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Tough Choices: A Marketplace Money Special

Marketplace Money airs Saturday at 10am & Monday at noon on KWGS 89.5-1

When you think "personal finance", you probably think about retirement accounts or student loans -- mostly concerns of the middle class. Middle class families have to make important financial decisions, but America's poor face the toughest choices. Figuring out how to fix your car, go without health care or feed your family on just dollars a day are some of the difficult choices facing the roughly 46 million Americans living on or below the poverty line. This weekend, join us for "Tough Choices", a Marketplace Money Wealth & Poverty Special. Host Tess Vigeland and the teams from Marketplace Money and Marketplace's Wealth & Poverty Desk join forces to explore the challenging financial choices that many Americans face. And while the picture is often bleak for those struggling to get by, there are some hopeful stories of people who are taking the steps to improve their economic situations.

The program will introduce you to people like Halima Tinson and Rickey Ricardo, who feed a family of six on just twenty dollars a day. Or Clifford Fleischbein, an IT consultant whose family went from making $250,000 a year to living on the edge of poverty. Or eighteen-year-old Bertin Solis who spent his childhood doing landscape work with his father, and recently faced the choice of continuing to support his family or leaving them with one less income by pursuing his college education.

 

Tess also explores the psychology of making tough financial choices, Wealth & Poverty reporter Shereen Marsiol Meraji looks at the barriers to owning and maintaining a legal vehicle and Tom Fudge hits the streets of San Diego to find out what the rich and poor really think of each other.