Center for Financial Wellness

The mission of Westminster’s Center for Financial Wellness is to: 

1. Provide services, events, and programming primarily to Westminster students and secondarily to Westminster employees and the broader community that help promote a deeper understanding of how the economy and financial markets work and how to better manage one’s finances, retirement planning, debt management, and other areas of personal, business, and household economics and finance
2. Provide transformative experiential learning opportunities to students in tax preparation and financial advocacy
3. Provide free assistance with tax preparation and financial advocacy
4. Provide a “financial lab” facility located in Gore 226 as a resource for Westminster classes
5. Facilitate the production and dissemination to the public of student/faculty research on local business and economic conditions
6. Offer public events on campus featuring prominent guest speakers and panelists on business and the economy   

Serve as a professional development resource to Utah’s K–12 teachers of economics and business

The vision for the center is to contribute to making Westminster students and employees, and more broadly Utah’s population, financially healthier, happier, and more independent. While other higher education institutions in Utah generally provide financial wellness services and programming to their students only, the Westminster Center for Financial Wellness is the first comprehensive provider of financial wellness, including tax compliance, services to students, employees, and the community, at a higher education institution in Utah. One important area of focus for the center is the promotion of financial and economic literacy for persons from historically excluded populations.

Each topic is taught in each lesson session. For example, the Making Consumer Decisions lesson will include these topics: Emotions, attitudes, and behaviors in making financial decisions; Economics and decision making; and Advertising and marketing in financial decision making.

• Presents a set of decision criteria useful in making consumer purchase decisions.
• Addresses the role of individual emotions, social convention, attitudes, and behaviors in making such decisions.
• Discusses the effect advertising and marketing have on consumer behavior, giving specific examples.

In-class Exercise: A set of decision criteria are considered, against which students examine a range of possible consumer decisions. Students then determine which decisions are most consistent with the given criteria and expected outcomes.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Determining personal decision criteria and sharing them with the financial literacy instructor.

• Introduces the concepts of opportunity costs and economic profit and their role in financial decision making.  

In-class Exercise: Students are given a set of financial conditions resulting in a particular financial profit and then must compare this profit with the economic profit from a set of opportunity costs not expressed in the financial decision process.  

Out of Lesson Assignment: Identifying opportunity costs resulting from a set of capital and time commitments and then considering how they impact the resulting “profit.”    

• Introduces the relationship between the Federal Reserve, money supply, and key interest rates and how these influence inflation and consumer interest rates in the domestic economy.
• Presents with the concept of the yield curve.
• Introduces the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate with respect to employment (unemployment) levels.

In-class Exercise: Students construct a yield curve given current economic conditions.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Inflation is introduced and examined to help students see how interest rates are influenced by central bank activity and consider how rate changes may impact unemployment (employment) and wage levels.

• Introduces the relationship between labor supply and demand in the domestic economy
• Discusses the market-clearing levels of labor supply and demand arising from perfectly competitive markets.
• Discusses the characteristics of labor supply and demand
• Discusses the concepts of perfect competition and market friction

In-class Exercise: Marginal productivity is presented through a workplace setting. Students examine the determinants of labor supply and demand.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Students determine the extent to which the current domestic labor market is perfectly competitive.

• Introduces students to the concepts of, and relationships between, market-clearing wages, wage floors, wage ceilings, labor quotas, the minimum wage, the living wage, and subsistence wages.
• Introduces the concepts of pre-tax and net income.

In-class Exercise: A wage floor is exogenously introduced into an otherwise competitive market, giving students the ability to independently determine the potential positive and negative effects of state-sanctioned wage policies.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Students will identify the level of incomes (pre-tax and net) required to maintain subsistence lifestyles in the state of Utah for single, 2-person, and small family households.

• Introduces students to common stock as a form of equity investing and discusses the markets in which these instruments are traded, how they may be purchased individually or as part of a mutual fund, and the role of market indexes.
• Briefly discusses a firm’s structure to give students an understanding of what stock represents to the issuing firm and its investors.
• Teaches how to search for and understand stock values, calculate rates of return, dividend yields, and learn the relevance of a stock’s beta (price volatility measure).

In-class Exercise: The class will select a portfolio of common stocks and track their historic performance compared to 2 major market indexes: the DOW 30 Industrials and S&P 500.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Students will each select a mutual fund and track its performance over the same time frame as the portfolio selected by the class, compare the mutual fund’s return to that of the portfolio, and consider differences as a function of the fund beta versus that of the portfolio.

• Introduces students to the concept of homeownership, how real estate values are estimated, the role of real estate brokers/agents, closing costs, and how real estate purchases are financed.
• Discusses the process of applying, qualifying, and paying for a residential mortgage.
• Introduces students to online mortgage calculators.

In-class Exercises:

• Students will identify the effects of different real estate prices, down payments, interest rates, terms, and credit scores on monthly payments. 
• Students will each select a home to purchase through online resources, compare that home’s price to what they may be able to afford given a set of budget conditions, and participate in an offer, response, and counter-offer simulation.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Students will be required to calculate mortgage payments given a property’s price and required loan-to-value ratio, but for which there are multiple interest rate, term, and credit score conditions.

• Introduces students to the process of finding, applying for, affording, and renting an apartment.
• Presents the elements of the “renting versus buying” decision process.

In-class Exercise: Students will be introduced to online apartment listings and application, qualification requirements, and rental terms and conditions.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Students will be required to consider the purchase vs. renting decision and determine whether or not a roommate is necessary to afford the apartment.

• Introduces students to the concepts of supply and demand in the goods market, competitive market assumptions leading to market-clearing values of price and quantity, and the rationale behind downward-sloping demand curves and upward sloping supply curves.
• Introduces the concepts of monopoly and oligopoly pricing.

In-class Exercise: A consumer budget and consumption decisions are examined.

Out of Lesson Assignment: Students will identify a product for which some level of monopoly power exists and consider the supporting conditions and their impact on consumer satisfaction.

• Introduces students to the concepts of supply and demand, competitive market assumptions leading to market-clearing values of price and quantity, and the rationale behind downward-sloping demand curves and upward sloping supply curves.
• Examines the concept of information asymmetry

In-class Exercise: Examine the concept of information asymmetry in relation to purchasing a used car.

Out of Lesson Assignment: A consumer budget and consumption decisions are modeled.