New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education

Financial education can happen in many contexts and can be especially effective when the entire family is engaged. It can even happen at cultural festivals and celebrations. For example, at a day‐long festival celebrating the birthday of Cesar Chavez, La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) coordinated a series of family‐education booths displaying financial services and products for local residents of a small southwestern border community. (La Union del Pueblo Entero or “LUPE” is the social service organization for the Texas Farm Workers Union.) One of the family‐oriented, financial education sessions was based on the well‐loved family game of Loteria. Loteria is a Spanish language form of the English language Bingo board game played by many Mexican origin families; it is also the Spanish word for lottery/lotto. Instead of numbers being called out, pictures from a deck of cards are used to introduce children to various words (see Figure 6.1).

As in Bingo, the first person to line up a straight line or diagonal or four corners of the picture board game wins a prize. The person drawing cards and calling out the word for the picture images was a financial educator. Each picture represented a particular aspect of financial services or products that could be explained in a familiar manner. For example, a picture of a fish on a hook was called out to the various family players. The players, mostly grannies, aunties, and mothers with children of various ages helping identify the picture on the players’ boards, marked off the corresponding image on their board games. The fish on the hook represented getting “hooked” on payday loans. As the caller explained what a payday loan was and how hard it was to pay off such a loan, the women began to speak out about their experiences with such a product. As the women continued sharing their experiences, the children began asking questions and learning about that “fish on the hook.” Another example was a picture of the sun radiating heat rays. As the financial educator called out the word for “sun,” they also explained how nature, the environment, and time wear out the roof on a home. The financial educator explained that having home insurance helps to pay for roof replacement and that home insurance saves families more money in the long run.

Using a whole‐family learning activity by using a board game that is both culturally familiar and engages all family members is an effective way to introduce difficult financial and economic concepts. Leveraging familiar game play along with a festival, family‐oriented atmosphere where children and youth are also included in a whole‐family activity creates a safe and memorable learning environment for financial and economic education in hard to reach communities. It also acts as a form of culturally responsive financial education.

The Great Recession of 2007–2009 revealed that the average American consumer was woefully unprepared for navigating increasingly complex economic and financial services and products. For culturally diverse, low‐wealth communities, the recession erased family assets acquired with hard work that took years, if not generations, to accumulate (Shapiro, Meschede, & Osoro, 2013). Research on consumer behavior and cultural diversity indicates that individuals and families experience daily economic activities and decision making in terms of multiple identities such as mother, daughter, sister, wife, as well as situational socioeconomic class and racial/ethnic affiliations (Peñaloza, 1995; Stayman & Deshpande, 1989; Viramontez & Trask, 2009). In acknowledging this lived reality and multiple relationships over the life course, Tisdell, Taylor, and Sprow Forté (2013) suggest that adult educators can leverage learners’ cultural capital and family affiliations in curriculum and pedagogical framing. This chapter goes one step further by considering not just the adult learner as the student participant but also the entire family unit. When adult educators leverage all foundational elements of the learners’ environment such as cultural capital, socioeconomic class, and community environment (for low‐income neighborhoods, this often means a cash economy), a whole‐family learning approach becomes comfortable, familiar, and most importantly, understandable for low‐wealth, culturally diverse families and communities.

The remainder of this chapter first presents insights into economic resiliency and financial aspirational information collected from a study over a five‐year period in the southwestern region of the United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas). Next, some of the information and primary findings of the study are presented that highlight the importance of capturing cultural information and knowledge gaps. Third, the importance of attending to the family in a cultural context as a way of increasing economic resiliency is addressed.

Economic Inclusion: Economic Education and Cultural Capital

Economic education is promoted as a means to strengthen family financial capabilities. Financial capabilities are defined as resilient behaviors that reflect making ends meet, planning for both the present and the future, and asset building connected to economic mobility aspirations (short‐run and long‐run goal setting) and entrepreneurial activities. The information‐gathering methods (survey and open‐ended responses) used for the study that is the basis for the insights discussed here were designed to track financial capabilities and economic activities that reflect the daily lives and resiliencies of low‐wealth, working families in culturally diverse communities and ethnic enclaves.

