Poor financial advice, habits hurt many Hispanics

By TAL ABBADY | South Florida Sun-Sentinel

She's had to take a second job as a maid. To save on gas, she rarely drives her car. And she stands to lose her home.

As a lifetime of hard work crumbles under one bad financial decision after another, Alicia Suarez wishes she and her husband had sought better advice.

"By the time we realized we had no money saved in the bank, we were at rock-bottom," said Suarez, 52, of West Palm Beach, Fla.

Suarez's plight is shared by millions of Hispanics and blacks who have suffered critical setbacks in a shrinking economy, according to recent data from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

Debt-counseling services are scarce in low-income neighborhoods, and many financially strapped black families often don't know where to turn for help, according to Emanuel Ridgeway, chief financial officer of the Urban League of Palm Beach County.

"You have a lot of single mothers who live paycheck to paycheck," said Ridgeway, whose agency offers debt management counseling, particularly for first-time homeowners. "Many of them just don't know how to save and put away for a rainy day. There's a lack of resources and education out there."

Among Hispanics, a widespread mistrust of financial institutions in some immigrant communities and the tendency to rely on an informal network of friends and advisors for financial guidance has led many to the brink of ruin.

"They are one flat-tire or emergency-room visit away from disaster," said Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

Suarez, a Colombian native, said she and her husband quickly built a solid, middle-class existence when they moved to the U.S. five years ago. She got a job in the marketing department of a company that sells health products and he found work as an electrician. They had all the measuring sticks of success: a comfortable, two-bedroom home, two cars and two children assimilating well in school.

But after refinancing their mortgage, spending more money than they had and maxing out their credit cards, the family will likely lose their greatest asset, their home, to a short sale. Suarez said her husband's hours were reduced while gas and food prices rose, worsening their predicament. But she emphasized that irresponsible spending, acquiring four credit cards they didn't need and listening to the advice of friends put her family in a bind.

"We didn't educate ourselves. We simply went to friends who said, 'Refinance your home. It'll give you the power to buy things.' That's true of many people in my community. We're not getting organized and going to a professional for help," she said.

Javier Roca, director of ProColombia Unida, a group that guides immigrants in South Florida through the citizenship application process, said his agency is struggling to meet the growing demands of Hispanics there who need financial advice.

"A lot of people are considering bankruptcy. They simply don't know what to do," he said

In recent years, Freddie Mac and other institutions have partnered with Hispanic organizations around the country to launch bilingual credit education programs. But information about personal finance is not always readily available to new waves of immigrants, for whom the first point of contact in the U.S. are often small, grass-roots groups like ProColombia Unida.

Fabio Andrade, head of the Americas Community Center in Weston, Fla., said his organization, which provides services to immigrants in Broward County, will likely make financial counseling a regular part of its services. The agency caters to many white-collar Venezuelan and Colombian professionals.

"You have a lot of people in our community who wanted to keep up a certain social status," he said. "That meant getting the new car, the bigger house they couldn't afford. Now they're living day to day."