Ep. 3 - Let's Talk About Money - Credit cards, Investing and Loan payments, oh my! With TRIO Counselor Michelle Onaka

Michelle Onaka, a recent TRIO SSS academic counselor, instructor, and data coordinator at Oregon State University, talks about engaging students in conversations around money. We talk about how to start conversations, about credit cards and debt aversion, investing, and even making plans to repay loans after graduations. Michelle shares the course she developed and her tools for helping students choose their own adventure by sharing resources from YouTube, blogs, podcasts, and other media.

Michelle received her BA in Economics from Ohio University, and her Masters in College Student Services Administration from Oregon State. In addition to her 8 years working with SSS through TRIO, she founded Intentional Money Life to help educators plan for their financial goals.

You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, and Linked in at Intentionalmoneylife.com and she gladly shared a wealth of material in her  google drive at intentionalmoneylife.com/GAIN.

Michelle also mentioned Yanely Espinal (@missbehelpful) and her podcast Mind Your Money.

Please help others find this podcast by rating and reviewing wherever you listen!

You can find me at https://www.firstgenfm.com/ and on LinkedIn. My email is jen@firstgenfm.com.

Transcript

Jen: 0:12

Hi and welcome to First Gen FM, a podcast for educators who want to learn more about serving, working with, celebrating first generation college bound and college students. I am so excited to be here today with Michelle Onaka, who is currently an instructor and academic counselor and a data coordinator for the TRIO program at Oregon State. So, a West Coaster to talk to today. I know she knows a lot about the topic we're going to talk about, which is financial education and you'll hear the journey of how she actually got interested in this as well as some great takeaways about how we can all help our students learn more about financial literacy and financial education. So thanks for joining me today and welcome Michelle. Welcome to First Gen FM about how you engage students in talking about money and finances. Cuz I know I'm gonna learn a lot and I'm sure you're gonna learn a lot who's listening. Let's start with. How did you start talking to students about money? You know, I noticed that about 2021, you not only started to teach that, at the school that you're at, but you also started business just specifically on, being intentional with your money and your life. Tell me, how did that get started? What was the spark?

Michelle: 1:35

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. So I think that. The original kind of why I started talking to students about money is because I work for Trio Student Support Services. Yeah. And in a federally funded trio, any of the trio federally funded programs, one of the things that we have to do is talk to students about money. So we actually have to report on how many students we talked with, about how many students we gave financial education or something like that. And so that's something that's, you know, mandated in the grant. And I love to talk about money, so I. Embraced to that very quickly. And I ended up kind of becoming the main like money person in my program, I would say. So we all kind of end up taking on our own little like roles and I would say money was the one that I kind of ended up taking on. Yeah. So that's why it's because the grant says we have to, and I said, great. I would love to do that. Let's figure out how to do this.

Jen: 2:32

Nice. So how did you get interested in, in wanting to teach that?

Michelle: 2:36

So the reason I ended up deciding to actually teach a course to the students was because I was, I kind of did my own deep dive into learning about investing in, around like 20, 20 ish. So I, you know, I was always decent with money. I grew up in a frugal household and I've always been frugal and pretty intentional with my money. But, No one talked, like, we didn't talk about money, we didn't talk about like how to invest it or anything like that. So like, I didn't know any of those things either. And so yeah, we, my husband and I, we knew we wanted to retire earlier. We were hoping for like, at least 55, but we had no idea how to get there. And I just knew that like saving wasn't gonna get us there. Like we don't make mm-hmm. Super high income. So saving is not gonna be the way to get there. And so I, I did a deep dive in around 2020 and I. Finally feel, feel like I understood investing. I figured out all the pieces that I had needed to know to be ready to really invest. And in that process, I was actually listening to a podcast and it was an episode with a woman who was a first gen college student. And she was saying something that kind of, I took as a challenge that's like, there are not enough people teaching financial education out there and we need to step up and do more. And I was like, You know, like I'm not a professional. I didn't go to school to figure out how to teach financial education, and yet I know a lot. And so like for me, one-on-one wasn't a scary conversation, right? Because it's just like, yeah, I can talk to you about money any day. But like deciding to teach a course, it made me feel like, okay, now I'm like positioning myself as an expert. And I was like, no, I'm not. Now I'm positioning my positioning myself as someone you can learn from. That's it. And so, yeah, I kind of took that challenge and decided to Ask my my director if I could offer a course for our students. And so, yeah, I got to teach that course in 2021 and 2022 in the spring.

