An Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Financial Education on Graduating Business Students’ Perceptions of Their Retirement Planning Familiarity,Motivation, and Preparedness

Today's multifaceted and dynamic financial environment requires a high level of individual financial literacy to ensure that sound financial behaviors are the norm. Unfortunately, many individuals have limited knowledge regarding financial issues and are ill prepared to make sound financial choices. The purpose of this article was to benchmark and then determine if graduating business students’ perception of their retirement planning familiarity, motivation, and preparedness improved after taking a semester‐long course in Personal Risk Management and Insurance (PRMI). We discovered that business students were more financially literate than nonbusiness students and that business students’ familiarity with retirement plans and personal level of readiness to make retirement planning decisions improved significantly after taking the principles class. Specifically, we showed that only 15.8 percent and 42.3 percent of the nonbusiness and business control students, respectively, felt adequately prepared to make retirement decisions, while 82 percent of the business students who completed the PRMI class felt prepared. Ex post, graduating seniors who were exposed to coursework covering life‐cycle risks and options to treat those risks perceived that they are leaving college with a better ability to meet the financial challenges that await them. Last, we showed that significant differences existed in retirement plan and investment familiarity based on gender. Our findings provide support for including financial literacy as a general education requirement at colleges and universities.     

University-Provided Retirement Planning Support and Retiree Financial Satisfaction During Retirement: Differences by Gender, Job Classification, and Planning Behavior

Sound financial planning and financial advice is necessary to achieve retirement income adequacy. The shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans and the recent bankruptcy of Enron Corporation underscore the importance of managing retirement accumulation and liquidation risks. This study analyzes the effectiveness and adequacy of institutional-provided information and advice on employees' retirement planning decisions and their satisfaction with financial resources during retirement. Results suggest that retirement planning should begin earlier in an employee's career and that employer-provided retirement information and advice is a highly valued service. Gender, planning practices, job classification, and age are all significant predictors of satisfaction with financial resources during retirement. Targeting women and union employees with retirement information and advice that focuses on allocating contributions using a balanced portfolio approach should result in significant increases in satisfaction with financial resources during retirement. Regulatory objectives should focus on reducing retirement accumulation and liquidation risks, improving the delivery of professional financial advice to plan participants, and expanding qualified retirement plan choice for all labor force participants. To encourage employer participation in employee retirement planning, employers acting in "good faith" should be federally protected from liability for providing retirement planning information and advice to employees.     

Effects of risk tolerance,financial literacy,and financial status on retirement planning

In this study, we investigate the effects of retirement planning on the economic and psychological factors of consumers using a large sample drawn from the 2012 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Specifically, we examine the combined impact of risk tolerance, financial literacy, savings, income, and debt on consumers’ retirement planning behavior. Risk tolerance, financial literacy, income, and savings are all found to have positive relationships with retirement planning, though debt has no significant relationship with retirement planning. Also, higher levels of risk tolerance weaken the relationship between savings and retirement planning. Implications of these findings for the literature and the financial planning industry are provided as well as directions for future research.

     

Quality of life aspirations: Exploring baby-boomer financial means-end goal structures

Motivated by industry concerns that baby-boomers are neglecting to plan for an eventual retirement, this study examines perceptions about the importance of financial means in contributing to their quality of life. Framed by means-end chain analysis and scholarship in consumer evaluations of life satisfaction, a number of theoretical expectations are empirically confirmed. Findings indicate that financial means are not high in the order of life domains that contribute to respondent quality of life. Retirement planning relies predominantly on compulsory superannuation contributions from employers, with the assumption that this would provide sufficient income to maintain their current lifestyle. Prior to retirement, respondents reported being more preoccupied with funding children's education costs and home mortgage payments. They also wished to avoid the embarrassment of approaching a financial planner until they had a reasonable sum that required more skilful investment advice. Finally, it was revealed that gender had an influence on the priority given to financial means and subsequent decisions to seek financial planning advice. These findings confirm the importance for financial planners to determine the core motivations and subordinate means through which baby-boomers envisage achieving quality of life on the journey into retirement.     

