How we Learn About Our Finances with Jaylyn Boydon
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Matt: Welcome to Bellingham Technical College’s new podcast, from the MoneySmarts Financial Wellness Program. I am your host Matt Benoit, and each episode I will talk to BTC students, BTC staff, community professionals and financial experts about financial literacy and wellness in order to help listeners navigate resources in the community and empower themselves financially.  
We’ll get to hear from real students, mentors and experts on how to research and tackle the issues most students are facing, including debt, paying for college, balancing a budget, and saving for the future, as we breakdown some common misconceptions about our finances as well.
Our goal here is to provide insights, realistic financial strategies and solution-based advice that students can apply to their lives so they can achieve a higher degree of financial understanding and security.
Today’s MoneySmarts topic is how BTC’s Money Smarts mentorship program works and how we learn about our own finances. Today, I am here with BTC student and Money$marts mentor Jaylyn Boydon Thanks for being here, how are you?
Jaylyn: Good, you?
Matt: I’m doing good! First of all, you are a BTC student. So how long have you been a student here?
Jaylyn: I think, two years, maybe. Yeah.
Matt: What are you focused on as far as your education is concerned?
Jaylyn: I started out with dental hygiene, but I’m actually going to be starting the dental assisting program in the fall. 
Matt: Excellent. And you are a Money$marts mentor. So tell us a bit about the Money$marts program and why you decided to get involved with it.
Jaylyn: So, the Money$marts program is actually a student mentoring program. I’m a student, and all the other mentors are students as well and then we have gone through some trainings from local banks and just financial aid people who work at BTC. They gave us a lot of information, basic information, and students are allowed to sign up with us, with the program. We meet once per week with everyone, and they give us their questions and we go out and research it if we don’t know or we take whatever we learned from training and share that knowledge with the students. And kind of help them guide them through their next steps, what they can do with their situation. Basically, the program is mentee guided.
Matt: How has it been… How long have you been a part of it?
Jaylyn: I started from the very beginning so they started…they started in fall last year [2017]
Matt: So I imagine being that, the often used phrase is when you teach you tend to reinforce your learning quite a bit so I’m sure you’re learning just as much as the students are in a lot of cases.
Jaylyn: Oh yeah, so I actually did not know anything about finances or whatever, money. Anything related. But my boyfriend graduated with a business degree so he knows all that stuff. And he’s actually thinking about going into the military so I might have to have all that on my shoulders. I figured, they’re looking for mentoring and I’m actually a mentor with the STAR program here at BTC, so I had that in my pocket and I’ve just been learning as I go kind of thing. 
Matt: You mentioned the STAR program, that’s an acronym, what does that stand for?
Jaylyn: Yeah, so STAR is a BTC coaching program for students. It stands for Success coaching, Tutoring, Academic Support, and Resources.
Matt: Are there any specific moments that stand out to you that have been particularly insightful for both you and the people you’ve been helping learn about financial literacy? 
Jaylyn: I think just doing research. Students don’t realize that all the knowledge they need is available to them they just need to know what questions to ask and that’s what I’ve been able to do for them. I’ve connected with my resources through the trainings and through BTC’s financial aid just asking them the right questions or giving them the situations that the students have given me and then they’ll tell me, “ok go ask so and so this question” and I get the answers through that. I can then relay that to the students. That’s been pretty big.
Matt: Obviously, you said you came into the program not knowing a lot about financial literacy, so it’s been a big learning experience for you.  Prior to this, how did you learn about finances? Was it from your parents? Friends? Significant Other? How did you learn about budgeting, debt, paying for college before this training? 
Jaylyn: So growing up- my parents had me super early so my dad’s saying for his life is the whole YOLO (You Only Live Once) thing. And so he just spends his money willy nilly and so I’ve notice that that wasn’t a helpful or healthy way of living. I actually went to his brother who is very well stabled, he’s in the military, he’s going up in life basically, and he taught me about budgeting and all that stuff just the basics as a student. Through the mentoring program with STAR they introduced me to growth mindset, from there I was doing my own research, and I got obsessed with looking up successful people and what they do. I’ve kind of just gone from there. Doing this research and knowing other peoples’ questions with life and finances, that’s helped me find those answers and look for those questions and all that. So, that’s been super helpful.  
Matt: Is there any one thing you’ve learned from the Money$marts mentorship program that you’ve applied to your own life?
Jaylyn: That you can actually ask a lot of questions that people know the answers to and once you ask the questions to the right people – they can help you. You don’t have to sit in your room and wonder, “is this possible?” you can go out there and connect with people and you can solve problems.
Matt: So, don’t be afraid to ask questions.
Jaylyn: Exactly, yeah.
