Americans are on a collision course with financial disaster. Forty-three percent of Americans spend $1.22 for every $1.00 they earn. In 2005, over 2 million Americans filed for bankruptcy, the highest number in history. The need for CPA intervention in our nation's growing financial literacy crisis has never been greater. Our ties to the community, our specific financial expertise and our comfort level in dealing with individuals in all walks of life make CPAs ideal candidates to help our fellow citizens regain their financial health.

While many of us have individually volunteered our services, there is now a national professional effort, 360 DEGREES OF FINANCIAL LITERACY, focused on improving the financial understanding of Americans. By joining this national effort, we can work to ensure that people access the kind of financial advice that translates knowledge into behavioral change.

Since the program launched two years ago, the combined media and outreach efforts of the AICPA, state CPA societies and individual CPAs have reached over 300 million Americans. This is good news for our profession, but we need to take additional steps to have a long-lasting impact on the financial understanding of Americans.

A key feature of the 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy effort is its emphasis upon financial education as a lifelong endeavor. It focuses on common life stages that trigger financial issues, from childhood to retirement. This approach provides CPAs with an opportunity to help consumers focus on their particular financial issues at pivotal moments in their lives. A variety of resources are available for CPAs to use in volunteer efforts, including a consumer Web site and a resource center for CPAs, featuring a free CPE course and toolkits with speeches, PowerPoint presentations and handouts for delivering community programs.

People need CPAs to help them build and maintain small businesses, to plan for a secure retirement, to protect what they currently have. They need advisors to help them strategize, analyze and clear through the clutter of financial messages bombarding them on a daily basis. Mostly, they need the trusted CPA to help them achieve a much less definable, but most important goal of financial literacy: financial well-being.

I invite every CPA in this country to join the cause of 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy. There are millions of Americans who need our help. Together, we can make a difference.

Written by Carl R. George, Chair of the National CPA Financial Literacy Commission and the CEO of Clifton Gunderson LLP.

360 Degrees of Financial Literacy is a national effort of the CPA profession to improve the financial understanding of Americans across the country. It provides a comprehensive approach to financial education, focusing on the information that people need at each stage of their lives from childhood to retirement. For more information, click here to visit our consumer website. For resources for CPAs, click here.

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