New Mexico State University Student Success Center hosted a workshop at Zuhl Library to help students learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle on a budget. 

Student Program Coordinator for the Student Success Center (SSC) Cody Womack said the workshop was a part of the Student Success Center financial wellness program and is a topic that had been suggested numerous times by students. 

“There’s such a stigma on college students that you can’t be healthy on such a low budget so that was an idea we actually started doing last semester, and it was a good idea, good reviews, good feedback from the students,” Womack said.  

NMSU student Armando Reyes was attentive at the workshop, focusing on all the tips offered such as making a list of what you need and staying away from what you don’t.  

“It’s a good topic to talk about because like, you’re going to Walmart just for groceries but you come out with like air pods or the newest video game and this gives you some guidelines on what to do to avoid that,” Reyes said.  

The workshop suggested to stay near the outer edge of the store and stay away from the inner aisles as the outer edge is where the produce is mainly located and other products that are more likely to be put on sale due to their storage life.  

Throughout the workshop, Womack discussed tips on how to stay within budget and what would be good to substitute. He also passed out flyers with additional tips as well as a list of grocery shopping apps, like Grocery Pal and Flipp, that show where the best deals are.  

Womack said the research process for gathering this information starts with graduate assistants on their team.  

“It’s a process, so it starts out whenever we’ll get a topic one of our graduate assistants will usually do some research on it to gather information, and then they’ll sit down with our team of graduate students and they’ll build a presentation and they bring it to one of the professional staff,” Womack said.  

While all workshops are directed towards students, Womack said in some cases the SSC does collaborate with TRIO, a federally funded program that supports first generation, low income students.  

Other coming workshops to be hosted by SSC concern topics such as The College Student Guide to Credit, Don’t Let Your Identity Get Stolen and Keys to Saving and Investing. Womack noted they will be bringing in outside resources for students to assist in certain workshops.