Investing in Tomorrow: Helping Families Build Savings and Assets [AECF.org]

For a low-income family, a day’s wages might only fulfill today’s basic needs: food, clothing and housing that may be temporary. But some families’ daily struggle to support themselves leaves nothing for tomorrow. To help children realize their full potential, families need savings and assets, the currency of the future.

Assets — emergency savings, a college fund, homeownership — provide the financial stability a family needs to create a quilt of resources that turns children’s dreams into plans. That quilt also serves as a security blanket of a family’s own making. Without it, what should be a temporary difficulty — a flat tire, a sick child, an injury — can become a crisis with permanent consequences, including a lost job or impossibly large debts. Family financial stability can easily be undermined by such events, eroding prospects for self-sufficiency and long-term success.¹

^{[For more of this brief, published January 20, 2016, go to http://www.aecf.org/resources/...-savings-and-assets/]}