Transcript CFPB FinEx Webinar: Helping Those You Serve Deal with Financial Stress and Anxiety During the COVID-19 Thursday, April 9, 2020 Presenter: Alicia Atkinson, The Prosperity Agenda Facilitator: Meghaan Lurtz, Ph.D. >>Dr. Meghaan Lurtz: Okay, everybody. My name is Meghaan. Hopefully, you are able to hear me. I am going to start. I apologize for some of the craziness this morning. It just seems like with COVID, it doesn't matter if you're a human or if you are a piece of technology. You don't necessary want to work, but that's all right. So we are recording this. If you can't hear me, I apologize. I'm not sure how to fix that. I'm not very good at the troubleshooting of technology. I just kind of know how to record Zoom videos. So I'm going to record this presentation on "Helping Those You Serve Deal with Financial Stress and Anxiety During the COVID-19 Emergency," and we're going to be talking specifically about financial stress and anxiety. This presentation is being put on or is in support of or with the support of the CFPB. So, if you all thought you were coming here to find the CFPB, you are in the right place. Again, we just had some technical difficulties this morning. So a little bit, just quickly, who I am, I'm the past president of the—or a recent past president of the Financial Therapy Association. I'm a senior researcher and writer for the blog kitces.com or nerdseyeview.com. It's a blog dedicated to financial planning and education. I tend to write a lot about the interaction of money and psychology, and I am a professor of some sort across a few different universities, all within financial planning or financial psychology, and so that's just sort of my educational background, if you will. But kind of getting into more of why you're here, we're going to be talking about sort of five different things today. One, trying to get, before we even start getting into the material, a little more information on—or just a way to think about the lens that we are going to use today, if you will, when thinking about just individuals and the way that they're reacting with things that are related to their money. Then we will get into the actual definitions of financial stress and financial anxiety. We'll then talk about how to work with those individuals, as these individuals—even though we oftentimes will see financial stress or financial anxiety being used interchangeable, technically these are two very different diagnosable disorders in terms of at that level, but they are two very different constructs is, I guess, what I want to say, stress and anxiety, even though they are often used interchangeably. We'll also talk about how to take care of yourself during this time, and then last but not least, we will talk a little bit about if you're a mental health professional or listening to this call or if you're a financial professional listening to this call, the opportunity to sort of work with your clients together and what that may look like. So, jumping into just sort of the framing for today's overall discussion, as you can see here, you may or may not be familiar with it. It's totally okay if you're not, but this is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. So there's physiological needs. Do I have food, water, warmth, rest? There's safety needs, security and safety. There's belongingness, so like love or the human interaction. >>Attendee: Hey, Meghaan? Hey, Meghaan, this is Sandra. You're going to need to share your screens with— >>Attendee: I have already emailed— >>Dr. Lurtz: Thank you, Sandra. >>Attendee: You're having some trouble on the other line too. So we may even end up just redoing this. I really appreciate everybody. >>Dr. Lurtz: Okay. Can you guys see my screen now? I apologize for that. I see people shaking their heads. I'm sorry. >>Attendee: Yeah. We can see it now. >>Dr. Lurtz: Perfect. All right. So I'm Meghaan. I'm going to talk to you about some stuff today. To the thing that I was hoping that you could see, this lovely pyramid here, is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and I bring this up because money is emotional or money drives emotion or we oftentimes see the intersection of emotion and money, not necessarily because of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but for me, this is just a really easy way to see that money impacts us at all of these levels. So when our money is being impacted, maybe we are concerned about whether or not our physiological needs will be met. Will I be able to pay my bills? Will I be able to eat this week? Is it the money specifically? No. But it is what the money represents. The same thing can be said for esteem or self-actualization, you know, people saving for their retirement is just saving for their first home. They wake up the next morning and look at their account statement, and in the wake of COVID, 25 percent of it has been deleted. That doesn't feel very good, and it can certainly bring up those feelings of fight, flight, freeze, and we'll talk about another one today as well as flock. But I bring this up or I'd like to point this out because if we understand that when people are thinking about their money and more so what the money is representing and their response to it, it no longer looks like irrational—it no longer looks irrational that somebody might be mad. It no longer looks irrational that somebody might be sad. In fact, it looks incredibly rational that they would be reacting in those ways because their safety and what they need to live a flourishing life is being taken from them. So, from that perspective, let's start talking a little bit more about financial stress and financial anxiety specifically. I first want to point out that stress is a two-step process. We oftentimes think of it as just people saying, "Oh, I feel stress today," but technically, stress is a two-step process. So something has to happen in our lives that we are feeling threat or we're feeling harmful or we identify as a challenge, and then the next step is