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Personal Financial Planning

This page is your window to a variety of Personal Financial Planning resources and projects provided by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the B.I. Moody III College of Business Administration.

Our money is a lot like our health - life is better when we take good care of it. But there are real and constant challenges to managing it the best we can. The purpose of this site and of these resources is to help you take control of your financial situation - both while you're a student and in the future - to help you have all the options and opportunities to create the life you want.

More than anything, our goal is to help money management and financial planning become a source of empowerment for you and not a source of stress.

In addition to providing resources on this site, we also periodically hold workshops,consulting sessions, town hall meetings and other forums that are designed for specific student groups. If you are interested in having us provide a financial planning event for you or your group, please contact Brian Bolton at brian.bolton@louisiana.edu. 

 

Personal Financial Planning Books

The books below were written by UL Lafayette faculty, explicitly for UL Lafayette students. These books include a lot of personal finance foundations, concepts and exercises for you to help you build your financial planning skills and confidence.

These books are designed to help you develop a long-term financial plan. We encourage you to go through these books thoughtfully and intentionally, thinking about your own unique values, goals and priorities. We encourage you to approach this book with an open mind and an open heart. And we encourage you to make this experience as personal as possible. Everybody is different – and everybody has different financial knowledge, different financial situations and different financial futures. Personal finance is very personal. Make this experience about you and your future. Customize this experience for yourself so you can take control of your financial future.

 

Other Personal Finance Resources

There are a multitude of Personal Financial Planning resources available for free on the internet. We encourage you to use them and to learn from them. We have provided a few resources below that we use in class and in campus events that can help you in your financial planning.

Graduate School Money Matters Workshops

During 2021-2022, the Graduate School launched a series of Money Matters monthly meetings, with focused topics designed to help graduate students think about financial planning. The slide-decks from those Money Matters meetings are below:

Accelerate Entrepreneurship Programs by the Louisiana Entrepreneurship & Economic Development Center

The Louisiana Entrepreneurship and Economic Development Center develops regional innovation clusters, advances high-growth entrepreneurship, and cultivates innovation. Several times a year, the LEED Center runs Accelerate programs to help entrepeneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs gain the skils, knowledge and confidence necessary to start a business of their own. These programs include 6 sessions, including a session on "What You Need to Know About the Numbers." The slides for these Accounting, Business Finance & Personal Finance-focused sessions are posted below.

You can learn more about what Accelerate Northside is - and what future programs we may offer - here

 

In addition to the Money Matter Sessions for Graduate Students and the Accelerate Programs for Entrepreneurs, we reguarly give Personal Finance presentations in other contexts and to other groups. Some of these resources are below:

UL System - Bridging the Divide Program

In Summer 2022, the UL System launched a series of outreach programs under its inaugural "Bridging the Divide" program - including mental health, grant-writing, online teaching and financial literacy.

Money Matters: A UL System Financial Wellness Series comprised the following 6 workshops, open and available to all students, faculty and staff within the 9 universities of the UL System. The resources below hope to help all UL System constituents take better control of their financial futures and turn money issues from a source of stress to a font of personal empowerment. We hope to continue and expand this work beyond Summer 2022; if you have any requests for future topics and programs, please let us know and we will try to make it happen.

2022 Bridging the Divide Summer Program

  1. Investing Goals, Habits & Strategies (June 22) - Download the slides here
  2. Budgeting & Debt Management (July 6) - Download the slides here
  3. Investing for Retirement, Education & Other Special Events (July 13) - Download the slides here
  4. Investing for International Students, Faculty & Staff (July 20) - Dowload the slides here
  5. Tax Planning for Budgeting, Investing & Retirement (July 27) - Download the slides here
  6. Career Planning: Your Money & Your Future (August 3) - Download the slides here

2023 Bridging the Divide Summer Program

  1. Adults Returning to College (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  2. Financial Planning for Graduate Students (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  3. International Students: Financial & Tax Planning (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  4. Financial Planning for Side-Hustles & Entrepreneurs, Part #1 (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  5. Family Financial Planning (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  6. Paying for College (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  7. Caring for Adult Dependents (June 2023) - Download the slides here
  8. Changing Careers (July 2023) - Download the slides here
  9. Building Savings Accounts (July 2023) - Download the slides here
  10. Veterans & Financial Planning (July 2023) - Download the slides here
  11. When Retirement is Close (July 2023) - Download the slides here
  12. Financial Planning for Side-Hustles & Entrepreneurs, Part #2 (July 2023) - Download the slides here
  13. Financial Planning for the Fun Stuff (July 2023) - Download the slides here
  14. Investing 101 (August 2023) - Download the slides here
  15. Turbulent Economies: Financial Planning & Uncertainty (August 2023) - Download the slides here

 

Federal Student Loan Forgiveness - Information Sessions

In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Education introduced revisions to federal student loan programs, including the possibility of $10,000 or $20,000 of debt relief. We have held several information sessions, both on the UL Lafayette campus and across the UL System, working to inform students, staff and faculty about what we know about the program. As we now know, the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Education's plan to relieve student loan debt across-the-board was not legal. Nonetheless, the DoE has continued to provide relief to certain communities of borrowers due to a variety of legal purposes: institution failure, lender fraud and other issues. 

During Fall 2022, we held several sessions at UL Lafayette and across the UL System discussing what we knew about the possible forgiveness program at the time. We have decided to leave these slide-decks posted here, not because the forgiveness information is still applicable, but because the student loan information in them is still applicable and possible useful to many students. The key takeaway is for all students with student loan debt to refer to the Department of Education's website and to www.studentaid.gov for the latest and most accurate information and to contact their loan servicer(s) to understand the specific status of their loan(s).

  1. UL System Information Session on Federal Student Loan Forgiveness for Compete LA Students - October 25, 2022
  2. UL System Information Session on Federal Student Loan Forgiveness for Employees - October 24, 2022 - Download the slides here
  3. UL Lafayatte Graduate School Information Session - September 15, 2022 - Download the slides here
  4. UL Lafayette Graduate School Information Session - August 30, 2022 - Download the slides here

 

Louisiana Economic Activity Forecasts


Every quarter, Dr. Gary Wagner (UL Lafayette Economics Professor, Acadiana Business Economist and Endowed Chair in Economics) publishes a Louisiana Economic Activitiy Forecast LEAF). Each report summarizes recent economic activity - including inflation, jobs, industries and trends - and projects future economic activity in Louisiana. While these reports do not specifically address personal finance issues, they do provide some context for the broader macroeconomic issues that may be affecting our personal finance situations.

Click here to access Dr. Gary Wagner's Louisiana Economic Activity Forecast site and to download his quarterly LEAF reports.

 

Contact:

Brian Bolton (brian.bolton@louisiana.edu)

This page is maintained by Brian Bolton, Professor of Finance and the Dwight W. Andrus, Jr. / BORSF Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Finance at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Brian is passionate about championing student success and students owning their future - and so we created this project and these resources to help you do just that. Brian is very grateful to Mr. Dwight Andrus, Jr., to the Louisiana BORSF and to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for making this work possible.

Brian can be your main point of contact, but he is not the only one involved in this effort. Moody College of Business Dean Linda Nichols, Graduate School Dean Mary Farmer-Kaiser, Economics & Finance Department Head Sarah Skinner, Graduate School Assistant Dean Philip de Mahy, Professors Bill Ferguson, Maria Slater, Mary Luquette and many others have been instrumental in leading these efforts - and will continue to be instrumental in helping you achieve the educational, personal and financial futures that you want.