When financial stability isn’t enough: How climate change is impacting one woman’s plans for the future
Photography by Ellingboe Photo
With support from the Wells Fargo Foundation, SaverLife launched The Downpour, a research initiative intended to expose the ongoing impacts of climate change on the financial health of households living on low-to-moderate incomes. This is the first SaverLife member story from this study.
Megan recognizes that climate change has arrived at her Minnesota doorstep. Wildfire smoke and the high temperatures affect her daily life, negatively impacting her asthma, energy levels, and overall health. But with costs of living like rent and utilities competing for her attention, Megan feels that she doesn’t have the luxury to think about climate change. Achieving financial stability takes precedence.
“As far as climate change goes, I can only prepare for the changing temperature,” she explains. “I can only take care of what’s in front of me right now.”
As a nonprofit fintech and advocacy organization, SaverLife regularly speaks with members who are balancing necessary living expenses against their long-term financial goals. Chronic stressors like income volatility, groceries, and unsecured debt can make it challenging for people living on low-to-moderate incomes to maintain a positive household balance sheet. And while they work hard to reduce these stressors, SaverLife members, and the millions like them, often make difficult trade-offs between their current financial demands and long-term aspirations.
So where does climate change fit in when maintaining a tight budget and working toward financial stability? It doesn’t. With SaverLife members facing multiple emergencies per year, with at least one costing more than $1,000, preparing for the physical and financial impacts of climate change is largely out of reach for people living on low-to-moderate incomes. However, despite limited means of support, they’re still thinking about and responding to climate change in the ways that they can.
“I have two children with special needs in the house, and I have my own health issues,” Megan describes. “How much do you expect one person to be able to take care of by themselves?”
Creating lasting “financial freedom”
A single parent who works part time at a senior living community and offers tax preparation services on the side, Megan finds that she’s constantly planning. “I don’t do well flying by the seat of my pants,” she says. “I plan my work shifts, my medical appointments, and my transportation on a weekly basis.” On top of this, Megan manages her family’s monthly budget, tracks her two children’s calendars, and maintains a strict schedule for paying off her debt.
Planning mitigates Megan’s stress and helps her feel prepared when her finances go through “peaks and valleys.” She, her children, and her parents live together in an effort to reduce housing costs. But even with the additional support, Megan says that her income fluctuates greatly throughout the year, in part because of her health. She survived a stroke in 2022, but developed health complications that make it challenging for her to work more than two to three hours at a time. “It just depends on how I am physically,” Megan describes. “I have back and neck issues, migraine issues, and things like that. When I have good times, I work, work, work. But then I overwork and end up having down periods of time too.”
Mapping out her budget and filling her work schedule ensures that Megan’s family continues taking steps toward their financial health goals. And even though Megan admits that it often comes at her expense, she’s proud of the steps she’s taking to keep their finances in order. Recently she took a course through her church to better track her spending and avoid building credit card debt. Since then, she’s been able to pay off several of her cards and even close a few accounts. “I’m slowly taking away the temptation to rely on my credit cards,” she explains.
Megan’s top priority is to be debt free, and she knows she’ll have achieved financial health when her credit balances zero out. But her goal doesn’t stem strictly from wanting to erase looming debt. Megan sees a debt-free life as an independent life. “I live with my parents because I need the extra support with my kids — and because I can’t depend on my work alone to cover the cost of living. To be able to accomplish that kind of financial freedom would be a huge success.” Megan also sees paying off her debt as an important opportunity to connect with her kids. By demonstrating how she successfully manages their family’s money, Megan can show them how “hard work, dedication, and determination pay off.”
The choice between financial health and climate change
The journey to financial health isn’t straightforward: a reality that Megan demonstrates through her persistence and resiliency in spite of systemic barriers. But when the challenges impacting her path forward are combined with the impending effects of climate change, the outcomes of her financial health journey take on a very different shape. How does someone account for the lasting impacts of climate change when they’re already coping with a financial system that doesn’t reflect their needs? To Megan, her current financial reality is all that she has energy to navigate right now, and even that can be overwhelming.
Not that she doesn’t think about the ways that she and her family can plan for climate change. In particular, Megan feels that policymakers could help households living on low-to-moderate incomes prepare for shifting weather conditions by making environmentally friendly choices more accessible and affordable. For example, in Megan’s town, paying for a waste disposal company to pick up recycling comes at an additional charge. She explains that, if these fees were waived or subsidized, more people would be incentivized to respond to climate change in their daily lives — and without needing to make a trade-off with their budget. Getting better buy-in from local communities and creating small opportunities to plan for the shifting climate: that’s where Megan can see change happening.
But when it comes to the potential financial impacts that climate change could pose to her long-term goals, Megan doesn’t have a strong sense of what that could look like. She’s laser focused on achieving financial stability by securing additional support for her disability and paying off debt by October 2024. And by then, she could have new financial priorities to consider before accounting for climate.
“All I’m looking for is consistency right now,” Megan concludes. “Just keeping things on my budget.”
Stories can change the balance
SaverLife members and their stories have the insight needed to tip the scales toward an equitable financial system. However, if we collectively want to change the balance, the financial and social sectors must tackle narrative change alongside their advocacy efforts. Together, we need to bring the financial system into full view through people’s individual experiences and highlight how it can be transformed to work with — and not against — people living on low-to-moderate incomes.
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