I don’t think we can say that financial literacy education doesn’t work based on a single set of data. Nor can we blame all of this drop on education. As you describe, many factors are at play.
We’ve got to fully accept that it is critical that all citizens have basic financial literacy – starting with the time value of money! We’ve not been systematically teaching that and industry has good reason to hope folks don’t understand it. Since it appears that everyone is responsible for our own retirement funding, we’ve got to ensure everyone understands and can see a path to their own financial security. If we don’t, those who do will have to give up even more resources to take care of those starving in old age. Everyone has a stake in how this works out and we can’t just say you’re responsible and do nothing to teach people how to handle that responsibility. Too many people view this as an impossible achievement that’s not worthy of their focus since they can’t achieve it anyway. This must change.
I don’t think we can say that financial literacy education doesn’t work based on a single set of data. Nor can we blame all of this drop on education. As you describe, many factors are at play.
We’ve got to fully accept that it is critical that all citizens have basic financial literacy – starting with the time value of money! We’ve not been systematically teaching that and industry has good reason to hope folks don’t understand it. Since it appears that everyone is responsible for our own retirement funding, we’ve got to ensure everyone understands and can see a path to their own financial security. If we don’t, those who do will have to give up even more resources to take care of those starving in old age. Everyone has a stake in how this works out and we can’t just say you’re responsible and do nothing to teach people how to handle that responsibility. Too many people view this as an impossible achievement that’s not worthy of their focus since they can’t achieve it anyway. This must change.