Jean Chatzky, financial editor for NBC's Today Show and author, will highlight the Cornerstone Credit Union Foundation's FOCUS Summit at the Doubletree Galleria Hotel in Dallas on Feb. 6-7.

The two-day event brings together credit union professionals, financial education advocates, community leaders and school officials to share ideas and best practices on removing the barriers to household savings, asset building and empowering consumers to become better managers of their personal finances.

A report from the Corporation for Enterprise Development in Washington finds that 49.8% of Texas households are in a persistent state of financial insecurity. What's more, and the number of households that have little or no savings to cover emergencies or to start building a better life has barely budged from last year's 49.5%. CFED is a national non-profit organization dedicated to financially empowering low-and moderate-income families. Chatzky will focus her discussion on money – "how to get it, how to keep it, how to invest it, and how to make peace with it," according to the CCUF of Farmers Branch. The summit will also feature a "life simulation" exercise in which participants will assume the role of a family living in poverty that is struggling to make ends meet. Some families are newly unemployed, some are homeless, and others are senior citizens living on disability payments or raising grandchildren.