Updated Book Available June 2016

Financial education speaker and author Shay Olivarria wrote 10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money in 2010. The book has been read by students across the country. Credit unions purchase it to provide young members and scholarship recipients with a concise foundation in personal finance.

This year, Shay is updating the book. A new chart of current student loan rates is included as well as a whole chapter about stocks and bonds. The revised and updated 10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money will be available June 2016.

 

Shay Olivarria is the most dynamic financial education speaker working today. She speaks at high schools, colleges, and companies across the country. She has written three books on personal finance, including Amazon Best Seller “Money Matters: The Get It Done in 1 Minute Workbook”. Shay has been quoted on Bankrate.com, FoxBusiness.com, NBC Latino and The Credit Union Times, among others. To schedule Shay to speak at your event visit www.BiggerThanYourBlock.com. 

 

Student Loan Forgiveness Bill

I saw this post on Default: The Students Loan Documentary‘s Facebook page and I knew that you would be interested in reading about it:

Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-MI-13) introduced the Student Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012 (H.R. 4170) on March 8, 2012. If enacted, this legislation will provide student loan forgiveness for federal education loans, allow private student loans to be refinanced into federal direct consolidation loans and cap all federal student loan interest rates at 3.4%.

This legislation would address some of the calls for student loan forgiveness raised by forgivestudentloandebt.com and the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Of course this has not been passed, but it’s a great step in the right direction. To read the whole article on Fastweb, click here.

To read about more ways to manage your money order a copy of 10 Things College Students  Need to Know About Money. Not sure what’s in it? Check out the reviews here.

 

 

Free Book

Get this book free.

For a limited time, “10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money is available for FREE in the Kindle Library.

Review from Until No More on Goodreads.com:

If you are the type that was never really scared of finances but kind of veer away from them because it just seemed boring and overly complicated. Then have no fear because the Financial Expert Author Shay Olivarria is here.

I purchased this book, read it and when I was done, I can honestly say that I felt very different about my finances in a good way. I know the book reads 10 Things College Students Needs to Know About Money but the truth is everyone can benefit from this book. So in a nut shell:

This book is funny, an eye opener, light but all in all everything you need to know. Now, usually I’m not one to say “go get this book” but seriously if you don’t have it go get it, especially if you care about you and your family’s financial future.

It had sure change my life!

Until…

Don’t have access to the Kindle Library? Buy it here.

Fox Business

The most dynamic financial education speaker working today, Shay Olivarria, was quoted on Fox Business in “Are You a Good Fit for a Credit Union?”. As usual, Shay is a strong advocate of credit unions. Her quotes are centered around the benefits of using a credit union for college students.

While a handful of large, well-known banks appear to dominate the banking landscape, and smaller community banks are often touted as the only alternative, the truth is that there’s a third option used by more than 91 million Americans.

Credit unions are becoming increasingly popular, and with more than 7,000 of them across the U.S., consumers have a lot of choices. But is a credit union right for you?

Consider these five types of consumers who routinely join credit unions.

College Students Learn About Finances

Even if they had a checking account or savings account as kids, most college students are still relatively new to managing their finances. Oftentimes, that means they don’t get the best deal from banks, says John Iglesias, CEO of Salal Credit Union in Seattle.

“College students often don’t have much of an income or an extensive credit history, so larger financial institutions may characterize them as risky, and that likely means higher fees on products,” Iglesias says.

According to Iglesias, some credit unions are specifically set up by schools for students, and their business model is geared toward working with younger customers who might not keep a very high balance in their checking account.

But Shay Olivarria, author of “10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money,” says credit unions also offer a real advantage to college students because they can be more forgiving if you make a mistake.

“There’s a focus on financial education with credit unions, and college students have more of a support system in terms of learning about money,” says Olivarria.

Click here to read more

Black Teen Empowerment Radio

I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to be a guest on Black Teen Empowerment Radio with Scotty Reid and R. Lee Gordon. We talked about community economics, recycling the Black dollar, the difference between traditional banks and credit unions, types of accounts, and a few tips from my book 10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money.

Listen to Black Teen Empowerment Radio

Free books

I’m so excited about Financial Education Month that I’ve decided to give away 25 copies of 10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money. I’ll provide the link to order your free copy tomorrow, but my email list will get the link an hour earlier.

Sign up for the Bigger Than Your Block, LLC mailing list so you don’t miss valuable promotions like this.

Who Controls Your Retirement Account?

I was reading about how the rules that govern your 401k and IRA are created in Financial Advisor and it kinda scared me. I think that we should all be saving for retirement. The part that scares me is when there are laws enacted to make sure we do:

While at Brookings, Iwry began developing the auto-IRA, which would require employers without retirement plans but with more than 10 employees to withhold a portion of each employee’s pay—similar to a payroll-tax withholding—and deposit it into an IRA. Employees could opt out.

