Prince and Karen Davis
“It’s important to save and pay yourself first...Prince and I have had times where it’s been rough—not paying our bills and finding ourselves short. We don’t have that problem any more and won’t have it again.”
- Karen Davis
The CAAB flyer that Karen Davis ’s co-worker gave her sat on her desk for several months. “I looked at the flyer and saw that if you’re engaged you can get this money, but I didn’t believe it,” Davis recalls. “It seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch.”
But when she finally called CAAB to learn more about the Marriage Development Account for engaged or married couples, she learned that the only requirements for enrolling in the program were DC residency, a combined income below a certain threshold, and a willingness to save.
An energy program specialist for DC government, Karen wanted to enroll in an MDA to help her then-fiance, Prince Davis, pay for school. Davis had returned from two tours of duty in Iraq with the Marines and had just begun studying for his undergraduate degree in health care administration from Howard University when the couple connected with CAAB. Prince aspires to a career in nursing home administration because he was “raised by my grandmother and always been around people older than me. I felt the elderly population was being neglected and I could make a change.”
Karen and Prince signed up for an MDA last June, then started the saving program in September. “We were trying to save enough for Prince’s tuition as soon as possible,” Karen says, “so whenever we had extra money we’d put it in there. We budgeted $50 a month, but most of the time we ended up putting in more than that. We have about $2,300 left to save.” Timing for Karen and Prince was critical—because Prince can afford to take classes this summer, he will continue to receive benefits from the GI Bill, and will graduate in May 2009.
Participating in CAAB’s money management classes this year has proved invaluable for the couple, who got married in March. In addition to Prince’s school bills, they also have to budget money for day care for their one-year-old son, PJ.
The most helpful lesson she learned in CAAB classes, Karen says, was about credit reporting. “I understand now the different things that hurt and don’t hurt your credit. Saving I already knew about. But I missed one session and my husband came home talking about saving money for a new car!”
Prince agrees that CAAB has helped him with credit issues as well. “I have some problems with my credit and I’ve been trying to clean it up. The class taught me how to clean it up. We also learned about the importance of saving for emergency funds. Now we have an emergency fund. We have a written budget that we go by every month.”
“We wrote out a plan,” Karen explains. “trying to get enough in emergency savings to cover our bills. We planned for $2,000 by the end of the year. We learned how to budget our money and after just a few months we’re almost halfway there.”
According to Karen, having a written plan helped the couple transform their habits. “The biggest thing was not spending money we didn’t have,” she says. “And not going out to eat much. We have a set amount you buy clothes with, instead of spending money and not knowing where it’s going. We were surprised how much we’d been spending without realizing it. Snacks here and there add up.”
“It’s important to save and pay yourself first,” Karen says. “Prince and I have had times where it’s been rough—not paying our bills and finding ourselves short. We don’t have that problem any more and won’t have it again.”
Prince encourages others to learn what he and Karen have learned. “Attend the financial planning classes, and take them seriously. A lot of times these classes are offered. If you don’t pay attention you’ll miss a lot of important things. Go home and implement what you learned immediately. Then the results are almost immediate.”
