Nearly all college educated Americans responding to a Laurel Road survey said they regretted not receiving an early education in personal finance.
Three-quarters of respondents said that personal finance education courses would be a more useful college graduation gift than a check for their first month’s rent.
Wakefield Research conducted the survey for Laurel Road, a national online lending company, by surveying 1,000 U.S. college-educated U.S. adults, with half of those surveyed also holding a graduate degree, in January and February.
The survey found that 94 percent of college-educated Americans think personal finance courses should be required to graduate either high school or college.
The study found that while male respondents were more likely than women to understand common finance terminology (52 percent vs. 42 percent), retirement savings (32 percent vs. 28 percent) and the ins and outs of investing (35 percent vs. 23 percent) before graduation, women are more likely to learn basic money management, such as budgeting (69 percent vs. 63 percent), and managing bank accounts (75 percent vs. 65 percent).
Among millennials with student loans, less than half (44 percent) fully understood their repayment timelines before taking on debt to pay for college. Millennial women were nearly twice as likely as millennial men (37 percent vs. 20 percent) not to understand the basics of student loans before they borrowed.
According to the survey, one-third of respondents reported a lack of confidence in fully understanding their college financing options in 2019, compared with 25 percent in 2018.
Millennials on average said they believed they would be paying off their student loans until age 49. Forty-nine percent percent of men and 34 percent of women said they have received help paying off their student loans.
The study found that 90 percent of millennial women are becoming more proactive in managing their finances, compared with 83 percent a year ago.
Women have about $123,000 less on average in retirement savings than their male counterparts and are nearly twice as likely than men (37 percent vs. 20 percent) not to have saved any money for retirement.