ESS 509: Bears for Financial Success
This week we wanted to build on the financial resources information that we learned about last week and are excited to tell you about Bears for Financial Success (BFFS). Peer adviser Diego Corona-Munoz joins us today to give a more in-depth explanation of the BFFS resources, where to get budgeting worksheets geared towards college students, and why working with a peer makes a difference when getting support in a judgement free environment.
BFFS is a peer-to-peer financial wellness program housed in the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office and they offer workshops and one-on-one appointments to help students manage their personal finances in college and beyond.
Important links:
Laura Vogt:
Hello and welcome to The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. My name is Laura Vogt. I’m the Associate Director for Marketing and Communications for the College of Engineering and your podcast host. So last week we spoke with Joe Sell from the Financial Aid and Scholarships Office. And today I’m excited to have one of your peers, Diego Corona-Munoz, to talk about Bears for Financial Success. Welcome, Diego, and please tell us about yourself.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, so hi, everybody. My name’s Diego, Diego Corona-Munoz, and I am a rising senior. I’m studying political economy and Spanish and minoring in public policy. I am currently a peer educator with Bears for Financial Success. And I’m here to tell you a little bit more about personal finance.
Laura Vogt:
Well thank you so much for joining us today. And this season of the podcast we’re exploring more about campus resources for students, and I was interested to learn more about Bears for Financial Success. Can you tell us more about the program and how did you get involved in it?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, so BFFS is a peer-to-peer, we’re like an advising group, but also a space in the Financial Aid Office where students can come and ask questions about basic financial aid questions, personal finance questions. We’re still a group of students through a work study program. So even if you don’t have work study, you can still be a peer educator, just do an application process. And by doing so, you are able to help students walk into our office and help them regarding issues about their personal finance or basic financial aid questions.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
And we also provide workshops and presentations for any organization that may request them. So we talk about spending plan, managing credit cards, managing debt. Anything you could think of regarding finances and college. But yeah, along those lines, I started being a peer educator my freshman year, so spring semester of my freshman year. So I’ve been here quite a long time, going on to my third year. So been through many conversations with students and explored a lot about personal finance myself.
Laura Vogt:
And so you talked about the classes, are they specific to financial planning or do you also talk about if students need more information about taking out student loans? Or loans in general?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, they’re not classes per se, more like workshops. So some of these workshops, we had a few more during COVID. We had a virtual distance level, virtual learning. We opened up a few of our, I guess, timelines or a few time slots within our office. We’ve just provided some links on our social media page. And then we’d said, “Hey, we’re going to be talking about spending plan, feel free to join us.” And it’s just kind of carry on a conversation and help spread basic financial literacy. Hopefully it would also help students during this difficult time.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
But when we’re in person, we also provide workshops with any organization that may request it. By requesting it, you just have to send an email to our office and then we’ll more than happy be able to send someone over to talk about that specific topic.
Laura Vogt:
Is there one specific thing that students often seem to have the most questions about?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
A lot about budgeting and spending plans. So that’s what we also have our bulk of knowledge as well, just because it’s kind of some common theme. And most of the reason is because lots of these students don’t come with that financial literacy knowledge. So it becomes difficult for them to navigate your new environments without being financially stable.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
So then there comes budgeting, they don’t have much experience budgeting. So we like to make that process smoother for them by walking them through certain budgeting tips, we go through spending plan template, and we help them fill it out to help them visualize what expenses may come up or what expenses they should expect in the future. And by taking those little steps, it more definitely helps them manage their finances later on through college.
Laura Vogt:
Do you think it helps being a peer being able to talk to them on the same, I don’t know, level sounds like the wrong phrase to use, but doing the peer-to-peer counseling?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, definitely. At least from my experience being also on the other side, talking to another peer or another college student within the same grade level, or even a few grade levels higher, is definitely more relaxing and it’s less intimidating just because you have someone who may have gone through something similar more recently.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
And there’s different level of comfort when talking with someone your age, it feels like it’s talking to a friend rather than a professional. And by eliminating that barrier, it’s also easier to help educate these students and also understand them. And having that possible experience recently, you can also share some growth that I guess the educator also experience. And just by having that timeframe close to within each other definitely plays a role just because it helps them feel more comfortable knowing that they’re not the only ones that are going through something like that.
