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Financial Basics
Budgeting & Financial Planning
Overspending
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Understanding Financial Aid
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Welcome to U-M CashCourse!

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The U-M Office of Financial Aid is pleased to provide access to this National Endowment for Financial Education resource through our customized CashCourse website. The site provides a maize-and-blue entry point for U-M students and recent grads who want to take advantage of the great information and resources that CashCourse has to offer.

CashCourse is filled with quizzes, calculators, and tips that will help you manage your finances while you're in school and after you graduate. You can use CashCourse to:

  • learn how to manage debt
  • create a budget
  • plan for the future
  • test your knowledge about money management and much more!

We hope you'll come back to CashCourse any time you have a financial question, you're looking for good resources to help solve a money management problem, or you just want to have fun and test what you know.

For general information about financial aid at the University of Michigan, see the Office of Financial Aid website.

About the National Endowment for Financial Education

The National Endowment for Financial Education® (NEFE ®) is an independent, nonprofit foundation committed to educating Americans on a broad range of financial topics and empowering them to make positive and sound decisions to reach their financial goals.  Financial literacy is especially important for today's college students, who have more financial choices to make and opportunities to pursue than any previous generation. NEFE is created CashCourse to provide college students and recent graduates with comprehensive, non-commercial information to help them make informed decision.
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Students partner with U-M Office of Financial Aid and CashCourse to promote financial literacy

See the most recent newsletters below!

A student-driven group, Students Promoting Financial Literacy, has organized through the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts to encourage student awareness of personal financial issues.

All U-M students are invited to join the group, which features on-campus activities to promote personal finance responsibility and information. The group is educating fellow college students about the importance of being financially savvy through newsletters, presentations and fun activities.

SPFL has partnered with the Office of Financial Aid to promote financial literacy using this U-M CashCourse website, which is operated by OFA.

Explore the CashCourse website and learn more about personal finance. Contact the LSA Scholarship Office for more information about SPFL at 734-763-9521 or email them at studentspromotingfinanciallit@gmail.com

Students Promoting Financial Literacy Newsletters:
Spring 2012 newsletter (PDF)
December 2012 newsletter (PDF)

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Loan counseling tool helps families map out college finances
Visit studentloans.gov to use ?real-time loan data

A federal loan counseling tool allows students and families to view existing student loan debt in real time and assists them in planning for their education.

The Financial Awareness Counseling Tool, or FACT, can be accessed through the front page of StudentLoans.gov under the "Tools and Resources" tab.  If students log in, they can access their individual loan history and receive  feedback to help them better understand their financial obligations both now and after college.

The public may also use the tool as a guest and enter loan and other information to calculate results. The Financial Awareness Counseling Tool provides students with five interactive tutorials on these topics:

  • Understand Your Loans:  View your existing federal student loan debt based on data from the National Student Loan Data System. You can also enter other loans not reflected.
  • Manage Your Spending:  Use an in-school budgeting tool that compares living expenses with current income. Data can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for convenient use.
  • Plan to Repay: This section will calculate monthly payments for each of the types of repayment plans. You can also see the effect of paying extra toward a loan to reduce overall debt and the amount of interest paid over time.
  • Avoid Default: Find tips about how to postpone repayment or lower monthly payments.
  • Make Finances a Priority: Develop a financial plan and make financial decisions using help from this portion of the site.

A summary page at the end of the tool summarizes the data viewed or entered and can be printed.

The U.S. Department of Education launched the interactive tool in August 2012 to provide students and their parents with financial management basics, including information about their current loan debt and estimates for debt levels after graduation.  It is available in English or Spanish.

If you need additional help budgeting for college, explore this CashCourse portal for general information or contact the U-M Office of Financial Aid at 734-763-6600 and speak to an aid officer.