I recently came across my journal from a decade ago when I was contemplating the opportunity to come to the Aspen Institute to build out the Financial Security Program. At the time, my own life was at an inflection point: I had recently purchased a fixer-upper cabin full of character and potential (but not much else); I was newly single; and I was in the midst of a legal process to assume custody of a relative’s young children.
As I reflected on adding a major job transition to the mix, I recognized that taking this risk was possible only because of the financial security I had attained through a combination of good jobs, good benefits, good timing, and good luck. I was by no means financially “set,” but I had managed to build enough of a cushion to make some consequential choices about the direction I wanted my life to travel.
Having spent my whole career researching the connections between financial stability and economic opportunity, I was aware of how shockingly few people have the level of income, savings, and assets that afford them the kind of choices I was contemplating. More often, people face false choices and trade-offs that pit the financial realities of “now” against the aspirational goals of “later” in order to manage risk and buffer shocks.
My journal entry captured these tensions, as well as my vision:
Ida Rademacher (right) with Shamina Singh at a Mastercard event in 2023 (Courtesy of Mastercard).
- “Long-term financial security feels unreachable and irrelevant to too many American workers.”
- “I want the new conventional wisdom to be that people in the U.S. need both income and assets to have financial security.”
- “The job will require an ability to set true north as the destination, and work with a wide cross section of leaders to figure out how to get there.”
In the course of a few college-ruled pages, I convinced myself that the Aspen Institute—with its emphasis on dialogue, leadership, and action—was exactly the right place to build a new team and a new kind of conversation that probed the messy, multi-faceted ways that people’s financial lives were changing amid broader changes in the economy and society.
I think about Aspen FSP’s first 10 years as an all-out effort to build the evidence, insights, and ecosystem of leaders that could inform the kind of “walk and chew gum” framework for financial security that connected all the pieces. Just a few examples:
- We actively mixed up guest lists and matrixed data in an effort to disrupt siloed conversations that typically focused on short- or long-term financial security, or on work or wealth.
- We launched the Expanding Prosperity Impact Collaborative (EPIC) to lead deep dives into issues like income volatility, consumer debt, and housing affordability.
- We convened the Consumer Insights Collaborative and the Community Advisory Group to inform groundbreaking work on the essential role that short-term financial stability, public and employer benefits, and wealth play in achieving financial security.
- Nearly every new insight and innovation we surfaced found its way into dialogue and bipartisan policy ideas (like retirement-linked emergency savings and early wealth building accounts) that took root during our annual Aspen Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings, and guided our work to inspire and inform the U.S. Treasury’s first-ever National Strategy for Financial Inclusion in the United States.
- And all of it informed our work to articulate a New Wealth Agenda that has sparked new interest from innovators, investors, and policymakers across the political spectrum who are animated by the possibilities for transforming wealth and ownership opportunities in the U.S.
After a decade, I am still just as passionate about this work, and in awe of the dynamic team who took their own risks to join and build Aspen FSP into the ambitious, successful program it is today. As we celebrate 10 years of Aspen FSP, you’ll be hearing directly from other team leaders in upcoming newsletters and blogs, starting with my incredible co-executive director Joanna Smith-Ramani who was one of the very first to join me on the journey. Together we’ll look back on our 10-year track record of frameworks and forums that give leaders like you deeper insights, stronger connections, and greater clarity about the role you can play to improve the wealth and well-being of your customers, constituents, and communities.
Even amid extraordinary change, I feel confident that our collective commitment to this work will meaningfully improve the financial stability and security of low-wealth households, empowering them to make their own consequential choices about the direction they want their life to travel. Thank you for being with us—here’s to the next 10 years.
