Money Management Matters Site to Aid Students; Topic: Student Loans

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 28, 2014) — What might your degree be worth?

The University of Kentucky Graduate School is prepared to aid students in developing the personal financial knowledge to answer this question and others related to financial literacy.

The UK Graduate School has created a personal financial education webpage titled "Money Management Matters," (MMM) built upon six salient personal financial topics that pertain directly to students and graduates:

1.         Student loans

2.         Employment

3.         Health care

4.         Credit

5.         Saving and investing

6.         Money management

This week, UKNow will highlight the first topic: student loans.

The MMM web resource collection provides a myriad of information designed to aid individuals in managing their federal student debt. 

Topics addressed within the MMM student loans category include the types of federal student loans available; comprehensive description of the various federal student loan repayment options; the benefits/costs of loan consolidation; the utilization of the National Student Loan Data System to determine the amount of federal student loans that one has, and the rate of interest applied to each loan; as well as personal federal student loan repayment estimations based upon one's exact loan totals.

The UK Graduate School is one of 15 universities, in partnership with the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) and the investment firm TIAA-CREF, introducing a personal financial literacy initiative aimed at educating students and graduates.

Last fall the 15 university partners distributed surveys to their graduate student populations concerning a variety of personal financial questions, to understand their “baseline” of personal financial knowledge. Using this information, the CGS developed GradSense.org as a personal financial education platform designed to help students and graduates enhance their personal financial knowledge.

The UK Graduate School has created the "Money Management Matters" website to strengthen this initiative at UK. 

 “We hope the information provided within GradSense.org and MMM will aid students and graduates in establishing a strong foundation of personal financial knowledge that they can build upon in order to make sound decisions across all stages of their personal financial life cycle,” said Chris Riley, project manager of the Enhancing Student Financial Education Grant and graduate student at the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration.

MEDIA CONTACT: Sarah Geegan, (859) 257-5365; sarah.geegan@uky.edu