Let's face it - the average college student is poor.
And why shouldn't he be? College students work jobs and try to keep up in classes, but when it comes down to it, students as a whole really don't manage their money very well.
Russ Carroll, a resident of Murfreesboro and lead financial counselor for Dave Ramsey, works with college students and helps them learn to spend wisely. Carroll often travels and conducts financial seminars and trains people to become financial counselors.
Carroll, a former staff member of Campus Crusade for Christ, has agreed to speak at the MTSU chapter on March 31 in the Business and Aerospace State Farm room at 8 p.m.
"I was on staff with Crusade for 12 years in Eastern Europe," Carroll says.
"I met Russ while I was raising support for Crusade," says Jenny Rone, an MTSU Campus Crusade for Christ staff member.
"We needed a speaker while Britt, the director, was out raising support," Rone says. "Russ had offered previously to come and speak about the history of Israel, Jewish culture or anything financial. Ben, one of our staff guys, couldn't believe that I knew him."
"I think it is great for him to come speak to college students because college students either set themselves up for financial success or failure," Rone says. "A lot of people get credit cards in college for the free T-shirt without knowing how to use them."
Although Ramsey's program is based on biblical principles, not all of his clients are Christians.
"About 50 percent of the people I counsel have no relationship with God at all," he says. "The program is something for everybody."
Carroll's lecture at MTSU will be open to all students who wish to learn more about responsible money management.
"I'll be introducing a financial compass that shows common [finance principles]. These principles are basic, but they are so elusive in American culture," Carroll says. "Life is a Crock-Pot - it's a slow cooking process over a lifetime rather than just a quick fix."
"I'm much bigger on application and taking time to make change rather than a quick fix," he says. "We need to understand the financial pulls - what they are and how to make the better choices."
"We have to pick and choose our priorities. America purchases 51 percent of the consumer goods in the world, and I've been in counseling for about 25 years," Carroll says. "You don't want to keep up with the Joneses. I counsel them."
Carroll met Ramsey in 1993 after moving to Tennessee from California, just as Ramsey was recovering from his financial crisis.
"It's kind of a Cinderella story," Carroll says. "I went to my Farm Bureau agent, and he had [Ramsey's] first book out, Financial Peace. My agent told me to call him, so I did. I went to church with him one Sunday in Brentwood and we spent the afternoon talking," Carroll says.
"He was just coming out of his crisis, and we decided to start the Financial
Peace University program about a month later," Carroll says. "My background was in counseling, so I counseled a lot of people."
Carroll's counseling is the clean-up process for the results of a media-dominated society.
"In America, we have not been taught how to handle money," Carroll says. "We are in a system that promotes products rather than how to spend money, and making the best choices is what handling money is about. It's common sense, but unfortunately it's not too common."
"Every day we are hit with 4,000 to 5,000 media pulls to buy things, and we don't even realize it," Carroll says, "but our minds don't forget. It clouds our ability to achieve the important good things."
Carroll works as a part of Ramsey's program to try to help people change the ways they think about money.
"Our whole mission statement is that the group provides biblically-based education and empowerment that gives hope to those who are financially healthy or financially distressed," he says. "Seventy-five percent of my counseling is crisis counseling."
Carroll provides financial guidance to people from all walks of life.
"I have good synthesizing and problem-solving skills. I want to listen well, identify the issues that have gotten people to where they are and help them map themselves out by giving them guidance," he says.
"I love helping them move in a positive direction rather than the way our culture is pulling them, and I have a big heart for single mothers because it has become a common reality in our culture," he says, "and 90 percent of married couples say that money is the number one issue of conflict because they don't talk about it."
Today, the average college graduate earns less than $30,000 per year, and many of these have already accumulated debt.
"People start out with great hopes but are trapped by student loan debt," Carroll says. "College students are branching out on their own for the first time, and they love to spend money. It's tight because they don't have a lot of it, and they have to make ends meet."
According to Carroll, people learn from a very young age how to use money by watching their parents.
"We grow up with either good modeling or not-so-good modeling in terms of taking care of money and how it is used," he says. "We have a program called Financial Peace for the Next Generation to educate young people, teach them how to save money and plan for long-term goals."
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