Habitat For Humanity For Housing And Build Your Financial Future

Habitat for Humanity is an excellent option if you’re looking to move your family into a new home that is affordable and cost-efficient. By having those two characteristics, you can keep your mortgage and overall monthly expenses low.

While Habitat for Humanity homes are not free and you will be expected to pay a mortgage, the program does everything it can to help stay afloat. How? By giving you classes to help improve your financial situation now and in the future.

How Habitat for Humanity’s Financial Education Classes Help Families

Before you make the move to apply for Habitat for Humanity housing by contacting your local office, know this: It’s no giveaway.

You will have to go through an application process to determine eligibility via family size, citizenship, income, and other factors. You will also have to perform many hours of “sweat equity” to help build your or another community member’s Habitat home. Last, but not least, you will have to attend counseling sessions or classes to help you become a responsible homeowner.

While the thought of attending classes may seem like a bore, they’re for your own good. Think of them as free financial education that many people would gladly pay for. Also, think of them as critical to setting up a solid foundation that you can use well into the future to minimize your chances of making mistakes with money.

When do these financial education classes start? Usually, before you even purchase your Habitat home. What topics do the courses cover? Things like:

• Checking accounts
• Savings accounts
• Money market accounts
• Loans
• Credit repair
• Estate planning
• Wills

If you don’t have a budget because you don’t know how to make one, the classes can help you see where your money is going. In doing so, you can hold onto more of it by cutting unnecessary expenses.

How long do these classes last? As with many aspects of Habitat for Humanity, that depends on your local chapter. However, some last as long as a year and a half, which means you’ll be getting an in-depth look at managing your finances.

If debt is an issue, you can learn how to tackle it, so you pay less interest and keep from ruining your credit. You can also learn saving strategies to give you extra money to pay down debt.

Beyond paying down debt, extra savings can also be used to invest and grow your money. As part of Habitat’s financial education program, you can learn investment strategies as well.

In short, Habitat not only helps you secure housing, but your financial future too. This is obviously helpful to your current situation, but you can use what you learn to teach your kids about money as well.

Although making you perform sweat equity and attend classes may seem like strict requirements for homeownership, the fact that they exist can only help you in the long run.