When speaking with Ms. Yvonne Green, I heard a soft, relaxed easygoing tone in her voice. However, within a few minutes of our interaction, there was no doubt that this woman, the Director of Financial Empowerment Services at Memorial Assistance Ministries is passionate and committed to her calling.
In her capacity, Ms. Green, who has previously been a housing counselor, asset builder counselor, and who is an AmeriCorps alum, provides services that regular people can take advantage of.
She previously worked as a Director at Bank On Houston, a collaborative in Houston advocating to financial institutions to have safe banking accounts, without so many excessive fees. She was one of the first Bank On fellows with Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, which is in cities across the country and internationally, the CFE Fund is helping government leaders embed financial empowerment strategies into municipal infrastructure.
Yvonne Green is excited about helping people financially. As she speaks, she gets more and more excited and in her excitement, she mentions a man named Glenn Carter, who she encouraged to do something that he felt he couldn’t do, which was save money and get out of debt.
She told me that Mr. Carter was at a seminar she was heading and she sat with him for a time and they had a conversation with him about his own financial goals. Mr. Carter was energized to put into practice the simple tips that Ms. Green gave to him. She helped him to see that he could, indeed, achieve financial freedom.
When I asked what her advice was for meeting financial goals she simply said, “Building wealth is about the habit of saving. Even saving a penny a day. Save what you can and save coins.” Her example for saving was even more interesting. Ms. Green gave an example: just like when you go to bed at night and you watch TV, seeing all those food commercials; you wake up the next day hungry and you know what you want to eat for lunch. In the same way, envision dropping money into your bank or pennies into your savings jar at home. Building wealth/saving the money she likened to bad habits like, smoking, excessive drinking, or eating out every day. Those habits that we indulge ourselves in are the same way we should think when indulging ourselves in saving and building wealth.
I asked her what other people should do to change their way of thinking about building wealth through savings and financial freedom, just like Mr. Carter is doing. What she said was unexpected: “We may want to save, but if everyone around you is not saving, you don’t want to save.” Her answer gave me pause as I considered her words. As if that wasn’t enough, she dove into America’s premiere economic strategy― Capitalism. “We hear so much about saving to spend and not saving for our future and then we’re chastised if we spend on something that we cannot afford…”Clearly, Ms. Yvonne Green is a passionate, educated, and experienced financial empowerment advocate, whose advice, if taken truly works. Just ask Mr. Glenn Carter.
