One important way to avoid running out of money at the ends of the month is to set aside or “earmark” money as it comes in for bills you know you’ll need to pay.

Despite the fact that more than half of U.S. households struggle with their financial health, fintech founders and those who invest in them reflect a homogenous world. While specific numbers for diversity in fintech are difficult to nail down, we know that all-women teams of entrepreneurs received just 2 percent of all investment by venture […]

In November, we released the inaugural 2018 Baseline Report which established a baseline to track changes in financial health over time. In 2019, we plan to build upon the foundation we laid this year.

Recently, Financial Health Network and MetLife Foundation hosted five social entrepreneurs from South Korea to exchange ideas and learnings with U.S. nonprofits, social enterprises, impact investors and financial health fintech companies. There were three main themes that made an impact on the South Korean social entrepreneurs.

Pictured: Tanya Van Court, CEO and founder of Goalsetter Kids with savings accounts in their name are six times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to own stocks as young adults. Having worked as a leader in preschool and parenting digital products at Nickelodeon, Tanya van Court knew a lot […]

Frequent debit card use makes it difficult to keep a diligent check register that accounts for pending payments. Behaviorally informed personal finance apps and smart checking account features have already begun to remove some of the uncertainties posed by recurring cash management challenges, just as smart meters have taken much of the gambling out of parking.

Here are six tips discussed in our recent webinar featuring innovative companies who have been using our FinHealth Score Toolkit to measure their customers' financial health.

By Thea Garon Director, Financial Health Network Despite a surging stock market and record-low unemployment, millions of Americans are struggling financially. Nearly half of Americans (47%) say their spending equaled or exceeded their income in the last year. One in three people (30%) say they have more debt than is manageable. More than a third…

Benefits season is the most important moment of the year for Americans to take positive action for their long-term financial health — and now more than ever before because American workers are not financially prepared for their life after work.

Much about overdrafting behavior remains a mystery. Given the small amounts and short periods by which overdrafts occur, why aren’t many of them avoidable?

Could overdrafting and payday borrowing actually compound each other, leading to greater use of both products? We asked the banks to compile some key behavioral statistics before and after the discontinuation of their “deposit advance” programs.

In this guest blog post, Josh Sledge and Equifax describe characteristics of underbanked and unbanked consumers and how financial institutions can better serve them. Josh tells us, “There’s a real market opportunity for providers to help underserved consumers build savings and credit to increase their resilience to financial shocks.”

When it comes to “small dollar credit,” overdraft is the elephant in the room. The inexplicability of overdrafting — of why a small group of people seems willing to pay so much for transactions that could be easily avoided — has been the subject of policy debates within our industry for some time.

If you are considering higher education, let me share some of my advice for reducing your overall student loan debt burden.

By Lily from The Frugal Gene The Teen Years Saving your own money for college does a lot more than just paying the tuition. Spending your own money teaches you about the value of money, provides a safety net, and gives you a preview of the working world. I’ll tell you my experience of going to…

By John Hammond, StartU Today marks the 3rd annual #FinHealthMatters day; an event started by the Center for Financial Services Innovation to draw attention to the 57% of Americans — approximately 138 million adults — that are struggling financially today. This year’s theme is student health; emphasizing the financial health of college students in America today. At StartU, this…

By Roderick King, MD/MPH, CEO, Florida Institute for Health Innovation, Assistant Dean of Public Health Education, Director — MD/MPH Program at University of Miami MIller School of Medicine  and Jennifer Tescher, President & CEO, Financial Health Network Poor physical and financial health overwhelmingly go hand in hand. Financial insecurity leads to toxic stress and chronic disease while,…

Working in the consumer payments business, you learn a lot about your customers from the timing of their bill pay traffic.

