Making the most of your money
Managing money is challenging. In the current economic environment, it has become even more difficult. For people living on a low-income, managing the day-to-day expenses, let alone life changes or emergencies, can be overwhelming. Prosper Canada has created an online course that you can share or use with your clients to help them access tools and resources to support their daily money management. Making the most of your money is an easy-to-use, accessible, online course to help people living on a low income organize their finances and explore ways to increase the amount of money coming in and reduce what is going out. This interactive course has activities, videos, handouts and resources that are also downloadable.
The mastering money podcast
Brought to you from CPA Canada, this financial literacy podcast talks about key issues, trends and tips as they relate to financial education. Season 7 of the Mastering Money podcast takes a deep dive into debt and the way it affects Canadians. Season 6 of the Mastering Money podcast will help prepare you for retirement and give you the tools to get there, no matter your age. Season 5 of the Mastering Money podcast unpacks the hard financial conversations you need to be having with your kids, partners, financial planners and more. Season 4 of the Mastering Money podcast explores the role money plays in the lives of women from all walks of life, now and in the future. Season 3 of the Mastering Money podcast looks at the difficult financial decisions Canadians are making during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Season 2 of the podcast takes listeners on a journey across various financial literacy hot topics and trends. These include how to fit financial literacy into existing programs, the financial health of future generations as well what it takes to take the plunge and start your own business. In this introductory season of the podcast, hear from financial educators on topics such as behavioral economics, the emotions of money, financial wellness, and more.
Getting Your Money Back: An Investor’s Guide to Navigating Canada’s Complaint System
If you have a complaint, it is important you fully understand your rights, so that you don’t feel taken advantage of during the process. After reading the guide, you will:
● Know how and who to contact when you first make a complaint.
● Understand your basic rights during the process, including how much time your bank or investment firm has to resolve your complaint.
● Know when and where to bring your complaint, if you are not satisfied with your bank’s or investment firm’s response.
● Learn what other options may be available to you, if you are still not happy with the outcome.
● Be aware of time limits that may affect you.
Canada workers benefit
The Canada workers benefit (CWB) is a refundable tax credit to help individuals and families who are working and earning a low income. The CWB has two parts: a basic amount and a disability supplement. You can claim the CWB when you file your income tax return. Learn more including eligibility requirements, how to apply and how much you can expect to receive by clicking on the Get It button below.
Retirement savings course
The Association of Canadian Pension Management (ACPM) launched its new Retirement Savings Course to empower Canadians wishing to learn the basics of retirement savings and to foster awareness of the importance of retirement income savings at any age. Course highlights: The free course will provide you an overview of the building blocks of retirement savings and insight into the role that government pensions and workplace pension plans may have for your future or that of those you care about.
Connecting families initiative
Daily aspects of Canadians' lives are increasingly touched by digital technology, and access to high-speed Internet has become an essential service and a key driver for improving our economic and social well-being. The Government of Canada originally announced Connecting Families in Budget 2017 to help bridge the digital divide for Canadian families who struggled to afford access to home Internet. Learn more about the next phase of this initiative.
About the Canada Learning Bond
The Canada Learning Bond (CLB) is money that the Government adds to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for children from low-income families. This money helps to pay the costs of a child’s full- or part-time studies after high school at apprenticeship programs, CEGEPs, trade schools, colleges, or universities. Learn more about eligibility requirements and the application process using this website.
Financial consumer protection framework
This presentation provides information about the FCAC's public awareness strategy for Canada's new Financial Consumer Protection Framework including an overview of FCAC's planned activities and resources and highlights the importance of collective action to inform Canadians. Additional promotional toolkits can be found on the FCAC website.
Recognizing and responding to economic abuse
With speakers from CCFWE, Johannah Brockie - Program Manager for Advocacy and System Change and Jessica Tran - Program Manager for Education and Awareness, this webinar will guide you through the definition of economic abuse, how to identify an economic abuser, impacts of economic abuse, Covid-19 impacts, tactics, what you should do if you are a victim of economic abuse, and key safety tips. Economic Abuse occurs when a domestic partner interferes with a partner’s access to finances, employment or social benefits, such as fraudulently racking up credit card debt in their partner’s name or preventing their partner from going to work has a devastating effect on victims and survivors of domestic partner violence, yet it’s rarely talked about in Canada. It’s experienced by women from all backgrounds, regions and income levels but women from marginalized groups, including newcomers, refugees, racialized and Indigenous women, are at a higher risk of economic abuse due to other systemic factors.
