Confused about paying your bills or having trouble finding a loan?

The Iowa State Office of Financial Aid has adopted a new Web site that explains financial aid issues to students and outlines common money problems.

CashCourse is a stand-alone Web site that replaces information previously found on the Office of Student Financial Aid’s Web site.

Roberta Johnson, director of financial aid, said the information on CashCourse is more thorough than the financial aid Web site and hits more topics of interest to students, such as how to buy a car or what to expect when moving into an apartment. The Web site “provides good information in a short format,” she said.

Johnson said she thinks students would like to have a centralized location to find accurate answers to their money questions, and that they would be more apt to utilize a Web site before they speak to an administrator.

“Sometimes parents aren’t the best source,” Johnson said, “A lot of adults walking around today learned by trial-and-error.”

Johnson heard about CashCourse from Tahira Hira, executive assistant to the president, after Hira saw it implemented at other universities.

The National Endowment for Financial Education, a non-profit organization, developed the Web site free of charge. The information on the Web site is not tailored specifically to Iowa State, but it is linked through the Iowa State financial aid Web site and the header is the university’s logo.

Jeanna Hennick, graduate assistant for campus organizations, said she thinks students will like the Web site because it provides an abundance of information for those looking for financial answers.

“CashCourse is a great thing to get out there now,” Hennick said. “It’s readily available to students all the time because it’s completely online. It’s a great resource.”

Hennick said the advice she would give to students looking to start the financial management process is to start keeping track of where your money is going.

“Start keeping track of your money, because that is really the first step in doing anything — you have to know where it is going in order to make a change or to make plans to put it somewhere else,” she said.