By Dustin Tyler Joyce
May 7, 2007

The Mayors’ National Dollar Wi$e Campaign has announced the theme for Dollar Wi$e Week 2007, “Savings for Kids and Families.” Dollar Wi$e Week will be celebrated in cities across the country September 24-29.

Dollar Wi$e recommends that cities team up with their local financial institutions to invite families to bring their children to open savings and/or investment accounts. Cities can set a community goal—for example, signing up a certain number of children for savings accounts—and then work toward that goal. As individual cities reach their goals, the National Dollar Wi$e Campaign hopes to report what has happened on a national level.

“Saving money is an important part of wise personal financial management. It’s essential that we teach this to our children from as early an age as possible,” said Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick, chair of the Conference of Mayors’ Council for the New American City. “Learning to save will help prepare our youth for whatever the future holds—college, homeownership, emergencies, and even retirement.”

Mayors and cities should use Dollar Wi$e Week as a time to emphasize the importance of personal savings and to begin teaching their youngest citizens the benefits of saving money from an early age. Typically, cities mark the annual Dollar Wi$e Week, now in its fourth year, with mayoral proclamations, press conferences, forums, classes, workshops, and other community events that put the media spotlight on their year-round local financial education efforts. This year, cities can focus these events on children and savings.

This is the second year Dollar Wi$e has encouraged its local campaigns to focus on a particular theme for Dollar Wi$e Week. The campaign wants to build on the success of last year’s theme “Recognizing Community Partners in Financial Education.”

“We developed a theme for 2007 that inspires both kids and families to work together in tackling a growing issue in our communities—a lack of savings,” stated Mary Jane Seebach, chair of the Dollar Wi$e Advisory Board and Managing Director for Public Affairs at Countrywide Financial Corporation, the Dollar Wi$e Campaign’s founding sponsor. “We also hope this theme permits local campaigns to develop quantifiable savings goals that can be assessed over time.”

Mayors can expect to receive more information about Dollar Wi$e Week 2007 and this theme in the coming months and at the Conference of Mayors’ 75th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles in June.

For further information on the Dollar Wi$e Campaign, visit dollarwiseonline.org or call Dustin Tyler Joyce, manager of the Mayors’ National Dollar Wi$e Campaign, at 202-861-6759 or send e-mail to dollarwise@usmayors.org.