Making dollars, cents of budgeting

by Denice Hurlbut HUR00001@BYUI.EDU News Asst. Editor

Kyle Brown works for a financial institution, but he has never balanced a checkbook before. Brown, a junior from Sugar City, Idaho, and an employee of Beehive Credit Union, prefers to take a more laid-back approach to his finances.

“I use a debit card, and I just keep tabs on how much money I’m spending,” Brown said.

Dan Gulbransen, BYU-Idaho Student Financial Aid Director, would discourage Brown’s approach to budgeting.

“Students ought to itemize their costs and then look at their resources. If you have more resources than you do costs, then you’re doing okay, but if you have more costs than resources, you’re in trouble,” Gulbransen said.

Gulbransen worries that many students come to school without realizing all of the costs that will face them. Students should be prepared to spend $7,000 to $12,000 on annual education and living expenses, Gulbransen said.

“Basically, you need to get a handle on what costs are and get them under control, and don’t buy what you don’t need,” Gulbransen said.

Lydia Labrum, a senior from St. George, Utah, has learned the benefits of organized budgeting. When Labrum kept overdrawing her account, her mother suggested that Labrum invest in some budgeting software.

Labrum purchased Quicken and started tracking expenses on Excel spreadsheets.

“It’s so much easier,” Labrum said, “and I don’t have to do the math either, it does it for you. It also makes it easier to balance my check book when my bank statement comes.”

Programs like Quicken and Excel are only a taste of the budgeting recourses available to students.

One for the Money: Guide to Family Finance by Elder Marvin J. Ashton, is a booklet produced by the Church. It’s available in the Financial Aid Office.

“It’s one of the best sources of how to deal with finances that I know of,” Gulbransen said.

Another recourse is the Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority Web site, www.uheaa.org. The Web site includes tips for working students, budgeting advice and applications for financial aid. It also states that more students nationwide drop out of school because of credit card debt than academics.

“Credit cards can be a major problem,” Gulbransen said. “It’s easy for college students to get a credit card and it’s easy for them to just flip it out when they’re paying for things, but soon they have a big balance with lots of interest.”

Gulbransen suggests that students learn to use credit cards with control, perhaps as a way to transfer cash and not as credit. Then they won’t become a burden that students will live with for years to come.