What is SAFE at KU? Deanna Ambrose sat down to talk to me a little bit about the organization and what it does for our students.
SAFE (Student Advocates for Financial Education) is a money management group that creates events in order to get students to be more aware of their finances. As we all know, college is expensive. And for those lucky enough to go have to consider a number of things including applying for scholarships, getting loans, and what the ‘rents can afford to give you.
Deanna also works for Student Money Management whose organization works closely with SAFE to close the information gap on how to pay for college as well as how to finance your everyday life. Student Money Management is a more hands on group whose students are trained to speak to you on an individual level where as SAFE is the mouth piece to this service.
Deanna talked a lot about how most students don’t consider money in their everyday lives in a real long lasting way and to live in the real world finances are a very serious part of it. Often she says students don’t consider the debt they are in until after they receive their degree and by this time, it’s almost too late.
Talking to SAFE or getting help from Student Money Management Services has nothing (but in another sense, everything) to do with how much you make, what kind of loans you have, how much of your tuition is already payed off, as well as how much more money you can receive. I say this because every single person is going to have to deal with money in their lifetime regardless if you are rich, poor, or somewhere in between. So everyone in the beginning needs help with understanding their money and because talking about money can be such a taboo subject, SAFE exists to be a service extended to students, which is rare as not a long of programs exist in any educational institution to really talk about the real world and real life finances. They are even creating programs in the local high schools to start the process of thinking about money a little earlier. So if you can’t make it by the office located in the 3rd floor of the Kansas Union or one of their many events on campus feel free to be on the look out for their podcast coming out soon and get excited to talk about MONEY and how not to lose it!