Financial literacy and its consequences: Evidence from Russia during the financial crisis

The ability of consumers to make informed financial decisions improves their ability to develop sound personal finance. This paper uses a panel data set from Russia, an economy in which household debt has grown at an astounding rate, to examine the importance of financial literacy and its effects on behavior. The paper studies both the financial and real consequences of financial illiteracy. Even though consumer borrowing increased very rapidly in Russia, only 41% of respondents demonstrate an understanding of interest compounding and only 46% can answer a simple question about inflation. Financial literacy is positively related to participation in financial markets and negatively related to the use of informal sources of borrowing. Moreover, individuals with higher financial literacy are significantly less likely to report experiencing a negative income shock during 2009 and have greater availability of unspent income and higher spending capacity. The relationship between financial literacy and availability of unspent income is higher in 2009, suggesting that financial literacy may better equip individuals to deal with macroeconomic shocks.     

Personal bankruptcy and consumer credit delinquency: The case of personal finance education

Given the increasing complexities of the financial markets as well as a shift away from employer/government sponsored pensions to individuals managing their retirement funds, personal finance education is an important tool in order to navigate the evolving and complex financial environment. In this paper, I examine the impact of personal finance education on credit delinquency. Prior studies show that financial literacy affects financial decisions such as savings, retirement planning, wealth accumulation and stock market participation. Using U.S data on personal bankruptcy and consumer credit delinquency rates, I show that personal finance education is important in reducing personal bankruptcy as well as consumer credit delinquency rates. Furthermore, personal finance education does not appear to moderate the impact of gambling legislation on personal bankruptcy or consumer credit default.     

Integrating benefits decision making

Integrated employee benefit decision making helps employees use their benefits more wisely and identify opportunities to balance their immediate benefits needs (such as health care) and future benefits needs (such as retirement). This article discusses how employers can overcome employees' behavioral barriers to making integrated employee benefit decisions by changing the ways benefits are communicated and employees are presented with action decisions. Undertaking these steps allows employers to not only improve their employees' overall financial perspectives, but also furthers plan sponsors' goals of actively promoting personal responsibility with respect to retirement funding and changing employee behavior with respect to controlling health care costs.     

How Behavioral Finance Can Inform Retirement Plan Design1

Several key lessons for pension design have emerged in the last decade from behavioral economics and finance research. This article analyzes the insights from this literature on how workers decide to save, manage their retirement investments, and draw down their assets in retirement. The aim is to understand how workers and retirees deviate from the rational, well‐informed agents that underpin economic theory, public policy, and often retirement plan design. The evidence suggests that many people save too little, others make poor investment decisions, and still others spend their accumulated assets too quickly in retirement. The “behavioral” reasons for such tendencies include overconfidence, limited self‐control, the overvaluation of the present at the expense of the future, susceptibility to “framing,” and an aversion to realizing losses. By shedding light on why people fail to achieve an ideal outcome on their own, this literature offers practical guidance to plan sponsors and policymakers who must design, regulate, and evaluate the institutions that help provide for economic security in old age. More specifically, the literature suggests that the plan design should be made automatic for the many individuals unwilling to exercise full control over their retirement savings choices. Recommended design features include automatic enrollment, scheduled annual savings increases, and default investment options or managed account programs that represent optimal portfolio choices.     

Sequential loss of self-control: Exploring the antecedents and consequences of student credit card debt

Self-control lapses not only impact credit card debt, but combined with this debt lead to further self-control lapses and life stressors for consumers. A causal model is developed and tested exploring college students’ pre-/post-debt decisions as a series of sequential losses in self-control, and how initial and post-failure decisions impact financial anxiety. Pre-debt loss of control takes on two forms: materialism and impulsivity. Locus of control theory is used to test how post-failure self-control lapses negatively impact the psychological well-being of consumers. A better understanding of these time-ordered self-control mechanisms offers insights for developing educational and policy interventions useful for staving off self-control lapses early in the decision-making process.     