Most mainstream research on economic and financial education curricula and campaigns generally focuses on understanding the decision making and literacy of the individual, divorced from any family‐oriented, joint financial decision making or shared economic knowledge. Since the Great Recession, formation of intergenerational households appears to be escalating as a result of the current fragile recovery (Kochhar & Cohn, 2011; Lofquist, 2012; Taylor et al., 2010). As more adult children move back into their parents’ households, two to three generations living under one roof to safeguard assets and minimize financial losses has become commonplace.

What is a “whole‐family‐learning‐over‐the‐life‐course” approach? As illustrated in the Lotería vignette, it is allowing the family unit to interact with other family units in a space that is inclusive of children learning with parents about economic and financial concepts, markets, products, and services. Indeed, by having the entire family engaged in conversation with other families, no fear of the product or confusion or shame toward the economic or financial concept is attached. In low‐income, low‐wealth, ethnic enclaves, learning to do more with less is part of the “making ends meet” capacity of the entire family unit. Given the orientation toward family, a learning environment introducing not only financial management but also economic markets is part of connecting the dots for high immigrant, transnational, and immigrant legacy communities and ethnic/racial enclaves. By including children, and deliberately engaging the age 10–16 cohort, economic education and financial literacy becomes part of what the youth paraphrasers and translators can access when interpreting for immediate and extended family members (Orellana, Dorner, & Pulido, 2003; Valdés, 2003).

Using a whole‐family orientation when undertaking economic and financial decision making has been a significant component of cultural capital in diverse, low‐wealth, and high immigrant memory communities. For example, resource pooling in order to accumulate family assets is often viewed as part of a deliberate assimilation and economic inclusion strategy; it is a means of aspiring to upward socioeconomic mobility. For ethnic enclaves, cultural capital is not just knowledge of other languages or understanding cultural markers of behavior that language courses often do not teach. It is also youth interpreting for elders; it is extended family members serving as substitute workers or child care providers; cultural capital is also knowledge of how to make ends meet during lean times for specific cultures, groups, or tribes. To know how to move from the formal economy to the informal economy seamlessly is another type of cultural and class navigational capital. Ultimately, the intersection of culture, social‐economic class, ethno‐racial, and gender characteristics combines to create a very diverse learner pool.

It is precisely the diversity of the learner pool that, if harnessed appropriately, can anchor learning economic concepts and financial literacy in ways that prepare the participants for a rapidly changing 21st‐century economic reality. For low‐wealth, high immigrant communities, we may want to reassess the individualized financial education outreach campaigns to include extended family, or at least, a multi‐generational family perspective that provides an introduction to economic education and financial services knowledge as a “whole‐family” initiative. Such an approach to economic education workshops, curricula design, and pedagogy as part of family‐oriented community activities and whole‐family awareness campaigns may resonate more strongly with communities of color (Guy, 1999; Tisdell et al., 2013).

Capturing Financial Knowledge and Gaps: Community Voices

The study that has generated much of the insights discussed here made use of a community‐data‐gathering process. Community data become a basis for community self‐advocacy and the role of culturally inclusive data collection creates an avenue to identify the cultural capital of low‐wealth communities that often escape mainstream notice. Community data collection also sheds light on families’ financial education knowledge as well as gaps along with their economic mobility aspirations. Given the increased incidence of distressed communities across the United States, the information gathered from low‐wealth, culturally diverse communities in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas creates the opportunity to share insights with other community‐based organizations (CBOs), researchers, and community stakeholders.

The Frontera Asset Building Network (FABN) is a coalition of community‐based organizations partnering with university researchers, federal and local public sector agencies, as well as foundation and private sponsors to increase tax compliance and asset building awareness campaigns in the southwestern region of the United States. The CBOs that participated in the study's survey design crafted an instrument, which sought to be as noninvasive as possible while capturing economic, financial, and tax decisions of individuals, families, and households. This respondent pool includes Latinos, Native Americans, Non‐Hispanic Whites, African Americans, Asian Americans, and others. In addition, the survey sought to identify economic resiliency activities engaged in by respondents.

