"A Financial Coach is Like a Personal Trainer for Your Wallet" – Insights from the Embedded Financia

The Embedded Financial Coaching (EFC) program, a collaboration between multiple partners (Prosper Canada, West Neighborhood House, EBO, Building Up, and LogicalOutcomes), aims to empower individuals with low income by embedding financial coaching into their existing support systems. Through focus groups conducted with 19 participants in mid-2024, participants shared invaluable insights into the program’s benefits, challenges, and opportunities for improvement.

Key Findings

1.    Direct Benefits: Participants praised financial coaching for offering expertise, personalized advice, and practical strategies like budgeting, debt management, and saving. These skills translated into measurable outcomes:

• Knowledge: Improved understanding of credit scores and spending habits.
• Mindset: A shift toward long-term financial planning and exploring new income streams.
• Emotional Changes: Increased confidence, reduced anxiety, and renewed hope for the future.
• Habits/Skills: Mastery of saving, negotiating with creditors, and even the courage to open mail.

2.    Supportive Environment: A recurring theme was the importance of a non-judgmental and empathetic space. Participants valued their coaches' ability to foster trust and accountability, enabling honest self-reflection and constructive feedback.

3.    Challenges: Many found confronting their financial realities emotionally taxing, often tied to deeply ingrained beliefs and past experiences. Older participants, particularly women, highlighted difficulties in unlearning financial dependence or poverty mindsets. Social barriers, like judgment from peers for “loud budgeting” (publicly discussing frugal choices), added to the challenge.

4.    Integrated Services: For the 12 focus group participants that were part of financial coaching integrated within employment programs, they perceived it as complementary—that receiving financial coaching was a natural progression to receiving employment help. They also thought adding financial coaching to employment programs was convenient, as receiving both services at one organization eliminated the stress of having to coordinate with or travel to multiple organizations. Many recommended embedding financial coaching in all employment initiatives.

These focus group results underscore the transformative power of financial coaching. By addressing emotional and systemic barriers with sensitivity, the EFC program has empowered participants to take control of their financial futures—one budget at a time.

For more information, explore the Embedded Financial Coaching Toolkit, designed to help workforce programs and financial empowerment service providers embed financial coaches into workforce development programs. This toolkit, created in collaboration with partners, represents the first iteration of an evolving resource. We also acknowledge the pioneering efforts of US-based LISC.

This initiative was made possible through funding from JPMorgan Chase Foundation and RBC Foundation.