The long game to wealth: How Newark residents navigate evolving paths to financial health
The wealth-building journey is rarely a straight path, as reflected in the experiences of our SaverLife Newark members.
This research was funded by The Prudential Foundation. We thank them for their support and acknowledge that the findings and conclusions presented in this report are those of the author(s) alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Prudential Foundation or Prudential Financial.
Wealth building is personal
Traditional financial systems often assume people move predictably from budgeting to saving to investing. But Newark members are building wealth in more complex, adaptive ways: balancing stability, income growth, entrepreneurship, caregiving responsibilities, debt, investing, and unexpected setbacks all at once.
Through conversations with SaverLife members in Newark, New Jersey, we identified three distinct but interconnected wealth-building archetypes:
- Foundation Builders
- Opportunity Multipliers
- Capital Strategists
These archetypes aren’t stages. They’re different ways people pursue financial progress based on their goals, resources, and circumstances.
Understanding these archetypes can help practitioners, policymakers, and community organizations design better supports that reflect how people actually build wealth.
Building wealth in Newark
This report examines what wealth building looks like for SaverLife members living in Newark. By leaning into and amplifying the real-world experiences of SaverLife members living in Newark, we can examine what wealth building looks like for them. This approach helps move conversations beyond conventional notions of what it means to build wealth and opens the door to new discussions about what financial progress really looks like.
Key findings
Member stories
The stories that follow illustrate how members in Newark actually think about and navigate their financial journeys, in their own words.
