Managing Your Money

Allston Brighton CDC offers programs targeted at helping Allston Brighton residents manage and save their money:

Classes

	Your Credit and You This mini-workshop on credit covers a broad range of topics including: Knowing your credit; Why it is important; What your credit score means; Building your credit; How to monitor your credit for free
	CreditSmart Topics covered in this four-part workshop include: Knowing your credit & understanding its importance; Money management, financial planning & goal setting; How to best utilize banking services; Consumer credit rights; How to repair your credit; Determine if you are financially ready to buy a home; How to spot and avoid credit scams. One-on-one financial planning support and counseling upon completion of the course

Building Individual Assets

Saving For Success

Saving for Success (SFS) is a matched-savings program providing low-income residents the opportunity to save money and acquire assets that can enable them to transcend poverty across generations. Our participants are actively committed to their own security and happiness for themselves and their families for years to come. SFS requires participation in monthly workshops that address bolster financial management skills and provide asset-focused training. Each month, every participant saves $50, which is matched with $200 in funds that become available after the 12-month saving period at the time of asset purchase. In the six years of the program, 49 residents have participated and 25 of them have already purchased their assets, worth over $1.5 million, including ten for education, seven for homeownership, two for small business development, and six for retirement.

Our program is not simply a financial and information support program -- it also builds participants' confidence to pursue goals that they once considered other peoples dreams. While information and matched savings are key to gaining greater economic security, so, too, is encouragement in the conviction that they are deserving of their dreams and that they have access to the avenues leading them to their goals.

Current SFS participants are working toward higher education. Success with this goal requires more than saving. As participants struggle to navigate complex educational bureaucracies and hierarchies, they learn not to take the challenges as personal affronts, and that the skills and confidence needed to navigate the system are key to acquiring a degree. Sustaining motivation in this process can be hard without ongoing support, which people often lack in their busy lives. SFS offers support and cheer that bolster the energy needed to overcome these challenges while building the fortitude required for daily survival on a limited income.

ABCDC is the state leader in IDAs. We founded and are the lead agency in the MIDAS Collaborative, comprised of IDA programs across the state. MIDAS' program manager is housed in our office and ABCDC is the Collaborative's fiscal agent.

Fostering Financial Fitness

All of ABCDC's asset building programs involve a financial literacy component. In our Homebuying program, participants need to understand and master their financial position in order to become stable homeowners. In Saving for Success, participants need mastery of basic financial skills in order to implement their asset development plans successfully. In TGH, families need basic financial skills to follow-through on their computer financing commitments and to complete their plans for financial advancement.

ABCDC offers a core financial literacy class that is four weeks long and brings together some of the best financial literacy training modules available, including the City of Boston's Credit Smart, the FDIC's Money Smart. We also offer specialized workshops on topics that include, but are not limited to, developing a budget using Microsoft Excel, Financing Your Education, Wills Trusts and Estates, and Consumer Protection.

For more information about our Money Management and Savings Programs, please contact Michelle Meiser at 617-787-3874 x218.