Research from many countries around the world shows not only individuals display low level of financial literacy and financial illiteracy can be linked to financial planning and insufficient resources in retirement (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2011a, 2014. Workers especially the young ones need to be educated on the basics of investing and planning for the future, including the relationship between risk and return and the differences’ between short-term and long-term investments, and the consequences of not planning well for their retirement.
Research undertaken by the Ministry of Finance over the past years suggests that Ghanaians do not have adequate financial knowledge and skills and are therefore not able to make good judgments about their financial decisions on the management of their finances as well as understanding details of financial services and products (Atakora 2013). Most workers fail to plan adequately for their retirement and are therefore left to fend off only on their pension. This however is not enough which leads them to face so many challenges during retirement such as access to decent accommodation, good health and good source of income. As a result of inadequate planning for retirement most workers in Ghana tend to reduce their age in order to remain in the workforce which also reduce productivity due to over-age and hinders the younger ones from getting employment. People need to be more knowledgeable about retirement funds and how they operate, including an understanding of their own and their employer’s responsibility, as well as the many options that are available to them (Abetz, 2005).For adequate retirement planning, Department of Labor launched “a national pension education program aimed at drawing the attention of American workers to the importance of taking personal responsibility for their retirement security” (Berg, 1995). On the contrary, in Ghana there is no such thing as national pension education program, however, some organizations such as Ghana Commercial Bank, Ecobank Ghana, Social Security and National Insurance Trust, Ghana Ports and Harbour, Volta River Authority among others have taken up the initiative to organize Retirement Planning Programs (RPPs) for their workers to educate them on retirement issues and the need to make preparations towards it.
Hence, most of the workers in Ghana still lack financial knowledge to enable them take the right decisions towards their retirement. The inadequacy of research relating specifically to financial literacy among workers and how it influences retirement planning is a major concern in Ghana. The above problem has therefore prompted the researcher to undertake the study to establish a relationship between financial literacy and retirement planning.
