MONEY SMART & RENT SMART TRAINING FOR PROFESSIONALS IN MARATHON COUNTY

SITUATION
In recent focus groups conducted by the United Way of Marathon County’s Financial Stability Coalition identified a variety of family financial security and resource management issues as local concerns. As a new agent to Marathon County in 2007 Carattini was able to see that the need, interest and requests for educational programs in family financial education remained strong and continued to increase.

RESPONSE
Carattini located and began to partner with a local financial coalition that had gathered to work on their local “Money Smart Week” activities. Carattini explained the community need for financial counseling and asked the coalition for support in the effort. It was determined that Marathon County needed a hybrid format of both group and individual budgeting. So Carattini, partnered with Janke from Lincoln County to adapt a current Extension financial volunteer training curriculum to meet their needs. They designed one day training for professional who belong to the coalition who would like to volunteer during the year to be one-on-one counselors and help guide clients through a basic spending plan. In January of 2008, the first volunteer training was held and the first community budgeting program was held in February utilizing the format of the first hour being a group session taught by Carattini and the second hour each client is split up on-on-one with a volunteer. The goal of the program is that each client will walk out with written short, medium and long term financial goals as well as a written spending plan or budget.

RESULTS
A total of 42 volunteers were trained during three sessions during 2008. Those volunteers assisted 81 non-duplicated clients during seven sessions throughout the year. End of session evaluation results showed a 98% rate of increased understanding of spending plans and budgeting and 98% of participants stated their intent to start tracking their spending, working on their spending plan, saving money and working toward their identified financial goals.

EVIDENCE
End of session evaluations were completed by 80 of the 81 financial workshop participants (99%). A 6-month follow-up survey is currently underway but data has not yet been compiled. Some participants did choose to come back again for multiple sessions to update their spending plans and share their progress. Monthly sessions are planned for 2009.

Jackie Carattini, Family Living Agent - 2008 Success Story

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