Although financial planners are optimistic about the financial potential of young Americans, young Americans themselves are pessimistic about it and are pretty much in the dark about their net worth, according to two surveys released jointly by the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Planning Institute. The financial planners said that half of young Americans (aged 18-34) could accumulate $1 million in thirty years, but of the 1,000 young Americans surveyed, only 9% thought so. Almost half of these young Americans did not know how much they were worth or that personal net worth meant financial assets, home equity, and other tangible assets minus consumer debt.
This lack of financial literacy is critical to the future of many aspects of our society, not the least of which is personal philanthropy. If you don't know what you have, it is hard to give it away. Unfortunately, financial planners don't have an incentive to take on these young clients because the payday is so far away.
Fortunately, there are others who see our society's need for fiscal literacy and who are actually doing something about it. The March 2006 issue of Worth magazine contained an article written by Todd Harrison, the founder of Minyanville, an animated infotainment community where metaphorical critters serve as vehicles of fiscal literacy. The goal, he said, "is a shared vision for what financial information could and should be to unveil the world of finance and make it approachable."
Terry Axelrod, the founder and CEO of Raising More Money, once said that teaching fundraising to adults was nothing more than remedial work with people who were taught at an early age that fundraising was about selling things. With people like Todd Harrison leading the way, perhaps we will see a day where, instead of having to teach adults the basics about money and finance that they could have learned easily as children, we will imbue our citizenry from an early age with the fiscal literacy to competently generate wealth, understand their finances, and, in turn, be capable of determining their philanthropic legacies.