actually a question that we ask ourselves. So, given this harmful thing and this threatening thing that's in front of me, do I think I can handle it? And if the answer is no, then this is now a stressful thing that we are going to have to deal with. So stress is outside of our bodies. It is triggered by an external event, and it can remain there until that external event is dealt with. It's also important to point out, because we're going to talk about it a little bit more in a little bit, but even if we don't recognize this stressor event consciously, a lot of times, our bodies will recognize it as an unconscious level. It's also important to point out that stress is incredibly normal, but simply because what stress brings up for this person is not necessarily what's going to bring up stress in another person. And then also, stress may appear to be in many different ways. We may have people that get angry. We may have people that get restless. We may just have someone with a stomach ache or a headache, and they may not even recognize that they're feeling stress and just simply say I have a headache. And then there's also a lot of times with stress an eagerness to do something. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that financial stress is really common, but I will cite a recent dataset. It's the FINRA Foundation does a big study, and 44 percent of all the respondents that they had, which is a nationally representative study, said that they were experiencing financial stress. Compare that to financial anxiety, which is more so of an unhealthy attitude, and associated then with—due to that unhealthy attitude, a lot of unhealthy behaviors. Anxiety tends to be more prevalent than stress. Some people think because the anxiety can remain even after the stress is over. So, again, I have this bill. I'm worried about this bill, but eventually, I'm able to pay the bill, the bill itself. The stress goes away, but the anxiety of potentially maybe not being able to pay a different bill, even though that's not the case right now, that anxiety can remain, even though the stress is over. And anxiety too can oftentimes look like worry. It can look like agitation. It can look like restlessness or fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and certainly, we can imagine it being an all-out panic attack. As mentioned earlier, from the FINRA Foundation dataset, 53 percent of individuals reported having some level of financial anxiety. So I think it's really important that we realize that these are two different things, even though they can be co-morbid in the sense that they can be going on at the same time, and that they can sort of support one another. And "support" is kind of a strange word, but that starts out as stress, and then the stress leaves, but the anxiety stays. And then maybe there's a new stressor, and it just kind of goes back and forth. So being that they are so similar, how do we know the difference? I think that measuring it is helpful. There are actual financial anxiety and financial stress scales that are different from one another. You can absolutely, in working with clients, have or give as part of the intake paperwork, perhaps, that you're working with a test of financial anxiety or financial stress. If giving some full-out test sounds really uncomfortable or not like something you would want to do, again, I point to the FINRA Foundation. They had two questions. The anxiety question was "Thinking about my personal finances can make me feel anxious," and it a simple "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" statement, and that's what they went on. And then for financial stress, "Discussing my finances can make my heart race or make me feel stressed," again, a very simple 1 through 7. So simply asking that question or bringing up that question or differentiating between the two, making sure to ask both questions, and just sort of allowing the person that you're working with, your client, to give you feedback can give you an indication on which one may be more top of mind for them. If not, again, possibly both of them could be going on. Another thing to consider, when working with stress, so thinking about the fact that, again, even those these things are related, different things work for different people. With stress, people that are under stress don't necessarily want to be told, "It's okay" or "Just do nothing." I mean, this is a common financial thing that we say in terms of like modern portfolio theory, for example, is buy and hold. So, during these market swings, we would often times say to people, "Don't sell out. Just do nothing." That's like telling somebody that has recently broke their arm, "Don't cry. Don't feel bad right now. Everything is going to be okay in 6 months." The immediate stress that they're feeling, nobody wants to be told "Don't worry," "It's okay," and "Do nothing," because it sounds like this is advice that a 7-year-old could give and doesn't really feel very good in speaking to the issues that they're having. So what can you do if those statements aren't particularly useful? First off, remind clients or help them to think of ideas, maybe even outside of the financial world where they overcame a similar issue. If they're trying to decide between two issues or they have two bills that they have to pay or they have two different issues that are sort of conflicting with each other and they're not sure how to deal with it, get them out of the financial head space and just talk to them about their own ability to be a problem solver. Sometimes those, well, one, it's more of a positive talk than a negative talk, which is a good thing during this time, but then it also helps them to call upon their own natural strength to help them overcome the issue that they're having. Another important thing to do is to actually address the stress, so, again, different from anxiety where a lot of times we don't want to address it. If a client is expressing to you that this stressor is bringing them down, even