San Francisco: Home to Rice-A-Roni and Free Bank Accounts

You don't always have to be a mobster to stash your savings under the mattress. While this previous tactic held its advantages, when random guests needed a place to crash, “sleeping with one eye open” brought on a whole new meaning. All jokes aside, many families throughout our nation are literally living “paycheck to paycheck.” For this reason, the city of San Francisco, California, along with several other financial institutions launched the campaign Bank on San Francisco.

The city’s initiative highlights one main focus: granting citizens access to bank accounts and financial education. When the pilot began in September 2006, over 50,000 unbanked households existed in the city. After only two years, more than half of those households had signed up for accounts.

The primary reason for the lack of household checking accounts was that many of the families lacked government-issued U.S. IDs. Under the Bank on San Francisco program, however, the seventeen participating banks and credit unions must accept Mexican and Guatemalan IDs. Now, people have the opportunity to keep their money in a safe place instead of having to use check-cashing services that often usurped more than 5% of their net income each year!

The program also offers money-management training which helps its participants to spend and invest their money wisely, in addition to granting them access to professionals who can help them get out of debt or plan ahead. Free classes and seminars are also available to those who are enrolled in the program.

Bank on San Francisco has become such a success that Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill to expand the program statewide in California. With it’s tenacious social service programs available to its citizens, the city of San Francisco is paving a way to equality one bank account at a time. In doing so, it has not only created a unique opportunity for its citizens, it’s shifting social responsibility to a more local-friendly level, which we think deserves an ‘A’ credit rating. Have YOU helped save the world today?






For more information, visit: www.fastcompany.com, bankonsf.org

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