Spreading Financial Literacy in the Brazos Valley

By Kay Dobbins

On May 20th, I volunteered to present Budgeting 101 to a group of residents of the Bryan Housing Authority. (BHA)  Avery Roth from the TSCPA provided me with a PowerPoint presentation which I customized to fit this audience made up of low-income women.  Marilyn Johnson, BHA's Service Coordinator, had contacted the TSCPA and requested this presentation.  She provided a good budget worksheet and assigned this worksheet as homework to the participants.  I am actually scheduled to return to BHA on June 9th in a follow up visit. 

This is a valuable service for our Chapter to offer to our local community and is in line with the TSCPA's goal of promoting financial literacy.  Since it's unlikely that these participants will ever need our professional services, we CPA's may not derive any direct financial benefit from this type of activity. However,  teaching financial management principles to these women might be the beginning of a process for them in breaking the chains of poverty that hold multiple generations of families in financial bondage.