One Crisis Away: Helping Low-Income Workers Save for Emergencies
Aspen FSP’s managing director Joanna Smith-Ramani joined Prosperity Now and Prudential Financial on Capitol Hill to discuss the lack of emergency savings for working families around the country and how policymakers, researchers and advocates can push for policy solutions to help fill this void. This event highlighted promising federal proposals to help low-income workers and their families save. In addition, Prudential discussed an innovative emergency savings feature they have been piloting, which would help employers to further support their employees in saving.
“The panel, moderated by Prosperity Now’s David Newville, then took a deep dive into the issues around emergency savings and solutions, with the discussion focusing on what the research shows about the need for emergency savings to what employers can do now to federal policy solutions currently on the table. Joanna Smith-Ramani, Managing Director of the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, offered insight into the difficult situation that so many Americans face and what research has discovered. “Our work on financial security has uncovered three main challenges: one is that basic expenses are really unmanageable; two is that Americans are struggling with debt; and three, income is not stable for working families.” Smith-Ramani emphasized the need for more creativity in how working families save money.”