Canada learning bond for 18 to 20 year olds
The Canada Learning Bond is money that the Government of Canada adds to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) to help pay the costs of full- or part-time studies after high school. If you are eligible for the Canada Learning Bond and have not already received it in an RESP, you will receive $500 deposited into your RESP, plus an additional $100 for every subsequent year that you were eligible, up to the age of 15. This money can help cover the costs of tuition, books, tools, transportation, and housing. You do not need to put any money into the RESP to receive the Canada Learning Bond. This single page insert tells you everything you need to know to apply for the Canada learning bond. Disponible en Français.
Money Mentors’ free financial education programs
Money Mentors’ free online courses are available to everyone. The 1-2 hour narrated courses make it easy to learn at your own pace. These online courses provide the same great content as our in-person presentations, but at the touch of a finger. They cover a variety of topics including budgeting, debt, credit, fraud, life events and one course even focuses on managing money and understanding credit for high school students. Read more about Money Mentors' free financial literacy presentations to provide K-12 students with money concepts and skills here.
Resources
Project reports, journey maps, and toolkit
Reports
These slide decks describe the goals and outcomes of this project.
Socialization deck: Supporting the design of a remote financial help service (Bridgeable)
Client Journey maps
These journey maps offer a visual explanation of the process used by the 3 participating community agencies offering one-on-one client support.
Family Services of Greater Vancouver
SEED Winnipeg
Thunder Bay Counselling
Toolkit
This toolkit was developed in collaboration with community partners, and shares tools for coaches and clients in the virtual one-on-one process.
Virtual service delivery tools (Toolkit)
National Housing Strategy
The National Housing Strategy is a 10-year, $70+ billion plan creating a new generation of housing in Canada giving more Canadians a place to call home.
Change Matters Volume 2: Assets
This is the second brief in a new series from The Financial Clinic. Change Matters leverages the data gathered through our revolutionary financial coaching platform, Change Machine, alongside the voices, wisdom, and lived experiences of Change Machine customers. We hope that our action oriented analysis will lead to positive social change. We believe we have a responsibility to ask the right questions, to use our data for good, and to inspire products, practice, and policy innovations that centralize the needs of the working-poor in building economic mobility.
Helping financial empowerment champions deliver critical services to low-income Canadians
Service design consultancy Bridgeable provides an overview of the project partnership with Prosper Canada in April 2020 to take a design sprint approach in providing remote tax-filing and benefits application service solution. Over the course of four consecutive days, Bridgeable worked with eighteen financial empowerment champion (FEC) partners to generate solutions to four key aspects for remote service delivery:
The Impact of Matched Savings Programs: Building Assets & Lasting Habits
Matched Savings programs, or Individual Development Accounts, are a financial empowerment strategy that aim to build financial stability and reduce poverty. These programs build sustainable livelihoods by working with participants to earn savings while learning about money management, build regular savings habits, self-confidence, and hope for the future. Matching This brief presents key findings from Momentum's Matched Saving programs and the impact on program graduates' saving habits, establishment of emergency savings, and contribution to registered savings.
funds act as a power boost to the participants’ own savings, allowing them to purchase productive assets to move their lives forward.
Virtual tax filing: Piloting a new way to file taxes for homebound seniors
WoodGreen Community Services, a large multi-service frontline social service agency in Toronto, provides free tax preparation services year-round to people living on low incomes. WoodGreen was interested in designing a novel solution to address the tax filing needs of homebound seniors who are unable to access WoodGreen’s free in-person tax-preparation services due to physical or mental health challenges. Specifically, WoodGreen wanted to know… How might we provide high-quality professional tax preparation services to all clients whether or not they are onsite? Prosper Canada and a leading commercial tax preparation software company partnered with WoodGreen Community Services in order to answer this design question.
English
Supported self-file process maps: English
French
A Scan of Municipal Financial Capability Efforts
As the connection between financial capability and social mobility is made evident, both public and private actors are increasingly interrogating the drivers of personal financial health and investing in the innovation of products and services designed to improve the condition of economically vulnerable individuals. This high-level scan of existing U.S. financial capability initiatives and the ways they fit together lends insight into the role that cities and their core institutions can play in promoting residents’ personal economic growth. This study, funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and executed by Urbane Development (UD), leverages
primary and secondary research to explore features of the broad range of programs and policy efforts that make up the financial capability landscape of the U.S. This examination focuses particularly on programs deployed by and within municipalities.