if you feel that there is a more important thing that they should be focusing on, unless you deal with that stress immediately, you're not going to be able to get them to move forward. So allow them to attack it. Sort of actually use their stress to your benefit. And that's to the next point here. Be problem focused. Stress again can bring out that "fight" response, and if someone is open to that "fight" response, they may be very willing to take advantage of a potential to-do list that they may have not been emotionally sort of spurred to do before. So, if you're working with someone and you're not quite sure, try giving a to-do list, and if they respond positively, this could be more of an indication of stress than anxiety. If they do not respond to your to-do list, it may very well be more of an issue of anxiety, and so in these situations, it's more about being—or your job more so becomes being a safe space for this individual. This does not necessarily mean they're going to come in and tell me the problem, and then I'm going to teach them something, or they're going to come in and tell me the problem, and then, again, I'm going to hit them with another to-do list. This is simply just a safe space for them to talk about move freely and share ideas with you and share concerns with you that are feeling most prominent to them until they are ready to sort of make change, and so you are waiting with them, in a sense, in this safe space until they indicate to you that they believe that they are able to make change or want to make change. And when they do, they will let you know, and it's a great thing to be able to be there in that moment and actually offer assistance. Perhaps they're very worried about, again, a bill or a 529 plan or they don't know a lot about the stock market, and so they have a lot of questions, and now they're finally done asking their questions during this safe space time. And they're really ready to do something. You being there with them in order to help them do those things, even if it's just sitting with them as they walk through the steps, like signing up for their 401(k) plan, can be a huge, huge benefit. Another big thing that you can do as the professional in the room is recognize growth. This is really hard when someone is feeling anxiety to take these steps forward, and so letting them know that you see progress, even if it's small, giving an honest compliment in moments like this can be a huge ago booster that someone needs in order to continue to make these steps going forward. So, getting into now the practitioner section, if you will, of today's presentation, I'm always reminding my financial practitioners that I work with that in the same way that we are reminded when we are on the airplane, you have to take care of yourself first. Put your mask on first before you can help others, and a lot of times, I hear, "Well, I'm just listening. I don't feel like I'm doing anything super stressful. I don't think that this really applies to me," but in fact, it does. And we know this from therapy that when we are listening, especially if you are an incredibly good financial advisor or a very—you're connected with your clients, more than likely, listening to their stories, being deeply compassionate or being deeply empathetic, empathy essentially has a dark side, and it's called "vicarious traumatization" or "compassion fatigue." It basically works in the way that if our brains and our subconscious body hears enough of these stressors all day long, every day, our own bodies begin to think that we are under stress, and so your body will start to react in the same way as a person who has actually been under the stress. Mental health practitioners luckily receive training for this, but it is even something that they struggle with, which is why it is a part of their training. But traditional financial professionals actually do not get training in this, and in many ways, financial professionals are also not taught about some of the professional separation and professional boundaries that mental health practitioners are, and so you may be even close to your clients, which would also bring about more vicarious traumatization and compassion fatigue. The problem with these two things is, again, not only that it can send your body into stress and into anxiety, but when you are under stress and anxiety, even if you don't realize it at a conscious level, which again is super common, you can't be as objective, and you're not able to be as creative. The mind focuses. That's what we're talking about, the fight and the freeze. Your mind is moving to a more focused place to try to fix the stress or the harm or whatever it is that it's perceiving. So, when it does that, you're not able to be as objective with clients. Another thing that can happen is because you are connecting so closely with clients and you're failing to be objective, a lot of times, you will give advice to them that maybe you yourself wanted to feel or wanted to hear, which is not necessarily the advice that they should have received, given their own unique situation. I always point out that, again, this is not so much a question of will this happen to you but simply a question of when will this happen to you. Britt and Klontz in 2012 did a study of financial professionals and found that 93 percent of them, after the crash in 2008-2010, had reported some sort of PTSD-like symptoms, mostly disturbed sleep, and they found that there had been a change in portfolio tactics, moving from modern portfolio theory, which is thought to be a very conservative way to approach portfolio structure versus a more tactical way, which is a more risky thing to do. So we've got financial planners that are actually being riskier with less sleep, not necessarily a good mix. So how can you recognize this? I've now talked about it. I've made it pretty clear that you are likely going to have this happen to you. What can you do to even realize is this happening now? Or if it's not happening now, thank goodness, but how can you be more aware of yourself? It's pretty simple, believe it or not, which is great, which makes it easy for all of us to do, but doing a self-check. Are there clients that you are overly worried about, perhaps even more so than the client themselves. Are there clients that you have dread in terms of reaching out to them to talk to them about this, that, or the other? Do you find that you're working harder than those clients? Are you doing things like skipping lunch or finding that, especially now that many of us are working from home, are you working more hours sort of feverishly? