Helping Clients Develop Money Skills for Tough Times

All of the links included in the webinar are listed here, with brief descriptions.

Comprehensive money management programs

These will be particularly useful if you will be leading one class or a series for your clients.

All My Money: Change for the Better from University of Illinois Extension. The kit costs $150 and includes:

USB with printable instructor guide for eight lessons, participant worksheets and handouts.
Resource Box with
Reusable game cards, play money, beads, and other activity items.
Client tools such as Take Charge wallet card. Make more with the masters on the USB or order refill kits.

Your Money – Your Goals, a tool kit created by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. You can download or request printed copy for free. Also available:

Companion guides for populations w unique needs (download
Booklets for participants
Trainer videos

Main sources for individual worksheets and tools shown in the webinar

This website, KarenChanFinancialEd.com. Specifially:

Covid19 & Your Finances explains government assistance programs set up to help people through the pandemic, and links to many reliable sources for additional information.
Twelve Months to Take Charge of Your Finances provides downloadable worksheets, links to online calculators, and other tools for specific money management tasks such as tracking expenses, making a plan to pay down debt, etc.

Savings Fitness, a publication of the U. S. Department of Labor, has several excellent worksheets in the appendix. There are also interactive, online versions of the worksheets.

University of Illinois Extension trains Money Mentors, and many of the Money Mentor resources are available online for free. Scroll down the page and click the Resources tab. These include a budget worksheet, a worksheet for estimating Occasional and Seasonal Expenses, and more.

Tools for tracking expenses

Apps for tracking expenses – useful review to help you choose:

Envelop budgeting can be a useful approach. Wikihow has a good explanation.

Financial additional income or resources

Unemployment insurance: Some expansions for COVID-19 are still in effect. Use this link to go directly to the section of Karen’s COVID-19 webpage about unemployment https://bit.ly/COVID-Unemployed

That same page includes links to existing government assistance programs such as SNAP (food stamps), LIHEAP (low Income Heat & Energy Assistance Program), Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Creating a Debt Repayment Plan

PowerPay is a free, online tool created by Utah State University Extension. A version is also available for I-Phone users.