Jen: 4:27

That's great. I, I love how you took the podcast challenge. Yeah. You know, took it as a challenge. Like, oh yeah, well, I'm gonna be one of those people who's

Michelle: 4:35

gonna teach. So it was like, oh, dang. She's totally right. Like, just talking to my students one-on-one isn't enough. Like, I need to do this.

Jen: 4:42

Yeah. Do you find that students are hungry for that information and are just like signing up for your class or really engaged.

Michelle: 4:51

I would say yes. So I mean, the course, it was only for Trio SSS students and it was geared towards students that were near graduation. So it wasn't like it was available to all of the students necessarily. Mm-hmm. And I think we got like 15 students each, each time I, I offered it and 15 students, when you have a grant with. 300 students, but you know, the vast majority of them are not even in the demographic of, you know, getting close to graduation. And then you have to add in like, okay, it's a two credit class that they have to take in the spring term and it has to fit into their schedule. Like, I felt pretty good about it. We also offer a career- focused course, and that course is also awesome, but they didn't get as many students as I did in my course. So yeah, I, I think, and I think in one-on-one appointments, students are interested in talking about, I found students to be. Really hungry for like legit financial education information.

Jen: 5:43

Yes. Yes. Tell us where would you suggest we start? If we wanted to build something like this or We wanted to get our students talking and thinking about that before they graduate, before they go into their careers and, you know, start to have money coming in. Yeah. You know, beyond the money that they have now or even, what should they start thinking about in college?

Michelle: 6:04

Yeah, so I think that, you know, being cognizant of where they are in their career. So like, are they, you know The middle of high school versus at the end of high school, are they planning to go to college? Are they at the beginning of college? Are they at like, you know, wherever they are? Mm-hmm. And that's why I wanted mine to be geared towards getting ready to graduate from college, because that's a very specific time period and that really helps you to kind of narrow down and make it really relevant to them. But I would say in general for starting with students, I think it can be like, don't let it be a scary thing. Don't let it be a big overwhelming thing, like just start. And so if you, if you talk to students one-on-one in really any capacity, if you are a, if you have peer mentors or if you are a mentor, or if you have student workers, or if you have one-on-one appointments with students, any of those opportunities, you could always just like, Ask some offhanded comment or bring up some offhanded thing about money to just open the conversation. So I know in the presentation that I made about this, I gave examples of with my students, I'm pretty upfront and I'm just like, so do you have any idea what your credit score is? And that can work for some people. That totally works for me. Some people might not wanna be so maybe confrontational or direct and they might wanna say Hey, you know, I've been really looking into my credit score lately, or I've been, you know, something about. This is something I've been really thinking about or I've been learning about a lot lately, and I'm just curious, you know, do you feel like you're educated on this, however you wanna phrase it, but just bringing up those conversations. So in, so I'm an academic counselor and so I meet with students one-on-one. And in those meetings, yeah, towards the end if like, okay, we've covered academics, we've covered like all of these other things that I usually want to cover. And we have a little bit of time, I'll just kind of throw out a random question. Like, okay, remind me how much student debt do you, are you currently in? Or. Like, Hey, you know, are you using anything to monitor your credit score? Or do you have an emergency fund set up yet? Or whatever.

Jen: 7:56

And do you find the students are they surprised by that? I mean, maybe, maybe the first time,

Michelle: 8:00

but at least Yeah, I was gonna say not from me. Yeah. Okay. So I kinda tell people I'm a money nerd. Like, yeah, let's talk about money. So I don't think that they're ever, I don't ever remember someone looking at me like, what? So they probably talk to each other different too. That might be Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I, I'll have, I'll have students who are not my students set up financial education appointments with me and they'll come in and we'll figure out, you know, getting their first credit card or, I've been helping students invest in a Roth ira. These are low income first generation students, and I still have some of'em that are literally, I'm helping them get a Roth IRA set up and set up automatic contributions to it.

