Redefining and Reclaiming Financial Literacy As a certified financial planner with thirty-five years of industry experience, Cindy Couyoumjian is committed to filling the financial literacy void for many Americans. In her timely and thought-provoking book, Cindy gives a unique macro perspective of what she calls “the hidden forces behind your money,” which are the unseen political and economic forces that may influence your investment decisions. Through meticulous research, Cindy shows how these hidden forces have contributed to a complex retirement system, which includes pensions, social security, and what she believes is the outdated 60/40 investment model. To address this issue, Cindy spent endless hours developing a new multi-asset class investment methodology, known as the REALM model, that may offer broader investment strategies aimed to mitigate risk from the hidden forces that may negatively impact your goals. Redefining Financial Literacy can help you • Understand the complex macro forces that you cannot control, yet could determine your financial future, • Take actionable steps to regain command of your retirement strategy, • Build a retirement with potential durable income strategies, lesser volatility, and risk-adjusted returns. Redefining Financial Literacy and Cindy’s innovative REALM model can open your eyes to investment possibilities while helping you regain confidence in the American dream. Diversification does not guarantee profit nor is it guaranteed to protect assets. There is no assurance that any strategy/model will achieve its objectives. Registered Principal offers securities and advisory services through Independent Financial Group, LLC (IFG), a Registered Investment Adviser. Member FINRA/SIPC. IFG, Cinergy Financial, and Greenleaf Book Group are not affiliated companies.

The great majority of working Americans are unprepared to face the difficult task of planning for retirement. In fact, the personal savings rate has been holding steady at zero for several years, down from 8 percent in the mid-1980s. Overcoming the Saving Slump explores the many challenges facing workers in the transition from a traditional defined benefit pension system to one that requires more individual responsibility, analyzing the considerable impediments to saving and evaluating financial literacy programs devised by employers and the government. Mapping the changing landscape of pensions and the rise of defined contribution plans, Annamaria Lusardi and others investigate new methods for stimulating saving and promoting financial education drawing on the experience of the United States as well as countries that have privatized their welfare systems, including Sweden and Chile. This timely volume pinpoints where human resources departments, the financial industry, and government officials have succeeded—or failed—in bridging the way to a new retirement system. As the workforce ages and more pensions disappear each second, Lusardi’s findings will be invaluable for economists and anyone facing retirement.

This book describes the different types of financial education programmes currently available in OECD countries, evaluates their effectiveness, and makes suggestions to improve them.

It is a well-known saying that money does not buy happiness. But it certainly helps in life. It is important to have enough of it to satisfy our needs and to secure ourselves from emergency situations. That's what adults think. And what about the youth? What is their approach to money, what do they know about finances and how are their skills in everyday financial management coming along? What kind of knowledge and skills should be provided? Do young people in different countries represent similar or different approaches to financial matters? Using the results of a research on young people in Poland and Germany, the authors draw a picture of financial literacy. They furthermore present a number of recommendations that help developing the knowledge and the financial skills of young people in practice.

The objective of this book is to prompt a re-examination of financial literacy, its social foundations, and its relationship to citizenship education. The collection includes topics that concern indigenous people’s perspectives, critical race theory, and transdisciplinary perspectives, which invite a dialogue about the ideologies that drive traditional and critical perspectives. This volume offers readers opportunities to learn about different views of financial literacy from a variety of sociological, historical and cultural perspectives. The reader may perceive financial literacy as representing a multifaceted concept best interpreted through a non-segregated lens. The volume includes chapters that describe groundings for revising standards, provide innovative teaching concepts, and offer unique sociological and historical perspectives. This book contains 13 chapters, with each one speaking to a distinctive topic that, taken as a whole, offers a well-rounded vision of financial literacy to benefit social education, its research, and teaching. Each chapter provides a response from an alternative view, and the reader can also access an eResource featuring the authors’ rejoinders. It therefore offers contrasting visions about the nature and purpose of financial education. These dissimilar perspectives offer an opportunity for examining different social ideologies that may guide approaches to financial literacy and citizenship, along with the philosophies and principles that shape them. The principles that teach and inform about financial literacy defines the premises for base personal and community responsibility. The work invites researchers and practitioners to reconsider financial literacy/financial education and its social foundations. The book will appeal to a range of students, academics and researchers across a number of disciplines, including economics, personal finance/personal economics, business ethics, citizenship, moral education, consumer education, and spiritual education.

Most parents do more harm than good when they try to teach their children about money. They make saving seem like a punishment, and force their children to view reckless spending as their only rational choice. To most kids, a savings account is just a black hole that swallows birthday checks. David Owen, a New Yorker staff writer and the father of two children, has devised a revolutionary new way to teach kids about money. In The First National Bank of Dad, he explains how he helped his own son and daughter become eager savers and rational spenders. He started by setting up a bank of his own at home and offering his young children an attractively high rate of return on any amount they chose to save. "If you hang on to some of your wealth instead of spending it immediately," he told them, "in a little while, you'll be able to double or even triple your allowance." A few years later, he started his own stock market and money-market fund for them. Most children already have a pretty good idea of how money works, Owen believes; that's why they are seldom interested in punitive savings schemes mandated by their parents. The first step in making children financially responsible, he writes, is to take advantage of human nature rather than ignoring it or futilely trying to change it. "My children are often quite irresponsible with my money, and why shouldn't they be?" he writes. "But they are extremely careful with their own." The First National Bank of Dad also explains how to give children real experience with all kinds of investments, how to foster their charitable instincts, how to make them more helpful around the house, how to set their allowances, and how to help them acquire a sense of value that goes far beyond money. He also describes at length what he feels is the best investment any parent can make for a child -- an idea that will surprise most readers.

Financial literacy and financial education are not new topics, even though interest in these topics among policymakers, financial authorities, and academics continues to grow. The Routledge Handbook of Financial Literacy provides a comprehensive reference work that addresses both research perspectives and practical applications to financial education. This is the first volume to summarize the milestones of research in financial literacy from multiple perspectives to offer an overview. The book is organized into six parts. The first three parts provide a conceptual framework, which discusses what financial literacy is, how it should be measured, and explains why it represents a relevant topic and effective tool in enhancing decision-making among consumers as well as consumer protection strategies. Part IV addresses the connection between financial education and financial literacy, with chapters about financial education in school settings as well as for adults. This part includes an analysis of the role of Fintech and the use of gamification in financial education. Part V is a collection of contributions that analyze financial literacy and financial education around the world, with a focus on geographical areas including the U.S., South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. This part also considers how financial literacy should be addressed in the case of Islamic finance. The concluding part of the book examines how financial literacy is related to other possible approaches to consumer finance and consumer protection, addressing the relationships between financial literacy and behavioral economics, financial well-being, and financial inclusion. This volume is an indispensable reference for scholars who are new to the topic, including undergraduate and graduate students, and for experienced researchers who wish to enrich their knowledge, policymakers seeking a broader understanding and an international perspective, and practitioners who seek knowledge of best practices as well as innovative approaches.