Intuit’s ongoing commitment to financial literacy

Financial Literacy Month is celebrated during the month of April as an effort to bring awareness to the benefits of gaining and maintaining healthy financial habits and teaching people how to improve their understanding of many common financial issues. 

The World Economic Forum named financial literacy as one of the top durable skills every student critically needs to succeed to be prepared for jobs of the future. However, students are finishing school without these critical skills, particularly students of color and those living in low-income households, creating unequal disadvantages that can affect their well-being for years to come. Many employers agree, with 70% saying recent graduates don’t have the durable skills, like financial literacy, problem solving, communication, leadership and collaboration, needed to be job ready and thrive in today’s job market. 

This lack of preparation is one of the contributors to why closing the racial wealth gap is greater today than it was at the start of the century. According to the 2021 State of Financial Education Report from Next Gen Personal Finance, personal finance education is not made equally accessible, let alone guaranteed, for all students causing more challenges to overcome economic mobility. 

• In schools with a 75%+ Black and Brown student population, only 1 in 14 students were guaranteed to take a standalone personal finance course prior to graduation.
• In schools with 75%+ Free and Reduced Lunch eligibility, only 1 in 13 students were guaranteed to take a standalone personal finance course prior to graduation.
• 17.4% of high school students in rural locales were guaranteed to take a standalone personal finance course.
• 12.1% of high school students in suburb + town locales were guaranteed to take a standalone personal finance course.
• 8.6% of high school students in city locales were guaranteed to take a standalone personal finance course.

While federal and state legislation can help drive an increase in access, partnering with the private sector can accelerate that access so that all students have equal opportunity to enter the workforce better prepared and begin better managing their financial lives.

Bringing real-world financial literacy tools into classrooms

At Intuit, the work to achieve our mission of powering prosperity around the world goes beyond our products. As a key part of our corporate responsibility focus, we’re helping students develop their financial literacy through Intuit’s job readiness program, gaining the personal finance skills needed to succeed in their future jobs. We are committed to the goal of better preparing 5 million students for jobs by the year 2025, and we’re well on our way with more than 510,000 students and educators having already gone through our program. 

Our Intuit Financial Literacy Foundations online course helps students get introduced to the foundations of personal finance, and includes personal hands-on simulations of TurboTax, and QuickBooks, to help students build confidence and develop smart money habits and skills:

• The TurboTax simulation, offered in both English and Spanish, teaches tax basics, gig-economy, tax education credits, crypto and investing. Students are able to build confidence to remove the fear of tax day forever. Since launching in November 2021, more than 400,000 students are using the Intuit TurboTax simulation. 
• QuickBooks Online resources use Intuit’s cloud accounting software, allowing students to simulate running a small business. In addition, students can begin building their resume early with the Intuit QuickBooks Certified User exam, which validates student knowledge and proficiency of Intuit QuickBooks and general computing skills. More than 97,000 students are currently enrolled to use Intuit QuickBooks.

Our simulations go beyond simply helping students build better financial knowledge by teaching them how to learn, grow and apply healthy habits through the use of real-world application and experience.

Intuit’s Prosperity Hub School Districts

Intuit is committed to using our products, unique expertise and scale to have a positive impact on underserved communities around the world. We do this by investing in people and helping them meet the challenges they face—because when people thrive, their communities thrive, and we all prosper.

Our Prosperity Hub School District helps develop the next generation of students with access to Intuit’s job readiness programs and teacher professional development, as well as programs from our strategic partners, to school districts that are most in need. In addition to free online classes, focusing on specific school districts in key areas is a crucial factor to help pave the path forward to future success by helping address the inequalities in today’s classrooms.

The program now includes 21 school districts across nine countries with a combined enrollment of more than 1.6 million students.

• Students are provided access to free courses, content, competitions, and classroom mentors to help them build the durable skills needed to compete for jobs. 
• Teachers are provided access to professional development to gain experience and confidence in teaching skills such as entrepreneurship and personal finance.
• Administrators are provided access to training on the same methodologies used by the most innovative companies to address their most significant challenges and create a more effective learning environment.

Continuing our investment

Beyond school districts, Intuit continues to expand our programs to drive accessibility to broader audiences. We are the founding corporate partner of the Congressional Award Foundation’s (CAF) Diversity & Inclusion Initiative, resulting in an online Financial Literacy Program to support promoting financial health for students of diverse economic and social backgrounds. The program helps young people take ownership of their financial futures through education, real-life applications and giving back to their community by volunteering.

In its second year, our #LeadingConEducación Program helps to empower the next generation of Latinx students through their personal finance journey, with educational content, including webinars and hands-on experience through our TurboTax simulation (available in both Spanish and English). We also help students become the next generation of Latino professionals by providing an opportunity for high school and college students to obtain educational grants and scholarships to help complete their higher education. So far, we’ve awarded $2,500 scholarships to over 60 students. 

Building a brighter future by supporting financial literacy

In honor of Financial Literacy Month, we’ll be highlighting content across our brands. From tips to build confidence in managing personal finances to sharing insights and tools for small business owners, we’re here to help students, educators, small business owners and consumers build healthy habits that can lead to lifelong financial success. 

For more information about Intuit’s Job Readiness programs and our Prosperity Hub School Districts, please visit our Financial Literacy Month resource page or the Intuit Job Readiness page.