Financial Capability Survey

From FINRA press release:

The FINRA Investor Education Foundation today released survey results that measure the financial capabilities of American adults and reveal in detail how Americans save, borrow and plan for their financial future. The National Financial Capability Survey, the first of its kind in the United States, was developed in consultation with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy. In an event today at the U.S. Treasury, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and FINRA CEO and FINRA Foundation Chairman Rick Ketchum all met with financial literacy and community leaders as well local high school students to announce the results.

The survey found that:

• only 41 percent of parents have set aside money for their children's college education;
• the majority of Americans do not have a "rainy day" fund for unanticipated financial emergencies and are not adequately preparing for their children's college education and their own retirement;
• more than one in five survey respondents use high-cost, alternative borrowing methods, such as payday loans or pawn shops; and
• fewer than half (46 percent) of those surveyed correctly answered two basic questions about how interest rates and inflation work.

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