asset building

In a world of growing financial complexity, predatory products, stagnating wages, and escalating inequality, financial insecurity is a dramatic problem. We gathered a group of leaders who are combating financial insecurity for a conversation on how it all relates.

What does it take to achieve financial security for the millions of American households without it? Clearly full employment, higher wages, and a more robust safety net would be some major components. But as important as those are, they aren’t the full picture. Assets are an important counterweight to income.

A. Actually they do! However, they tend to be saving for the short term, rather than the long term.

Children’s savings accounts for higher education, even those that have accumulated only small amounts of money, can change expectations for low-income students and they might also provide a vehicle for larger wealth transfers.

Regardless of income level, a family that is just getting by is locked in a state of stress and vulnerability.

What is productive agricultural land and clean water worth? What are strong communal relationships worth? What is a clear connection to heritage, to culture, to past, to future, and self, worth?

Today’s economic climate offers little hope to many struggling families. Family incomes still lag in comparison, for example, to rising housing costs in many markets.

I attended my first ever Assets Learning Conference, put on by CFED last week, and I have to say it was mighty impressive. And I was particularly pleased to see that economic justice and things like reforming the tax code to be less regressive and reward savings by low- and middle-income Americans, rather than mostly […]

A: Not any more! There are many myths out there about manufactured (or “mobile”) homes, but in fact they can be a very important source of quality affordable housing…

How would you define “wealth”?  Owning your own home? Accumulating an abundance of financial resources and goods? Celebrating a network of relationships that help you take care of your family? […]

A: Yes! And keeps them safer than traditional homeownership does.

Permanent affordability and asset building might seem at first blush to be contradictory goals for a low-income homeownership program, but new research says in fact they can be achieved together.