A New Horizon for Hopewell

ALM Hopewell Center under Peoples Family of Corporations is excited to announce a new Youth Trauma Program that will focus on children 3-6, 7-13, and 14-18 years old that have been impacted by related trauma.

Our goal is to provide a host of individual services to our clients which includes; Therapy services (individual, group, family, and play), Case management, psychosocial rehabilitation groups, Drop in Center, Community Outreach, and a 24-hour Crisis Hotline.

The Peak Response Trauma Program wraparound model of services to our children and families. The Peak Response Trauma Program approach will be done by utilizing the PHC Family of Corporations service model, which will include access to medical, dental, community action resources, and Behavioral Health services. This service model will assist The Peak Response Trauma Team to meet the needs of the youth and families we serve by providing access to ALM Hopewell, People’s Community Action Corporation, and People’s Health Center.

For more information, visit Hopewellcenter.com

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IT’S TIME TO OWN IT

Thoughts on owning a house, land, or our own business.

BE YOUR OWN BOSS

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By Jeremiah Willis

2 Exposing Students to Colleges and Universities

3 A New Horizon for Hopewell

9 Real or Fake: Do Brands Matter?

10 Six Steps to Starting a Business

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By Jeremiah Willis

MENTAL HEALTH IS WEALTH

Find out if it’s OK to not be okay.

12 The Job of Finding a Career

15 It’s a Mental Thing

THE SUCCESSFUL MESS

I am starting to get to a point in my life where I feel like a successful mess.

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By Jeremiah Willis

mess

17 Jay-Z Gives Back

#FollowTheMoney

@onthemoneystl www.onthemoneystl.org

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Understanding Credit 6

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How to Save Understanding Income

How Can Scholarships Save You From Bad Credit?

PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY ACTION CORPORATION4236 LINDELL BLVD SUITE 300 , ST. LOUIS MO 63108 • 314-862-6270

Understanding CREDIT

When you graduate school and no longer feel the pressure from academics, you will naturally feel lighter and prepared to take on the world with no more stress from standardized scoring. However, that relief is cut short when you learn that there is another score that you must depend on, the credit score. This score determines the accessibility of financial resources and opportunities.

The FICO Score, or credit score, acts as your financial GPA; which can go up or down depending on how responsible you are with your financial decisions. It’s important to have a high credit score because it can help you save money on important expenses. It does this by lowering the interest rate that you pay on loans and credit cards, thus lower interest rates can save you thousands of dollars in the grand scheme of things. An easy way to build credit is getting a credit card and using it wisely. A good way to use credit wisely is by not using credit on outrageous expenses and paying the card balance off in full every month. You can also choose to pay the minimum balance, but that will add interest to the next payment and is not smart for saving money. Neglecting to make timely payments or defaulting will significantly impact your credit score in a negative way.

You can use your credit card to build your credit quickly by maintaining a low utilization rate. A low utilization rate is less than 10%, but the ideal utilization rate is less than 30%.

Being responsible with your credit promotes financial stability for future endeavors.

How to Save

At some point everyone should have a financial goal, and that goal could be anything as big as buying a house or as small as buying a pair of designer shoes.

At some point, you’ll have a goal that requires you to save money.

Although saving is not easy, efficient budgeting and willpower can prevent impulsive spending. It’s important to start saving early, because starting to save money early in life can work in your favor due to compound interest. Compound interest is the additional interest to the principle sum of a loan or deposit, or in other words interest on interest. For example, if you save a dollar at age 20 at 8% interest that dollar will be worth over 21 dollars when you’re 60 years old. Additionally, if you save a dollar at age 30 at 8% interest that dollar will be worth just over 10 dollars when you turn 60. Starting early goes a very long way.

Paying attention to your income and expenses is also a good step to take when saving money. According to MarketWatch, 56% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck due to lack of savings. There are so many reasons to start saving early, find your reason(s) and begin to save for your future.

Enkosi Key

Understanding Income

Income is the money that you earn. This money is from jobs, allowances, gifts, and many other sources. Income is important because without it, it’s hard to afford the essentials. In today’s world, you want to be smart and try to have multiple sources of income. This can be done through multiple jobs or investing. I recommend multiple sources of income, if one fails then you have another to fall back on in the event of an unsuspected emergency.

An easy way to diversify your income is by investing in stocks and bonds though investment apps like Stash and Robinhood Markets. Stash offers retirement, banking, individual investment, and custodial accounts through a web platform and mobile apps. With Stash, users can invest as little as $0.01 increments into fractional shares of thousands of stocks as well as invest in personal and retirement accounts. Stash also offers financial education and automatic investing.

Robinhood’s mission is to “provide everyone with access to the financial markets, not just the wealthy.” Robinhood Markets is a financial services platform that operates with commission-free stock trading with no account minimums, fractional share trading, and focuses on cash management services including debit cards.