Be an adult
You probably realize that I’m all for small government and personal responsibility. People should be educated about how and why to save for retirement and then left alone to make their own choice. If they end up eating cat food because they haven’t saved a penny… that’s not my fault. The reason that many law makers want to make laws that force people to save is because they think we’re not smart enough to comprehend the importance of saving and investing for our own well being. If we don’t start making different choices we’ll either end up a) being forced into programs that we don’t understand. Obviously if we understood them, we wouldn’t need to be forced. We’d run to our financial institutions and set up our automatic retirement contributions as soon as we earned our first check from the mall or b) we’ll opt-out of those forced plans and become part of the social welfare system set up for people that couldn’t handle being an adult and making adult decisions.

Make good choices

What is more, the lower-income workers are more likely to withdraw money before 59 1/2 for emergencies and living expenses, and then owe a 10% tax penalty on the withdrawal. “They might wind up with less after taxes than if they had never contributed at all,” says Ms. Ferguson.

That means that workers that don’t earn that much in the first place are putting a few dollars aside and then pulling them out before they should, triggering extra penalties. I understand that sometimes things happen that we can’t control, however we can control our responses. Do you have an emergency account set up to deal with life’s emergencies? Do you have your retirement contributions going to your 401k or IRA account automatically so you can pay yourself first?

One day you’ll be old.
One day you’ll be old. You can choose to prepare for that eventuality and feel the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with that or you can choose to do nothing and hope that you can get by on whatever money you get from social security every month. Are you willing to make decisions that will set you up for a comfortable retirement? Will you make small sacrifices now to have future gains?

Whatever you’re life ends up being, it’s that way due to your choices.

Choose wisely.

May Newsletter

In case you missed it, here’s the May Newsletter. So many good things are going on that I had to make a video! My second book on personal finance will be available soon, my new eBook “Guerrilla Financial Tactics’ has been downloaded almost 700 times, I’m giving they keynote at Become New’s Money & Emotion event, I’m speaking at Greater Mt. Olive’s Juneteenth event, and I’m looking forward to teaching Master Your Money: Increase Your Credit Score & Decrease Your Debt at Riverside Community College.

View the May Newsletter here.

$15 available from Amazon.com

Voluptua Project – 5 Reasons You Should Open an Account at a Credit Union

This month, my article on The Voluptua Project is about credit unions.

# 1 Traditional banks don’t care about you.
Traditional banks exist to make money for shareholders. This means that regardless of how much money they spend to make you think otherwise, their main concern is for a healthy bottom line not for your welfare. Sometimes their desire to earn profits dovetails with your desire to be financially solvent, but don’t be fooled .. read the rest of the article here.

HBCUs, College Costs, and Money – Why You Should Care

I just finished reading a post in the Higher Education blog about Historically Black Colleges and Universities and I’m fighting mad.

the six-year graduation rates of 83 four-year HBCUs last year, finding that just 37 percent of black students attained degrees within six years. More striking than the low completion rate was the fact that the national college graduation rate for black students is actually 4 percentage points higher than that of HBCUs collectively, calling into question the long-held notion that HBCUs are better at graduating African Americans.

It’s not only the fact that only 37% of students at HBCUS are graduating after 6 years that’s getting me riled up. The part that stuck out to me the most is:

Asked about graduation rates Thursday, Education Sector panelists suggested that funding levels could not be discounted as a significant drag on student success at HBCUs.

“A lot of that [graduation] rate …. is grounded in money, lack of money,” Wilson said.

Some HBCU officials say they still encounter hundreds of academically eligible students each year who drop out of college because their financial need cannot be met with Pell Grants and other aid. The vast majority of HBCUs have small endowments, so there isn’t a pot of money to dip into when financial challenges arise.

I take two things from this:

1) Many students of color rely on financial aid to pay for college costs. To make sure that students of color have access to the funds they need financial educators like myself have to:
– Make sure that parents have access to more information about saving for college early and regularly.
– Reach students to plan for college costs earlier.
– Help students of color save and aggressively seek scholarships and grants.
– Assist families of color in better understanding college costs and finding the school with the best fit for them.

2) Students that graduated from HBCUs aren’t supporting the colleges and universities financially as much as they could. I wonder if there is an opportunity to assist HBCU students, and potential graduates, in becoming more successful and understanding how their contributing to their alma maters contributes to building a strong community.

I think we all know the reasons we want more youth to have access to higher education. More young people in college means fewer young people getting into trouble with the law or getting stuck in low wage jobs. If we want our communities to be strong then we have to do what it takes to support others that are striving for positivity.

In an effort to reach more HBCU students I’m making an effort to share my new book 10 Things College Students Need to Know About Money with all 105 HBCUs in the United States. To kick things off I’ll be visiting Fayetville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, and Dallas-Ft. Worth this August.

Want Shay to visit your school? Call Shay!