Jubilee Center to Host Financial Workshop for Hoboken's Middle Class

Local financial planner, Jenny Wilson (pictured), will run a financial planning workshop for Hoboken residents on Saturday, Jan. 24 at the Jubilee Center, located at 601 Jackson St. in Hoboken, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. The workshop is designed for middle class residents who are looking to learn how to manage their money and plan a financial future.

“When middle class people use financial planning solutions that are designed for the wealthy, it can be like treating heart disease with insulin,” said Jenny Wilson, founder of Maple Street Financial. “The treatment doesn’t suit the malady.”

Wilson had been working in accounting for many years when she decided to move into personal finance. She had long been concerned with the troubles faced by the American middle class.

“My goal was to offer personal financial advisory services to this underserved sector. However, as I progressed through the process of CFP® certification, it became very clear to me that the middle class was more than underserved. Services were basically nonexistent. Not only are most financial products and services prohibitively expensive, financial planning itself tends to be synonymous with wealth.”

To meet what she saw as an overwhelming need to bring affordable financial planning to the middle class, Wilson spent years developing financial planning methodologies and software designed to address the unique needs of middle-income earners.

The heart of every middle class plan, she says, is cash flow maintenance, and the soul is personal values. “What middle class people care about isn’t buying a yacht, it’s providing for their families,” she said. “I’ve never had a client or student even bring up wealth-building as a topic.”

As she developed her business concept, Wilson spent the next several years teaching free classes out of her dining room and working with people at their homes. “What I ended up with is what I call ‘Values-Based Financial Planning,’ and the tools with which we build your values-based plan is a software I designed called ‘Foundations.’

The foundation of the middle class financial plan is cash flow. Whether your household income is $30,000 a year or $250,000 a year, the biggest concern for almost all middle class families is running out of cash. So we start with an in-depth examination of your personal values, priorities, and goals, and build a cash-flow based plan around them.”

One of Wilson’s biggest goals in establishing Maple Street was to make financial planning affordable on any budget. The workshops are a hands-on, eight-hour course focusing on what she calls the four pillars of the middle class financial plan: 1) Budgeting/Cash Flow Management, 2) Debt & Credit Management, 3) Managed Spending, and 4) Saving & Investing.

Wilson added that she loves working with young adults. “For the middle class, a very large part of financial planning tends to be crisis management, but if I can start working with you when you’re 22, I can do you one better and teach you crisis avoidance.”

One area she focuses heavily on is calculating how much debt and credit you should allow yourself access to. “Just because three different credit card issuers gave you a $10,000 limit or your bank offered you a $250,000 mortgage doesn’t mean you can actually afford that much credit and debt. You have to take control into your own hands, and the best time to take control of your debt is before you incur it.”

“We also spend a lot of time on time value of money concepts and calculations,” Wilson added. “TVM is especially important to young middle class people because there are two critical factors in growing money. One is time. The other is money. If you’re young and middle class, you may not have a lot of money, but you do have a lot of time. So our young people need to understand the importance of taking advantage of their time from a young age.”

Wilson will be holding a workshop on Saturday, Jan. 24 at Jubilee Center at 601 Jackson St. in Hoboken, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. For more information or to sign up, please call 201-543-9467, email info@maplestreetfin.com, or click here.