“One Misstep Away from Financial Disaster”

Today is a big day for the asset building community. Our friends at CFED have released their newly updated 2013 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard which evaluates household financial security across the U.S. and grades states on how well or poorly they support asset development and promote opportunity. 

As has been true in recent years, the key finding is that huge swaths of the population are living in a precarious state of “asset poverty.” As our Justin King told the Huffington Post: “These are households and individuals that are living paycheck-to-paycheck. And without savings, you’re one misstep away from financial disaster.” As Jillian Berman for HuffPo explains, people are “coping with stagnating wages and rising prices. This group is also navigating a banking system that subsidizes wealth-building programs — like homeownership and retirement accounts — that are geared towards the wealthy but don’t offer the same boost to poor and middle-class savers.” That gap exacerbates disparities in financial security over time – people with assets are able to leverage what they already have to support long term goals, while the rest are left scrambling to meet basic needs, unable to effectively plan and save for the future. 

NPR also produced a strong piece using the Scorecared as a launching point, click here to read or listen, then navigate over to the Scorecard to explore the data yourself. CFED is also hosting a webinar today at 1pm to introduce the Scorecard findings. Use the scorecard to get information about how people in your state are faring and be sure to check out the action on Twitter with the hashtag #CFEDScorecard.