In an attempt to educate students in a topic they may not be familiar in or care to be interested in the University Student Union held a seminar titled ‘Investing for your Future.’
A total of seven CSUN students attended the ‘Investing for your Future’ seminar in the Ventura room at the University Student Union, Wed. March 18.
There were at least 30 seats readily available for students to occupy at the workshop and only seven were filled with students who showed interest in their future financially.
The workshop was sponsored by the USU and CITI bank, where personal banker Sara Yohanna presented the number of ways students can start planning and prioritizing for their future.
‘I really feel that (students) should take every opportunity available to learn as much as possible about the economy and about how they can protect their wealth,’ said Yohanna.
The seminar went over the five-step investment planning process to rationally guide your investing strategy. The first step is to determine goals, whether they may be short term or long term.
Electrical Engineer major Alex Rusin mentioned buying a house was one of his long term goals and also one of the reasons he was there.
‘That’s why I’m here. To see how to save my money to buy a home,’ said Rusin.
The second step is to determine investor profile, which means to figure out the impacts such as when the money is needed and what rate of return is needed.’
Step three is to review investment choices and basic investment concepts about cash, cash equities, fixed income, equities, and hard asset.
The next step is to determine asset allocation in ways that will manage the risk and maximize potential return. The last step is to always monitor your investments whether they are short term or long term.
There have been two previous workshops with the focus of educating students about today’s financial crisis as well as how to protect themselves from identity theft.
‘At times of economic hardship, these topics are very important for students to understand, I think too many times you see students being victims of those types of crimes,’ said Yohanna.
Referring to students’ lack of interest Yohanna said ‘ it’s not that (students) don’t know enough or they don’t have the willingness to learn, it’s that it’s not a high priority for them. So I hope that in times like these it becomes more of a priority.’
Little by little students are getting the picture that its important to start planning for the future or at least educating themselves on ways to plan for their future, Yohanna said, actually in previous workshops there has been less attendance but ‘today we had more people then we did at the other seminars.’
Communications major Monique Mongalo and sociology major Christina Nagatani said that while it was helpful, however their sole reason for going to the event was for extra credit.’