By Justine, from Debt Free Millennials Forget student loan debt. When I think about my college experience, it’s filled with memories of purple everything, late night study sessions at Hale Library, $2 You-Call-Its at O’Malley’s, and being flat broke. Me and my girls. All purple. Cheap beer. K-State Wildcats. And dirt poor! I was clueless…

Financial Health Network welcomes Gina Harman and Luz Urrutia as guest bloggers. Gina currently serves on Financial Health Network’s board of directors and Luz is a past member of Financial Health Network board of directors. Guest post co-authored by: Gina Harman, CEO, U.S. Network, Accion Luz Urrutia, CEO, Opportunity Fund As mission-based small business lenders,…

This blog series aims to explore solutions in one area of household finance where innovations by business, technologists, and regulators can all make a positive difference: the cash crunch too many families face at the end of the month, when their bills come due and their bank balances approach zero.

Good financial health starts with being proactive and getting rebellious with your finances. And there is no better day than today.

By Karen Andres Vice President, Financial Health Network Anyone who has heard the words “terminal,” “no cure,” or “palliative care” in a doctor’s office will remember everything about that moment. When I heard those words a decade ago about my 57-year-old mother, I immediately felt like I had been hit over the head by a…

“We tend to spend when the checking account balance is high so I like being able to put in money when I need it, it’s more flexibility. I like the idea of having a buffer account that I can feed into my checking account. I get more control of my finances.” — Matt, Current Payroll Card User…

Recently GreenPath, one of the country’s largest nonprofit financial counseling organizations, released “Building Successful Nonprofit-Fintech Partnerships,” detailing its work to co-develop and distribute a new client service with EarnUp, a fintech company that makes it easier for people to manage and pay down debt. The report is a goldmine of insights on how to build better […]

In January 2018, we issued a call to the marketplace of entrepreneurs in America, seeking a broad range of solutions to improve the outcomes of people in America struggling with their finances. Applicants were strongly encouraged to support diversity in solutions, customer focus, and founding teams. For the fourth year in a row, the Financial […]

#FinHealthMatters Day 2018 April 25, 2018 was the third annual #FinHealthMatters Day. Each year, #FinHeathMatters Day brings attention to Americans’ financial health through a thunderclap of social media activity, news stories, blogs, podcasts and more. Over the past years we have seen 240+ blogs posted, 2,500+ influencers tweeting nearly 6,000 times, and ultimately, close to 27…

By Mindy Hauptman, Managing Director, Consulting Services, Financial Health Network Ready to tackle product innovations in order to improve your customers’ financial health? Financial Health Network Consulting Services is here to help. Request a consultation today. Innovative products result in happy customers, and customer satisfaction drives business. According to CFI Group’s Bank Satisfaction Barometer, products…

By Kaitlin Asrow, Financial Health Network Data breaches have become inevitable in our increasingly digital lives, but unlike other global events — from terrorism to the 2008 economic crisis — they have not yet become a catalyst for market-wide changes to business practices in industries that center on consumer data. But that may be changing. Recent events, from the…

It’s no secret that financial challenges play a big role in overall student success and achievement. We must work to find the holistic and streamlined solutions that address the complexity of everyday life in order for students to pursue their dreams.

This story first appeared on Medium.  It took a natural disaster 1,500 miles away from where he was living in New York for R. Jerry Nemorin to upend his Wall Street career and start anew. Five months after the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving 1.5 million people without a […]

Today we’re sharing an interview with Matthew Cooper, co-founder of EarnUp, a member of the 2016 Financial Solutions Lab class.    You’re an openly gay fintech founder. How do those two facts relate to each other? Being openly gay has greatly affected my career choices and how I became an entrepreneur. Both my startup journey […]

By Kate Flocken, Financial Health Network For more than 40 years, public policy has been actively promoting financial inclusion and how to enable consumers to have better access to high quality financial services, but the federal and state governments alike have struggled to keep up with the fast pace of change. Last week the Financial…

By Liz Loewy As a former elder abuse prosecutor in a large District Attorney’s Office, I witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of fraud in later life. The hundreds of elder financial exploitation cases I handled had a number of things in common. First, many of the cases involved older victims who weren’t able to testify, […]

$250K for each selected startup The Financial Solutions Lab — managed by Financial Health Network with founding Lab partner JPMorgan Chase & Co. — is excited to announce that applications are open for our fourth Innovation Challenge. Selected companies and nonprofits will each receive a $250,000 investment as well as unparalleled access to resources that can help them grow. For…

