A new Boston financial study is giving a select group of young local workers the opportunity to shout: “Show me the money!”
The study, led by the city-sponsored Bank on Boston initiative — along with partners at Northeastern University and Harvard Business School, among others — is giving 15 lucky members of a summer youth employment program up to $1,000 to invest in a Roth IRA.
The experiment will follow the grant recipients, aged 18 and older, with monthly updates on their investment progress and other ways it has inspired their financial behavior, according to a local NBC 10 Boston report.
It was inspired by longtime Wall Street Journal financial writer Jonathan Clements, who was diagnosed with a terminal illness in 2024 and donated funds to help create an initiative to educate young people — especially those from low-income families — about money.
“Jonathan Clements had a very specific vision to make saving and investing accessible to all young people, not just those from middle- and upper-class backgrounds,” Alicia Modestino, Director of the Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy and part of the team involved in launching this study, told Moneywise. “This program specifically targets low-income young adults who are ten times less likely to open a Roth IRA account compared to their more affluent peers.”
