(gentle music) - There are a lot of financial advisors selling products that supposedly meets your need.

But the great thing about the Financial Empowerment Center is that we don't have anything to sell.

My name is Erin Akery.

I am the Senior Manager at the Financial Empowerment Center.

The Financial Empowerment Center provides one-on-one, free financial counseling, and we are a program of the Mayor's Office and we're implemented by United Way.

So it's a public-private partnership.

And what we do is pretty much anything related to personal finance, we help our clients with.

Primarily, we work with folks on debt reduction, credit improvement.

We do a lot of money management work.

We work with people to make sure they have the right benefits, insurance, help people save for retirement, save for large purchases.

Kind of runs the gamut of personal finance work.

These are just things no one really understands well, because we weren't really taught how to navigate this system when we were in school, which is really something that affects everyone.

We are a pretty neutral third party, and we can look at your situation just from an outsider's perspective.

We don't have anything to gain other than you succeeding.

You won't be able to work forever.

Whether you have to stop at 50 or 80, you're gonna have to stop working.

So it's just important to kind of face that fact.

Many folks don't really know their options for saving for retirement, or they think they don't have any options for saving.

So something I hear a lot is that "I'm never gonna retire."

And the reason being, they don't have a 401k offered through their workplace.

But just because they don't have a work sponsored plan doesn't mean they can't save on their own.

We hope to meet people before they get to the end of their career so that we can encourage these alternative options for saving ahead of time.

Because the sooner you start, the more likely it is that you'll be able to retire comfortably.

(gentle music)