The 5 Most Interesting Statistics From Recent Financial Literacy Research
By i2c inc.
Read Time : 05 Min
In the run-up to Financial Literacy Month, a number of organizations released research about how Americans spend, save, budget, and think about money. We went through many of them and extracted a list of 5 stats that we found noteworthy.
1. 61% of US adults don’t have a budget.
Most experts agree that budgeting is a useful activity that helps people build a sound financial future. The fact that such a large percentage don’t do it is eye-opening.
Source: 2014 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey by The National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC)
2. 33% of Millennials don’t have a rainy day fund.
Again, this is something that you hear financial advisers talking about all the time. Not only do a 1/3 not have the recommended 6-12 months of expenses – they have nothing at all.
Source: FINRA Foundation Financial Capability Insights, March 2014
3. 17 states require that high school students take a personal finance course.
That’s a lot of kids who probably don’t understand how credit card debt works when they graduate high school!
Source: Council for Economic Education’s Survey of the States, 2014
4. The percentage of households that carry credit card debt has been steadily declining over the past five years – 34% in 2014 vs. 41% in 2010.
Did the Great Recession cause people to be more responsible when it comes to spending money they don’t have? Or is it that fewer young people are using credit cards today?
Source: 2014 Consumer Financial Literacy Survey by The National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC)
5. Financial literacy increases steadily with age. Only 24% of Millennials exhibit high financial literacy while this percentage increases steadily through each generation: 38% of GenXers, 48% of Boomers, and 55% of Silent Generation.
Source: FINRA Foundation Financial Capability Insights, March 2014
It’s interesting to think about what drives this. Is it experience? Responsibility? Net worth? All of these? Given the debate over the value of formal financial education, I also wonder to what extent exposure to financial education influences a person’s ability to attain the “financially literate” level (which is this study was answering more than 4 questions of a 5 question quiz correctly).