Creating a Strong Foundation for Change
This guide is designed to be a resource for programs working with low income families to use when anticipating or implementing a new approach, such as coaching, to doing business. It helps you to systematically – and honestly – look at your foundational readiness for change, so that the improvements you want to make will take root and grow in fertile ground. Making time and space to look deeply into your organization can offer the opportunity to reconsider what quality service delivery looks like, help you discover how coaching (or other techniques) could be a tool, and plan efficiently on where it fits best into your existing context.
Getting Legal Help: A Directory of Community Legal Clinics in Ontario
This resource provides a directory of community legal clinics in Ontario. Community legal clinics provide information, advice, and representation on various legal issues, including social assistance, housing, refugee and immigration law, employment law, human rights, workers' compensation, consumer law, and the Canada Pension Plan. Some legal clinics do not handle all of these issues, but staff may be able to refer you to someone who can help. Community legal clinics are staffed by lawyers, community legal workers, and sometimes law students. Each legal clinic is run by a volunteer board of directors with members from the community. All help is private and confidential and provided free of charge.
Incentivized Savings: An Effective Approach at Tax Time
A tax refund is often the largest amount of money a low-income household will receive throughout the year. It offers a unique opportunity to think long term and save for the future. Thus, in 2018, Momentum launched a new pilot program called Tax Time Savings (TTS), presented by ATB. It was through a dedicated collaboration with ATB Financial, Aspire Calgary, Sunrise Community Link Resource Centre, Centre for Newcomers, and First Lutheran Church Calgary that made it all possible. This report shares results and highlights from the 2018 Tax Time Savings program. 93% of participants earned the maximum match of $500.
Money and Youth
The Canadian Foundation for Economic Education (CFEE) works collaboratively with funding partners, departments of education, school boards, schools, educators, and teacher associations to develop and provide free, non-commercial programs and resources for teachers and students – developed and reviewed by educators. The online version of their curriculum Money and Youth is organized into separate modules so that users can select individual topics that align with interests. An introduction to the topic, a teachers guide containing lesson plans, and parent resources are included within each module.
Enterprise Communities Plus: A network of financial capability services in low-income housing developments in New York City
In early 2018, Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) began a pilot program, Enterprise Community Plus (EC+), to provide financial capability services to residents in two neighborhoods in New York City. Enterprise is a nonprofit housing developer seeking to create opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through affordable housing in diverse, thriving communities. The pilot program seeks to develop a network of service providers dedicated to supporting the housing developments and introduce rent reporting for credit building and matched savings accounts to residents. Prosperity Now joined the implementation process in May 2018.
In this brief, we provide some initial information on the participants that currently are enrolled in the program and some lessons learned to guide other organizations in their efforts to provide financial capability services into housing programs.
Promise Accounts: Matched Savings to Help Families Get Ahead
This report from Prosperity Now shows the importance of matched savings programs called 'Promise Accounts' which help families successfully save for their futures. They are especially important for households of color as compared to white households. Decreasing economic inequality and closing the racial wealth divide means creating saving pathways for low-income households to build wealth. Promise Accounts make some key changes to traditional matched savings programs. Specifically, these accounts would have features including:
More Than Just Taxes
Tax time financial capability services offered at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites range from encouraging taxpayers to save a portion of their refund to free credit reviews, to referrals to financial coaching, and others in between. This report from Prosperity Now summarizes research findings on VITA programs offering asset-building and financial capability services. Specifically, findings address barriers to be overcome, facilitating factors, and the opportunities for targeted outreach, tailored messages, and policy improvements to move the needle on Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) take-up rates.
Overview: Financial Empowerment Center Counselor Training Standards
This overview summarizes the Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) model’s Counselor Training Standards. The Standards delineate the breadth and depth of the financial content areas, counseling and coaching skills, practice and experiential learning, and socio-economic and cultural context setting necessary to serve the diverse needs and backgrounds of FEC clients. The Standards also include a Code of Ethics that promotes responsible, professional and ethical financial counseling, furthering the profession of one on-one financial counseling.
