Cleveland woman saves to improve home
Making My Money Work for Me
For Sugretta Westbrooks, the path to saving started with an n email last year from her employer, Ohio Savings Bank, about a new program called Cleveland Saves.
“How to become a millionaire is how they approached it, and who wouldn’t want that?” Ms. Westbrooks said with a laugh. So she went to the meeting. “We heard about how people in America didn’t save anymore, like our parents did, and our grandparents.”
That message hit home with Ms. Westbrooks, a single parent with two children who “lived paycheck to paycheck, trying to take care of necessities. Especially appealing was the offer of one-on-one help from a savings counselor. So she joined.
One of the first steps in becoming a Cleveland Saver was setting a goal. “That was something I never did….I never had a plan. I was surviving. I honestly had to look at it and think, okay, Sugretta, what is it that you want? Are you satisfied with where you are at? Can you move a little further along?”
Part of what was holding her back, she realized, was a fear of looking “greedy.” Also, her religious background had taught her not to worry about the future, because “tomorrow is not guaranteed.” Cleveland Saves helped her realize “that you still have to make preparations for the next day. It’s not a matter of worrying about the future. It’s preparing for the future.”
One of the most helpful tips she got was that she could specify a dollar amount, rather than a percentage of her salary, to contribute to her company’s 401(k) plan. “When they put it in dollars and cents, it made sense for me.” She immediately started saving $50 per paycheck in her company’s 401(k).
At first she wasn’t sure the $50 amount would be affordable. “I figured I would give it six months,” she said, and reduce her contributions if it proved to be too much. Instead, when the end of the year rolled around, “I upped it another $50.”
Her current savings focus is on improving her home, a two-family unit. “Going to these classes made me realize what a big asset I do have.” So, when she finishes paying off her credit card bills (with luck that will be in August), she’ll take out a home equity loan, use it to improve her house, and use the money she had been budgeting to pay off her credit cards to pay off the home improvement loan.
Ms. Westbrooks credits Cleveland Saves with giving her “a new mindset” about saving. Ultimately, though, what it has taught her is the same thing her father told her when she got her very first job. “He said, ‘Don’t work for the money. Make the money work for you.’ That’s what I’m doing now. I’m making my money work for me.”
“I never had a plan. I was surviving.” --Sugretta Westbrooks