Financial Literacy In The United States Is Stagnant At The Generally Low Levels That Existed Eight Years Ago

 I recently viewed a report indicating that Gen Z scored the lowest on a series of financial literacy questions, answering only 38% correctly.

Financial Literacy and Retirement Fluency in America - 2025.

Sounds rough, but if you put it in perspective, most Gen Zs are in their early 20s. Of course baby boomers will know more about money - they've been through all the cycles and they're in or approaching retirement.

 Baby boomers have seen inflation, recessions, market rallies, wars, bubbles bursting and financial crises up close. I'm willing to bet their edge is less knowledge, and more mileage.

But they still only answered 55% of the retirement-specific questions right... so even with all this mileage, they're still not immune from gaps in money smarts.

The two stats that really stood out to me:

1. Financial literacy has shown no improvement over the past eight years. As a country, we're flatlining.

2. One of the topics everyone seemed to struggle with was RISK.

In my opinion, the biggest mistake young people make with their money is not taking enough RISK.

How do you take risk? You invest! Any student of mine will remember the Ben Franklin example (I hope!).

If Ben Franklin's parents took $1, the day he was born, and put it into a savings account earning 1% interest, that dollar would be worth $24.

If Ben Franklin's parents took $1 the day he was born, and invested it, earning an 8% return, that dollar would be worth...

How do you take risk? You create something! You sell something! You offer something. You write or produce something!

But the shortcut? The easiest way?

Invest.