One common complaint about high school curricula is that it is rarely applicable to the real world, with materials and examples used in the classroom not matching situations found in the adult world. Fortunately, financial services company Intuit is partnering with the Suh Family Foundation to help high school students on the West Coast learn more about personal financial literacy. As the producer of popular software TurboTax and QuickBooks, Intuit’s expertise in finance will provide real-world examples and software that can help teens see the real tools adults use to manage their personal and business finances.
About the Suh Family Foundation
NFL player Ndamukong Suh founded a nonprofit with his wife, Katya, to provide youth with education and empowerment tools, especially financial literacy education. With help from Intuit, the Foundation will put on in-person seminars in high schools in Los Angeles, Inglewood, Compton, Oakland, San Francisco, and Dallas. Suh has been helping students improve their financial literacy since 2021, when he partnered with fellow professional football player Brennan Scarlet to boost the financial literacy of high school teens in Portland, Oregon. This initial effort, in partnership with financial literacy nonprofit Stash101, directly helped 160 selected students in the district.
Since then, Suh has continued championing financial literacy through his podcast, Business Casual. As a professional athlete, he speaks on firsthand knowledge of the struggles that come from suddenly having to learn to manage significant amounts of money. Without solid education in financial literacy, many professional athletes make expensive mistakes that can dwindle their fortunes and even lead to bankruptcy.
About Intuit
Intuit is a major financial services company, with over 56 million Americans using TurboTax to file their income taxes in 2021. Many small businesses use its QuickBooks resources, and many budgeters use its Mint software to track all their accounts and expenditures. To help teachers around the country, Intuit offers a cost-free Financial Literacy Foundations course. The course includes financial basics, preparing for college expenses, and how to get a job. There is even a module on how to start a small business!
In addition to its Financial Literacy Foundations course, Intuit offers a TurboTax simulation to help teach teens about filing their taxes. This simulation is run through EVERFI, providing financial education to high school students. Similarly, Intuit offers its Mint budgeting platform to teach students about budgeting. Students can use four fictional characters to help develop an optimal budget and determine the best mix of savings and credit card accounts. Through these two popular programs, students can see what financial literacy will actually look like as an adult with a steady income, improving classroom engagement.
Using popular platforms will hold students’ attention far better than the worksheets of yesteryear, or the blank spreadsheets of today. It will also allow students to engage with their parents and other adults about personal finance, many of whom likely use TurboTax, QuickBooks, or Mint. Knowing how to use these platforms will even allow teens to actively budget with their parents, using the platform in real-time to add expenditures and compare options.