For many college students figuring out taxes, money management and financial aid can be daunting, but Common Cents Week is trying to change that.
Common Cents Week, organized by ASUW, consists of events throughout this week that provide information and advice to students trying to navigate their finances. Colin Herold, a UW graduate student in business, organized a panel discussion for the week and said it is important to educate students on financial issues.
“When I was an undergrad I had a million questions about insurance. Some of the questions that I had coming into college was about investing, retirement, trading, that’s the reason we’re putting this event on,” Herold said.
Herold organized a discussion panel consisting of Wyoming financial experts yesterday morning to answer questions that university students have about making investments, retirement and managing finances. The panel consisted of Patrick Fleming, a business professor at UW, Kevin Murphy, Stifel senior vice president, Jim Ninnemann of Laramie Edward Jones and Tracy Swanson, senior vice president of D.A. Davidson.
Herold said there are many financial opportunities in Wyoming that students could access if they were only a little more financially literate.
“Instead of making students go over to financial aid, I want to bring financial aid in front of the students,” Herold said.
Murphy said that his biggest mistake in his finance career was investing under false pretenses. He explained that if a student wanted to start investing their money that it is important for the investor to do research and figure out where they can find reliable information.
“My biggest mistake is that I’m a project guy. I heard about something called Convertible Preferred and I got excited and didn’t realize that the research I was seeing was being cooked. We had a million dollars in that and lost it all, it was a lesson learned,” Murphy said.
He said that getting a couple successes could easily make up for the mistakes.
Ninnemann said that it is key for people to diversify in finances and in life.
“If you spread out far enough, if something bad happens, whatever it may be, you don’t have all your eggs in one basket,” Ninnemann said.