Innovative use of technology for VITA
In this presentation, German Tejeda, National Director of Financial Programs, Single Stop USA, shares results from the Virtual VITA Program in the United States since 2012. This presentation is from the session 'Innovations in tax filing assistance', at the tax research symposium hosted by Prosper Canada and Intuit, February 7, 2019, in Ottawa.
Virtual Tax Filing Pilot
In this presentation, Radya Chaerkaoui, Senior Product Manager and Innovation Catalyst, Intuit Canada, and Steve Vanderherberg, Director-Strategic Initiatives, WoodGreen Community Services, share insights from their Virtual Tax Filing Pilot program. This presentation is from the session 'Innovations in tax filing assistance', at the tax research symposium hosted by Prosper Canada and Intuit, February 7, 2019, in Ottawa.
Get Your Piece of the Money Pie
In this presentation, Althea Arsenault, Manager of Resource Development, NB Economic and Social Inclusion Corporation, shares insights from the 'Get Your Piece of the Money Pie' tax clinic program. This program has operated since 2010, and currently files over 23,000 returns each year. This presentation is from the panel discussion 'National and regional strategies to boost tax filing', at the tax research symposium hosted by Prosper Canada and Intuit, February 7, 2019, in Ottawa.
Financial Coaching Program Design Guide: A Participant-Centred Approach
This comprehensive resource from Prosperity Now supports organizations in developing a participant-centered financial coaching program. Grounded in a field survey, over 100 interviews, expert advice and beta-testing with six new financial coaching programs, the Coaching Guide highlights the strengths and limitations of financial coaching, offers designs tools, showcases promising models and practices, and includes resources from program leaders and financial coaches.
Improving Education Outcomes through Children’s Education Savings
Children’s education savings accounts are a vital tool in boosting high school completion rates, increasing post-secondary education attainment, and reducing poverty. Research shows that saving for a child’s education is connected to improved child development, greater educational and career expectations, and future financial capability. This brief explains why RESPs are so important, and how parents can use RESPs to save for their children's education.
Integrating Financial Capability Services into Tribal LIHEAP
This brief is a companion resource to Building Financial Capability: A Planning Guide for Integrated Services (also known as the Guide) and provides real-world examples of financial capability integration efforts. The brief shares lessons and approaches for how tribal-serving organizations can integrate financial capability services into LIHEAP and other emergency assistance services. The brief highlights the experiences of two tribal serving organizations in Alaska that integrated financial capability services: the Kenaitze Indian Tribe and the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association (APIA). It is organized into three sections: understanding households’ financial lives, deciding which financial capability services to integrate, and assessing organizational and community capacity to plan for how to deliver services.
Insights on planning free tax clinics in Indigenous communities
This infographic by Prosper Canada features advice to help Indigenous communities and organizations set up free income tax clinics. Advice was shared by clinic volunteers through a roundtable and interviews as part of the First Nations Financial Wellness project.
A Much Closer Look: Enhancing Savings Counseling at Financial Empowerment Centers
Building savings is a fundamental strategy for empowering individuals and families with low incomes. Even relatively small amounts of savings can serve as a buffer against inevitable financial shocks that can otherwise undermine social service efforts and successes – and short-term savings offer realistic first steps toward building longer-term savings and acquiring assets. The CFE Fund conducted a research pilot at municipal Financial Empowerment Centers to better understand how clients are saving, and inform new savings indicators for financial counseling success. This report explains the insights of this research pilot, and client outcomes in savings and goal setting.
MPower Money Coaching Program
This is the final report on the MPower Money Coaching Program. This program was a unique collaboration that brought together Prosper Canada, a national charity, Canada’s leading investment firms and investment industry associations, and the City of Toronto’s Employment and Social Services Division (TESS) to provide neutral, high quality financial help to people living on low incomes.
A Growing Movement: The State of the Children’s Savings Field 2016
The Children’s Savings Account (CSA) movement has taken off in the past few years. These programs provide long-term savings or investment accounts and savings incentives to help children build savings for their future. In 2016, CSA initiatives started in a diverse range of locations, such as Durham, NC; Boston, MA; and Worcester, MA. In 2017, we expect several more program launches, including in places like Oakland, CA, and Milwaukee, WI. Based on a recent survey, this document offers a snapshot of this growing field, illustrating the range of program models being customized to meet the needs of the communities and states these programs serve.
Lead By Design: Deepen Understanding of Program Design & Models to Better Meet People Where They Are
