As a sponsor of the annual Retirement Confidence Survey, we know that adults are not doing well in terms of managing their finances and saving for retirement. When it comes to saving and investment education, the nation's 50 million students in grades K-12 have been largely ignored. The 1997 survey will serve as a benchmark to determine if students' knowledge of personal finance is increasing. By far the weakest area of knowledge was savings and investment where students answered only 47.3 percent of the questions correctly. Educating Americans of all ages on the importance of saving and investing is of vital importance to ASEC's mission.
Real life includes the ability to earn, save, invest, and spend responsibly.
Right now, our high school seniors need help in all four areas. It enables people to choose how they will live their lives, and how they will live their retirement. ASEC's programs are already working to help adults improve their ability to choose. Students who graduate without personal financial management skills are driving unbuckled. They may survive, but the risk of disaster is a lot higher.