Harvard Economics Department Holds Inaugural Personal Finance Workshop Series

Students concentrating in a variety of fields gathered in Harvard Hall for the Economics Department’s first session of its four-part inaugural Personal Finance Workshop series on Monday evening.

Open to all undergraduate students, the free workshop comprises four weekly sessions throughout April, each covering practical financial topics — from understanding credit to investing to behavioral economics. Economics professors John Y. Campbell and Karen Dynan taught Monday’s session, and professors David I. Laibson and Jeffrey A. Miron will help lead subsequent classes.

Monday’s session on personal finance and the basics of credit drew roughly 125 attendees, which included both Economics concentrators and students concentrating in other fields. Dynan and Campbell both said they were especially pleased with the turnout and the enthusiasm demonstrated by students.

“We were delighted with the turnout last night and with the interest students were sharing. People were asking lots of questions, which was great,” Campbell said.

The Personal Finance Workshops aim to bring awareness to common financial issues in an effort to promote financial literacy among “a broader audience,” according to Campbell.

“This is a time when everyone in society is faced with ever more complex financial decisions,” he said. “Higher education gets more and more expensive. Many people acquire debt…and we feel that everybody can use some basic education in this material, so we hope to be useful in this.”

Miron said he wants to make it clear that the sessions are meant to be accessible to all students regardless of background.

“All undergraduates are welcome,” he said. “You absolutely do not need a background in economics… Almost everything we’re trying to get across is based on simple reasoning, simple logic to organize how you think about your own finances.”

The hope is that by teaching students about such topics, they will then apply this knowledge to their own financial lives, according to Dynan.

“Our view has been that if people understand the underlying reasons for these rules — as well as some of the relevant evidence — they can do a better job with their own finances,” Dynan wrote in an email.

Mark H. Kong ’21, who attended Monday’s session, said he found it informative and will likely attend future workshops as well.

“There’s enough content that something will end up being helpful that I may not have known about. For example, I had an incorrect assumption about mortgages so I learned about that,” he said. “I think there’s stuff here that’s definitely applicable.”

Organizers said the future of the workshop will depend on how the “trial-run” goes this month. The workshop’s evolution will rely upon student feedback.

“Depending on how that goes, how much attendance we have, how much interest we’ve heard about from other sources, we might do something similar next year, or we might want to repeat it at other times, or we might want to adjust the target audience or the material,” Miron said. “But we’re just kind of experimenting right now.”

Correction: April 7, 2019

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated 25 people attended Monday's workshop. In fact, 125 people attended the workshop.

—Staff writer Sophia S. Armenakas can be reached at sophia.armenakas@thecrimson.com