k

Keep It Goal 1
Families set short-term and long-term financial goals, and attain them.

Common Sense
  • Saving plans can help families prepare for unexpected costs, such as emergency health and vehicle repair expenses.
  • Families that regularly save a significant portion of their income and have a savings plan with defined goals are more likely to secure their future financial situation.
  • Expenses such as debt payments, health insurance, child care expenses, and mortgage payments depress savings in low-income households.

Fast Facts

Check out related Action Ideas and Alerts below! Or view other Keep It goals here.

Children’s Savings Accounts

The Basic Idea: Help children, youth and their families save towards the purchase of an appreciating asset upon reaching adulthood so that economic status will not be a barrier to the young person’s path to success. How it works: Children and youth are provided with a specialized savings account that they can access and use […]

Roll Your Change Week

Roll Your Change Week (RYCW) is an event designed to encourage individuals and families to start saving. Community members gather the coins they have saved and found in their homes and carry them to a central event location-where volunteers roll the coins for them. People are encouraged to deposit their rolled coins into existing accounts […]

Rural IDAs

Earning It isn’t enough to lift families out of poverty—they have to Keep It and Grow It too. Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are one of the most successful and tested ways to help families Keep It and Grow It. But there are special challenges and opportunities when you start and run an IDA program in a rural place. The basics […]

The Nasty Nine: Helping Rural Families Avoid Predatory Lending Practices

Do the rural families you encounter turn to predatory lenders and products when they need money—and end up in worse financial straits? Here are some resources you can use to guide them to better lending products that can help them stay afloat and get ahead in this economy: A recording of the RuFES webinar on the Nasty […]

RuFES is a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group.
One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, D.C., 20036