Matt: When you talk about your own experiences and the fact that say your Dad wasn’t the best influence on budgeting but your uncle may have been a better influence. Who’s responsibility do you think it is to teach young people about money? Should it fall on the shoulders of parents? Other family members? Or should this knowledge, kind of – should you be required to learn as much about it in high school and college as you can? What do you think?
Jaylyn: I think it would be a good mixture of both, would be the best answer to that. Because through my research and what I’ve listened to, I’ve heard that people who are in better financial standing, they learn a lot because their parents went through it and they know exactly what to tell their kids what to do and how to set themselves up. One of the key things of being financially stable is starting early. Who’s telling you these things when you’re young? Your parents. I think a mixture of your parents coming in and telling you the basics. These are what you need to start on now for savings because if you started saving $100 when you’re 18 every month, you’d be a millionaire by the time you retire. Those are little things that definitely add up. Also, school. I’ve heard my parents say they had home-ec., and they would teach them how to write checks and balance a check book and I don’t know how to do any of that. So, I’m ashamed on that. I think the school system needs to work on their stuff.
Matt: Yeah, cause where I went to high school, I ended up taking my junior senior year as an elective, I took a personal finance class. Which you do learn how to balance a checkbook, just normal budget conscious things. I think it’s very helpful but again, it’s not – it was an elective, it’s not required of anyone so you could totally avoid that learning path if you wanted to. Considering it’s something that pretty much everyone needs to know is not a great way to have it set up. I think in college, I don’t think I did any personal financial stuff. You kind of learn as it’s thrown at you with loans and grants and having to schedule your classes, and how you spend your money, it all becomes very – because in high school it could all be theoretical, the stuff you do in a class is theoretical, but once you’re in college you’re on your own and it’s real world, as you go, learning.
Jaylyn: Which, I feel is unfair because you should have practice runs with everything, right? And then, you’ll have real life consequences if you mess up.
Matt: Obviously, You came into Money$marts with some gaps in knowledge, most of the people who come in as mentees are seeking more knowledge. How do you think Money$marts helps people fill in their financial knowledge gaps?
Jaylyn: So most of the time, when students come to me, our first meeting, they know what they’re supposed to do or what direction that their supposed to go to they just needed someone to keep them accounted for, for that direction. Because they’re students and they have lives and some of them are even parents, so they’re thinking about how to pay their bills but also what’s gonna be for dinner, how to do their homework, when to do their homework and all that. I think having this program really helps people because we have a meeting every week, which is a pretty good amount of time. They can go to the bank, they can have a meeting with their banker and get to know them. It’s more accountability than that and when they do have questions, I guess I just do the research. I spend a lot of time doing research, because I actually like looking up stuff and learning more and connecting with people within the community and building relationships with people.
Matt: Awesome. So, about how many mentees do you take on at one time? 
Jaylyn: At first, I had four or five people the first quarter and I stuck with them the whole quarter. The most recent quarter it was just- I met with two or three students throughout the quarter. When they wanted to stop, we would stop and then I would go on to the next student who was on the waitlist and so they would get all their questions answered. Then they’d be like “alright, thank you that’s all I needed, see you around” and I would just move on to the next person.
Matt: So, for the students that you did mentor, was it rewarding knowing that you were doing all this research and helping students gain financial confidence?  Could you see that they were learning and getting a handle on budgeting and understanding about financial matters?
Jaylyn: Oh my goodness, yes. That was my favorite part. I think that is why I am doing two mentoring programs because I love to watch people grow. The fact that I get to help them with that growth, that is a big win for me. So when my students are able to come back and say “Oh my God, I did this. I can’t believe I did. I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t for you.”  I just absolutely love that. And it’s like “Good! Now do more!” That’s the best part about mentoring, I think.
Matt: With your new financial knowledge you gained how do you balance your wants versus needs?
Jaylyn: I think having to define your wants vs. your needs first. Then, definitely making sacrifices. Saving now will help me in the future to provide me the wants… that’s a weird way of saying it, I don’t know if that makes sense at all.
Matt: You’ll have more wiggle room to afford those wants if you work hard now…
Jaylyn: Yeah, and sacrifice all that and live a more simplistic way.
Matt: Is there anything you currently do that is helping you achieve that goal?
Jaylyn: Well, I’m attempting to not eat out as much and not spoil myself, I guess. Just live with what I’ve got and kind of just focus on school and get free activities out of the way. And just explore Washington… not get it out of the way, just enjoy those things. Instead of traveling and all that stuff because I can do that when I’m done and I’m actually working a job, job. An adult job.
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Matt: Well I think we’ve covered some informative subjects on this episode of BTC’s Money$marts podcast. Thanks, Jaylyn for your time and for sharing your story. Thanks for coming in. I think we had fun. We hope you enjoyed this first episode of the BTC Money$marts podcast and we invite you back for the upcoming episodes. We’ll have stories, tips, tricks, strategies for financial literacy. I’m Matt Benoit. We’ll see you next time.