Q&A WITH AMY WELCH
Free Financial Fitness Kits available
Q: What's the Financial Fitness Kit?
A: It's basically a booklet, something like a large magazine — 80 pages this year — full of expert financial advice from certified public accountants on family issues, going to college, credit and debt, retirement, estate planning and mitigating the financial effects of a disaster. Also this year, the Oklahoma Society of Certified Public Accountants added a section on avoiding fraud and scams.
Q: What prompted the group to put together this kit?
A: In 2004, the American Institute of CPAs (now the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants) challenged all the state CPA associations to plan and implement financial literacy programs. As such, I joined a group that created the Oklahoma Jump$tart Coalition (OJC). In April 2005, the coalition hosted Jump$tart Your Money Week, which is now Money Smart Week, the last week of April. Well, as you can imagine, the last week of April isn’t the best time to try and get CPAs to volunteer, as many of them are taking much-needed vacations. After unsuccessful attempts to get volunteers for projects, I decided that the Oklahoma Society of CPAs had lots of brochures, pamphlets and other financial literacy materials that we could assemble in one folder and offer for free. I invited other associations to provide materials that we could include and we allowed people to go to our website, input their mailing information and we mailed them folders full of all this valuable financial information. The first year, I honestly thought we would only get about 50 or 60 requests and we ended up getting more than 100. The second year, I thought I would play it safe and estimate 300 because I didn’t want to run out of materials. We got more than 500 requests the second year. By the third year, I was working nights, weekends and Easter holidays. I was recruiting my family and friends to come help me. We finally decided to put all the information in one publication and send that out, which was infinitely easier than assembling folders of information, but it does take quite a bit of planning.
Q: How did public libraries get involved?
A: We started getting requests from groups, including libraries, and finally it dawned on us that having community partners across the state would be ideal. Soon, we started working with public libraries to simplify distribution and allow people to walk into almost any public library in Oklahoma and pick up a free Financial Fitness Kit.
Q: How are members of the Oklahoma Society of CPAs involved?
A: Our members volunteer for various committees. The Oklahoma Society of CPAs Financial Literacy Committee ultimately reviews and makes suggestions each year for content. Other committees, like the society's Taxation and Personal Financial Planning Committees, have members that volunteer to look over our existing content and make suggestions or changes. Some members contributed articles. Additionally, we pick up quite a bit of content from the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and its website, www.360financialliteracy.org.
Q: Are the kits available online?
A: Of course! Visit www.knowwhatcounts.org and a link to a PDF file will be the top link on the page.