By Mayor Jane Campbell
May 26, 2003

The Consumer Federation of America and the Ford Foundation have chosen Cleveland as a demonstration city for a program called Cleveland Saves, a pilot program for America Saves — a social marketing campaign focused on encouraging Americans to save money, build wealth and reduce debt. Like the successful "don't drink and drive" marketing campaign, America Saves seeks to encourage people to spend responsibly and develop savings goals and habits in order to create household and community wealth. The premise is that everyone — regardless of income — has the ability and the opportunity to create a measure of wealth that allows for greater economic stability.

America Saves attempts to influence our current cultural climate of "live for today" without planning for the future. A majority of Americans with household incomes of $35,000 or less believe they are more likely to accumulate a $500,000 nest egg by winning the lottery than by patient saving and investing of relatively modest sums. The typical American household has less than $10,000 in net financial assets (excluding home equity but including retirement accounts). The 1990s saw a growth in excessively high-rate lending to those least able to afford it to feed consumption, including payday loans, car title pawns, rent-to-own and refund anticipation loans. Often these so-called "loans" carry effective interest rates in triple digits, and the Fannie Mae Foundation estimates that these "loans" annually involve 280 million transactions worth $78 billion and carrying $5.5 billion in fees.

Local campaigns such as Cleveland Saves are being organized in more than twenty locations, including the cities of Philadelphia, Seattle, El Paso, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Milwaukee, Charlotte and statewide in Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky. The campaigns are attracting major corporations, financial institutions, chambers of commerce, religious and educational institutions, libraries, non-profit organizations, labor unions and government agencies. National Partnerships have developed with BET.com for Black America Saves and the Department of Defense for all of our military personnel.

In Cleveland, more than 100 organizations continue to be involved in planning and implementation of community marketing while organizations of all kinds run internal campaigns for their employees, congregants, constituents, members or customers. Cleveland Saves provides resources such as motivational workshops to encourage people to save even small amounts like $10, $20 or $50 a month, free financial coaching, no fee savings products, free sessions with financial planners, savings clubs and financial education from seminars to multi- session courses.

In Cleveland, since the launch on March 6, 2001, over 2700 Cleveland Savers are saving an average of $60 a month and to date have saved more than $1.6 million. My organization, the City of Cleveland, is a Cleveland Saves site, providing these services to all 9,000 of my employees.

The process and discipline of saving makes a difference in people's daily lives. It helps stabilize families, because money problems create other problems. It helps stabilize neighborhoods when families are worrying less about money and more about their communities. It gives people confidence in their ability to achieve a measure of wealth proportionate to their goals and current opportunities. It provides them with the hope and the determination that they can achieve financial success, and it has a generational consequence for their children and grandchildren.

I hope you will join me in making your community a part of America Saves. To learn more information about the program, call George Barany at (216) 881-9650.