By Alan Lytle
Lexington, KY – More than 300 UK students got some financial advice from President Lee Todd, and men's basketball coach John Calipari. The two spoke on Thursday during a credit-wise financial literacy forum.
Coach Cal says everybody needs to learn early how to set, and stick to, a budget.
"My own child went away to college and I got a credit card bill. And I had to fly to that university and say this bill is bigger than my credit card bill and I'm traveling! What are you doing? I'm eating. Who are you feeding? So I've lived it, and we're trying to teach our own children and trying to head that off at the pass and say, you don't want to get out in front this way."
UK Senior and Credit Wise Ambassador Kayla Klein followed that up with a student-focused financial literacy seminar.
"A lot of us like to get our favorite cup of coffee each day, or purchase a pack of gum, and I think many of us don't realize how much it adds up each week. I noticed personally with me, I was eating out way too much. And for one month I decided not to eat out at all and just buy groceries, and I saved sixty dollars that month just by doing that. So just remember, the little things add up and a cup of coffee each day can almost be a thousand dollars a year."
Klein is one of ten students nationwide participating in the peer to peer Credit Wise program which was created by MasterCard more than a decade ago. The Company says the program has reached more than 520,000 students on nearly 80 college campuses.