2026 TIAA Institute–GFLEC Personal Finance Index, May 2026 | Paul J. Yakoboski et al., TIAA Institute and Stanford University/GFLEC
After a decade of tracking what Americans know about money, researchers at the TIAA Institute and Stanford University’s Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center have reached a sobering conclusion: People are getting worse at managing their money.
The 2026 Personal Finance Index, which surveyed 3,602 US adults using 28 questions covering everyday financial decisions, found that respondents answered correctly only 47% of the time—a statistically significant drop from the prior year and the lowest result in the study’s ten-year history.
The decline is broad-based. Financial knowledge dropped in five of the eight functional areas measured, with the steepest fall in basic spending and budgeting. Risk comprehension remains the weakest category overall; only 36% of risk-related questions were answered correctly, and that number has barely moved across all generations.
Women continue to trail men by 6% overall, with the largest gaps in investing, insuring, and saving—the areas that most directly shape long-term financial security. Gen Z is faring the worst of any generation, answering correctly only 38% of the time, with more than a third scoring in the very lowest knowledge category.
The real-world consequences are measurable. Adults with very low financial literacy are four times more likely to struggle to make ends meet in a typical month, three times more likely to be unable to come up with $2,000 for an unexpected need, and four times more likely to lack even one month of emergency savings.
“Financial literacy has never been lower,” said Surya Kolluri, Head of the TIAA Institute, “and Gen Z is entering adulthood without the foundational knowledge they need to thrive.”
