Money Smarts for Life: Fixing Financial Literacy from Age 5 to Retirement
Broadcast Retirement Network's Jeffrey Snyder discusses the latest survey findings and recommendations to improve financial education across the life cyclewith The SPARK Institute and Redwood Consulting Solutions' Snezana Zlatar
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Joining me now is Snezana Zlatar of Redwood Consulting Solutions. She also serves as the co-chair for the Spark Financial Literacy Committee.
Whoo, Snezana, I got that all out, big titles. Good morning. Good morning, it's great to see you.
We're gonna be talking about financial literacy. We just passed Financial Literacy Month, but here at the network and at Spark, financial literacy is 365 days a week. Let's talk about the recent survey results.
Your colleague and co-chair, Michael Ellison at Corporate Insight did a lot of great survey works. I wanna give him a shout out. What were some of the key findings that we can take away from that survey?
Snezana Zlatar, Redwood Consulting Solutions & The SPARK Institute
Well, Jeff, as you mentioned, Corporate Insight and under Mike Ellison's leadership has done a phenomenal job at partnering with Spark for the past four years in administering this financial literacy survey. This year, they talked to over 3,000 high school students, college students, and also new employees to just understand their aptitude, meaning knowledge, behaviors, and confidence around financial literacy. We call it the ABC of financial literacy.
And I guess one of the main findings is how little things have changed over the past four years. There is some progress, but still we see that both high school students and college students lag in terms of their knowledge. Almost half of them have lower levels of financial literacy, meaning they cannot answer a few basic questions related to financial literacy well and correct.
And then new employees, of course, in a little bit better category when it comes to that knowledge, overall knowledge, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement. Another interesting finding there is that we want to see certainly financial literacy introduced in high schools in education as a personal finance course. And it seems that those who have taken that course certainly have slightly higher level of knowledge, but still their confidence in making financial decisions is not where it needs to be.
We also see disparities in terms of that. Students generally rely on their parents as a main source of advice when it comes to financial literacy. But for those students who come from families where parents did not go to college, it seems that they don't rely on parents as much.
They rely on other sometimes random sources of information through internet, social media, and so forth. Not all of it, of course, is bad information. There is good content there, but also it's uncurated and it's hard to know what these kids are actually learning through those efforts.
We see also that young people rely on AI now to come up or to hear some answers and that will help them learn more about the environment. That's kind of in early stages of adoption, and we would like to continue to track that. But then there is also a big aha moment, I think, for employers and for us who work in the industry, because we heard that only 43% of recent hires say that their employer provides retirement education.
That means almost half of them, more than half of them, don't know that they have those resources available to them. Also, they tell us that 38% of those who are surveyed, new hires, recent hires, want clearer guidance of what are they enrolled in. They, over 30%, want access to no-cost financial advisor.
30% want also to know how to actually invest within their retirement plan. So there's a huge opportunity for both employers and us as an industry to actually make sure that employees understand what information they have at their fingertips, how to use that financial education and then how to apply that to their daily decision-making.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, well, I guess it's good that we're making progress. I guess I'm a pretty impatient guy, so I like things to be moving forward a lot quicker. I'm sure many of your colleagues probably feel the same way as well.
Let's talk about the SPARC Institute, excuse me, and the Financial Literacy Committee issued, I would say, a framework, a perspective, a point of view on establishing greater financial literacy in the 21st century. Tell us about that research, that paper, and what that means.
Snezana Zlatar, Redwood Consulting Solutions & The SPARK Institute
Sure. So just recently, as you mentioned, we released a white paper that is called Investing in Financial Literacy Today for a Stronger Nation Tomorrow. In this white paper, we talk about why financial literacy matters.
And we all know and we believe deeply at SPARC that financial literacy is foundational for individual financial prosperity and wellbeing. And then we talk about definitions of financial literacy and how it changed over time. As Jeff, you may remember that 20, 30 years ago, one of the main things you learned in school was how to balance the checkbook.
