Tulsa Celebrates Opening Of Financial Empowerment Center

Tulsa city leaders are celebrating the opening of a center to help people improve their financial lives. Mayor G.T. Bynum said every Tulsan deserves the ability to be financially resilient and able to thrive financially.

Tulsa's leaders said they're looking forward to what they believe will have a big impact on the financial futures of many Tulsans. This center will give one-on-one help with financial counselors for those who need it.

For the last few years, city leaders have been continuing work with their "Resilient Tulsa" roadmap. It's a strategy that outlines four goals to create more opportunities for all Tulsans. The city is partnering with Goodwill Industries to make it happen.

"The idea is to build a rapport, and the idea is to build outcomes,” Modi Kwanza with Goodwill said. “We want to see some change, we want to see some things happen, that's going to take some time, and that means multiple sessions. That's really what we're going to focus on, what we want to see is folks coming back.”

The city said because of the pandemic, the center will start out by helping people virtually. They said they can connect you to public benefits, show you how to work with creditors for student loans and credit card companies, help reduce debt and improve credit, build savings, budget, and more.

"This is available for everybody, and once people start to feel stress points, that's the time to go for help. Don't until it gets bad if you can, but when things start to feel like they're not working out," Jonathan Mintz with the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund said.

Those in charge said the advice could help you overcome COVID-19 struggles, but they really believe it'll help Tulsans further into the future

"It could be maybe you didn't get hit as hard as some others did through the pandemic, but you saw enough of what happened to other people that sparked something for you to say, 'Maybe I need to do some planning, maybe I need to get some things in place," Kwanza said.

You can find more information on how to set up an appointment with the center here.