AFT Launches Financial Empowerment Partnership with Tiffany ‘The Budgetnista’ Aliche as Part of Fight for Affordability Campaign

WASHINGTON-The AFT today announced a partnership with financial educator Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche, the New York Times bestselling author and one of the most trusted voices in personal finance, as part of the union's Fight for Affordability campaign. Aliche, a former preschool teacher, will headline a new series of member-facing financial education videos and lend her expertise to a financial empowerment toolkit being distributed to AFT members nationwide. The AFT announced this partnership at its 89th biennial convention in Washington, D.C.

The partnership comes as the AFT's own data shows a membership under crushing financial pressure. In a survey of more than 7,500 AFT members conducted with Protect Borrowers, nearly three-quarters of respondents reported living month to month, and 40 percent said they cannot afford all of their monthly bills. Fifty-nine percent named costs rising faster than wages as the single biggest obstacle to their financial security. More than half said their financial situation had worsened over the past year.

These are teachers, nurses, higher education faculty and public employees who are using credit cards to buy groceries, using "buy now, pay later" products to pay rent, and standing in food pantry lines while working full time.

"Our members are up against an economy that has been rigged against them-hospitals that sue their own patients, credit bureaus that destroy workers' finances with a typo, and payday lenders that make a windfall when borrowers fall behind," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "Tiffany Aliche started out as a preschool teacher, and she knows that working people are struggling because of the cost of living, not the cost of a latte. She tells them the truth, and she gives them a plan. That's exactly the partner we want in this fight."

"I started teaching financial education because I watched my own community get exploited by predatory systems that were built to take advantage of them," said Aliche. "Educators, nurses and public service workers show up every day for everyone else. They deserve more than shame and a budgeting app. They deserve real information, real tools, and a union with the power to go after the companies profiting off their stress. I'm proud to be part of this."

Through the partnership, the AFT will release a series of short videos with Aliche covering the financial products and systems members are struggling with most-credit reporting, medical debt, credit cards, debt collection, "buy now, pay later" and payday products, and scams. The videos will be paired with a financial empowerment toolkit, member clinics run by trained local leaders, and train-the-trainer programming so that locals can run this work in their own communities.

The AFT's Fight for Affordability campaign, launched in partnership with Protect Borrowers, applies the model the AFT built over more than a decade of student debt work-clinics, toolkits, direct member assistance and legal advocacy efforts that have helped members access billions of dollars in loan forgiveness-to the full range of financial products squeezing working families.

Members will be able to find the toolkit, clinic schedule and full video series at aft.org/affordability. New materials are released monthly.

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Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche is an award-winning financial educator and the author of the New York Times bestseller Get Good with Money. A former preschool teacher, she has taught more than 1 million women worldwide through her Live Richer Challenge and was instrumental in the passage of New Jersey's law requiring financial education in middle schools.

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The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.