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the good thing is you're normal, and you're probably a really great financial professional or mental health professional, and at the same time, you are likely attempting to exert control in an effort to fight off or handle your own anxiety or stress that you may or may not recognize at a conscious level. So what can you do? If you did answer yes to any of these or you find yourself answering yes to these, what is there to do? Take care of yourself. Again, self-care is not a selfish thing. If you have the opportunity to work in teams, I know, again, remote work might be a little bit strange, but working in teams is actually really, really beneficial. In a sense, just imagine it as being able to spread out the stress. Instead of it all being on your shoulders, it's now on two of you or perhaps three of you. Working in a team also allows you to check in. If you did maybe overly empathize with a client, again, that's a really natural thing to do, but if you did it, it can be a really easy way to miss something. If that other person is there, maybe they didn't connect as much, and they can help you see the blind spots. In emotional times, especially when it comes to our money, people get angry. Again, we're talking about the fight, flight, freeze response, and again, this is a super natural, rational way to respond. It's not necessarily a fun way to respond if you're sitting on the other side of the table, but it's normal. So, again, meeting with someone in teams can actually help to ward off a really dramatic emotional outburst, which can just make everybody in the room feel more comfortable. Again, working in teams allows for a debriefing period. And I also just want to point out that working in teams or really working as a triad is a natural thing that we do, anyway, oftentimes when we are thinking about anxiety or stress. It's totally normal that when I feel stress, I call my mom, I call my friend, I talk to my husband. I'm spreading that stress out. Again, we oftentimes talk about fight, flight, and freeze, and we forget that there is actually a fourth "F" word, and it is flock. It is the ability to come together and really share having a communal grief, communal sharing. Anytime that you can share at a community level or just with other people what it is that you're going through, this is a much healthier way to deal with stress, to deal with anxiety, to deal with fear than isolating yourself. Another thing that you can do is protecting your time. Taking a walk, even if it's around your house or your backyard. Again, not eating lunch in front of your computer. Having a start and a stop time. Again, with everybody moving to remote work, it's super easy to be like, "Oh, yeah, I can answer one more email" or "I'm going to plop down in front of the TV, and I'll just answer emails until ten o'clock at night." Don't do that. Make sure that you have a start time at, let's say, 8:00 a.m. and we have a stop time at 5:00 p.m. Then leave your laptop, leave your phone in a place where you are not walking by it 16 times, or close your laptop and phone, and let yourself have downtime. The same sort of idea with a designated work area, again, not trying to just work yourself to death, because again that's a really natural response that we do when we're under stress in an effort to try to control the stress that we're feeling, but it doesn't actually do anything. You would be better off taking some downtime, flocking with your friends and family, and try to have space in between your meetings. I would also encourage you to watch the news a little bit less. There were, again, studies done after the 9/11, that people just watching those videos over and over and over and over again, they developed PTSD-like symptoms simply from watching the news too much. Make sure during your downtime that it's not just sitting there and listening to all the horrible things that are going on around the world with COVID and the markets. Take time to just be alone and do something that makes you happy. This may sound like a very simple thing, but it is a very true thing. It has been supported in terms of how can we develop more self-compassion to have a positivity journal. This is a practice that I actually have. Again, we can focus on the fact that we're stuck inside, that we're not having a good time, that we're not sure how our bills are going to get paid, that everything is just turmoil. We can certainly focus on that, or we can choose to focus on the things that we can control. We can choose to focus on the things that are good in our life, and again, doing that helps your brain at a conscious level and a subconscious level to get out of that fight, flight, freeze mode and will actually help you to expand because it helps you to relax and be able to come up with more different ways maybe to make money or different ways to do this or different ways to do that. It allows you to be creative if you are not feeling so much stress and anxiety. So a couple of closing comments here. All of what's happening is normal. We've talked a lot about the market today, but I also just want to point out some research that was done by Dubofsky and Sussman in 2009. They were looking at financial professionals in particular, but those financial professionals, they were dealing with death with their clients. They were dealing with conflict between