Boston Saves, the City of Boston’s children’s savings account program, has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the Boston Foundation to help fund the next two years of its three-year pilot. The funding will help support a financial incentives program to encourage families to save for their children’s future, an online platform where families can track their savings, and school programming around financial education and family engagement.
Mayor Walsh launched Boston Saves last fall with the goal of helping families of Boston Public Schools (BPS) kindergartners save money for their children’s college or career training. Boston Saves provides each participating kindergartner with an account that is automatically seeded with $50. Using an online platform, families can also earn financial incentives for consistent saving and track all their savings for their child in one place. Participating schools host family events and classroom activities to promote saving as a fun, community-wide effort.
In the first year of its pilot, Boston Saves has so far provided seeded accounts to 246 kindergartners at five participating Boston Public Schools. The next two years of the pilot are projected to add another 1,100 children to the program. By Fall 2019, the initiative is slated to begin roll-out to all Boston’s public school K2 kindergarten classes.