By Dustin Tyler Joyce
August 11, 2008

Thousands of residents in over 150 cities across America will participate in events marking Dollar Wi$e Week 2008, September 20–27. Now in its fifth year, Dollar Wi$e Week provides mayors an opportunity to emphasize the importance of financial literacy, highlight local efforts, and focus their communities’ and the media’s attention on financial wellbeing.

This year’s Dollar Wi$e Week theme is “Savings for Kids and Families.” The focus is on teaching children from a young age the value of money, the importance of setting aside at least something in a savings account, and beginning a habit of living well within one’s means.

The Dollar Wi$e Campaign encourages mayors to partner with local organizations to invite children and their families to open—and contribute to—savings accounts. In addition to a mayoral proclamation, mayors can work with local financial institutions to promote savings in the community, either at a large community-wide event or through smaller events at the financial institutions and other locations. Ranging from community fairs to small financial seminars, these events can be adaptable to the resources and needs of any city.

In Greenville (MS), Mayor Heather McTeer Hudson will be working with a local elementary school to help students in a second-grade class learn about making financial decisions. For an entire month beginning with Dollar Wi$e Week, each student in the class has five tasks to do: cooperating with others; behaving well; fulfilling class duties; completing homework assignments; and getting a parent or guardian’s initials on the tracking form. If all five tasks are completed for a day, the student receives one dollar.

The next Monday, students will be given the opportunity to buy small gifts with their money or to save their money. So, by the end of the project, students will have either spent all of their money, saved all of their money, or a little of both. If a student saves the entire $20 earned over a month, he/she will be given the opportunity to buy a large gift or open a savings account at a local bank, with the idea that saving money begins with sensible decisions about spending money.

Dollar Wi$e Week 2008 will also mark the kickoff of the Conference of Mayors’ new initiative with the Consumer Federation of America and its America Saves campaign. Through this collaborative effort, both organizations will work together with four cities across the country on bolstering local savings campaigns and financial literacy efforts, along with creating a public-relations campaign to promote those efforts.

The first of these cities is Akron (OH), whose mayor is Donald L. Plusquellic, a past president of The United States Conference of Mayors. There, the local newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal, has selected five households to track their efforts to build savings, pay down debt, and achieve financial goals, guided by financial counselors. These families will become the public face of the newspaper’s community-wide effort to promote savings, called Reclaim the Dream. “And since the Reclaim the Dream pledge drive was begun [in June], … readers have pledged to save or reduce their debt by more than $315,000 over a six-month period,” the Beacon Journal reported August 3. “Specifically, readers have pledged to store away more than $142,000 toward a savings fund and reduce their debt by more than $173,000.”

Over 120 America Saves campaigns have been established across the country. These range from campaigns at the state level to the county and city levels—even some on college campuses. In each, the Consumer Federation of America has worked with local partners to establish a network of participating financial institutions, establish community-wide savings goals, and enroll citizens who pledge to work toward achieving personal savings goals.

For more information on the Mayors’ National Dollar Wi$e Campaign, go to the website www.dollarwiseonline.org, call Dustin Tyler Joyce, manager of the campaign, at 202-861-6759, or send e-mail to djoyce@usmayors.org.