Jen: 8:36

Nice. Nice. And, you probably tell them just how, how much saving now. Compounding over time will be a blessing to

Michelle: 8:47

them later and how far ahead of me they are. Like, I didn't know this stuff at their age. I wasn't doing this. I didn't have me at their age. So yeah. And I think that that's a really good thing for them to feel like they're ahead, you know? Because I feel like with the first gen or low income students, often it feels like they're playing catch up. And I think with financial education, I. And I wonder if that's one of the reasons they're so interested in it. I have found with my students that it, it feels like they think the reason they don't know this stuff about money is because they are first gen or because their family doesn't have a lot of money. And I think truthfully, it's because the education system just doesn't teach it. Like I don't really. Think that it's because of their family situation. Because I think middle income and higher income people even aren't learning this stuff either. I think it's a, it's a problem with education, but they come in thinking like, oh, the reason, I don't know, like everyone else knows this. The reason I don't know this is because my parents didn't know it and they couldn't teach it to me. And so yeah, getting to them to the point of like, you have a Roth ira, you're 21, you're 22 years old, like you are ahead of most of the people around you.

Jen: 9:52

Yes. Right. Regardless, regardless of their parental income. You're way ahead of the game. Yeah. Uhhuh, what what do you find is most interesting to the students when you start to talk with them or when you do a presentation, you know, where, what, what kinds of questions are like flying in that they wanna know about? I find

Michelle: 10:09

that, Students are usually fairly interested in credit cards and understanding how to use those successfully. I think, and once again, with the population that I work with, I have found that a lot of them are very debt averse. Mm-hmm. So I don't find very often that my students are actually in credit card debt. I find that. More often than not, they have been too scared to deal with credit cards. And that may be based on like the cultural and the demographics of specific students that I'm working with. But yeah, I find that a lot of them, I. Like either their parents don't use credit cards or they do, but they don't really talk to them about it. And so they, they don't feel like they have any knowledge about credit cards and they've probably heard some scary stories and so they're like, I wanna build my credit, but I'm really scared to get a credit card. So the credit card one, I feel like I had a decent amount of students come to that and be interested in that. I actually have had a decent amount of students wanna talk about investing and I think, and I, my guess is that with investing, and this may be from my own experience, I knew. Credit cards and credit scores and I knew how to stay outta trouble, but I didn't even know how to invest right until, only a few years ago. And so I also wonder if the people that they're talking about about money probably have a similar blind spot. And so they don't have as many people to go to to talk about something like investing, whereas maybe they have more people that they can talk to. Possibly, I don't know. I do find that a lot of my students say, being in the class brought up a lot of conversations that they were able to start having with their parents and their significant others and their friends that they weren't really having, like money is such a taboo topic that even in, we all know that none of us have money here. They still don't necessarily like talk about like, how are we doing this? How are we making this work?

Jen: 11:50

Yeah. Do you, do you ever get any pushback about, well, we don't have any money right now, so why do we need to know this?

Michelle: 11:56

You know, I haven't, and I, I get that, that's a thing. I know that there are some people that might say that, but at least my students, the ones that are joining the class, for instance, one, they joined the class, right? So maybe the students who would say that aren't in the class but they are getting close to graduation. And like one of the things that we actually do, it's it's around their debt repayment. But I helped them figure out like, how much money might you actually be making in your career? And so a lot of them are, you know, even if it's three, I had a student that was like, I know that this is for students that are getting close to graduation, but I'm a sophomore and I really wanna take it. And I'm like, sure, if that's what you wanna do, go for it. And so, but even for her, she could look and she could see like, okay, how much am I going to be making? And then what's my student repayment gonna look like? Like let me, everything was for them, everything was like, Okay, you are going to apply this to yourself. Do you have a credit card? Let's do a worksheet to figure out like what do you need to know about getting a credit card if you don't have one? And let's do a worksheet to figure out what's your student loan repayment gonna look like? And let's go ahead and set up your own budget. And it's, of course, some of it's kind of theoretical, but like let's base it off of all the information that we can get so that you have the most realistic example of what it's like to do this for yourself.