Culture and language play a large role in culturally diverse family economic security and financial resiliency behaviors and the community data capture this aspect of diverse low‐wealth communities (Robles, 2006, 2009; Yosso, 2005). The participating CBO members agreed to administer the surveys during tax seasons (January 15 to April 15). The data were collected at the participating CBOs offering either low‐fee tax preparation services or free tax preparation services affiliated with VITA (Volunteer Individual Tax Assistance) programs sponsored by the Internal Revenue Service. The surveys were administered in English and Spanish. The response rates were generally high and attributable to the long‐term presence of the CBOs anchored in low‐wealth, diverse communities. The data were collected over seven years after first being piloted in tax season 2004 (tax year 2003) through 2009 (tax year 2008).

Additionally, several survey questions were designed to capture the affordability and accessibility of financial services used by low‐wealth diverse families. These questions included (a) Where do you cash your paycheck? (b) Do you use money orders to pay your bills? (c) Have you ever received your tax refund the same day (or within the week) from a commercial tax preparer? (d) Do you lend to or borrow from family members in emergencies? (e) Do you send money to family members not residing with you?

Such questions, which are intended to get at the cultural context of the respondents, reveal the types of financial transaction services used by low‐wealth families living in predominantly cash‐based economies. For example, even though a significant percentage of survey responders indicated that they cashed their paycheck at a mainstream financial institution (90%), they still had a high rate of using money orders to pay their bills (48%). In addition to these combined questions indicating that banking products may not be as easily accepted in a cash‐based economy (e.g., landlords accepting money orders or cash only), they also indicate that low‐wealth consumers do not employ mainstream financial institution services and products in the same manner as do middle‐class and affluent consumers.

The findings indicate that family is far more flexible a definition among culturally diverse communities where more grandparents raise grandchild‐ren, aunts and uncles and fictive kin (e.g., kinship relationships established through religious ceremonies, godmother/godfather) predominate, and these social networks may be substituting as the “savings” buffer for family emergencies. Survey respondents were also asked two structural questions: (a) Have you ever spent your tax refund on the following? (b) What would you like to know more about? Both questions had a list of entries covering various financial services and products along with asset‐building activities as well as an open‐ended text option. Some of the 15 tax refund items asked about included such economic resiliency activities as house down payments, car, computer, and appliance purchases, as well as other types of payment fees, such as immigration fees, medical bills, auto insurance, and payoff of payday loans.

The survey results provide evidence that asset building in communities with high immigrant, ethnic, and cultural legacies does not conform to the “individualized” consumer stereotype of the nuclear family unit but rather encompasses a multi‐generational and extended family orientation. For example, survey respondents indicated that they used their tax refunds to pay for family members’ green card immigration fees, for brother/sister/niece/nephew or grandchildren's tuition and/or books, for family member funerals, to help family members with bills, to pay back money borrowed from family members/fictive kin/friends, and to pay for a baptism, wedding, or quinceñera (coming of age celebration). For the open‐ended text responses for the second question (i.e., What would you like to learn more about?), respondents indicated future and family‐oriented items such as helping with taking care of elderly parents, getting a GED, enrolling in ESL courses, how to save for school expenses, and legal help with student loan repayment.

