“Mom, can I get this? Please?” Adela’s 13 year old daughter Laura asks as she holds up a tank top during a quick Saturday afternoon shopping trip, “Please mom? I need it.”

Any mom will tell you that this is just the way shopping with kids goes, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“Thank god I had just gotten out of my budgeting class!” Adela laughs as she tells the story. “Now I know how to explain when I say no so she understands about our budget and how we can and can’t spend.”

A wife, mother of two and public school employee living on Chicago’s southwest side, Adela’s predicament is one that most households in America seem to be facing today. A full 42% of households now say they live paycheck to paycheck, and in many places, jobseekers outnumber jobs by as much as four to one. But as families lay the bills out on the kitchen table, trying to figure out where there might be fat to cut, their knowledge often doesn’t keep pace with their needs.

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” says Carmen Jimenez, one of Heartland Alliance’s financial educators. “People want to save money, but if you don’t know how financial systems work or what tools are available to you, you stay stuck.”

Adela can attest to that. Her husband, Alfredo, the manager of a local bakery, was always a good budgeter and took care of the bills, but it was her job to keep the house. She found herself overspending, sometimes on necessities, sometimes on special things for her children. Frustrated when she came up short one month, she talked to a friend at her school about it.

“She said to me ‘why don’t you just stop paying the mortgage?’. I knew that wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to do. Nobody did. We’re all in the same place.”

Just that day, though, a flyer arrived at the school where Adela works. ‘Learn to budget, save and get ahead in our financial education workshops’, it promised. The course was hosted by Heartland Alliance. Adela not only signed herself up, she asked Heartland Alliance to come teach a Saturday morning class for the parents in her school.

“We have to start at some point,” says Adela. “We learn together and can help each other stay on track.”

Taught by Heartland Alliance financial educators like Carmen, the class focuses on the basics of money management. Topics include making and sticking to a budget, how to understand and improve your credit, how banks work, savings tools like Certificates of Deposit (CDs) and savings bonds, mortgages, and everyday tips to make your money go further. The curriculum itself is recognized by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) as a ‘model course’ – one that they recommend to other organizations providing financial education across the country.

Every Saturday morning for six weeks, 25 parents gathered with Adela at the school to take Heartland Alliance’s course. Two weeks ago, the participants got their diplomas – a reward for a job well done.

“We learned so many ways to save, which is what I wanted to know,” says Adela. “I have these two [kids], and they have to go to college. In my house there is no choice – you are going for sure! So I wanted to learn to be better with money for that.”

Her two kids, daughter Laura, 13, and son Louie, 11, are on board with Adela’s new financial outlook. When we caught up with Adela and her family two weeks after the course ended, they were quick to tell us what Heartland Alliance’s financial education meant for them.

“Well, I want a PlayStation 3,” says Louie excitedly. “Mom won’t get it for me, though.”

“That’s right. You save your money and when you can buy it, you buy it,” Mom Adela reiterates in what is surely a conversation the two have had before.

“And when we went shopping the other day I was looking at clothes,” Laura chimes in.

“And what did I say?” asks Adela.

“Is that a want or a need?”

“That’s right,” Adela says, proud. “I’m just so glad I know what to say now! I never used to know how to do that!”

To learn more about Heartland Alliance’s financial education programs, http://www.heartlandalliance.org/assetbuilding