Arizona Saves Public Policy Agenda

Overarching Purpose: To empower Arizonans to build sustainable self-sufficiency by advancing healthy money management through education, saving, debt reduction, and asset building.

Arizona Saves is working to increase opportunities for Arizona families and children, neighborhoods, and communities to learn healthy money management skills, and to support efforts to strengthen consumer protection from products, programs, and services that do not promote financial management, saving, and asset development.

Financial Education

We support local and state legislation and programs to increase public awareness of the importance of financial literacy, saving, and asset building.

We support local and state initiatives to incorporate financial education into our school system and K-12 classroom curriculum. Our children/teens are the most vulnerable to repeating the patterns of debt, poverty, bankruptcy, and homelessness their parents/guardians are experiencing as a result of poor financial management. Incorporating financial education into our schools will help ensure they have stable, successful, and financially secure futures.

Earned Income Tax Credit
We support the continuation and expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) campaign and VITA sites for tax preparation in Arizona.  The EITC is a significant source of financial support for low- and moderate-income families and communities.

Family Financial Self-Sufficiency
We promote access to low-fee and appropriately priced products and services from financial institutions and other financial organizations.

We support state and local efforts to regulate and minimize the negative consequences of high-priced or high-fee services such as payday loans, refund anticipation loans, and social security check lending services. These products do not support sound financial planning and management, do not assist with asset accumulation, and do not assist with the development and accomplishment of saving goals that lead to financial self-sufficiency.

We support state and local efforts to educate and eliminate predatory lending practices attached to home mortgages, car purchases, and other purchases.

We support state and local efforts to advance asset building opportunities to low- and moderate-income individuals and families.