themselves and/or conflict between the clients themselves. They were dealing with people that were seeing marital problems. They were dealing with general mental health concerns. So it is totally normal to see conflict, to see stress, to see anger, to see fear, to see anxiety, to see depression, to see marital problems. All of these things are normal, normally occurring issues that we will run into with our clients, and so it's not a bad thing, and it's something that we need to be aware of and know how to deal with in a proactive manner. In thinking of it that way that I know that I'm going to run into these things, it's normal to run into these things, I now know how to protect my own self so that I can take care of my clients. Another thing to consider is just broadening the horizons of different types of professionals that are out there that may or may not be appropriate for again getting you more help and getting your clients more help. In deciding, then, for example, do I want to talk about some of these more emotional things with my clients, being empathetic is a wonderful skill that just about anybody can have. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody will want to do it, but being empathetic is something that you can do. So, if you feel comfortable and the way that your practice is designed that you can be there for clients in those emotional moments, awesome. Even better, you get a certificate of some sort or take on additional education. The AFCPE is a great certification. The Financial Therapy Association has a great certification. There is the CDFA certification, which is about working with divorced clients. There's the Financial Behavioral Specialist certification. All of these certifications are designed to help clients or really to help the advisor or help the financial professional to learn more about what to do during these highly emotional moments and help you to become more comfortable if this is an area where you want to go. I also want to point out, though, that even with this extra special expertise—I mean, I, for example, have a master's in psychology. I have a Ph.D. in personal financial planning with an emphasis in financial psychology. I've done multiple certifications in terms of being more comfortable in this area, but I can tell you I am not a person that can diagnose. I am not a person that can deal with someone who is or who truly—I'm not a therapist in the sense that I have not become a marriage and family therapist. I'm not a licensed therapist, and so there are things that I cannot do. When someone is saying or letting you know that they are in danger, that what they are going through is causing dysfunction in their life, they are letting you know that perhaps they are entering into different levels of deviance. Maybe they have taken up drugs or something like that, or perhaps they've hurt themselves or hurt someone else, or they are letting you know that they are in deep distress. These are examples of when reaching out to a full-blown mental health practitioner is extremely important to do. So how do you do that? If you're working with someone right now, which many of you may be, given COVID, and you don't have time to build a referral network of mental health practitioners, I highly encourage you to ask that person if you can call a family member or trusted friend for them, and if they say yes, let that trusted family member or friend know that you're concerned, that you don't think that this person should be alone, and just some extra care, some extra phone calls, some extra Zoom meetings or however we can call and talk with one another, Facetime, is a really important thing to do to keep this person from feeling isolated. The other thing that you can do, if this person tells you, "I really don't want you to call anybody for me. I'm going to be fine," you can still send them an email. Make a phone call. Come up with some reason as to why you need to talk with them, given the business, just to check in, again, trying to keep this person from feeling isolated. If you do have more time to build a network, I highly encourage you to visit Psychology Today or the Financial Therapy Association, and find some mental health practitioners that are in your area, and call them. Learn about them. Learn about their services. Learn about their specialty. Learn about their background with money. Learn about who their typical client is. Ask whether or not they are interested in working with you or would they be interested in allowing a more open stream of mental health referrals. If you're unfamiliar with therapy, again, it's not all just sitting on the couch. There's lots of different types of therapy. Google it. Google "narrative therapy." Google "solution-focused therapy," and you can actually watch what a solution-focused therapy meeting looks like. Again, it's not just laying there on the couch and talking about what happened when you were 7. There are certainly lots of reasons as to why that type of therapy, the couch therapy, if you will, is good, but not all therapy is like that, and it's super useful to know the difference, especially when you're working with a client who may have a preconceived notion about therapy, and you can let them know there's lots of different ways to think about this. There's lots of different ways to do this. Another thing that I would encourage is if you do find a few different professionals in your area, you go yourself. Again, we've talked about how hard it is to work in this area and be a professional in this area and the type of support that you may need as a professional in this area. So there's nothing wrong with having a session yourself, and at that time, you can also decide whether or not you thought this person had a nice office because you're going to be referring clients there or could refer clients there. You may want to get a feeling of how quickly or not quickly you can get an appointment, which would be important, again, if you have clients that are struggling