Laura Vogt:
And I imagine you make sure that they know that that’s a judgment-free environment.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah. That’s one of the things we go over during training as well. Many of these students are hesitant, but also scared and anxious to even talk about finances. And that’s something we have to understand walking into every appointment and every workshop because everyone has a different level of comfort when talking about their own finances.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
And even though the material stays the same, the way you approach certain workshops, certain appointments varies widely because you never know what any person may be going through and you just have to have that open mind and be willing to help that student however ways you can. And it’s also a good feeling at the end of the day when you know that the student has also had a positive impact by obtaining some resources.
Laura Vogt:
Do you have online resources if the students maybe just wants to be able to start planning their financial literacy or learning more about their financial literacy for them to use?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, BFFS is partnered and linked with iGrad. So iGrad is a self-learning tool. It’s also accessible through CalCentral. It’s free for all students. And there you can find courses regarding all types of financial literacy, even partially investing, retirement, savings, loans, debt. They have activities that you could do on your own, articles, videos.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
So that source has tons of stuff of financial literacy related. And that’s something we like to push within our space whenever we do workshops or talk to students in our appointments. And just by spreading out that iGrad is free for everybody and should be taken advantage of if you do feel like you need more assistance. It’s definitely there. Free of cost. So that’s something that is accessible for everybody.
Laura Vogt:
Is there a way for students to stay up to date for if you offer any workshops?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, so we are most active in our Instagram page. And that’s if I remember correctly @UCB.BFFS on Instagram. And other than that, our website, financialaid.berkeley.edu/bffs is also one of them. And that’s where we will be most of the time posting any tips about, especially on Instagram page, where we post a few tips about financial literacy. If we have raffles going on, sometimes we have raffles where if you complete a certain amount of iGrad courses, you’ll be entered into a raffle to win maybe a gift card.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
We also have a newsletter that you could sign up for and a blog. It varies on how it comes out or how often it releases, but we also have the blog. So in total, I would say most of the information will be relayed through either the blogs, newsletters, Instagram page, and our website. Our Instagram page is also linked to our Facebook, so you’ll most likely see duplicate content. But we’re most active on Instagram.
Laura Vogt:
Okay. And I’ll make sure that on the podcast page, I’ll have links to all of that as well so everybody can click on it real easily. So when can new students that are just coming in start to use the resources? Do they need to be on campus? Or do they have to wait till August?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Any student who’s registered within Berkeley, whether that’d be … we’ve already had a few students who haven’t even started, well who have recently been admitted and haven’t been on campus yet, already use our services. And as long as you could access the appointment portal through the Berkeley website, I believe it’s using the CalNet ID, you’re able to use our resources. And right now we’re offering virtual appointments, even throughout the summer. Appointment times or appointment hours may vary or office hours may vary just because we have limited amount of staff working in the summer. But throughout the school year, the academic year, you should expect, options to book Monday through Friday. Usually our office hours are between 9 to 2, 9 to 3. Or 10 to 2, 10 to 3. Depending on again, our peer educators’ schedules and how they can best accommodate office hours.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
But along that range of time. But yeah, we’re offering virtual appointments, virtual workshops, virtual presentations. Let’s say a group wants to schedule us to talk about spending plan, we can do that virtually. I know we’re moving back on campus and we still don’t know how that’s going to work or how we’re going to offer our services. But if there is some type of in-person activity, I’m pretty sure some of our peer educators will be willing to go. But as of now, regardless of how we’re doing or how we’re shifting our workplace, we’re still going to be offering our services one way or another. But most definitely, being virtual will be one of those top priorities just to accommodate everybody.
Laura Vogt:
And if a student wanted to make one of those virtual appointments with a peer, is it just a link on the website?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah. There’s a option on the website where you could book an appointment and once you click that, it’ll redirect you to a site where you can pick if you have a preference on which peer educator you want to pick or a time preference, it’s all listed there, a day as well. And you’re able to add a note or something, depending on what you want to talk about. And then you’ll receive an email confirmation and then you’ll be set.
