From ramen noodles for dinner tonight to retirement further down the road, college students face financial stress at the start of their adult lives like never before.
Redbird Flight Plan, formerly Redbird FLI, is Illinois State University’s solution to teaching students skills to ease financial anxiety. It’s a part of the College of Business.
Dr. Kevin Ahlgrim is the director of Redbird Flight.
“A lot of these financial decisions have been made for them previously. Things like grocery bills, things like living conditions, these were things that probably their parents had paid for,” Ahlgrim said in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
That’s why Redbird Flight offers students lessons on job benefits, buying a car, budgeting a paycheck, etc. Ahlgrim said the program addresses the reality that students are usually facing all these decisions at one time, once they leave home for school or prepare for graduation.
“It’s impersonal, we’re not basically trying to moralize money. It’s that it’s stressful and it’s totally normal," he said. “And what we’re trying to do is at least provide some guidelines so that they can understand that uncertainty and at least navigate the flight.”
Ahlgrim said the program handles takeoff, hence the name. Once a student is airborne, adjustments and honing will still happen because finances are a lifelong lesson.
Student outreach
Ahlgrim said since the dawn of the program, attendance has been a struggle. While students are in need of the service, they have a hard time opting in.
“I would argue we’re kind of similar to something like career services, in that they provide a service and what they need to also do is let students know that this service basically exists,” said Ahlgrim. “So, we’ve been trying to target some orientation type of experiences that students have to introduce them to this resource on campus.”
Previously, he said the program would host workshops to work directly with students. In addition to that, Ahlgrim often joins student organizations who host him for speeches and lesson plans.
A recent one was called From Ramen to Retirement. The lesson is anxiety about money does not go away; it just transforms.
“The idea is to recognize the tradeoffs from having dinner tonight all the way to decisions about retiring; those obviously have different stakes involved,” he said.” Dinner tonight probably isn’t very significantly stressful, but once you get toward retirement and you have a significant amount of money saved, that decision to actually retire is a pretty stressful thing.”
Ahlgrim said another example is Flat Tire Finance, a metaphor to explain a financial emergency can happen in the same way as a tire leak. You may have a slow leak, or you may have an unpredictable blowout on the side of the road.
Throughout the lessons, Ahlgrim said the program has adapted to a more opt-in format which allows students to see what lessons they like and take advantage of them along with the workshops.
“Those are more captive audiences,” he said. “And we’re just trying to introduce a resource that currently exists… to try to reach out to a lot of orientation classes, where those classes are trying to introduce students to a wide variety of resources that are available across campus.”
Redbird Flight is in the process of launching an email newsletter as well for students to see quick lessons and view upcoming events.
Ahlgrim said student workers are a key part of improving financial literacy as well, and Redbird Flight can find common ground with them as they start to frame finances in a new light.
Financial education
Students coming to college may find their high school curriculum or conversations with their parents did not prepare them enough for their emerging financial stress.
Ahlgrim said high schools are starting to improve those lessons, but the root cause is more likely the societal taboo surrounding financial transparency.
“Sometimes parents don’t have the tools to be able to understand their financial stress and so being a little bit more open and honest and having that conversation, I think, is important,” he said. “The other thing is, money tends to be personal, and at some level it can feel like you’re being judged for how you feel about money.”
With money, Ahlgrim said people tend to feel like everyone else has it figured out. Without enough exposure, people then also tend to practice bad financial skills.
Ahlgrim said money faces the difficulty of having delayed feedback.
“Money is a skill, just like everything else, like playing the guitar. And when you play the guitar, you get feedback right away,” he said. “So, when you pick up a guitar and when you play the guitar, you strike the strings, you hear and you listen instantly and you’re like, ‘Did that sound like Eddie Van Halen? No, not really.'”
With money, Ahlgrim said someone will not find out it was a bad decision until later.
“But really, what we’re talking about is life experience… Students don’t have the practice for budgeting, they’re going to get it month after month after month, and so they’ll start to learn a little bit more it,” he said.