right now. So, in talking about the referral network, I always get the big question of "Yeah, okay. That's well and good, but how do I actually say it? How do I actually say to someone, 'I really think that you should talk to somebody'?" Well, I have some good news in that right now, while everything with COVID is a total mess, it's really, really easy to say, "Hey, as a part of what we're doing, just given all the craziness with COVID, we are recommending to everybody that we talk to that you also talk to a mental health practitioner." This makes it normal. You've now told them that you are doing this for everybody. If they have opened up to you specifically, again, going back to this idea that we're not just there to be like, "Oh, it's okay" or "It will get better," a more useful response is to thank them, which may sound kind of funny, but this person has just opened up to you, told you something that is very private, may even be something that they are ashamed they are feeling. Let them know that you have heard them. Thank them. "Thank you, Sarah, for giving me that information. It means a lot to me that you would open up to me in this way." Use reflective language. If Sarah has told you that she is feeling sad and that she's nervous about her upcoming rent, then use the word "sad" and that you're nervous about the upcoming rent. There is no reason to necessarily say, "Well, now I think you're feeling depressed, and it's clear that you're not paying attention to your inflows and outflows." Just repeat back to them what they have said in order to make them feel heard. Being concise. Again, this goes back to that same idea of the language, being careful with what we repeat back, and again, I can't stress enough how important it is to make this referral normal. Just letting people know, "Thank you for sharing this information with me. I know that must have been difficult. I really appreciate that you trust me." In these situations, it's a really common thing in our office to work alongside a mental health practitioner. The mental health practitioner that we work with does solution-focused therapy. Have you ever heard of that? Make it normal. Tell them what it is so that they can hope to lower their fears, and again, you learning more about the different types of therapies that are out there, and working with and getting to know a mental health practitioner will bolster your ability to talk about some of these things and make it normal for yourself, which will again make the process of sharing those sort of feelings or sharing those thoughts and what needs to move forward a little bit easier. So that is all that I have. I know, because I've seen it over in the corner, that there's been lots of comments going. There is another woman that is going to be presenting, and I am going to pull up her presentation, and hopefully, she will be able to unmute herself. She's got some really great tools that may be of great benefit for, again, talking about some of these things but also specifically to the COVID situation, just helping people move forward. So, Alicia, can you hear me? >>Ms. Alicia Atkinson: Yes. Can you hear me? >>Dr. Lurtz: Yes, I can. Okay, great. Hopefully, all of you guys can see "The Prosperity Agenda: Inspiring Reflective, Community-Based Conversations Around Money." >>Ms. Atkinson: Yes. >>Dr. Lurtz: Okay, great. >>Ms. Atkinson: Awesome. >>Dr. Lurtz: So I will—take it away. >>Ms. Atkinson: Awesome. Thanks. Thanks, Meghaan. Yeah. As Meghaan mentioned, I am Alicia Atkinson. I am the managing director of The Prosperity Agenda and going to quickly do a quick presentation here, just sharing a little bit about our organization and in particular one of our projects around financial well-being and how we're adapting some of that content to meet some practitioner needs around the COVID-19 crisis. I want to just quickly introduce The Prosperity Agenda. So we're a nonprofit. We partner with other nonprofits, government agencies, employers, financial institutions across the United States to really design solutions for scale. We use a design thinking and human-centered design process because we believe that families know what's best for them, and their experience and their goals really drive how we design solutions. Our work challenges social systems where the norms are harmful to families, and we work through place-based partnerships across the country to bring our innovations to scale. Next slide. Thanks, Meghaan. Just quickly about our process for people who may not be familiar with design thinking, really it's the value that we really start with questions and not assumptions or solutions when it comes to our program design process. So we spend a lot of time understanding the context in which we're walking into. We talk to families, participants, staff, leadership in these different organizations and different systems to really understand the opportunities and the constraints in which we have to design around. We then build a very small prototype or testable solution. Start small, learn quick, put it into the environments we're designing for, and get a lot of feedback about how we can improve it. Ultimately, our goal is really to build racial equity, dignity, and choice in these systems with our partnerships. So just diving in, the project I'm actually going to share with you a little bit today was actually a project that we conducted a couple years ago, but the learnings, I think, are really relevant, and ultimately, what we found actually working with some workforce development agencies, talking to over 300 parents and participants over the course of a year or so was that traditional financial education methods are really having some unintended consequences in our communities, and this actually feeds off a lot of what Meghaan was already sharing. I wanted to highlight that I know we talk about financial education often as not changing behavior, but what we found was that it was creating for many folks a pretty anxious and not a good experience in