This booklet, Pathways to Getting Ahead, is about making choices that can move you along the path toward the economic future you want for yourself. It's also about increasing the chances that you attain the future you choose to seek. Making the best choices and increasing your chances aren't easy. So you need to know what pathways lead from where you are to where you want to be. You need to know about ways to get on the path you pick, how to stay on it, and how to move ahead on it. This booklet offers you that kind of information.

This information is about "assets" you can build. Assets are the capacities and resources that people need to succeed in today's economy. They include the following:

    * Knowledge, skills, and experience that you need to get a job and move up.

    * Jobs and the benefits they give you beyond that very important paycheck, and also resources that boost your income when your earnings fall short or jobs aren't available.

    * Financial resources, such as money in the bank or other kinds of savings and investments such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. These resources can get you through a personal emergency or crisis, help you become a home owner, start a business, pay your way through school, or make life in your later years that much more comfortable.

In many ways, having a real chance at success is about what you can and should do for yourself in each of these key asset areas. But, people usually do not build assets by their own efforts only. People know that they need to join together, as a community, to provide help for one another in different kinds of ways.

For example, they participate in local community and neighborhood organizations to build a safer and more livable and prosperous community. They also act as responsible citizens by educating themselves and thinking about public policies that can make a difference.

As you will see, the larger community provides many of the resources that can help you move along your path. As much as we have already done as a community, there is more that we can do to help one another succeed.

Visit Pathways to Getting Ahead Website

Joint Project of
Public and Community Affairs Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
and Asset Development Institute, Brandeis University

Table of Contents:
Introduction
What you can learn from this booklet 1
How to use this booklet 1
Moving ahead 2
Knowledge and Skills: Where the Path Begins 3
Starting with basic education 4
Getting the knowledge and skills to advance 4
Exploring your choices for assistance to pay for college 6
Staying on the career ladder and moving up 8
Applying what you know to starting your own business 9
Jobs Plus: A Path to More Than a Paycheck 11
Finding a job and the benefits that go with it 11
Making the most of what your job offers 12
Gaining other benefits based on employment 14
Getting by when your earnings are limited 16
Managing your money 19
Savings and Investments: Advancing Along the Path 22
Starting simple: Saving 23
Saving for the long haul: Investing in a home 26
Saving for the long haul: Investing in other ways 29
Managing savings and investments wisely 32
Links to Informational Web Sites 33
Sources of Statistical Data 39
About the Center and ADI & About the FRB of Boston 40

Download Pathways to Getting Ahead

PDF format, 882KB, 48Pages.

About the Center on Hunger and Poverty and Asset Development Institute
The Center on Hunger and Poverty promotes policies that improve the lives and developmental capacities of low-income children and families in the nation. Established in 1990, the Center conducts applied research and policy analysis, disseminates analytic information on poverty and hunger, carries out public education initiatives, and provides assistance on poverty and hunger-related issues to policy makers and organizations across the country. The Center's programs are carried out through the Asset Development Institute and the Food Security Institute.

The Asset Development Institute (ADI) was established in 1999 by the Center on Hunger and Poverty to promote and advance a new domestic policy framework. ADI's work grows out of the Center's longstanding leadership role in promoting new policy choices to reduce hunger and poverty in the nation by addressing their root causes. Its mission is to broaden and refine the asset development concept; familiarize the public, the media, and state and national policy leaders with an asset development policy approach to ending poverty; analyze and promote the most compelling policies for building assets that can serve as a model for state and federal policy development; and support diverse constituencies in advancing asset-based policies and programs.

The Center on Hunger and Poverty and the Asset Development Institute are a part of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

About the Community Affairs Unit of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks maintains a Community Affairs office to work with depository institutions and the public to identify local credit needs and develop innovative ways to address those needs.

The Community Affairs staff provides information about successful initiatives and programs for community reinvestment, small business lending, affordable housing finance, and rural and economic development issues. The Community Affairs Office is a resource for the Community Reinvestment Act, technical assistance and regulatory guidance to community-based organizations, government entities and others engaged in community and economic development efforts.

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