Page 334 - Keys To Community College Success

RISK ACTION
RISK
ACTION

FOR COLLEGE, CAREER, AND LIFE REWARDS

Complete the following on paper or in digital format.

KNOW IT Think Critically

Your Relationship with Money
Getting a handle on money anxiety starts with an honest examination of how you relate to money.

Build basic skills. Analyze yourself as a money manager. Look back at page xxx for a description
of what influences the way people handle money. Make some notes about your personal specifics in
the following areas.

1. What do you most value spending money on?
2. How do you manage money?
3. How does your culture tend to view money?
4. How do your family and friends tend to handle money?

Take it to the next level. Generate ideas about what you want to do with your money. If you
had enough money for your expenses and then some, what would you do with the extra? Would
you save it, spend it, do a little of both? Describe what you would do if you had an extra $10,000
to spend this year.

Move toward mastery. Look for practical ways to move toward the scenario you imagined.
Realistically, how can you make that $10,000 a reality over time? You may need to change how
11 you operate as a money manager. You may need to make some sacrifices in the short term. Describe
CHAPTER
two specific plans involving changes and sacrifices that will move you toward your goal.

WRITE IT Communicate

Emotional intelligence journal: You and credit. First, describe yourself as a credit card
user. Do you pay in full or run up a balance? Pay on time or pay late? Restrict use to emergen-
cies or use your credit card (or cards) all the time? Describe how using credit cards makes you
feel. Examine those feelings and their effect on how you use credit. Then describe a change in your
thinking you could make that would help you handle money more wisely.

Real-life writing: Apply for aid. Use Internet or library resources to find two scholarships
that are not federally funded, available through your college, and for which you are eligible. They
can be linked to academic areas of interest, associated with particular talents you have, or offered
by a group to which you or members of your family belong. Get applications for each and fill
them out. Jot down notes about your personality, skills, talent, achievements, dreams, and contri-
butions to others. Use the information from those notes to write a one-page cover letter for each
application, telling the committee why you should receive this scholarship. Have someone proof-
read your work, send the applications, and see what happens.

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