Financial Literacy Resources

What if the solution to student debt was reinvesting in yourself? Conventional wisdom tells us the formula for success is simple: go to school, get a job, work hard, repeat as needed until you retire. Unfortunately, such advice fails to take into account the recent (and not-so-recent) graduates for whom predatory student lending rates have set them back tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars before they even enter the job market.  In Buy the Avocado Toast, Stephanie Bousley shares lessons learned through years of working hard and perpetually undervaluing herself while coming to terms with owing almost $300,000 in student debt.

With unprecedented student debt keeping an entire generation from realizing the "American Dream," this book sounds a warning about how that debt may undermine both higher education--and our democracy. American higher education boasts one of the most impressive legacies in the world, but the price of admission for many is now endless debt. As this book shows, increasing educational indebtedness undermines the real value of higher education in our democracy. To help readers understand this dilemma, the book examines how student debt became commonplace and what the long-term effects of such an ongoing reality might be.

SMART and SAVVY WAYS TO PAY FOR COLLEGE...WITH NO DEBT (OR as Little as Possible) With college graduates earning over a million dollars more than high school grads will earn during the course of their lifetime, getting a college degree is incredibly important. However, the cost of college keeps rising and navigating the maze of financial aid options grows more challenging every year. This book is a comprehensive guide to saving for college, scholarships, financial assistance and more.

A guide to controlling college costs offers advice on financial aid packages, educational loans, tax regulations, and additional sources of revenue, and includes the latest financial aid forms and updates on tax laws.

An NPR Best Book of 2021 . From acclaimed Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, the "devastating account" (The Wall Street Journal) of student debt in America. In 1981, a new executive at Sallie Mae took home the company's financial documents to review. Over the next four decades, the student loan industry that Sallie Mae and Congress created blew up into a crisis that would submerge a generation of Americans into $1.5 trillion in student debt. In The Debt Trap, Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell tells the "vivid and compelling" (Chicago Tribune) untold story of the scandals, scams, predatory actors, and government malpractice that have created the behemoth that one of its original architects called a "monster."

Managing Debt takes a look at the differences between good and bad debt, discusses how to build a good credit score, and explains how to pay down debt. Features include worksheets, key takeaways, a glossary, further readings, websites, source notes, and an index.

The burgeoning volume of debt and repayment difficulties that many people now experience have created a vigorous debate on whether public policy should further intervene in student loan transactions. In economic terms, do the benefits exceed the costs? Close examination of the data on cumulative debt, number and characteristics of borrowers, types of institutions, and repayment dynamics raises almost as many questions as it answers.