Jen: 13:16

Yeah, that must be so helpful. I mean, even if they don't know the exact salary they're going to get, they can get a general sense of this is the range I might be in. And then planning the debt payment and just seeing yeah. It must be, I would think students would be relieved a lot having these

Michelle: 13:33

conversations, especially with a loan repayment one. That's when I see a lot, because you know, they go into it and they get some debt, but they don't have any sense of like, how much is this gonna cost me monthly and how much am I gonna make monthly? Like that is just not part of the conversation usually when students are getting out debt. And so to be able to sit down and. And guesstimate, how much debt am I gonna have at the end? What's my salary gonna be at the end? What are the student loan repayment options and what will that look like? A lot of them are like, okay, I know I have$30,000 of debt, but like this isn't actually as scary as I thought it was going to be, which I think can be really helpful. Yeah.

Jen: 14:06

And I think even talking about, you know, your salary may be$60,000, but you don't get to take home$60,000. Yeah. What does your, what does your monthly, I, I mean, do you have any students say? Like, what, what do you mean? Like, I make 60, but I just, I take home 48. You

Michelle: 14:22

know what what happens there? Yeah, so in the, so in the student loan repayment worksheet, we don't really talk about taxes, although at one point there's a budget and in, I give an example budget and I put how much, like I, I include taxes in there, but in my course, I actually didn't talk about budgeting until week eight, so this is a 10 week course. So it was like, we have already talked about. Debt. We have talked about student loan repayment. We've talked about buying a house, we've talked about investing, we've talked about taxes. And so when they get to the budgeting piece, they already know, like even getting an idea of how much taxes they're going to be losing, like they know all of that and they include that in their budget of like, what's your marginal tax rate gonna be? Or like, what's your effective tax? Like, we include all of that. And so I think some of'em, so one of the, the budgeting activity that I do is actually, it translates it into time. So they're like, wait, you're saying I'm gonna work like four days a month to pay my taxes, you know? Yes, yes. And so, but then they could get a better sense of how much time do you want to be spending on housing? How much time do you want to be spending on buying clothes? Do, does it make sense for you to work an extra day every month so that you could buy clothes or whatever? And that, that was one that I think was pretty impactful for some of the students. I'll bet.

Jen: 15:37

I bet. What kind of aha moments have you seen from those kinds of conversations? Because I think they do understand, the first gen students really do understand the time and money piece. Yeah. But maybe not the time and spending piece, or the time and savings piece. Yeah.

Michelle: 15:53

Yeah. I, I know that it's, it's just one of the things that we would talk about, I'm trying to think of like, so I would have the students do a weekly reflection, and so that was nice. So I would get to see like, what are you thinking about, what are you talking about? Because especially this was an online class. So it's not even like I was sitting in person with the students and can like read the room so much, and so I would have them do a weekly reflection and it was really cool to see like what some of the aha moments were. I'm not thinking of any, I do remember there being some students who really liked that budgeting activity because they thought it was really cool to see like, how many hours or how many days am I actually gonna be spending? In my work just so I can pay for this. One thing I do remember there being students who, for instance, I had a student who opened a high yield savings account during the course, and she like a month later was like, oh my God, I made$5 in interest this month. I've never made$5 in interest ever. Or I had another student who. Because we were talking about credit cards. She actually looked at her credit card statement and she found out that she had like$80 in like points or benefits that were about to expire. Like a month or two later they were going to expire, and so she got this like$80 for free. So I definitely saw like. This stuff had an impact, even like short term, even like little things, it seemed to have a really big impact on the students, which was so cool

Jen: 17:06

to see. Yeah, I'll bet. I, I would, I would think that's very fulfilling. Did you have a tough time selling that this would be a worthwhile course when you presented it?

