A Scary Number of Older Americans Can't Pass a Retirement Financial Literacy Quiz

The new RICP Retirement Income Literacy Survey from the American College of Financial Services estimated that an unnerving number of older Americans failed a quiz for assessing their retirement financial literacy, reports the Motley Fool . Three out of four interviewees from a total of 1,244 flunked the quiz. All were between the ages of 60 and 75, with at least $100,000 in household assets, not including their primary residence. Respondents also were unclear overall about topics including long-term care cost, investment considerations, approaches for sustaining income throughout retirement, and life expectancy. Although 61 percent claimed they had "high levels of retirement income knowledge," just 33 percent of that subgroup passed the quiz. Generally, 74 percent of the quiz takers scored less than 60 percent, while another 13 percent got a "D" grade for scoring between 60 percent and 69 percent. Eight percent of the remainder scored a "C," 5 percent scored a "B," and fewer than 1 percent received an "A."