Savings for Life

All Americans should have opportunities to save toward important goals such as education, homeownership, and retirement at every point of the life cycle, according to a new report by the Aspen Institute. In Savings for Life: A Pathway to Financial Security for All Americans the Initiative on Financial Security of the Aspen Institute introduces a new way of understanding national savings policy and a set of pragmatic savings vehicles that can help more people achieve financial security.

The report’s proposals include four innovative savings vehicles: Child Accounts (modeled on the United Kingdom’s Child Trust Fund); Home Accounts (to be used for the down payment on a home); America’s IRA (a standardized, simple Individual Retirement Account with a government match for working Americans without access to employer-based retirement plans); and Security “Plus” Annuities (basic life annuities to provide an additional layer of lifetime, guaranteed income as a complement to Social Security).

The policy recommendations for increasing financial security for all Americans—across income levels—culminate more than two years of a groundbreaking, bipartisan collaboration with chief executive officers from the financial services sector and public policy experts to identify market-based strategies for more Americans to save, invest, and own. The full report and a video from the May 3 release event are available at www.aspeninstitute.org.

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and others throughout the United States are working to implement many of the policies suggested in the Aspen Institute report, including universal child savings accounts and expansion of Individual Development Accounts. For more information on Illinois efforts, contact Dory Rand at doryrand@povertylaw.org.