Michelle: 17:17

No. Nope. Yeah, I mean, I sent out an email that was like, you know, if you're interested in all of these things, and it was like being able to retire early or having money to help your parents retire or, you know, being able to buy a house one day or, you know, I just sent out an email with like, here are some of the kinds of things that if you're interested in this, you should join this class. And, and the course, we actually did not offer it this spring term anymore. There were a lot of students that were pretty sad. Like there were students that had been planning on taking it. And that was a decision made by the director. It wasn't, and it wasn't even based on the course or anything. It was just like, well, this course isn't written into our grant, basically, so we're not gonna offer it anymore.

Jen: 17:58

Right. And so what made you decide to. To offer courses then to educators on money. Cuz that is, that's another, yeah. So not only do you business talk to students business, but Right. You run a business where you wanna talk to folks like me to say, you know, here's what you can do with your money. Yeah.

Michelle: 18:16

So I would say, So there's a couple answers to that. So why I really wanted to focus on educators is because as I talked about, there's not enough financial education out there in the first place. And if I don't know it, how am I gonna teach my students? Mm-hmm. And so, you know, if I think about like, you know, the kind of expanding impact, right? If I can teach a student, that's awesome, that's great. Maybe they'll teach some of their friends. If I can teach a teacher, if I can teach, whether that's like a high school teacher or someone working in higher education, Anyone like, right. If, if your, if your supervisor and your instructor and your academic advisor, if they all put that into the conversation in some capacity and open up a conversation about that, then this student is going to get so much more than just saying, okay, let's get a course in every school, which I think we should have a course everywhere, right? Don't get me wrong, I don not. Right. In high school. In high school, yeah. Yeah. Everywhere. Right? We should have courses all the time. But I think that we need to increase our education and I mean, like I said, It took that almost like, it felt like a direct like ask of like, you know, if no one else is teaching this students. And I was like, crap, you're right. No one else is teaching it. Right? Like it took me like really diving into learning about investing before I felt comfortable even considering that, right? So I would talk about credit cards and stuff like that, but that's not everything. And so partly I think we need to increase the education of. All of the people that might interact with these students in the first place. So that's part of the reason. Another part is that the course that I offered is, like I said, it was only for Trio SSS students. I couldn't offer it to anyone else, not anyone at the university, not anyone outside of the university. And so it felt like, You know, this is really helpful. Like the, the impacts that I saw on those students, just that, even that very first term when I probably did a terrible job, you know, it was my very first time teaching it. It was probably pretty bad comparatively. And still, I got such good feedback that I was like, okay, this is really important. This is really impactful and I need to get this out there for more people. I know that there's a lot of people out there talking about money, but clearly it's not enough because otherwise everyone would know this and I wouldn't need to teach this course in the first place. Right, right. So, so yeah, so I decided that I should offer a business and also there was a little piece of that offering a business that was also related to the dynamics of my work environment and like being forced back in person when. Covid and I have little kids and all of that. So there was a little piece that was like, okay, I need to at least diversify my income at the very least. But yeah, I love, like if I could choose, if I could work with like my perfect person that I would love to teach, it would be someone who is, say a first gen educator. So like they were first gen and they are now an educator and. Like helping them figure all of this out and build their own capacity so that they can improve their own lives and so that they can share that with all of the students that they come into contact with.

Jen: 21:09

Yeah. I, I just think that's so crucial, that's something I feel strongly about in terms of admissions, about teaching high school educators all about the, the admissions process and the, the nuances of it so that they can open doors to opportunity for their students. Yeah. And, and that's exactly what you're saying, it's, yep. Is the more financial education, the more financial. The more educators who are talking about money and finances. Yep. The more opportunities the students have. Yep.

