Overview
The program is carried out with the bank’s support and is intended for young couples and families who are at the beginning of their financial journey together. The program includes guidance and direction to help the families deal with existing financial difficulties and build stable and balanced foundations for their family household.
The families are accompanied, among others, by 27 employees and retirees of Bank Ha’poalim.
The project is in collaboration with the Center for Financial Growth from Bank Ha’poalim, which serves as a hub of knowledge, training, and financial tools for anyone in Israel who aspires to improve their economic conduct in personal, family, and business aspects.
The program gives economic support for 250 Young Families every year.
Background
Many young couples face an economic crisis at the beginning of their lives, especially after the birth of their first child. The unexpected scope of expenses sometimes leads them to take loans and engage in rash financial behavior, which only worsens their situation and makes it difficult for them to build a balanced and stable household economy with strong foundations that will serve them throughout life, with all the challenges it will bring.
An economic crisis of a young couple, touches on exposed nerves and brings to the surface sensitive issues such as the couple’s relationship, differences between partners in perceptions regarding money, the relationship with children, and often implicit or explicit criticism from the extended family about the young couple’s financial decline. All these reasons intensify the crisis and its impact on all aspects of the young couple’s life.
We see special importance in economic support for young families, whose situation is usually fixable through a series of steps to reduce expenses, increase income, and maintain proper financial conduct over time. Therefore, we chose to focus on this target audience in the joint project with Bank Hapoalim.
Target Audience and Provided Solution
The families, where the parents are a maximum of 35 years old and have up to two children, receive long-term individual support that lasts about six months and includes several structured stages, based on the Paamonim model for support:
- Process of reflecting the current economic situation as it is
- Building a family budget based on personal and family priorities
- Establishing a recovery plan, including the ability to repay debts in the long term
- Monitoring execution and meeting the plan’s goals for several months
- At the conclusion of the program, we emphasizing the tools and rules that will help the family maintain their achievements
The families participating in this activity approach Paamonim independently following the crisis they are experiencing. The economic support process is carried out by a mentor who has been specifically trained for this by Paamonim, and the meetings take place at the family’s home, out of a desire to maintain their life routine as much as possible.
