President's Message

Financial Literacy

By Karen Goodfriend, CPA

Last month, our chapter held its annual installation meeting and heard a presentation from guest speaker John McWilliams, former chair of CalCPA’s Financial Literacy Committee. John spoke to our chapter leadership group about CalCPA’s financial literacy initiatives and how our chapter and individual members can be involved. His message deserves sharing with our entire chapter membership.

Because I am a practitioner who specializes in financial planning, the financial literacy program has a special place in my own heart. CPAs can provide a valuable public service by sharing their financial knowledge and experience. We can make a real difference by helping students, seniors and others in our community to be more educated in personal finance.

With tax season behind us, and summer fast-approaching, you may want to consider getting involved. As of June 2008, more than 1,300 CalCPA members were signed up as financial literacy and student outreach volunteers. These volunteers are notified of financial literacy presentation opportunities with the Student Outreach Program, the Dollars & Sense Workshops, and various other opportunities.

CalCPA’s Student Outreach Program places CPAs into high school classrooms where they present a lesson in personal finance in an interactive and relevant fashion. Each presentation is designed to cover one of six financial literacy lessons within the time parameters of one class period. The lessons are from a curriculum that covers financial planning, budgeting, savings and investing, managing credit, keeping finances safe, insurance, and career pathways.

CalCPA’s Dollars & Sense program brings a panel of CPA experts to workshops hosted by legislators, community groups, schools and businesses. Each workshop consists of a presentation designed to provide tips on how the audience can better manage their money, improve savings and investment strategies and save on taxes. A Q&A period allows participants to walk away with valuable information that meets their specific financial needs.

You may also want to work with CalCPA to initiate a program where you see an important or unique need in your community. This could be a through a school or nonprofit organization. Or perhaps you have already initiated or know of a program at a local school that could benefit from the existing programs offered by CalCPA.

For more information on these programs, or if you are interested in becoming a financial literacy volunteer, contact Crystil Turner, community outreach manager, at crystil.turner@calcpa.org or (650) 802-2494. You also can contact our Peninsula Chapter Financial Literacy Chair Laarni Von Ruden, CPA, at Laarni@lvr.netbox.com if you want to discuss ideas for initiating additional financial literacy programs locally.

—Karen Goodfriend, CPA

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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