Some 39% of consumers get their advice from online or social media, while 60% of them said they’ve acted on financial advice if they received it online, according to a new survey from the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.
NAPFA talked to 2,007 adults age 18 to 64 in early November, breaking them into four different age groups: millennials, Gen Xers, baby boomers and Gen Zers, each composed of 500 or so people.
Only 21% of the respondents said they got their financial advice mainly from a financial advisor, while 20% said they got it from their parents. Eighteen percent of the respondents said they got their advice mainly from social media, 11% got it from an online blog and 24% got it from a website or online publication.
A total of 784 respondents said they got their advice from online or social media—39.06% of the 2,007 people surveyed.
Of that smaller group of 784 people, 60% of them said they had acted on the advice: that includes 67% of millennials and the same percentage of Gen Zers, while only 48% of baby boomers and 55% of Gen Xers had acted on the advice.
Among breakout groups responding to social media app questions, 64% of 357 respondents said that receive financial advice from YouTube, while 57% said they receive it from Facebook.
NAPFA also asked respondents about their retirement attitudes: Fifty-eight percent said they were preparing financial for retirement, while 42% said they weren’t; 71% of baby boomers said they were, while 58% of millennials and 57% of Gen Xers were.
When asked what had hurt their ability to prepare for retirement, 28% of the 2,007 respondents said that they had failed to plan for unexpected expenses, such as a trip to the emergency room or car troubles. Twenty-eight percent also said a lack of guidance had hurt them, and 25% said Covid-19 had hurt them.
Thirty-four percent said a lack of resources had hurt their ability to prepare—a number that rose to 39% for millennials and 35% for Gen Xers. Thirty-seven percent of females also named a lack of resources as an impediment to their retirement preparation.
When asked when they would be able to retire with their current plan, 29% of respondents said they had no idea or that they would be working the rest of their life—the same as the number of people who said they would be able to retire by their 60s.