by. Ron Shevlin
The CFPB says that FIs spend US$17 billion on marketing and that just US$671 million, or about US$2 per person, is spent on financial education.
And like uncritical, brain-dead slugs, many of you don’t just believe this, buttweet it, implying that the spending is out-of-whack.
My take: Comparisons of financial education spending to FI marketing spend are spurious, and belie the facts about financial literacy and what really needs to be done about it.
First of all, who’s to say that FI marketing isn’t educational?
If a bank’s or credit union’s marketing efforts inform consumers about the choices they have, and how to choose one FI over another, couldn’t it be argued that that’s “financial education”?
Second, there’s no relationship between what FIs spend on marketing and what the country spends on financial education.
Instead of comparing financial education spending to FI marketing, why didn’t the CFPB compare it to Obama administration’s programs that spends US$500 million — roughly US$24 per child between the ages of 0 and 5 — to help kids sit still in kindergarten?
