Wisconsinites report that lack of financial knowledge carries a high cost, according to the NFEC’s most recent survey. Participants across the state responded to the single question: “During the past year, about how much money do you think you lost because you lacked knowledge about personal finances?” The results are shown below. Since 2017, the NFEC has conducted this annual survey, consistently revealing that the average individual cost of financial illiteracy approaches or exceeds $1,000 per person – with estimated national losses reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and losses in the hundreds of millions across Wisconsin.

Financial vulnerability across America is assessed using two primary metrics: food insecurity and housing insecurity. The nonprofit Feeding America collects data regarding food insecurity state-by-state. In Wisconsin, Feeding America finds that one in every eight residents – and one in six children – is currently facing hunger. Expressed numerically, that’s 694,710 total individuals, or 11.5% of the population; and 202,600 children. The organization calculates that it would take more than $463 million per year to meet the food needs of these food-insecure Wisconsinites.

As regards housing insecurity, the World Population Review (WPR) reported that there were 5,049 unhoused individuals living in Wisconsin in 2024, representing a homeless rate of 9%. That figure had gone down by 10.6% since 2007. WPR estimates that there are over half a million homeless people living across the U.S., and defines “homeless” as those who “live in a temporary shelter or transitional housing or sleep in a place not meant for habitation (like an abandoned building).”