Financial Capability

Financial capability — built in developmentally appropriate ways — prepares young people to make financial decisions that are critical for the transition to adulthood. The Casey Foundation's Jim Casey Initiative offers two innovative, tested tools that help young people transitioning from foster care to achieve greater economic security: the financial literacy curriculum Keys to Your Financial Future and the Opportunity Passport® program. Learn about these tools to support young people in practicing the skills to save, budget, use mainstream financial products, build credit and acquire assets.

Featured Resources

Keys to Your Financial Future
This comprehensive curriculum helps young people ages 16 to 26 who are — or will soon be — facing adult responsibilities build the financial skills they need and empowers them to make informed financial decisions.

Opportunity Passport
Learning financial capability during young adulthood can help ingrain habits of saving, money management and mainstream banking for a lifetime and build a pathway out of poverty. The Opportunity Passport helps young people improve their financial capability when transitioning from foster care or navigating other youth-serving systems. Resources include:

• The Opportunity Passport: A Pathway to Economic Security for Youth in Foster Care
  This document delves into what the Opportunity Passport program is, the success rates when the program has been implemented and how to potentially scale it.
• Building Financial Capability for Youth Transitioning From Foster Care
  This report — published 13 years after the Opportunity Passport was launched — provides readers with participant survey results, strategies for expanding the program framework and how policy makers can help strengthen financial literacy and experiences among youth in foster care.
• Youth and Credit: Protecting the Credit of Youth in Foster Care
  This guide provides a step by step process for adults working with young people in foster care to implement the credit check requirement authorized through federal legislation in 2011.
• The Opportunity Passport: Building Assets for Youth Aging out of Foster Care
  This report shares select statistics and stories from the program’s first five years.
• Enduring Assets: The Financial Lives of Young People Transitioning From Foster Care
  This report examines the financial habits, perspectives, struggles and success of program participants.

The Economic Well-Being of Youth Transitioning From Foster Care
This research brief examines employment data from Opportunity Passport participants who were at least 16 years old and completed at least three surveys since 2008.