Well, and that was it. You learned about some basic money concepts and you thought that you were financially literate. None of that is sufficient in this complex world.
So we believe that the new definition of financial literacy is actually capability that allows a person that includes basically those core money concepts, education on those and knowledge about those. It also includes behaviors, ability to make good decisions, financial decisions, having access to the best financial products. And then of course, ability to combine both in-person support and also digital support and digital assets available to individual to really advance their knowledge.
The other thing that we mentioned in this paper is that financial literacy is about lifelong learning. It is a journey, not an event. And that at every stage in individual's life, there is place for financial literacy.
We believe that we need to start early, starting educating children that are starting at age five on basic concepts of money, enabling them to build some good savings habits to understand what intentional spending means, talking about money with their parents. And you'd be surprised how few parents actually have confidence to have those conversations with children, and they're very, very important. Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Yeah, no, go ahead. So that's one of the things that we learn at early stage. Then we think there is another pillar at every life stage.
For teens and young adults, we think that we need to, that's the time then to move from learning to doing, starting to understand budgeting, starting to understand credit, the good and bad sides of credit, starting to save and invest. And then moving into early career, for early career individuals, the key question for them is how to establish positive cashflow so they can start saving in addition to just spending and covering their basic needs. And we call that establishing financial stability or foundations of financial stability.
The learning at that stage is truly, again, understanding budgeting, perfecting that, debt management, if they come up with, if they have any debt, understanding how to take advantage of all the benefits that their employer offers. And then moving on in mid-career, then, of course, for people who are between ages 30 and 50, all the topics and the questions become much more complex. It becomes about how do I balance my household finances so I can meet all of my goals and retire well.
It's about deep learning about, say, building and really protecting the wealth across their career and life. This multi-goal planning and so forth. And then for pre-retirees, of course, getting ready to retire, preparing for that transition, retirement readiness, and so forth.
And even there is something to learn even in retirement. And that's all about spending money in retirement in a smart way, sustaining that income and legacy and figuring out how to really cover your healthcare and long-term care planning, how to think about legacy and so forth. So there is, again, it is a lifelong learning.
It is a skill that can be learned, again, and we recommend that we as an industry really provide the resources to enable people to do that.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Just that. Well, the framework's great, Snezana. Let me ask, we've got about a minute or two left, and I don't mean to give short shrift to a very important topic.
This is something that we'll continue to cover throughout the year, each and every year, because I think we're of a like mind. But let me ask you about just the committee itself. It has many of the members of the retirement industry.
If I'm watching this and I'm a member of the retirement industry, an advisor, a financial technology firm, a startup, for example, can I join SPARK and vis-a-vis join the Financial Literacy Committee? Because I would imagine having lots of minds help the committee and help SPARK.
Snezana Zlatar, Redwood Consulting Solutions & The SPARK Institute
Absolutely. I think that's a great point. Joining SPARK as a member provides an opportunity to join our Financial Literacy Committee.
SPARK has many other committees that are focused on other topics. But at this point in our Financial Literacy Committee, we have over 30 different organizations from financial services industry participating, and all of them are contributing to this thinking. For example, the white paper that we just talked about, I have to thank Michael Keady from Alight, Alison Wolf from Empower, Christine Curtin from Lincoln Financial who worked with me on actually creating this white paper.
But there is also input and opportunities that the committee provide on the research that we are doing, on the partnership that we build with not-for-profit organizations across the industry, and then, of course, on advocacy that relative to financial literacy. So please join us. We would love to have you on board.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, it takes a village. And as you said, it's a lifetime of learning. It's also a lifetime of producing content and information.
Snehzada, we're gonna have to leave it there. But as I said, we're gonna have to continue to cover the topic, because here it's not just about April, it's about, here at the network, it's about the other 11 months as well, 365 days a year. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us. And we look forward to having you back again very soon.
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This story was originally published May 6, 2026 at 7:30 AM.