Jovan Mann

Ashleigh Huang

Katie Oh

Elaine Sun

Vice President

Ethan Blum

Gina Ryu

Juan Lopez Ramos

Michael Sun

President

Common Cents is a student organization at the University of Pennsylvania and a national nonprofit seeking to empower college &amp; underserved high school students with the knowledge to manage their money and reach financial independence. Our committees work together to hold events and workshops and create educational resources tailored to high school and college students. We hope you’ll join us on our mission to make personal finance interesting, engaging, and inclusive!
<ins>Committees</ins>
<ul>
<li style="">Content: The Content Committee is responsible for researching personal finance topics, creating handouts and presentations for events and workshops, and working on high school financial literacy initiatives in the Philadelphia area and across the country. Content works closely with Event Planning, Marketing &amp; Design, and Growth to ensure our educational materials are accurate, relevant, inclusive, and engaging. Content is responsible for carrying out the education and advocacy that forms the core mission of Common Cents. Our audience includes CC members, the Penn community, other CC chapters, and high school students.</li>
<li>Event Planning: The Event Planning Committee is responsible for planning personal finance-related events for the general Penn audience. Duties include location selection, budgeting, catering, and working with our on-campus partners and external sponsors/speakers to curate and deliver fun, engaging, and inclusive events for the broader Penn community.</li>
<li>Marketing &amp; Design: The Marketing &amp; Design Committee duties include managing our social media accounts, creating posts, fliers, and graphics, leading event promotion, and designing marketing strategies to expand our reach across campus. Marketing &amp; Design ensures Common Cents’ branding is consistent and effective across all platforms and collaborates extensively with Content and Event Planning to ensure our efforts to promote financial wellness are noted.</li>
<li>Finance: The Finance Committee duties include tracking the club’s financial expenses, creating a yearly budget, finding external partnerships, designing fundraisers, and applying for funding through our campus partners (SPEC, SAC, and Wellness).&nbsp;</li>
<li>Affairs: The Affairs Committee duties include facilitating internal team-bonding activities, such as socials and retreats. Affairs ensures that all Common Cents members feel welcome and valued, and work to foster a sense of community among members and create opportunities for personal and professional growth.</li>
<li>Web-Tech/Analytics: The Web/Tech Committee will work on building out our website, designing the personal finance web-app, and analyzing statistics detailing CC's growth with regards to event attendance and chapter outreach initiatives.</li>
<li>Growth: The Growth Committee duties include working with Common Cents chapters at Cornell, JHU, and FSU and providing support and guidance as needed. The Growth Committee is also responsible for onboarding new chapters and maintaining ongoing communication with current chapters.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<ins>Past Events</ins>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: start;">Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Personal Finance Edition w/ Riepe College House: First-year residents at Riepe played Who Wants to be a Millionaire—with cash prizes, lifelines, and personal finance themed questions that touched on topics like budgeting, credit/debt, investing, insurance, and estate planning.</li>
<li>Winter is Coming—How to Survive the Cold Recession: Speaker Justin Winters, a Penn class of '05 alum with a CFA and CFP, financial advisor, and Managing Director at Treasury Partners, explained the role of macroeconomics on personal investing, and how to protect your assets during an economic downturn.</li>
<li>Credit Card Crash Course w/ AIS: Common Cents collaborated with the Association of International Students to deliver a credit card event, with special focus on optimizing one’s credit score, applying for an SSN/ITIN, and taking advantage of seldom-used rewards and benefits to get value from credit cards. This event was specifically targeted towards international students and the FGLI community.</li>
<li>The Power of Points—Why I Have 15 Credit Cards: Common Cents’ very own co-founder, John Ta (MLS '22), gave insider tips on what credit cards are, the best ways to optimize for rewards, and, most importantly, explained why he owns 15 cards at age 22.</li>
<li>D.C. Retreat: Members of Common Cents traveled to D.C. for a weekend. Social events like touring the National Mall, visiting the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and getting lunch at North Italia allowed for members to bond and spend an enjoyable time together!</li>
</ul>

Angelina Zhou

John Ta

Advisor

Finance Committee Chair

Anonymous

Web/Tech & Analytics Committee Chair

Mehak Dhaliwal

Content Committee Chair

Yiling Sun

Caroline Chen

Member

Gloria Cheng

Lalana Karri

Luke Trahan

Safiya Patel

Common Cents

Penn's first personal finance club

Being a member of Common Cents has taught me so much about credit cards and how to manage my money. I was also able to meet a bunch of cool people and the food selection for each meeting was also fantastic. I really liked the Masterchef crossover, the shakshuka was great!

Common Cents has allowed me to not only learn more about managing my own personal finances, but also meet incredible teammates and form bonds that go beyond the scope of our work. I've been able to spread financial literacy in a fun way to groups even beyond Penn, which has been a truly rewarding experience.

Common Cents Alumni