these classrooms. Again, this is not often because of the content or because of the facilitator, but just generally, we are a culture that carries a lot of shame and judgment about money. And even, I think, pre-COVID-19, a lot of anxiety when we went and observed and then had focus group participants, there was a lot of comments about "I don't have a job right now. They're asking me to save money. They're asking me things about a home and retirement, and a lot of that content is not relevant to me. And it's making me shut down," and I guess if you're thinking about that fight or flight, we heard about a lot of flight in these situations. Then the other thing we did here as well is that a lot of content that was being delivered was very white middle-class focused. So the metrics and the levers of success that were being highlighted were around home ownership and, again, these metrics of success that might not be relevant to different cultures. So we took that information and really tried to understand what could we be designing that could fit and kind of create a different experience for folks. Next slide, please. I have a hidden animation in there. So we designed a product that we're calling Money Mindset Cards, and these are activity cards. There's 30 of them, and they really are to spark dialogue about people's financial wellness and well-being. We're thinking about Money Mindset as really a way to reflect on our values, our experiences, our agency, and our sense of self when it comes to money, and ultimately really wanted to highlight that everyone has experiences with money, that people's glasses are full of experiences, and approaching conversations was really acknowledging that people have something to share can really create a different experience for folks in these rooms and in these classrooms. So, ultimately, the activities are really meant to be integrated into what's already happening, and I'll share a little bit more about how they've been used over the course of testing and then bringing them out into the market. But what we've seen is they really created conversations that are trauma-informed. They've very coaching-based. They start with questions, as Meghaan was sharing, very strength-based, trying to focus on what's working well in people's life, highlighting that we're all having challenges and really talking about how we can have more positivity, and success moves more positivity and success. They inspire more mental and emotional control, and really the goal is not to maybe create a certain action or behavior change, but really the action is just building this awareness about attitudes and habits about money in a different ways. Next slide. I'll just share a little bit about the results that we heard when we did our testing and as we brought this out into the market. So participants, we did a baseline and outcomes survey. There was a sense of increased feeling of control over their financial life. I think that's really important, the sense of autonomy like, "I have the things I need to understand how to move forward." A very important finding and as Meghaan was saying, really important that people feel connected, I think when they're feeling anxious and when they're feeling judged, and so we saw this increased reporting of "I have someone I trust to talk about finances with," this increased feeling of not feeling so much shame and increased feeling of social connection and then also an increased use of financial services. For organizations, we also wanted to look at how introducing this product could potentially change partnerships or the way organizations were approaching these conversations, and one of the most interesting findings we saw is that a lot of community-based organizations actually started using this with their partner banks, their community credit unions in their community, and ultimately, actually used the cards to maybe disrupt more financial lecture-based conversations when guest speakers would come in. Instead, we saw community-based organizations offering people a card, and we saw this as a way of really creating a different conversation between a banker and a community-based organization and participant, which was really fascinating, and we're continuing to actually work with some credit unions to further that development. We did see a reduction of biases and assumptions around financial behaviors, which was really fascinating, and we also saw higher empathy for different financial experiences. I think empathy, as Meghaan said, is a nuanced, complex process, but ultimately, we did hear that it really helps people, listen to people's full story, and really acknowledge that people had strengths that maybe they weren't seeing before, which we found really important. Next slide. I'll just go really quickly through kind of the ways we've seen these cards in practice. They were ultimately designed to be used in an in-person setting, and so they were used as classroom icebreakers. We've seen them used as one-on-one coaching, group coaching, participant recruitment, and in some housing authorities and housing organizations and kind of monthly housing meetings. For organizations, we've actually had credit unions reach out to purchase the cards as professional development and training for their own staff. They acknowledge that their own staff, be it kind of their frontline staff, were not comfortable talking about money and so wanted to use this product as a way to just garner that conversation to create a different culture. We've seen them used in team meetings. We've seen them be used in conference icebreakers and, as I alluded to before, in guest speakers. In this new normal, we're actually working on adapting some of the cards to be better suited for virtual classrooms or virtual discussion boards. So we've had our partners actually post some of the questions online, give some quick instructions about the activity, and then have a discussion. We've also seen them be used on kind of one-on-one phone conversations as