The Streetwise About Money Campaign

We at the Center for Community Problem Solving created our Streetwise About Money Campaign to help people manage their money as wisely as possible. Our Campaign includes ambitious financial education drives, engaging in-person workshops, and comprehensive manuals. We aim to help people sort their way through the often confusing world of checking and savings accounts, credit cards, credit unions, payday lending, check-cashing, credit counselors, pawnshops, and more.

We know managing money wisely is easier said than done. That’s true for all of us. And that’s particularly true for those living at the economic margins. They often lack access to mainstream services, face cultural and language barriers, and find themselves targeted by a wide range of predatory practices. Still, the experiences of people all across the country convince us that we do not have to give in to these forces. Instead, through our Streetwise About Money Campaign, we can and do share knowledge about financial services and develop skills about how to make the most of available options. And this knowledge and these skills can help us get better and better over time at making the most of the money we have and building for the future.

In addition to our Workshop and Guide on budgeting (why and how to keep a budget, how to live within a budget), banking (what are the different services offered by financial institutions, how to open and responsibly manage accounts), and credit (how to qualify for and use short-term credit, including credit cards), we at the Center for Community Problem Solving soon will be rolling out related components of our Streetwise About Money Campaign. These components will focus on economic issues that matter hugely to our client communities but most often get ignored in “financial literacy” campaigns. We already are far into the process of developing specially-designed workshops and written materials that focus on the costs and benefits of the “fringe banking system” that so many people tell us they rely on for everything from check cashing to money transfer services to payday loans. And we have initiated plans to address the range of discrimination that immigrants, people with criminal records, and others face through prevalent practices such as predatory lending and unfair credit checks.

Our Center’s work with communities does not stop there. As with all our Community Economic Development Project work, we hope through our Streetwise About Money Campaign to help us all grasp what democratically accountable community economic development can mean and how we might all have a greater voice in decisions being made about our lives. Economic policies and practices should be made accessible and answerable to everyone – not just the wealthy and not just the well-connected. Using our Streetwise About Money Campaign as one essential building block, we aim to reach out to a wide range of individuals, families, and communities and to ask them to join us in making certain that economic development make sense for us all.