Making a big impact on families with not-so-big incomes

It takes a family of four $35,000 a year to maintain a basic no-frills lifestyle, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Idaho, nearly half of all families fall short. A third earn less than $25,000. While classes on investment or retirement planning aren't hard to find, UI Extension family economics faculty are filling a nearly unoccupied niche for classes in fundamental money-management for adults. Increasingly, they're offering those classes at mid-day "lunch-and-learn" sessions to audiences eager to discover how to trim an expense here or add a little income there.

Lunch-and-learn lessons "People are willing to take an hour of their time at noon, whereas after work you have other obligations and once you're home it's hard to get back out again," says Beverly Healy, UI extension educator in Ada County. Her experience shows, "this is a wonderful way to reach people."

One of the lunch-and-learn classes—Gaining Financial Fitness — has already been delivered to employees of Ada County, the Idaho Tax Commission, and the Boise City-Ada County Housing Authority. "When we sent a global e-mail to county employees, the classes filled as soon as the e-mail hit," says Healy. And participants weren't disappointed: In their evaluations, they indicated that they would start tracking expenses, developing spending plans, and setting aside emergency funds.

Helping low-income families Idahoans attending Dollar Decision$—a related class targeted to low-income families—responded with similar resolve: 100 percent said they would set financial goals, begin budgeting, and establish emergency savings, compared with 0 to 18 percent before the workshop.

"These are basic skills and basic information that people need," says Marilyn Bischoff, UI extension family economics specialist, who developed the Dollar Decision$ curriculum with Jerome County extension educator Marsha Hawkins and southwestern Idaho's UI Extension Educator Linda Gossett.

"We have so many low-income individuals in Idaho who feel very hopeless about what they can do to help their situations," says Hawkins. "Dollar Decision$ shows them that they can set financial goals and work toward something they really want, even if they only set aside one or two dollars a week."

Indeed, when extension educators tested one Dollar Decision$ lesson themselves, they found that hundreds of dollars were slipping out of their wallets unnoticed each year. In the Case of the Missing Money, individual UI extension educators calculated that they were spending $156 a year on vending-machine sodas, $200 a year returning catalog purchases, and $468 a year on tri-weekly mochas.

Bischoff says Dollar Decision$—packaged as a complete curriculum, with a 22-minute video, two six-page publications (in English and Spanish), teaching instructions, and related materials — is attracting interest in the U.S. and even Canada. "There is a huge national need."

Consequently, both Dollar Decision$ and financially oriented extension lunch-and-learn programs are beginning to fan out across Idaho. Says Bischoff: "If extension is to meet its objective of putting knowledge to work, what better knowledge can we put to work than helping people manage their finances?"

--by Marlene Fritz

© 2004 University of Idaho, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.