Recovery Surveyed

A survey was recently conducted by a Minneapolis based company regarding financial literacy. Basically the survey was trying to determine what questions people most frequently have for lenders. It seems from the results that what most people have on their minds is the “recovery.”

Lenders were most frequently asked by borrowers how they can raise their credit scores, reduce debt, and build savings. Most people don’t know how credit scores work, nor how to improve them. (Maybe most people never had to think about it.) A fifth of all institutions surveyed said people ask mainly about their savings accounts and how FDIC works. And one in five lenders said borrowers mostly ask about budgeting and debt consolidation.

Lenders frequently felt that the best information they had to offer was regarding IRAs and home equity loans. The company that conducted the survey feels that the results indicate that borrowers are trying to improve their financial footing.

Whether this adds up to the widespread belief in the economic recovery that they’re predicting is questionable. Had this survey been conducted a year ago, would the results have looked very different? Maybe the most frequently asked question to banks a year ago would have been “Are you hiring?” And two years ago: “Are you lending?” And three years ago … and so on. What a survey like this needs to show are trends. Not snapshots of information. It’s extremely tricky to draw conclusions from isolated data. The best way to really see how the national mood has shifted is to compare these results with ones from previous periods.

We’ll just have to convince ourselves for now that recovery should be on everyone’s mind.