Finally, to better understand how culturally diverse, low‐wealth families engage in asset building and savings behaviors, a survey question designed to capture “informal savings circles,” (known as rotating savings and credit associations [ROSCAS] in the development economic literature) was included in the survey instrument. This particular question captures savings behavior that has a communal‐trust component since it occurs outside mainstream financial institutions, does not have an interest rate attached to it, and relies on a high degree of social and cultural capital among the savings participants (Hernandez, Restler, & Peralta, 2010; Hevener, 2006; Robles, 2007, 2009). The evidence indicates that college‐educated or some‐college Latinas were the highest participants in communal savings circles. This indicates that it is not knowledge of other savings products (mainstream financial institutions), but rather cultural capital, communal trust building, and “goal”‐oriented savings that are drivers in low‐wealth, high immigrant legacy communities. The survey findings provide an evidence‐based context for creating economic and financial education curricula and provide a blueprint for crafting pedagogical approaches that can potentially meet diverse low‐wealth community members where they “are.” These findings, along with those from other studies, highlight the importance of attending to cultural and communal issues in financial education (Cohen & Casper, 2002; Hatton & Leigh, 2011; Spader, Ratcliffe, Montoya, & Skillern, 2009).

Whole‐Family Economic Education Over the Life Cycle: Crossing Into New Territory

Given that many culturally diverse communities are very family oriented, a part of culturally responsive financial education should seek to leverage family cultural capital by including the family unit in economic and financial education curriculum. Social policy and education researchers generally define cultural capital as the diverse linguistic and racial/ethnic traditions in geographically anchored communities (Robles, 2006, 2009; Yosso, 2005). In economics research, cultural capital is often defined as cultural infrastructure and activities of a locale such as the number of visits to museums and revenue generated from tourist destinations. For example, social capital is often a function of human capital: where we go to university and the discipline or field that we study often dictates our social capital connections, their depth and breadth. What is important to recognize about cultural capital in creating a “whole‐family‐over‐the‐life‐course” economic education curriculum and pedagogy is that it contains the seeds for leveraging human capital across all the other economic sectors families and communities will be required to navigate in the 21st century.

One example of infusing economic education into a whole‐family perspective is sharing information that credit scores (a consumer certification concept) have cascading and interconnecting impacts on several economic sectors of family well‐being over the life cycle. For example, credit scores impact job applications (labor markets), securing auto loans (consumer market and transportation security), insurance rates and costs (asset building and wealth protection), and opportunities for entrepreneurial entry and expansion (income security and wealth accumulation).

The Great Recession alerted us to the increasing complexity of economic sector connectedness and the significance of economic events—both local and global—that impact our daily lives. Creating opportunities to understand family economic inclusion and financial security over the life cycle becomes crucial to family and community well‐being. Such basic family economic activities that leverage cultural capital include elders caring for grandchildren as parents and older siblings work, youth translators for immigrant extended‐family members as they engage in consumption decisions, home‐based economic and entrepreneurial activities that require rotating family member participation, pooling of family transportation resources, financial decision making based on whole‐family mobility aspirations, and communal savings circles, to name a few. Using new understanding of geographic and culturally anchored traditions in diverse low‐wealth communities can provide an inclusive economic education pedagogy that requires all family members to bring their daily economic activities and multiple affiliations to the learning process (Ruwanpura, 2008; Thornton & White‐Means, 2000). This allows for intergenerational transmission of survival and sustainability knowledge directed at navigating economic markets as part of the economic education learning process without creating age or experience silos.

Conclusion

Current economic and financial education curricula have identified the need to target specific groups and populations that have traditionally been neglected in pedagogical approaches: adult learners, English as a Second Language learners, recently arrived/immigrants, and the working poor. In culturally diverse and immigrant legacy communities, family orientation is paramount: family and extended family are generally both young and elder care‐givers, lenders of first resort, and often the only source of advice for financial and economic emergencies. To create financial and economic educational courses, workshops, and materials that acknowledge and include the family unit would cultivate increased trust and would contribute to word‐of‐mouth marketing. In addition, such an approach would expand participation rates among working adults precisely because economic and financial literacy would be offered as a family activity. Preparing consumers to understand financial products and services continues to be a fundamental learning goal addressed by adult education researchers and practitioners. Preparing the entire family unit to better navigate rapidly changing financial and economic markets using culturally responsive approaches serves as an additional communication tool in hard to reach diverse, low‐wealth communities.