By Jennifer Tescher, Financial Health Network Last week’s headlines gave the impression that America is suffering from a lack of basic financial access, particularly for lower-income consumers. The fact is, consumers have more access to high-quality, low- or no-cost transaction accounts than they have had in at least a decade, thanks to dramatic changes in…

By Tanya Ladha and Rachel Schneider, Financial Health Network Maybe you’ve been there — you break a dish, clean down the middle. You find the superglue, carefully squeeze a small stream of the potent liquid on either side of the break, and patiently hold for the allotted 90 seconds. When you move to place the mended dish…

By Jeanne Hogarth, Financial Health Network The recent turmoil in leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the initial actions of the acting director point to at least one conclusion: For consumers to continue to have access to high quality, innovative products that help them improve their financial health, focus needs to shift…

As an active participant in the fintech ecosystem, the Financial Solutions Lab shares in the responsibility to create a more inclusive industry, especially for female founders and people of color. Last year, we published our early thinking on the Financial Solutions Lab’s role to support and encourage diversity within the early-stage fintech space, and candidly […]

Building financial health can be a challenge for financially underserved consumers. What products address their needs in this evolving marketplace? To learn more about the underserved market opportunity, download Financial Health Network’s 2017 Financially Underserved Market Size Study. How did financially underserved consumers borrow, spend, save, and plan in 2016? From the increased prevalence of…

Imagine leaving the nation of your birth–where you had great credit, a car, a home, a bank account–and moving to the United States for the first time. While you might think that having great credit in your home country would ease the financial path ahead, today that’s simply not the case. Your credit history doesn’t […]

Financially underserved consumers spend $173 billion annually to manage their day-to-day financial lives — including $97 billion on short-term credit products. How can lending solutions build brand loyalty that grows with borrowers’ financial health? To learn more about credit and the underserved market opportunity, download Financial Health Network’s 2017 Financially Underserved Market Size Study. This fall, the…

Money20/20 is the world’s largest marketplace for ideas, connections and deals in Payments and Financial Services. It’s where leaders — representing every sector of the industry — come to seize new business opportunities, strengthen partnerships and discover the latest disruptions. With 11,000+ attendees — including more than 1,700 CEOs and Presidents from a whopping 4,500 companies and 85 countries — Money20/20 brings together…

With nearly three quarters of Americans living without life insurance, there’s no question estate planning is a major issue that often goes unaddressed by far too many in this country. That’s why Dave Hanley, co-founder of the app Tomorrow, wanted to make estate planning more accessible to the average American, not just the wealthy. The […]

A former software engineer at Google, Morgan Conbere had the chops to solve everyday problems using software development. He also knew there was one space that was ripe for improvement: public transit. In 2017, Conbere and a group of co-founders–Zachary Browne, Samuel Daly, and Ekaterina Kuznetsova–came together to create Token Transit, a platform that allows […]

In our last blog about consumer data access, we discussed the challenges that startups face when it comes to accessing their users’ financial data in order to build innovative tools. Today, we’re back to share that the Financial Health Network has just published a new report on this topic: Liability, Transparency and Consumer Control in […]

Today, the Financial Health Network released its 2017 Snapshot paper. In this report, authored by members of the Financial Solutions Lab, we discuss the latest trends in fintech and provide an overview of the market segment as informed by our analysis of over 360 applications from 2017, the more than 1,000 applications in our first […]

By The Financial Panther I like to think that I’m pretty financially healthy. At 30 years old, I’m in a fairly unique position. I’m currently debt free after paying off nearly six figures worth of student loans in just a few years. I’ve got a sizable emergency fund that should cover me in the event…

By Donna Freedman (FinCon and the Center for Financial Services Innovation are sponsoring a writing contest: “In 500 words, explain what financial health means to you.” Here are my thoughts.) My journey to financial health was entirely roundabout, and I didn’t get there until middle age. Financial survival, not financial health, was the focus of…

By Lindsey B. Goodwin In 2013, a year when our family’s combined income put us in the top 5% of earners constituting America’s wealthy class, we found ourselves strapped for cash and debt-ridden. I had no idea that we were even considered more than middle class, as we outspent what we made each month and…