Phoenix's Story

Phoenix heard about Momentum’s Youth Fair Gains program through a friend and decided to get in touch with Momentum to learn more. She learned that Youth Fair Gains was a program designed to help people save money through good money management practices. And of course, she immediately like the incentive part of the program — that Momentum would match every dollar you saved (up to $50 per month) with three additional dollars. That could really add up. If, over the course of the one-year program, you managed to save $500.00 (which sounds like a lot, but really, it’s less than $10 per week; or, only $1.40 a day)  than that would mean Momentum would provide an additional $1,500.00, to make a total of $2,000.00. And the one condition of the program, that you had to spend the money on something related to work or education, was fine with Phoenix because she was planning to attend university.

Youth Fair Gains, Phoenix decided, would be a great opportunity to save for tuition. “One of the things about Youth Fair Gains that I liked right away is that they had everyone in the class play games in order for us to get to know each other. Just silly things, like you would have to go around and ask everyone in the class if they owned a cat, while everyone else had their own question to ask. Just silly things like that, but obviously designed just to get everyone in the class talking to each other and getting to know each other. It was fun — and funny. And most important, it worked. Everyone was immediately relaxed from that point on.”

Phoenix is still in the program, so we’ll have to wait and see how she’ll do. She’s feeling confident, though. There is just such a great financial incentive to save, it’s hard to resist. “I think more kids in their teens need to hear about Youth Fair Gains. It really is about more than just getting the big bonus at the end. The lessons you learn about money are very straightforward, even easy — and they really stay with you. You really do get better at managing and saving your money. What kid wouldn’t want to learn that?”