Ownership & Assets

Editor's note: This post was originally published on Zócalo Public Square. In Washington, President Obama is expected to present his plans for changes in entitlements, including Social Security. Congress is taking up the debate. But when Social Security is discussed these days, it’s often in the context of the budget–even though the program’s purpose is to provide retirement security. So we asked: Given the country’s fiscal realities, is there a better way to enhance Americans’ retirement security? Below are two ideas.

The Asset Building Program hosted an event last week to examine the rise of suburban homelessness and the broader impact of the Great Recession on homeownership and the American middle class. We invited Monica Potts, senior writer for The American Prospect, to discuss her new piece “The Weeklies,” which takes an intimate look at a cohort of newly homeless families living in hotels in suburban areas. Janis Bowdler, Economic Policy Director with the National Council of La Raza, weighed in on the interplay of the foreclosure and housing crisis with family wealth, community resilience, and the social safety net. Reid Cramer framed and moderated the conversation.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include jobs, housing, retirement, savings, and debt.

Editor’s note: Hibah Hussain, a Policy Program Associate with New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), and Hannah Emple, a Policy Analyst with the Asset Building Program, discuss a new report on mobile financial services and the implications for mobile privacy and financial inclusion.

A recent report from the Federal Reserve shows that the rise in mobile phone usage is having an impact on the way Americans navigate their financial lives. In 2012, 87 percent of American adults used mobile phones, and about half of those were smartphones. Between 2011 and 2012, the Federal Reserve reports a 33 percent increase in the use of mobile banking (28 percent of all mobile phone owners used mobile banking in 2012, compared with 21 percent in 2011). Despite these increases, “the report indicates that many consumers remain skeptical of the benefit of mobile banking and the level of security associated with the technology.”

The Economist's Free Exchange blog has a great post up on the long-term decline of the savings rate in America. "Too Thin a Cushion" also charts the rise of the 401(k)and the concomitant rise of the penalized withdrawal from the 401(k).

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include employment, the social safety net, housing, inequality, and issues related to credit cards.

As I mentioned in a blog post a couple of weeks ago, families are facing a double-whammy to college affordability: costs are up and savings are down. The good news? As Rachel Fishman with the Education Policy Program and I discuss, there are a lot of things that the federal and state governments, educational institutions, and families can do to maintain access to higher education. To have a listen, click below.

A new article by Monica Potts in the most recent issue of The American Prospect, The Weeklies, explores an impact of the Great Recession that has thus far received sparse attention: the rise of suburban homelessness. Across the country, as foreclosures persist, many formerly stable families are finding themselves moving from one budget hotel to the next, permanently in transition. As the article notes, the recession has jeopardized “a defining characteristic of what it means to be middle-class” for many families—and in the process, called their very identities into question.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include public assistance, employment, inequality, and personal finance.