No good options: when safety comes at the expense of your dreams
How one family is weighing their financial future against climate change
Photography by Salt and Light Photography
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. Additional funding and support for our New York efforts was provided by Deutsche Bank.
Alizha is acutely aware that her North Carolina hometown is prone to flooding. With a ground-floor apartment and a large lake on the edge of town, she knows that extreme weather can upset her life quickly and unexpectedly: just like her sister’s was when Hurricane Matthew damaged her home and car in 2016.
Despite the threat, Alizha plans her response to potential flooding based on her family’s income. If they have the money, she says they’ll walk to a local hotel and stay there until the weather passes over. But if they don’t have savings to relocate, Alizha explains that “‘we’re going to get inside the tub, put a blanket over us, and hope we just float.”
When it comes to severe weather, Alizha won’t gamble with evacuation alerts. But, determining when and if her family should evacuate during extreme flooding is really a question of whether their financial situation makes it so they can evacuate.
Alizha is taking steps to improve her financial health and build her credit. Once she pays off her car, she hopes she can buy a home for her family and relocate to another town. But while she has some flexibility in determining how she’ll achieve these long-term goals, Alizha has few options for responding to climate change. And when she’s forced to make a decision related to severe weather, she has to weigh her hopes against it. Her current safety and security has to take precedence over her long-term dreams of financial well-being.
“If we had a hurricane, a part of me wants to say, ‘I don’t know what we should do,’” explains Alizha. “But when Hurricane Harold happened, luckily I had just gotten paid. So in that instance, I knew what we could do.’” When Alizha has more financial flexibility, she has more options for dealing with the effects of climate change — and without feeling like she’s making a tradeoff with her long-term goals.
Climate events drive future financial decisions
When they do have money to put toward climate preparation, Alizha says that she and her husband take small, actionable steps where they can. “We’re preparing for climate change by making sure we have the proper clothes, our bills are paid up, and we have reliable transportation.” But she also acknowledges that their financial health is a big factor affecting their ability to think about the unpredictable impacts of climate change.
“Money is the real stress factor,” she says. “That’s why I’m trying to pull more hours at work, and I’m trying to come up with different business ideas. So that I can have that money just in case. If we did get in a bad way, the power went out, or we didn’t have food, I could pay for those things or go to the grocery store really quickly.”
Planning for weather disasters has put a double strain on Alizha’s financial dreams. Not only is she diverting money that could go into savings toward preparing for unpredictable weather, but, as a result, she’s also having to reduce already scant resources for her family. In particular, Alizha feels this when dealing with power outages. “With the power out, you literally lose everything you spent your money on trying to prepare for that storm: groceries gone bad, lost work hours, and damage to your property." She’s glad to have money on hand for weather-related events, but also feels that this fund could be put to more urgent use on her family’s financial priorities.
Financial health at all costs
Alizha is driven by her dream of achieving financial well-being, so much so, that her idea of fun is “coming up with more ways to bring in income.” She works part time at a local coffee shop and takes care of her 10-year-old son, plus she recently launched a small online business to bolster their household income. When it comes to her family’s future, Alizha is doing everything she can to create new opportunities for her son and husband: “You have so much you want to do for them that you just have to choose to lose sleep,” she explains.
SaverLife has noticed an uptick in people like Alizha taking on self-employment opportunities to improve their financial health. In 2022, we spoke with SaverLife members about their experiences with side hustles and gig work. We learned that 51% of survey respondents launched a small business to cover their living costs, while 42% of this same group used their additional income to pay for personal expenses. SaverLife members’ motivation for starting a small business or taking on a side hustle is closely intertwined with their desire to achieve financial stability and well-being.
While finding a balance between work and her personal time is important to Alizha, her idea of financial health stems from no longer having to weigh her expenses against each other when calculating her budget. She’ll know that she’s achieved financial stability when she doesn’t have to ask, “Am I going to pay my water bill today? Or am I going to buy food?”
It’s these kinds of questions, Alizha explains, that dampen her optimism for the future, especially when compounded by the looming threats of climate change. Not only does she have to prioritize her finances for the present and future, but also account for an unpredictable weather event that she might not be able to fully prepare for — or recover from.
Yet these financial realities don’t stop Alizha from taking the next steps forward on her financial health journey; she’s got her sights set on financial well-being for her whole family, and especially her son. “I’m just always trying to move up, be better,” she concludes. “That’s all you can do.”
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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