Michelle: 21:40

To understand and who have good solid information because I, you know, so there's a lot of, like Dave Ramsey is big out there. I disagree with a lot of what Dave Ramsey says. I. I don't want, if people are gonna be building their education, I prefer that they don't go to him because there's some, I would say there's some problematic stuff in there. And so there's also like, I want it to be good financial education. And of course, what am I, I'm gonna think that whatever I have learned is the best cause. Like that's how that works. Right. But as Right, exactly. But as someone who, you know, really kind of like overlearn, like I tried to learn from a whole bunch of different people and then I synthesize that into my own beliefs and I'm like, okay, like this, I, I feel like what I have learned is good, solid information, and I wanna make sure other people get that.

Jen: 22:23

Yeah. So do you find when you're, talking about it to students, do you, do you say if you wanna know more, here are some great websites you can look at, or here are some good books to read.

Michelle: 22:33

Not really. So in the course, one of the things that I did was I included it was a choose your own adventure, where it was literally like, it could be podcasts, it could be YouTube videos, it could be books, it could be blog posts. And I just included kind of lists of different things that were relevant for different people. But it was all stuff that I had vetted. I didn't want to send anyone to anything that I hadn't, I hadn't been sure about. But I, I also, so at my institution we use Canvas and so we have a canvas page for our students, and I decided to make like little canvas sections about each topic mostly so that I could just pull up the video while I'm in the meeting so I could like quickly get to like the video about credit that I like the most or whatever. But, and that, and those modules are open to the students, but I don't think that they necessarily really use them. I think often it would be like, So, for instance, I have a student right now who he wants to talk about getting a credit card, but he does not have any student loans. He does not have anything. So, so we talk about it for a while and then I say, okay, let's make another appointment before then. If you can go ahead and try to pull a credit, credit report. My guess is he's not gonna have a credit report, but I'm like, okay, here's the link. Go ahead and try to pull it. I don't know if you're gonna have one. It's okay if you don't, but at least then we can get a sense of like, What kind of credit card do we need to look at? And if you don't have time to do that, we'll just do it in our meeting. So it's kind of like those, like smaller things usually. Mm-hmm. Is what I'm doing. And I also, so like this term, because I wasn't teaching the class, I've been doing like a a cash talk work workshop series. And so I would do the workshop and then I. Write up the main points into an email and I link to the video and I link to the slides, and then I send that out as an email so that at the very least, you know, the students that came are gonna get the most out of it. But then the students who just read the email might get some. And I remember there was one of my, one of my emails that I sent out recently that it had like a ridiculously high open and click rates. I think it was like I. 90% open and 60% click rates or something. And normally with our students it's like 60% open rates with most things. Right. So I was like, whoa. Yeah. Wow. That was, do you remember what the topic was at the time? I can, I can bring it up. I remember I put it in my presentation cuz I was working on this presentation. When I noticed it. It was either credit reports and scores or credit cards. Okay. Rep credit reports and scores. Yep. It was 90% opens and 66% clicks as of the time that I was looking at it. That's

Jen: 25:02

incredible. Again, somebody who's looking, like me, who's like this, this sounds great. I would love to start a course. Where do you suggest we start and how much knowledge do you think I keep asking like double questions. And how much knowledge do you think we need to have in order to present to the students?

Michelle: 25:22

I think you need to get to a point where you feel like you can understand and explain it to someone. So it doesn't have to be. So for instance, I teach people about investing. I don't need to teach people about investing on a margin because I don't recommend doing that. So all I need to know is don't do it. Right. So like you need to, you need to understand the pieces that you need to be able to explain to people. You need to understand enough to be able to answer why that's not a good idea, for instance. But I don't think you need to understand the intricacies of every single little thing. And you can always just say, and I'm sure we're educators, we know this. You can always just say, I. I don't know the answer right now. Do we, would we wanna look it up together or let me look into it and I'll get back to you. Like that's okay. That's my favorite

Jen: 26:04

answer. I dunno, but

Michelle: 26:05

I'll find out. Yeah. So often part, I mean, part of my job is demonstrating, finding information, right? Like as at the university, like, you know, I'm not sure what time that place opens. Like let's, let's look on the Oregon State website and we'll find it, you know? Right, right. So I think, you know, you need to know enough to feel like you can explain it. You need to feel, you need to know enough to feel confident explaining it. But like I said, if you don't know everything, you don't know every, like they, they don't expect you to know everything. Mm-hmm. So, you know, we don't have to expect ourselves, you don't have to be an expert. You don't have to have some financial professional certification. Right, right, right. Spend a little bit of time educating yourself. Make sure you feel like you can understand it and you can explain it. Find some resources that will help you ex explain it if you feel like you need to. And. And go for it. Start the conversation.