Investing for the old age: pensions, children and savings

In the last century, most countries have experienced both an increase in pension spending and a decline in fertility. We argue that the interplay of pension generosity and development of capital markets is crucial to understand fertility decisions. Since children have traditionally represented for parents a form of retirement saving, particularly in economies with limited or nonexistent capital markets, an exogenous increase of pension spending provides a saving technology alternative to children, thus relaxing financial (saving) constraints and reducing fertility. We build a simple two-period OLG model to show that an increase in pensions is associated with a larger decrease in fertility in countries in which individuals have less access to financial markets. Cross-country regression analysis supports our result: an interaction between various measures of pension generosity and a proxy for the development of financial markets consistently enters the regressions positively and significantly, suggesting that in economies with limited financial markets, children represent a (if not the only) way for parents to save for old age, and that increases in pensions amount effectively to relaxing these constraints.     

The silver tsunami: an enquiry into the financial needs,preferences and behaviours of retirees

Understanding the financial needs and preferences of retirees is critical for retirement income policy and product design. Today, Australian retirees are accumulating record levels of retirement savings in order to generate retirement income. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods, we find that retirees value leisure spending, but do not plan for long‐term health and care needs. Moreover, retirees value risk protection but are unwilling to forgo potential investment gains. The differing levels of importance that retirees attach to aspects of retirement, health, intergenerational planning and family dynamics suggest that retirement income products cannot be ‘one‐size‐fits‐all’.     

The Status of Social Security and Its Role in Retirement Planning: A Professional Advisor's Perspective

Currently, one of the more salient retirement debates surrounds the future insolvency of the Social Security retirement system. In spite of the important role that financial planning professionals play in the retirement and private-savings decisions that individuals make, no research has focused on assessing the opinions of this group. This study uses a survey approach to assess the opinions of financial planning professionals regarding the problems faced by the Social Security retirement system, the solutions that have been proposed thus far, and the use of Social Security benefits in the financial planning process.     

An analysis of personal financial literacy among college students

This study surveys 924 college students to examine their personal financial literacy; the relationship between the literacy and students' characteristics; and impact of the literacy on students' opinions and decisions. Results show that participants answer about 53% of questions correctly. Non-business majors, women, students in the lower class ranks, under age 30, and with little work experience have lower levels of knowledge. Less knowledgeable students tend to hold wrong opinions and make incorrect decisions. It is concluded that college students are not knowledgeable about personal finance. The low level of knowledge will limit their ability to make informed decisions.     

Resilience and wellbeing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of financial literacy

Using the 2021 wave of the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index (P-Fin Index), this paper provides an in-depth examination of the financial literacy of U.S. adults in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Knowledge is troublingly low, with U.S. adults averaging a score of 50 percent on the twenty-eight questions that compose the P-Fin Index. Even more disturbingly, only 28 percent of U.S. adults correctly answered a question testing their ability to comprehend and compare probabilities. Financial literacy matters. Lower financial literacy is associated with increased time spent worrying about personal finances. After controlling for income, education, and key demographic information, the more financially literate are found to be more likely to be financially resilient, to plan for retirement, and to feel unconstrained by debt. These findings highlight the importance of financial knowledge, in particular in a time of crisis, and raise concerns about the public’s ability to comprehend complex messages about risk during the pandemic.     

