Dulce Duarte said she didn’t have a firm grasp on her finances until she participated in an educational program for low-income single mothers.
“Money was controlling me. Now I’m controlling money,” said the 32-year-old Omaha nurse and mother of two boys.
Omaha’s United Way of the Midlands recently received $121,672 from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to expand a $7,000 pilot program that helped Duarte and seven other women last fall.
Over the next two years, about 100 women who are clients of four social service agencies in Omaha and southwest Iowa will participate.
Duarte and the other women in the pilot program attended eight two-hour classroom sessions and meet with a financial adviser for one year to receive individual help.
A software program helped them create and track their budgets. Meeting as a group allowed the women to exchange ideas and kept them honest about their spending, Duarte said.
“It’s just like exercise. You know you want to do it, but it takes discipline as well,” she said.
Julie Kalkowski, director of the local United Way’s Financial Stability Partnership, said the new program is an offshoot of the partnership’s work with a dozen companies on financial education for their employees. More than 900 people have taken that training over the past three years.
It was time to reach out more directly to parents, because financial stability helps the entire family, Kalkowski said. Single mothers became a focus because living on one salary can be particularly difficult, and the majority of single parents are women. In addition, women’s wages tend to be lower than men’s, she said.
The program targets mothers who make $50,000 a year or less.
“If we are helping the mothers, we are helping the kids, too,” Kalkowski said.
Mary Jackson, a 40-year-old Omahan with two children, said classes on level payment plans for utility bills, savings and banking, credit reports, insurance and retirement were effective.
“I’ve always been a budgeting person, but to go to class every week really got me motivated. And to have other people there,” Jackson said.
Jackson said her divorce more than a year ago complicated her finances. She was late paying utility bills and occasionally late with mortgage payments.
The class helped her be more organized about her finances and become more confident, she said. Jackson said she holds two jobs and makes $42,000 a year.
Duarte, who makes about $40,000 a year at a community health center, said the classes helped her become a more disciplined shopper, so there’s less stress about meeting basic needs.
For example, she recently spotted a dining room table she wanted that cost $1,500.
“It was made of solid wood, very fine. I could see how my whole family could fit in it. I was daydreaming about this dining table.”
But when she brought her 11-year-old son, Mario, to the store to show him the table, he questioned her about the cost. They bought a $600 table instead, square rather than rectangular, with a marblelike top instead of solid wood.
“It used to seem I wasn’t making enough. But I can pay my monthly mortgage and bring food to the table,” she said.
Duarte said she also learned that she has rights as a consumer, such as asking her bank to help contest a bill she received from an Internet search engine. The company said the search to find a relative would cost $5, but it charged $50, Duarte said.
“I never, ever knew you could contest a payment you don’t agree with,” she said. “I’m learning a little bit of the system.”
Mabel Alarcon-Craven, a financial professional at AXA Advisors in Omaha, provided the counseling for participants in the pilot project. She emphasized that the women maintain a budget and set realistic goals for things like retirement and college education.
“I would say, in general, the problem people have is we don’t live within a budget,” Alarcon-Craven said. “We know how much money we make. We usually don’t know how much we spend.”
She encouraged the families to keep up the good work.
“Financial planning is not something you do today. It is a process.”
Contact the writer:
444-1117, joe.ruff@owh.com
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