Jen: 26:52

Do you have a particular go-to resource that you like to point students to?

Michelle: 27:01

So not necessarily. Not necessarily. So I. I think, I mean, for instance, like pulling credit, you know, of course we know where credit reports need to come from, so that's a very specific thing, right? Mm-hmm. But if you're just gonna look at your credit score, I actually provide like a list of, like, here are some approximate credit score websites, and we talk about how like, these, this is not necessarily going to be a I C O, and your score changes all the time, and your score is based on these three different bureaus. And that's okay. Like it's just a, like this is. Information gathering. It doesn't have to be anything specific. I know like Investopedia and the Balance are websites that I have often talked about because I've often found some of their blog posts or posts and articles to be the most informative. But often it comes down to this specific, like what's the specific topic and like, was there a resource that I have used or I have seen for this? But I did so in. So I did a presentation on this a few weeks ago actually, and for that I created a Google Drive. And in that Google Drive I put some information, some resources. So sometimes it's like the slides from the presentation that I have done, or sometimes it is an activity that I had the students complete. Sometimes it's a link to my business resources because of course I'm familiar with those. I'm like, oh, you wanna talk about this thing? Cool. Let's go look. So often with my students, I actually. Go to my own Instagram page, because of course I created things knowing like, what do I need to show people? And so in that Google Drive, which you can get to@intentionalmoneylife.com slash gain, G a i n, that's because the conference was gain. So when you go there, you can look in there and there's always like a document. It's like additional resources where I just wrote out some things or I put links. And so often if it's like investing or taxes related, often I would link to some specific resources on my Instagram pages. And then if it's, you know, yeah. So all of that stuff is kind of there. So if anyone wants to, and that could be for yourself or for students. Like this is all, you know, It's just stuff that I've created over time. I'm happy to, you know, people can make copies of things and they can change'em and they can use'em with their students, whatever. I think, like I said, if we can build up more educators knowledge, then that's great. And if we can share that with students, that's even better. And then of course, and you might. Okay. And then of course, if you really want to learn more and you feel like you need more guidance, then like, here's a document. Here, go read this. I do offer things in my business, and so, and those things always come with like one-on-one support. So there's always a like, Hey, send me a message on any of the, you know, Viber, WhatsApp. Marco Polo, whatever, whatever it is, you could send me a message and be like, okay, I was going through this module and I saw this thing and I have questions about this. So for people that are like, I would love to kind of have a little bit more handholding with this. That's the kind of stuff that I do in my business. And the business stuff is more focused around like. Investing primarily in kind of retirement planning, like initial retirement planning and like taxes and like, things like that. That doesn't mean that I don't have knowledge around, you know, buying a house and debt and stuff, which is all stuff that I included in the course. It's just not the stuff that I focus on as much in the business, but there's should be resources around all of those things in the Google Drive that people can check out. That's

Jen: 30:30

fantastic. I will definitely link to that in the show notes so people can see that and, connect to that. My last question is in addition to the intentional money life.com/gain where are some other places that they might be able to find you? I know you mentioned Instagram.

Michelle: 30:47

Yeah. Yeah. I am on most places at Intentional Money Life, so I am on Instagram, I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn and TikTok. And I feel like there might be one more, but I don't know what it is. I don't actually post on Twitter anymore, so maybe those are the four. Pinterest. I am on Pinterest, but I don't really post on there. I think I posted like five times. It's a lot of work.

