DJ Hampton, President and CEO of Trident United Way
August 3, 2026
One of the first lessons you learn running a successful organization is that an income statement and a cash flow statement tell two different stories. At Trident United Way, we watch both. An organization can report millions in revenue and still struggle if there is not enough cash to make payroll or pay the electric bill. Revenue tells you how much money came in. Cash flow tells you whether you can keep the doors open.
I think we’ve made the same mistake with families.
Too often we look at a household’s annual income and assume we understand its financial health. We see a salary and think, “They’re doing okay.” But families do not live on annual income. They live on what is left after rent, child care, groceries, insurance, transportation and everything else that keeps life moving.
Put simply: what matters is not what comes in. It is what is left over.
A recent article in The Post and Courier puts that into perspective. In the Charleston region, a single person earning $65,800 a year is now considered low income for many housing assistance programs. A few years ago, many people would have called that a middle-class income. Today, it may qualify someone for help because the cost of living has changed that much.
That should make all of us stop for a minute.
Bloomberg recently reported that hardship withdrawals from 401(k) retirement accounts continue to rise. People are not pulling money out to buy something they want. They are trying to stay in their homes, pay medical bills or keep up with everyday expenses.
Those headlines are telling the same story: working families are paying today’s bills with tomorrow’s retirement.
Over the past several years, I have sat with parents who apologized for asking for help because they both had jobs. They believed someone else deserved assistance more than they did. They were working hard, doing everything they thought they were supposed to do, and still could not make the math work at the end of the month.
That is the part of this conversation we often miss.
By the time someone reaches into a retirement account, they have usually exhausted every other option. The emergency savings are gone. Credit cards are carrying balances. Friends and family have already helped when they could. A hardship withdrawal is rarely the first decision. It is one of the last.
That is the reality we see every day among ALICE households: families who are Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. They are working. They are contributing to our economy. Yet many are one unexpected expense away from falling behind.
A family can look financially stable on paper while quietly putting groceries on a credit card, postponing a doctor’s appointment or hoping the car makes it one more month. They are not making reckless decisions. They are making difficult, and sometimes impossible, ones.
Most financial crises do not begin with one catastrophic event. They begin when there is no cushion left. A transmission fails. Hours are reduced at work. A child gets sick. The air conditioner quits during a Charleston summer. Any one of those can push a family from getting by to falling behind.
That is why I believe so strongly in Family Coaching.
Families rarely need someone to tell them to work harder. They are already doing that. What they often need is someone who can help them make a plan, connect them with the right resources and stay with them long enough to see that plan through.
Just as important is where that support happens.
Families should not have to tell the same story five different times to five different organizations while trying to hold down a job and raise their children. Through our Thrive@ initiative and Family Coaching model, we bring that support into places people already trust, including workplaces, schools, libraries, housing communities, faith communities and military settings.
Sometimes that means helping someone build a budget. Sometimes it means improving credit or preparing for an unexpected expense. Sometimes it simply means having someone in your corner before a setback becomes a crisis.
If we want to understand what families are facing today, we have to stop looking only at income.
Families do not pay their bills with annual income. They pay them with cash flow.