It is a good idea to empower pastors with financial counseling skills. Many of the people who face severe financial problems end up seeing their pastors, in search of help. Some see the pastors with a view to get direct financial assistance from the pastors (or from church-affiliated charities). Others see the pastors with a view to be assisted in getting divine intervention about the state of their finances. This is because many of the people who face major financial challenges come to believe that their misfortune has spiritual causes. And perhaps that is indeed the case in some of the situations. Either way, the pastors – and Imams, Rabbis and priests — end up having to deal with people who are undergoing financial challenges from time to time. And this is why it is a good idea to empower the pastors with financial counseling skills. Some of the ways in which we can empower the pastors in that way include:

1. By incorporating financial counseling in pastoral studies: so this is an question of getting the theological schools to teach future pastors about financial counseling.
2. By organizing financial counseling seminars for the pastors: the idea here is to cater for those pastors who went to theological schools before the need to equip pastors with financial counseling skills was discovered.
3. By exposing the pastors to financial counseling literature: this is the least we can do, to equip the pastors with financial counseling skills. See, some of the pastors went to college when financial counseling wasn’t part of the curriculum. And they also don’t have time to go for financial counseling seminars. After all, some of them are part-time ministers. This means that they hold other jobs, and only minister on part-time basis. You may, for instance, find a pastor who works for a company like, say, PepsiCo. Therefore anytime he needs some time off, he has to visit the HR portal, at Mypepsico.com, to apply for the same. It may be a tall order to convince such a minister to visit the Mypepsico website to apply for time off to go for financial counseling seminars. But if he is exposed to financial counseling literature, he is likely to pick at least a few of the skills he needs to offer people good financial counsel.

Some of the clients you are likely to serve at some point, in your financial counseling practice, are students. The students who seek financial counseling tend to be those who are in college. But there may also be rare cases where you have to take a high school student through financial counseling. In this article, we will be mentioning some of the important things you need to know, when it comes to financial counseling for students.

Why students seek financial counseling

There are several reasons as to why students seek financial counseling services. In most cases, you tend to find a scenario where a student has lost control of his finances. This is where, for instance, you have a college student, who – try as he may — is unable to budget for his student loan. Or you could have a high school student who is unable to properly manage the little money that comes her way. She could, for instance, have recently received her monthly allowance in the form of a gift card. She could then have been introduced to the gift card website where she would be managing the card by tracking its balances and reviewing the transaction history for the card. Then, four days down the line, her parent or guardian checks the card’s Mygiftcardsite Visa balance — only to realize that it is totally depleted. That would be on account of the girl having gone on a spending spree immediately after getting the card.  The parent then, fearful that the girl may be developing poor financial habits at a young age, could opt to refer her for financial counseling services…

So we find that the students who seek financial counseling services fall into two broad categories. There are those who check themselves in, for financial counseling. Then there are those who are referred for financial counseling by their parents, guardians, school authorities and even government authorities in some rare cases.

How to undertake financial counseling for students

The most important thing is to help the students to come up with sustainable ways of managing their finances. You need to avoid giving advice, and instead focus on helping the students to brainstorm/think (for themselves) how they can manage their finances better. You would then serve as a sounding board, and give a listening ear to the students, as they voice the solutions they identify by themselves. And then you would serve as an accountability partner, for the students, as they try to implement the better financial management strategies they identify.

Important things to keep in mind while conducting financial counseling sessions for students

Firstly, it is important to understand that you are probably dealing with people who have very little life experience. So you need to keep this at the back of your mind.

You also need to remember that these are folks who are still in the experimenting stage of their life.

It is also critical to remember that the students you are working with are folks with limited financial resources at their disposal. So some of the measures you’d advocate for, while counseling working people/adults, wouldn’t necessarily apply for the students.

People go for financial counseling sessions with a view to get advice on how to handle their finances in a better way. And indeed, if you do go for financial counseling sessions, you will get advice on how to handle your finances better. But as you will come to discover, getting such advice is one thing. Actually being able to implement the advice is different matter altogether.

Motivating yourself

To be in a position to implement the advice you get in financial counseling sessions, you may need to find ways of motivating yourself. Implementing the advice you get in financial counseling sessions will often mean having to move out of your comfort zones. To do this, you need to focus on the benefits you stand to gain, if you implement the advice fully. Then you will be motivated to implement it.

Taking a day by day approach

In implementing the advice you get in financial counseling sessions, you may need to take a day by day approach. Every day you manage to make good choices, in line with the advice you got from your financial counseling, would be an achievement. And if you lapse on one day, you shouldn’t give up – but try to ensure that you do better in the next day.

Having an accountability partner

Further, in implementing the advice you get in financial counseling sessions, you may need to work with an accountability partner. This would be a person to push you along the (right) path.

Tracking your progress

At yet another level, in implementing the advice you get in financial counseling sessions, you may need to find a way in which you can track your progress. Then you should celebrate your progress — however little that progress may be. Like if, for instance, you were advised to start by searching for some sort of job. Then it so happens that, after several weeks’ search, you have finally been given an opportunity to be one of the Upsers — that is, to work for UPS. That would surely be progress worth celebrating, especially the moment you complete the UPSerssign up process – meaning that you’d have fully joined UPS as an employee. Then you can track and celebrate the progress you make in holding down the job, managing your earnings well, and eventually overcoming whatever financial difficulties that made you seek financial counseling in the first place.