Jen: 31:10

Yeah. And whatever's next and coming up and yeah, it's just like all the, all the, all the social medias to keep

Michelle: 31:15

track of. That's, that's great. Yeah. I think Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook are the ones that I use the most and the ones that I can post the most. You know, I can post an image and I can also post a video, and so you can kind of see a variety of things. But yeah, people can reach out to me on any of those places. Great. That's

Jen: 31:30

fantastic. Thank you so much for that. Is there anyone that you would recommend I talk to for first gen? For first gen folks like me and in the high school working with first gen college bound students about any topic that you think would be interesting?

Michelle: 31:48

So the person that comes to mind would be the person that was on the podcast that started everything for me, and that's Yanely Espinal, I think is her name. She does Mind your Money and has a, a YouTube channel and a podcast. I'm not sure how often, I don't know if she's still like doing all of those things, but so she was a first gen student and she's a Latina money person. So that would be the person that I would think of. And I don't actually know her, so I can't connect you. Alright, so you can't

Jen: 32:20

connect me. I'm just gonna say, look, you laid down a challenge and I just talked to somebody who picked it up and is now educating. There you, you go first gen students all about, money before they graduate. So that, that is really fantastic. Michelle, thank you so much for talking with me today. I learned a lot. I took down some great notes about just really good takeaways and I think. One of the key things that you said is don't let it be scary. Just put it out there and start the conversation however you feel comfortable starting it. Yeah. To get students talking back to you and talking back in the best way. Of course. And sharing what they're thinking and what they're feeling about around money. And then you can, really kind of dive into that and use the expertise even if you're just a step ahead. You know, not two steps or eight steps, but even just one step ahead, you can teach other people about

Michelle: 33:14

money, so, yep, exactly. Exactly. And, and we need people that start these conversations, you know? Mm-hmm. It's not a conversation that's often started between most people and so, People don't even know where to go to talk about it. You know, sometimes I'll have students that are like moving in with a significant other and like, that's a good time to talk about it. Or they're getting close to graduation, that's a good time to talk about it. They're going home for the summer and they're planning on, you know, working the summer. So like a big one that I do in the springtime is often talking about like money management and emergency funds and syncing funds and checking accounts and like things like that because I can talk about emergency funds and the importance of them in the fall, but often I know students aren't going to have. Much extra money to like put into an emergency fund. And so really making it a push to talk about it more in the spring when I know like, Hey, I know you might have a summer job, you might have a little bit of money. Like you could think about, you know, even if it's 50 bucks, setting aside 50 bucks in an emer in a savings account that's specifically for emergencies, that will be really helpful for you. So yeah, just thinking about like what's going on in their lives and what are the money things that might be relevant for them, I think is always good. And thank you so much for having me. You're fantastic. Oh,

Jen: 34:24

You were very welcome.

Michelle: 34:26

Thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun. Yes. Thank you. And my, the presentation that I did at Gain, the, slides is actually in that folder, so if people wanna look through it, talked about different ways, you know, in one-on-one conversations or like different ways that people can, can do these conversations. So it might be more helpful cuz, I mean, in my role I'm talking one-on-one with students most of all, and then of course in a class. But it might have some more examples of other ways that people can integrate these conversations regardless of what kind of role they're in.

Jen: 34:55

Fantastic. Well, you know, educators love handouts. So, you know, we're all about that you know, borrowing things that others have created. Yeah. And adapting

Michelle: 35:05

it. So that's, there was actually, there was actually, so the presentation, so I did a presentation and then there was like a worksheet where it was like a self-assessment, like assess yourself on these categories. And then the folders in the drive thing are those same categories. So you can be like, oh, I don't know enough about this category. And you can go to that folder and you can learn more about that category. Nice. Brilliant.

Jen: 35:27

Brilliant. Well, thank you so much and I just appreciate your time and your expertise and your knowledge

Michelle: 35:33

on this. Thank Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

35:37

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Michelle Onaka today on financial learning and financial education for our students. You can find her at intentional money life.com. And you can find me at first gen fm.com. That's first. G E N F m.com. Please go to the website let me know who you think I should interview next by using the contact form on the site. And Please share with other educators who you think might be interested in learning about what we're talking about here. This is Jen. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you next week.