well. I'll go into my next slide to just highlight, and we're still testing out some practices around this. I think it was really lovely to follow Meghaan because I think a lot of what she shared is really captured in our hopes around the Money Mindset Cards. I am focused mainly on the participant experience, but we know that there is a lot of stress and anxiety that staff face around talking about money in the field that we work. So I did just want to say that, ultimately, Money Mindset Cards were actually designed a couple years ago and have been used, but I do think they're even more important in today's context to really address the, maybe, financial shame. We hold so much identity close to our financial lives, and as people are losing income, losing jobs, and really finding a way to connect with people with compassion, inviting people's full selves into the conversations, not having a preconceived notion of what that conversation needs to look like, I think is really important, and ultimately, really how can we start unpacking some of these things around our money mindset and judgments about money that we have for ourselves and maybe for our peers and our community. And then also just building on what Meghaan already shared, what we have really found is that for people who are financial anxious, they're kind of in this, maybe, scarcity mindset. Connecting with people on their vision and values is a way to take action and to celebrate progress. This idea reflecting and understanding how I tick and what is important to me is a step in the right direction, and I think that's something to highlight right now because that is something everyone can do no matter what their financial circumstances are. Lastly, we just want to say we have seen this, and I think this is even more important today, this idea of celebrating each person's ability to make complex decisions based on their own context. People are navigating increasingly complex financial lives, and we just really want to highlight that people do know what they need to do, the best they know how to do it, because they are the ones experiencing their lives, so really leaving space for that celebration and that moment. I think I have just one more slide. Yes. Or maybe one more after this. But, yeah, I just wanted to say this was a very quick overview, but ultimately, we are posting some facilitating guidelines about how to transfer some of this content online as well as three Money Mindset Cards, and we're producing them so they can be viewed by both participant and coach or by practitioner. So you can hopefully use this in virtual or phone experiences. If you go to moneymindsetcards.org, you'll find more information, but I did just want to highlight that I really encourage you all to find ways to create these safe spaces. I think this idea of connection to reduce shame is really important, and I know that technology is tricky to navigate right now, but as much as you can get people connected to each other, I think that team mentality is really important in people not feeling overwhelmed. And then I do think I have one more slide. Sorry, Meghaan. Yes. So this is my last one. I just appreciate the time. Thank you, Heather, for inviting me to share a little bit today, and my email is on the slide. I would love to hear from you all if there is more interesting in talking. We're also publishing some free tools and resources over the next few months to really help practitioners coach online and virtually, so thank you. And I'll throw it back to you, Meghaan. >>Dr. Lurtz: Cool. Okay. I am going to end this slide show. I have a feeling that there's quite a few questions. I'm not exactly sure how to best open it up for questions. I guess if you have a question, if you want to put it in the chat, I have about another 10 minutes or so. I know we got started a little bit late. I apologize for that, but if you have a question, feel free to post it to the chat, and either myself or Alicia will be able to answer it or maybe we'll both be able to answer it. How do we get the Money Mindset Cards, and where will there be a recorded presentation? I am going to work with Heather to get a recorded presentation. I have a feeling it will be available on CFPB website. We'll try to get it emailed out to you. This is recorded. So I am pretty sure that I have access to names and things like that, but you have my email. You have Alicia's email, and you'll have Heather's email. So, between the three of us, we will get the recording available somewhere somehow. The Money Mindset Cards, Alicia, you said they are available on the website, The Prosperity Agenda website. >>Ms. Atkinson: Yes. If you go to our website or just www.moneymindsetcards.org, it will divert directly to our website, and feel free to email me. We are publishing a few for free, although normally they are available for purchase as well. All 30 of them are available, but just email me if you're having trouble navigating it, and I can make sure to get you the right information. >>Dr. Lurtz: Cool. And then Heather from CFPB, the woman who actually brought us together, so thank goodness for Heather, let us know that the email, if you want a link or want to make sure that you get the link to the website or to the recording is cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov. Oh, my email is my name, meg.lurtz@gmail. Oh, yeah, I can type it in the chat box. Good thinking there. [Pause.] >>Dr. Lurtz: For some reason, it's not letting me post my email to everybody. Oh, here we go. That's what I wanted to do. Thank you. Here we go. Cool. Oh, the CFPB one, I can put it in here again. Here we go, cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov. Cool. Well, I'm glad that you guys all enjoyed it. Thank you very much. It doesn't seem like we have any more questions. We appreciate all the kind words. You guys be easy on here, and hopefully, next month, we'll have better—we'll have a better technology situation, but thanks, everybody. [End of recorded session.]