Laura Vogt:
And are there resources for students that if they find themselves struggling with any kind of basic needs during the school year that you’re able to point them towards?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah, so if you come into our office, maybe requesting special needs or basic needs, whether that be financially, maybe housing or food insecurity, we do have a list of resources you could access. But we also work alongside the Basic Needs Center a few times in the semester. So we like to redirect students there as well. Also [inaudible 00:13:06] through programs on campus, but we most definitely have resources for you to reach out to in case we don’t know where to go. Feel free to drop in to our office. And we’ll be more than happy to guide you to the right place if our services aren’t what’s needed to help support that student.
Laura Vogt:
So when you think back to when you first started at Cal a couple of years ago, was there something that you wish you had done differently when it came to your financial planning?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
I personally would maybe have liked to have more experience or more practice budgeting just because there are many expenses that you’re not accounting for. And it’s one thing to kind of prepare yourself, like, oh, I may need to spend money on this when I go to campus, but you really don’t know until you’re there, just because something unexpected might come up. And I think that’s also the best way to learn. Even though you may read about something like, what to be prepared for something or for X, Y, and Z, you’re really not going to know until you’re there. And you actually, you’re basically no lie, managing your finances. So, and again, I mean, it’s not really something I would have wanted to do before coming in here, but more understanding that it’s kind of a process and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed. But the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better you’ll be able to manage your finances.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
But again, it’s a process. And even though I may have not known much about budgeting besides this job helping me in that, with the experience as well, it helped me kind of alleviate some of that stress. And just by constantly monitoring my finances throughout the years.
Laura Vogt:
And your financial planning forms for budgeting take into consideration a lot of the expenses that a college student would have.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Yeah. So we have a spending plan template. It’s actually also accessible on our website and there we break down budgets monthly. We have categories where you could fill out your monthly rent, utilities. We also break it down between fixed and flexible expenses. So fixed expenses being expenses that aren’t really change month by month. So it’ll be probably like your rent or maybe a car payment or phone plan. And then you have your flexible expenses, which include groceries, toiletries, haircuts, and all that. So little things college students typically pay for, we kind of have them listed there and that’s how we kind of break down expenses. Again, they may vary slightly student by student. Maybe they have different expenses that are to account for. But in a template, we break it down monthly and then we see where we can make adjustments. So that’s a very helpful too, which is also, like I said, accessible, even if you don’t make an appointment with us, it’s accessible on that website if you would also like to play around with that tool.
Laura Vogt:
Is there anything that we haven’t talked about today that you wanted to cover or something that you wanted to reiterate?
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Definitely being patient. Financial literacy is a big topic and it’s not expected, or don’t feel rushed to kind of understand everything all at once. I would say first focus on the basics. So like savings and budgeting. And once you figure out how to better save your money, better budget your money, you’ll notice that transition to credit cards, to loans, everything becoming that much easier just because you’ve already built that foundation.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
So take your time. It’s not a race. It’s better to master these skills early on when you’re young, rather than mess up drastically when you’re older. Just because, when you’re younger, you have more time to recover. So it’s okay to be overwhelmed at first. Understand everything’s a process and just trusting yourself through that learning, through accessing. And don’t be afraid also to access the resources. That’s why BFFS is here and exists to help students who are in need. So don’t be afraid to access resources and always remember to stay patient and just trust yourself and the knowledge that you’re constantly gaining.
Laura Vogt:
Well, thank you so much Diego for joining us today. This has been really useful information that I’m excited to share with the students.
Diego Corona-Munoz:
Of course, anytime. And again, feel free to stop by our office or virtually schedule an appointment or email us if you have any other questions.
Laura Vogt:
And like I said, I’m going to have all those links will be on our website for engineering.berkeley.edu/esspodcast. And we always like to have the important links they’re all gathered for you. And thank you to everyone for joining us today on The Not So Secret Guide to Being a Berkeley Engineer. And I look forward to podcasting with you next week.