Coming soon: One Month in Savings

Common Sense Finance will review the spending habits of participants to identify areas where participants can lower costs without significantly impacting their lives. Some common examples are finance costs including high bank fees, interest and late fees, and recurring subscriptions that are no longer valued by the participant. As part of this program, Common Sense Finance will also look at participants credit reports to see if there are ways to raise participants credit scores and thus lower participant’s future borrowing costs. 

Common Sense Finance will work with participants to identify costs that they are paying BECAUSE they are low income. Common Sense Finance will then work with businesses and donors to create programs to close this cost gap. 

Part of the reason that so many people live paycheck to paycheck is that they do not understand the value of savings and of building wealth. They simply do not think about, or care enough about, their future selves. Paying off high cost debt is not as fun as going on a nice vacation. Putting money in retirement is not as fun as buying a new cell phone. What people don’t realize is that the true cost of the nice vacation or new phone are many times the sticker price. Of course everyone deserves to have fun and enjoy life. However, those times should be conscious choices rather than just because there happens to be extra money lying around. Common Sense Finance will provide trainings to participants and use nudges with the goal of having participants think about their future selves every time they spend money whimsically.