AARP
People age 50 and older have special questions related to personal finance. Now that I’m nearing retirement, should I pay off my mortgage? What if my retirement savings fall short of my needs? What are the best investments for someone my age?
To provide answers, the National Endowment for Financial Education authored a series of articles that appeared in Money and Work, the e-newsletter of AARP, the Association of Retired Persons. The monthly articles featured tips, resources, and ideas about such topics as planning for Social Security, deciding when to retire, and making money last through retirement.
American Humane Association
NEFE and the American Humane Association (AHA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing child abuse and neglect, collaborated to produce a booklet that educated parents about the key financial issues involved in child rearing.
The publication, Family Money Basics: Achieving Financial Well-Being, offered information and discussed skills needed to prepare for the financial responsibilities of raising a child. The booklet covered how to determine the costs of supporting a family, discern the financial requirements of a child at various ages, and make informed decisions concerning healthcare alternatives, employee benefits, tax benefits, child support, and ways to supplement family income.
Community Action Partnership®
NEFE collaborated with the Community Action Partnership® to develop a unique and powerful electronic financial education tool for its 1,000-member organizations across the United States. Titled Changing Your Life Through Better Money Management, the Web site enabled Community Action Agencies (CAAs), which work with low-income individuals and communities, to provide financial planning insight to the people they served.
CAA staff introduced program participants to the Web site during a visit to a CAA office and worked with them on relevant sections; participants could continue their work by accessing the site from a local library or other location.
Child Welfare League of America
Nearly six million American children are being raised by their grandparents or other relatives. Regardless of backgrounds, these kinship caregivers share many of the same concerns—including money matters.
To help kinship caregivers tackle the financial responsibility of nurturing a child, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and NEFE teamed up to write and produce Sticking Together: Kinship Care and Financial Care. The 60-page booklet addressed personal finance issues, such as paying for a child's healthcare and daycare, managing debt, and preserving retirement savings. It acknowledged the physical and emotional strains of child-rearing by offering tips for coping with stress, finding support groups, dealing with the legalities of kinship care, bridging the generation gap, and more. Resources for kinship caregivers were provided, as well as suggestions for teaching children good money management habits.
Women leaving jail, prison, or other incarceration face special financial challenges. These include satisfying compliance issues such as parole and curfews, finding a job and housing, rebuilding credit, managing child care, and avoiding predatory lenders.
These issues and more were covered in Reuniting: Money, Family & You: A Guide for Women Leaving Prison, put together by the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and the Women’s Prison Association (WPA) in collaboration with NEFE. The 64-page, step-by-step booklet sought to help recently released mothers develop skills so they could re-enter the community and workforce, obtain legal help, access benefits, handle the stress of change, enhance their parenting skills, and build financial stability.
FINRA Investor Education Foundation
NEFE partnered with the FINRA Investor Education Foundation and the National Military Family Association (NMFA) to update and reprint Military Families: Money and Mobility, a publication that helped service members and their families deal with the financial issues surrounding deployment and duty station changes.
National Alliance To End Homelessness
To help individuals and families move toward self-sufficiency, NEFE collaborated with the National Alliance to End Homelessness to create a handbook entitled Turning the Financial Corner: From Survival to Prosperity that provided current and potential homeless Americans with:
- a list of resources to help them avoid losing their homes
- an approach for regaining housing and independence
- a plan for building a solid financial future
Readers learned how to reduce expenses; negotiate with creditors; organize a search for help; find potential job sources; save money; and apply for services like food stamps, Medicaid, and special programs for families and children. Copies of the handbook were available through the Alliance and some of its affiliate organizations.
National Adoption Organizations
NEFE formed a coalition of major national adoption organizations, in addition to the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs, to create the book How to Make Adoption an Affordable Option. It was developed for people who would like to consider adoption, but who may believe the process is too expensive. It was also meant for families who—caught up in the emotions of adoption—might not have given serious thought to some of the less obvious financial aspects of adoption. The book detailed the expenses common to most adoptions, as well as those that were unique to the adoption of waiting children, independent adoptions, and international adoptions.
Coalition members included: The Adoption Exchange Association, International Concerns for Children, Child Welfare League of America, Inc., North American Council on Adoptable Children, Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, Children Awaiting Parents, Inc., The National Adoption Foundation, and The Adoption Exchange, Inc.
