Posted by Christopher Stevenson
What's your strategy for saving for retirement and paying off debt? Oh, well, that's obvious; just systematically set money aside in your 401(k) and Roth IRA, and pay credit cards off at the end of each month. Pay yourself first, right? Not if you're part of the 40 percent of low-income earners who think it's more practical to bank on winning the lottery than to follow a systematic plan for savings. Not if you're one of the folks recently interviewed for Filene's Why Choose a Credit Union report who say they are on the "death plan" for retirements savings (i.e. planning to die before retirement). Savings isn't obvious to millions of Americans; they need some help.
Enter The Savings Revolution, the brainchild of Filene i3's Musette Bracher, GECU, El Paso, Texas; Danielle Chatfield, Kemba Financial Credit Union, Gahanna, Ohio; Mark Forsyth, NIH Federal Credit Union, Rockville, Md.; Tom Gisewhite, MidWest Financial Credit Union, Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Kathleen Emery, Online Resources, Woodland Hills, Calif.
From The Savings Revolution business plan:
"The Savings Revolution is like Weight Watchers for your wallet. It's a member-oriented, member-driven social-engineering-based method for helping members help themselves get out of debt and build wealth. It's a combination of reality TV, robust online interaction and support, and individual planning."
There are two components to the program: Savings Challenge and Savings Revolution.
Savings Challenge is an event in which selected members of the credit union work toward achieving established savings and debt reduction goals. Coaches work with each participant to help them develop strategies and support. The participant who comes closest to or exceeds his or her goals wins a prize. At GECU, where the Savings Challenge was piloted, two local television stations monitored the competition and broadcast monthly updates featuring the participants, raising the Savings Challenge from "just another CU marketing scheme to a community-based reality TV experiment. Check out the video here.
Savings Revolution takes the Savings Challenge to a national level, encouraging CUs across the country to promote the program in their own areas and building a national network. There may also be an online component, such as Wesabe, that would allow participants to establish goals and track their progress toward them.
Now think big. In GECU's Savings Challenge, the two participants who do the best job of meeting their goals will win $10,000 each, obviously a signficant cash prize. But what if a network of CUs worked together to launch a national Savings Revolution with an even more notable prize...say, a million dollars? (Yeah, I think CUs and the suppliers who serve them can swing that much.) Imagine the press--T.V., print, on line, radio, local, national. And the coverage wouldn't just be for the prize; it would also focus on the coordinated effort of CUs to coach consumers and help them eliminate debt and develop good financial habits that will put them on the road to wealth. Imagine, Mark Burnett presents: The Savings Revolution, hosted by Warren Buffet. (Hey, I said think big.)
I believe that this idea has legs. There are undoubtedly challenges, not the least of which is overcoming the increasing unwillingness of some credit unions to collaborate with others. But if those challenges can be overcome, The Savings Revolution has the weight to improve consumer knowledge of CUs, build membership, and push back hard on bankers' accusations that CUs don't do enough to help the underserved. There's lots of talk about building a national credit union brand; here's the start of it.
If you're interested in having your own Savings Challenge, the Savings Revolution Implementation Guide, available through Filene Research Institute, offers a step-by-step approach to getting started.
