Finance Instructor Featured on WalletHub on the ABCs of Budgeting

Elven Riley, adjunct instructor, Department of Finance, Stillman  School of Business, is well known for his expertise around the competitive space of mergers and acquisitions as well as financial services and technology (FinTech). However, he also is regarded as a personal money management expert and recently participated in a panel of experts gathered by the personal finance website, WalletHub, to share budgeting advice.

Riley authored the web-based textbook on financial literacy, Unavoidable Money Decisions (Great River Learning, 2024), at Seton Hall; this Spring semester, 201 undergraduate students are enrolled in his online one-credit personal money management course. Students study postgraduate credit and debt decisions, and featured topics include paychecks, credit cards, school loans, mortgages, stock investing and income taxes.

Said WalletHub financial writer Adam McCann, “Unfortunately, budgeting isn’t something that’s often taught in schools, despite 94% of the country thinking it should be, according to a WalletHub survey. The good news is that it’s a skill that’s never too late to learn, and it’s actually a lot easier than it seems.”

When asked about the benefits of having a budget, Riley noted, “I don’t think most of us would call being caught in a lie a benefit, but budgets generate facts. As humans, we often choose to ignore facts but that does not make them go away. Ignoring facts can work out for Hollywood romcoms and a few of us that are just lucky bugs but most of us just wind up paying the price plus penalty later. Budgets are just a simple ruler; they measure how much you spent. That is a fact.”

Riley sited two critical tips that can help people create and stick to a budget:

“A budget is a ruler. A budget is a reference measurement, and you rarely change your reference measurement. So, every month you blow your entertainment budget with the actual spending until one month you do not. I took over 200 practice shots at the soccer net before I began to see some success. During that time, I kept counting, and I did not move the goal posts. Frame the spending decisions by picturing your future self, sitting and staring at the months spending totals compared to your budget. What would your future self say to you today? It may seem silly, but finding those words and saying them out loud now will help you learn from your budgeting process.”

The entire WalletHub interview is available here.

Categories: Business