National Association of Service and Conservation Corps
Financing Higher Education for Graduates of Service and Conservation Corps, a collaborative program of NEFE and the National Association of Service and Conservation Corps—now known as The Corps Network—helped disadvantaged corps members use the life skills acquired from their experience working in a service or conservation corps.
The collaboration featured a Web site about personal finance topics, including financing higher education, developing careers and other opportunities with long-term potential. The Web site also showed former corps members how to use their AmeriCorps Education Awards to attend community colleges and tech schools.
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence/Intuit
NEFE, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), and Intuit partnered to produce a guide that contains information on how women who have experienced domestic violence can regain control of their lives. Hope and Power for Your Personal Finances: A Rebuilding Guide Following Domestic Violence helped battered women begin to build a secure and hopeful financial future for themselves and their children.
Through personal stories, easy-to-follow worksheets, and concise information, women learned how to find a safe place to live, take a financial inventory, start a money management plan, build a financial base, locate a job, and deal with legal issues relevant to their situation. The organization distributed copies of the guide to women's shelters across America.
National Council on Problem Gambling
NEFE and the National Council on Problem Gambling have developed two handbooks to assist individuals who may have to cope with problem gamblers. The first handbook, Personal Financial Strategies for the Loved Ones of Problem Gamblers, provided information on signs and stages of problem gambling and the financial actions that should be taken to deal with personal financial issues that may arise with problem gambling. Additionally, readers will find guidelines on how to shift control of finances, establish a spending plan, and locate other available resources.
Helping the Problem Gambling Client: A Financial Planner's Guide, the second handbook completed during this project, sought to sensitize and educate financial planners, who might have clients who are addicted to gambling, to the varied and unique financial issues confronting problem gamblers. The increased legalization of gambling and potential costs, the behavior of problem gamblers, and financial planners' ethical obligations and actions all are addressed within the booklet. The 18-page guide was distributed to more than 48,000 CFP® professionals as a supplement to the Journal of Financial Planning, a publication of the Financial Planning Association.
National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization/Caring Connection
Financial planning can be a difficult challenge for individuals facing the end of life. Worries about paying for health care, funeral costs, and everyday expenses can create anxiety at a time when they’d rather focus on family and friends.
Caring Connections, a program of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), and NEFE published a 64-page guide aimed at easing end-of-life financial planning. For the seriously ill, End-of-Life Financial Issues discussed end-of-life decisions, palliative and hospice care costs and benefits, sources of financial help, and funeral/memorial service costs and considerations. Information also was included for caregivers.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving
The National Endowment for Financial Education and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) collaborated on the development and publication of three booklets to enable consumers to cope better with the financial impact of a drunk-driving crash. The booklets provided a wealth of practical information to assist victims and their loved ones in dealing with the many, often-complex financial issues that typically arise in the weeks, months, and even years following a crash.
The booklets in the Picking Up the Financial Pieces series included Managing Financial Issues at Home, Managing Work Issues After a Drunk-Driving Crash, and Financial Recovery Issues in Court.
Prison Fellowship
Men and women in prison encounter special financial issues, including paying off debt and supporting a family when behind bars. To address some of these challenges, the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) created a series of personal finance articles to be published in the Prison Fellowship’s Inside Journal.
Distributed through chaplains and prior signed agreements with U.S. prisons, Inside Journal was circulated to 385,000 inmates. Each NEFE article explored a financial subject of interest to prison inmates. Topics included avoiding identity theft, managing financial transition after incarceration, talking with your spouse about money, and handling family finances.
RESOLVE
RESOLVE collaborated with NEFE on a project to provide much-needed information on the financial aspects of infertility and family building. The resulting booklet, entitled Planning to Afford Family Building: Financial Planning and Infertility, offered specific information for couples faced with infertility about treatment options and their costs, which could range from $1,000 to $30,000 per treatment.
It covered related health insurance issues and included a summary of the state-by-state laws concerning medical coverage. The booklet also explored the costs and choices of adopting a child, as well as more general topics such as choosing a doctor and getting help from a financial advisor.
Main Human Services Projects
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