As most college students dream about their futures, few dreams include establishing good financial credit.

However, an on-campus workshop called “Money Talks” will aim to help students understand more about financial issues that can positively or negatively impact their future aspirations.

Mike Scott, the director of Scholarships and Student Financial Aid and host of the event, said the workshop was important because students wanted answers about financial literacy.

The workshop would explain how credit ratings and scores are determined, show how current decisions could help or hurt financial credit, demonstrate how to find out and maintain individual credit scores and answer any questions students might have.

The goal of the workshop would be for students to become more financially literate, Scott said.

“There used to be a day where in most families, certain things like politics, sex and money weren’t mentioned,” Scott said. “Now, in today’s culture, politics and sex are more discussed, but money still isn’t.”

Scott said the workshop was created because Student Affairs approached the Office of Financial Aid requesting more courses on financial literacy. With tough economic times and a rise in private loans, the workshop was justified, he said.

“In a federal loan, there’s no credit issue,” Scott said. “In a private loan, your credit will be affected. We see more students dealing with these types of issues, and we feel that this workshop is very timely.”

Financial credit does have a major impact on the future, Karen Blumenthal, a financial journalist for The Wall Street Journal and an adjunct journalism professor at the university, said. 

Establishing credit in college should be a high priority for young adults, Blumenthal said. Without established credit, renting an apartment or financing a car loan can become difficult or expensive, since students and recent graduates are more likely to be faced with high interest rates, she said.

“Show you can manage your money responsibly,” Blumenthal said. “It’s like a midterm exam. They just want to see if you can master this skill.”

Blumenthal said there were multiple ways to establish credit and build a credit record, such as becoming an authorized user on parents’ credit cards to “piggyback” onto their records. Paying off student loans, a credit card or other bills on time also would establish good credit.

Christopher Fine, an alumnus from the class of 2011, said he had personally seen how powerfully credit could make an impact since he graduated. As a representative at a car dealership, Fine works with financial institutions daily, and he said current students should work on their financial credit as soon as possible.

Fine said the best way he found to establish good credit in college was to use a credit card responsibly and minimally to build a credit history. Instead of paying off the credit card immediately, pay it off over time through monthly, on-time payments.

“It sounds silly,” Fine said. “But if you take four months to pay off $200, you show the bank you can make regular payments, and you give them a long credit history.”

Scott said more workshops on financial literacy are in the planning stages and would likely be held in the future. The future workshops would cover multiple topics on personal finance.