Accounting for a Family’s Financial Future

4.18.2018 - LISC Stories

There’s no single thing that the Financial Opportunity Center (FOC) at Instituto del Progreso Latino has done to help Heidy Brito, 23, change the trajectory of her life. Rather, it’s the combination of Instituto’s programs and coaching that have empowered her to move from a fast-food service job onto a path toward a nursing career and a brighter financial future.

That kind of change wasn’t even on her radar screen when Brito, a mother of two young daughters who lives in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood, first stepped into Instituto in 2016. She had come for the nonprofit’s classes on nutrition, child development and other topics to support her parenting.

Instituto is home to one of more than 85 LISC-supported Financial Opportunity Centers around the country. While attending classes there, Brito began to learn about how Instituto’s programs could help her move beyond the unpredictable hours and low pay of her job at Burger King. She joined the agency’s training program to become a home health aide and, soon after, landed a job at a local nonprofit, Casa Central.

Today, she’s both working at Casa Central and taking courses through the FOC’s Bridges to Career Opportunities program to get her Pre-Licensed Practical Nurse certification, a step toward her goal of becoming a registered nurse.

Heidy Brito (left), a client of the Financial Opportunity Center at Instituto del Progreso Latino in Chicago, with her coach, Marina Becerra. Top image: clients in a class at Instituto's FOC.

As Brito worked with the FOC’s employment team, she also met regularly with Marina Becerra, one of the center’s two financial coaches. It wasn’t long before her financial habits began to change.

“When we first spoke, she didn’t know a lot about budgets or how much she was spending,” Becerra said. “The next time we met, she had taken all the information I had offered and was using it. She’s really enthusiastic and self-motivated about everything she does.”

The first step in the FOC coaching model is to have clients define their own financial goals. For Brito, those included buying a house in a few years. But even though she’s careful with her money, she didn’t have a credit score, essential to applying for a mortgage. In the past, Brito had paid for everything with cash, which kept her out of debt but also kept her off the records of the FICO credit system. “Learning about how it all works was eye-opening for me,” Brito said.

To begin establishing a credit history, Brito enrolled in Twin Accounts™, a LISC program that helps FOC clients simultaneously increase their savings and build a positive score.

Through the program, which began in 2010, participants take out a $300 credit builder loan and deposit the money in a locked savings account (the two “twin accounts”). The client makes monthly loan payments, which are automatically reported to the credit bureaus, and LISC makes a matching contribution to the savings account.

After 12 months, the client has accrued $600 in savings and a growing credit score. On average, participants like Brito who start the program without a credit score finish with a score of more than 630.

“It’s an ongoing process to keep credit healthy, and we explain that to our clients,” Becerra said.

Agatha DeMarchi, Instituto’s director of students and community support services, sees Brito as a great example of how the FOC’s integrated services work as a whole and the impact they can have.

“She’ll take advantage of any opportunity,” DeMarchi said of Brito. “You can see her transformation.”