As financial educators know, making day-to-day decisions on spending money is one of the biggest challenges consumers face in keeping their financial lives in order. Many people find it difficult to manage their household finances on a daily basis, let alone over the long term. This brief from the...
Because of the key role that financial education can play in people’s lives, the CFPB has conducted research over its first five years into what makes financial education effective for consumers. What do we mean by “effective?” It does not just mean training that helps people perform better...
Using pooled data from the 2012 and 2015 waves of the National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), this research finds that young adults who were required to take personal finance courses in high school were significantly less likely to borrow payday loans than their peers who were not. These...
In this toolkit you'll find materials to help you learn about what's involved in tax filing, and some materials to support setting up your own community tax clinic. Latest update: July 18,...
Pour souligner leurs 50 ans d’histoire, les Associations de consommateurs du Québec s’unissent pour offrir à la population québécoise un portail qui rassemble toute une gamme d’informations et d’outils développés au fil des années grâce à leur expertise en finances...
This is a one-hour webinar on matched savings programs and personal savings strategies that work for people living on low incomes. Our panelists share experiences from their programs in Ontario and Calgary. The presenters in this webinar are: Dean Estrella, Momentum, Calgary, AB John...
As student loan reform continues to dominate national discourse, a NEFE-funded study shows that financial education in states with state-mandated personal finance graduation requirements causes students to make better decisions about how to pay for college. It increases applications for aid,...
Research conducted by agencies such as AFOA, Native Women’s Association of Canada, and various other Canadian entities, has identified the need for improved financial literacy education in Indigenous communities, particularly among youth and Elders. Such research reports are often equipped with...
Developed in response to a call from G20 Leaders in 2013, the core competencies frameworks on financial literacy highlight a range of financial literacy outcomes that may be considered to be universally relevant or important for the financial well-being in everyday life of adults and youth. These...
Financial education plays an important role in guiding individuals to achieve their financial goals and contribute to the economic well-being of society as a whole. While the examination on the effectiveness of financial education has many factors to consider, the National Endowment for Financial...
This new research study: the 2016 UK Children and Young People’s Financial Capability Survey, is the first of its kind: a nationally representative survey of the financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of 4- to 17-year-olds and their parents, living in the UK. A total of 4,958 children and...
There is wide variation in how people in the U.S. feel about their financial well-being. This report presents findings from a survey by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on the distribution of financial well-being scores for the U.S. adult population overall and for selected...
Financial Empowerment is an integrated set of interventions proven to measurably improve financial outcomes for people living in poverty. This brief from Prosper Canada recommends nine financial empowerment strategies that can help reduce poverty by being integrated into poverty reduction...
Using data from a survey of young, enlisted Army service members, we explore whether soldiers have emergency funds and other types of savings. We find different sets of predictors for having an emergency fund and for the amount held in the fund. In general, education and money management...
In this paper, we report our findings from over a dozen interviews with youth apprenticeship coordinators in Wisconsin and Georgia. Although an integrated financial education component is the exception in youth apprenticeship training, we find broad support from our interviewees for the idea that...
Modern financial planning is dominated by one topic: retirement planning. However, in spite of extensive study and wide attention, retirement savings rates remain perplexingly low and remarkably resistant to policy intervention. One approach that does seem to work is employer-based education....
These are the webinar slides from the Center for Financial Security webinar on the role of education in retirement...
The United Kingdom is at the forefront of the global finance industry and is a leader in the fields of financial services, technology and innovation. Despite this high standing, a sizeable number of UK citizens lack access to even the most basic financial services, while still more are forced to...
About half of households are considered financially fragile, which means they’re not sure they could come up with $2,000 in 30 days if they had to. Lack of emergency savings is common. It affects about half of households that earn $25,000 to $75,000 a year, and about a quarter of households that...
Many consumers live paycheck-to-paycheck. Bills and financial notices arrive by mail and e-mail at different times of the day and month. Consumers typically don’t act on them immediately. Research shows that consumers have many reasons for their actions. To gain insight into why it’s so hard...
The purpose of this white paper is to outline how the ongoing struggle of many consumers to manage their finances can be mitigated in the future by focusing specifically on youth financial education. What we propose here is a comprehensive strategy to impart personal financial-management skills to...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (the CFPB) looked at the information sources consumers are exposed to when they make financial decisions. Empowering consumers to make the financial decisions that will help them meet their own life goals is a critical part of the mission of the CFPB. To...
To test out the impact of rules of thumb in helping consumers decrease their credit card debt, the CFPB commissioned a rigorous study of two financial rules of thumb on consumers with revolving credit card debt. We created two new guidelines aimed at aiding consumers to decrease their revolving...
For financial educators and others who help people with decision-making, there is evidence that providing financial rules of thumb to consumers can work better than more detailed and complex financial education in some situations. To further explore the potential of rules of thumb for financial...
From January 2014 through June 2015, ten community-based organizations from around the United States embarked on an 18-month journey to develop new ways for their low-income clients to progress toward financial security. This document highlights the lessons and successes from that Learning Cluster...