“That was the moment it just dawned on me: Oh my god, this is really working.”

David had been asked to speak at a celebration event for EMPath’s MassLEAP program. As he stood in front of the room at Quincy Housing Authority and shared his experiences in the program, his own words struck him in a new light.

“I remember I said out loud what my credit score was, what my job position was, how much debt I had. I was thinking about it in the back of my head, and then [as I was speaking] it just dawned on me how far I had come,” David recalls. The event was somewhat of an “aha” moment for him: “It drove me even more to make the most out of my final year and a half in the program.”

David had begun the MassLEAP program – a five-year program that brought EMPath’s economic mobility coaching to residents of the Braintree, Quincy, and Watertown Housing Authorities – three and a half years prior, in 2014. He was in a different place then, he says, and had a completely different perspective on life, especially when it came to finances. He was neglecting smaller bills and focusing only on larger ones, and wasn’t paying much attention to his spending. He was racking up credit card debt and his credit score was low. With ever-larger bills piling up, the small stuff seemed increasingly less important. He says his attitude was, “This bill is small, I don’t have to pay this, I have to pay the bigger stuff.”

With support from his EMPath mentor Megan, David began seeing the benefit of small financial steps that would eventually lead him to accomplish larger goals. He began paying smaller bills on time rather than putting them off. He created a budget and strategized with Megan about how to be more strategic around his spending. Slowly, over time, his credit score began to rise.

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