Two sides of the same coin: The simultaneous effects of spending and saving needs on budget estimation

This research explores how consumers plan for their personal finances, focusing on the simultaneous effects of spending and saving needs in budget-setting. The current research proposes that the number of budget categories and salient savings goals interactively influence consumers’ budget estimation. In two lab studies, we showed that participants with a salient savings goal tend to experience conflicts when they have the same (vs. different) number of budget categories for spending and saving needs, thereby perceiving the increased savings goal importance, which leads to the increased money allocation to saving. Our results further suggest that a detailed financial plan may not always help consumers to pursue financial success. This research contributes to the body of work on budgeting and consumer finance. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

     

Understanding Pensions: Cognitive Function,Numerical Ability and Retirement Saving*

In a world of declining state pension provision, it is becoming increasingly important that individuals are able to understand the financial choices they face and can choose savings products, portfolios and contribution rates accordingly. In this paper, we look at numerical ability and other dimensions of cognitive function in a sample of older adults in England and examine the extent to which these abilities are correlated with various measures of wealth and retirement saving outcomes. As well as finding that relatively large fractions of the older population can be seen to have low levels of numeracy, we show that numeracy levels are strongly correlated with measures of retirement saving and investment portfolios, even when controlling for other dimensions of cognitive ability as well as educational attainment. Numeracy is also related to knowledge and understanding of pension arrangements, and with perceived financial security. In the short run, there may be a role for targeting simple retirement planning information at low‐numeracy, low‐education groups; a longer‐run goal for retirement saving policy might be to improve numeracy levels more generally.     

Household financial planning and savings behavior

Greater personal responsibility toward financial decision-making is being advocated on a global basis. Individuals and households are encouraged to take a more active approach to personal finance. In this paper, we examine behavioral factors, which lead households toward savings and financial planning across a panel of 1253 Dutch households. In line with the available literature, we find that an individual's propensity to save decreases with age and is higher among the financial literate. Moreover, we find that saving behavior varies across generations, and is significantly dominant among baby boomers. This generation effect, however, weakens once we account for more individual specifics. Our results offer evidence for parental influence, and for the effects of the psychological and behavioral metrics of numeracy, self-efficacy, locus of control and future orientation. A good understanding of these personality variables helps to explain why some take financial responsibility while others do not.     

Teaching financial literacy in a co-curricular service-learning model

The current economic environment has brought to light the financial literacy epidemic in this country. A lack of personal financial education has contributed to the increase in consumer credit debt, a trend evident for many college students who often have significant credit card debt. One way to combat this problem is through financial literacy education. This paper describes a service-learning project implemented through a Beta Alpha Psi chapter, which fulfills the educational objectives of the accounting curriculum and addresses an educational need. The project provides reciprocity of learning between members of Beta Alpha Psi and their audience, college underclassmen. The results indicate that the project is successful in educating both presenters and audience members on basic financial knowledge as well as developing technical and communication skills of Beta Alpha Psi members. The project outline presented in this paper provides a framework for others to use.     

New Models for Old-Age Security: Experiments, Evidence, and Unanswered Questions

The escalating costs of traditional social security systemsare forcing countries to reevaluate the formal programs thatprovide income maintenance support to the aging. This articlesuggests a reform strategy built around three systems, or "pillars,"to provide old-age security—a public pillar with mandatoa private, mandatory savings plan, and a voluntary savings system.Three variations of this model are being implemented in differentcountries: the Latin American model, in which individual workerschoose an investment manager for their retirement finds; theOECD model, in which employers, union trustees, or both choosethe investment manager for an entire company or occupation;and the Swedish notional account model, a reformed pay-as-you-gofirst pillar that may be supplemented by a second, funded pillar.Preliminary empirical evidence on the efficiency and growtheffects of pension reform, mostly from Chile, indicates thatthe impact on national saving and financial market developmentand, through these, economic growth, has been positive and possiblylarge. Problems concerning high administrative costs and regulationsthat distort investment decisions remain to be resolved, however.      

Does retirement planning affect the level of retirement satisfaction?

This paper analyzes the relationship between retirement planning and retirement satisfaction. Do individuals think about and plan for retirement? If they do, do they utilize financial planning services? If they plan, are they more satisfied with retirement than those who did not? Data for 1,781 retired individuals from the first wave of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) are analyzed using an ordered probit model. The results indicate that thinking about retirement and attending planning meetings have a significant positive impact on satisfaction even when income, wealth, marital status and health are included as explanatory variables.