STEP FORWARD - Shriver Center

By Dory Rand, Supervising Attorney, Community Investment Project

One in five households in America owes more than it owns, according to the CFED 2007-2008 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard. The Shriver Center is advocating public policies and private initiatives that help households save and build assets. The income that households receive from tax refunds and stimulus payments provides opportunities to pay down debts and accumulate savings, but policy reforms are needed to avoid penalizing families who receive public benefits for saving.

Spend tax refunds “to recession-proof your financial house,” urges Gregory Karp. “If you don’t have a rainy-day fund of three to six months of bare-bones expenses, now is the time to build one,” Karp said in the Allentown Morning Call on March 30. Karp suggests that people “stash the cash in a higher-rate online savings account … and then set up an automatic deposit from your regular checking account to the savings account.” This advice applies as well to the stimulus payments that the Internal Revenue Service will deliver starting in May.

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