Financial Wellness is satisfaction with current and future financial situations.
Why is Financial Wellness Important?
Whether we like it or not, money plays an important role in our overall well-being. With the rising costs of college tuition, financial distress is a common experience for college students. Developing money management skills enables us to reduce stress and increase our capacity to focus on and enjoy other aspects of our lives. Financial literacy empowers us to feel confident in everyday and long-term financial decisions. The earlier we develop financial literacy and learn to effectively budget, save, manage debt, and invest, the better. Follow below for tips and resources to improve your financial wellness.
Self Check-In
- Do you set and stick to a monthly budget?
- Do you pay your bills on time?
- Are you aware of the different sources of financial aid that you are eligible for?
- Do you feel good about your current and future financial situation?
For any of the above questions that you answered no to, try to make that an area of focus to improve your Financial Wellness. If you have answered no to multiple, you may want to have this dimension be a top priority in order to benefit your overall wellbeing.
Where to start?
- Take our self check-in to assess your financial wellness! A great place to begin is first to understand where you are in terms of your financial wellness.
- Give yourself grace. Everyone’s financial wellness journey has a starting point. Financial literacy is a skill we are expected to have but are often not taught.
- Track your spending for a month and categorize your expenditures into needs, wants, and goals. Needs are necessities, such as food, transportation, rent, bills, etc. Wants are not necessary but can still benefit our overall well-being. It’s important to budget our wants, not cut them out entirely. Goals are planning for your future. This can be putting money into savings, towards debt, or putting money aside for future goals.
- Don’t put it off! Debt typically accrues interest, so it’s important to identify financial barriers before they become an issue.
- Budget and set savings goals.
- Invest in your future. When possible, put part of each paycheck into your savings. It does not have to be much, even $5 adds up over time.
Resources to support your journey
- The Crisis Leave Sharing Program allows for employees to donate accumulated vacation leave for potential use in emergency situations by other employees whose leave has been exhausted.
- Individuals are eligible for crisis leave if they meet the below requirements:
- Requires at least one overnight stay in a hospital, hospice or other residential health care facility under the treatment or supervision of a physician or other licensed health care provider, or
- Requires an absence from work for more than three (3) consecutive days as recommended by the physician or other licensed health care provider, or
- Is a chronic or long term illness that is incurable or so serious that if untreated would probably lead to incapacity for more than three (3) days, and requires continuing medical treatment or supervision
- Interested in applying for crisis leave? You can stop by the Human Resources Office for more information or fill out the form here.
- Full-time and retired employees who wish to continue their education may be eligible for tuition assistance through the employee scholarship program. Spouses and dependent children may also be eligible for this benefit.
- Employee Scholarship Eligibility
- All regular full-time (1.00 F.T.E.) employees of the University are eligible to apply.
- All retired employees of the University who have met the normal retirement regulations are eligible to apply.
- Employees must be admitted students of the University and must have met all normal academic requirements for the courses taken.
- The Employee Scholarship Program is not available to employees on leave of absence without pay.
- The Employee Scholarship Program is not available to employees whose anticipated employment period is less than six months.
- Dependent Scholarship Eligibility
- All regular full-time (1.00 F.T.E.) employees of the University who meet the employment eligibility requirements of the Employee Scholarship Program may transfer up to a total of fifteen (15) credit hours per year (August through July) to their spouse or to any dependent child at tuition equal to the University's resident tuition charge per semester credit hour at the campus of attendance.
- The Dependent Scholarship Program is only available to an employee's spouse or any dependent child who is an admitted student of a University of Nebraska campus and who has met all normal academic requirements for the course(s) taken. Full-time student enrollment status is required for a dependent child to be eligible, but not for a spouse. An affidavit will be required to document the status of dependent children. The University reserves the right to request copies of tax returns and or other supporting documentation.
- All retired employees of the University who have met the normal retirement regulations may apply the dependent scholarship program to their spouse or to their eligible dependent children.
- Register for Tuition Remission
- Go to Firefly
- Click on the "Employee Self Service" tile
- Scroll down to the "Employee & Dependent Scholarship" tile (under the "ESS Benefits" section) and
- Follow the instructions
- UNO Human Resources Department administers a loan fund designed to aid non-probationary, regular university employees in financial crisis who have exhausted all means of obtaining financial assistance in an emergency.
- The Employee Emergency Loan Fund (EELF) was set up to grant hardship loans to employees facing quantifiable personal monetary crisis with no other access to financial funds, including but not limited to:
- An out-of-pocket medical expense due to a certified medical emergency.
- An unanticipated family emergency (e.g., death of a family member, victim of a crime).
- Unexpected and significant vehicle repairs.
- Impending eviction from one’s residence through no fault of the employee.
- An employee may apply for a one-time interest-free loan up to a maximum of one thousand dollars ($1,000). Such loan must be paid back by the employee via their University paycheck through an authorized payroll deduction. The maximum repayment period for the loan is twelve (12) months. Any disciplinary action or separation from university employment will still require any remaining loan balance to be repaid including potentially deducting owed monies from an employee’s final paycheck.
- Interested in applying for the Employee Emergency Loan Fund? Fill out the application!
- Understanding and taking full advantage of your benefits as an employee is a wonderful way to improve your financial wellness.
- NUFlex is the University of Nebraska’s benefits plan. We have centralized benefits at the university so benefits are the same on each of our four campuses (UNO, UNK, UNMC, and UNL).
- As a university employee, you may be elligible for Federal Student Aid Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
- PSLF is a program for people who work in public service in federal, state, trial, or local government, or for a non-profit organization.
- Interested in learning if you're eligible? Check out the PSLF toolkit for more information!