Older adults diagnosed with dementia lose their ability to assess how well they manage their finances, according to a recent study I co-authored in The Gerontologist. In comparison, people of the same age who don’t have dementia are aware of their financial abilities – and this awareness improves over time.
For our study, we used data from over 2,000 adults in the U.S. age 65 and older, collected during a long-term study on aging. We focused on how participants’ financial skills changed over time. The study began in 1998 and is still running, but we probed data collected between 1998 and 2009.
Participants were assessed at one year, two years, five years and 10 years for their ability to carry out everyday tasks, including ones that required handling money. For example, they had to calculate the cost of a gym membership and a store discount rate, fill out part of a tax return and assess the cost of medical services. They also rated how well they thought they could do everyday financial tasks. Initially, none of the participants were diagnosed with dementia, but over the course of the decade, 87 participants, or 3.1%, received a dementia diagnosis.
We found that even though participants’ performance on financial tasks declined as they aged, older adults who did not have dementia and older adults who had mild cognitive impairment were appropriately aware of their financial abilities. What’s more, that awareness increased over time. However, participants who were diagnosed with dementia during the study and experienced severe cognitive decline often misjudged how well they performed financial tasks.Financial scams targeting older adults are on the rise.
The lack of insight into one’s cognitive abilities is called anosognosia. This study reveals a new type called financial anosognosia.
Few tools are available that can support families in helping cognitively impaired adults manage their finances. Our research suggests that there is a critical window of time after people begin to experience cognitive decline during which they are still aware of their financial abilities. We believe that this is when people can take action to secure their finances and develop systems to protect themselves from fraud.
What still isn’t known
Close friends or family members are often tempted to take away the financial autonomy of an older adult who is mismanaging their finances. However, that may not be the best solution, particularly for people who feel that handling their finances is a core part of their identity. More research is needed to identify how best to balance personal autonomy and the need to protect a person’s finances.
What’s next
This study used paper-and-pencil tasks to assess financial performance. But increasingly, many older adults are using online banking.
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E-banking simplifies many calculations, which may be helpful for older adults with declining cognition. However, e-banking can also make finances more of a black box, which may decrease a person’s awareness of their financial abilities. Furthermore, e-banking is constantly advancing, putting older adults at a disadvantage because they are more likely to be less cognitively flexible and to learn more slowly.
We hope to explore whether older adults with and without cognitive decline have similar awareness of their ability to appropriately manage their finances online and identify potential financial scams.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Personal bankruptcy filings are soaring in 2026, signaling growing economic distress
Personal bankruptcy filings are climbing as inflation, high interest rates and mounting household debt strain American consumers. Although bankruptcy can provide a fresh start, financial recovery may take decades.
I became interested in the subject while in graduate school. Not because of any courses I took, but because I ran out of money. While I was in grad school, my wife, who was keeping the family afloat, unexpectedly lost her job at the very moment our savings went to zero.
Ultimately, we didn’t declare bankruptcy, and I’ll explain later what we did to avoid it. But this near brush with that fate sparked my long-term interest in this predicament that befalls many American consumers who find themselves financially stressed out.
U.S. bankruptcy law has two big goals that contradict each other.
The first is to give honest individual debtors a “fresh start.” The process ideally reduces or eliminates enough of their debt to make it possible to earn, spend, borrow and repay money like people with a more typical financial life. In other words, personal bankruptcy can take the financial noose off debtors’ necks.
The second is to ensure that creditors get repaid as much as possible for their loans. When someone declares bankruptcy, some or maybe all of their creditors don’t get their money back. In 2024, the Americans who filed for bankruptcy had about US$75 billion in assets, but they owed their creditors about $86 billion – $11 billion more.
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States and the federal government make different trade-offs between these goals. As a result there are very different limits on how much equity – the difference between market value and what you owe – debtors can keep in their primary homes and personal property after they declare bankruptcy.
Some states are quite lenient. For example, Texas bankruptcy law doesn’t limit the amount of equity in a home at all. That helps debtors get back on their feet.
People declaring bankruptcy typically file using either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 of the federal bankruptcy code.
About 2 in 3 people use Chapter 7, a form of financial liquidation. The bankruptcy court appoints a trustee, who then sells off all of a person’s possessions, except what is covered by the various exemptions.
The trustee then gives creditors whatever money is left after the sale. In exchange for giving up most of what someone owns, filing Chapter 7 wipes out almost all debts and gives them a fresh financial start.
Chapter 13 is a slower-moving process. Creditors are paid over three to five years from a person’s earnings. Debtors keep enough of their wages to cover necessary living expenses, but all other disposable income goes to creditors. Chapter 13 allows people to save their homes from foreclosure and keep their vehicles.Filing for bankruptcy is a legal process, so it helps to hire a lawyer to handle the paperwork. D_BANK/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images
Bankruptcy filing rising after decline
The number of personal bankruptcies filed annually fell sharply for more than a decade before the recent uptick, hitting a low of about 368,000 in 2022, down from about 1.5 million in 2010.
That number has climbed steadily since 2022.
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A 2005 law called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act sparked the earlier decline. Its goal was to make declaring bankruptcy harder and more expensive. Many creditors pushed for these changes because they felt some individuals were abusing the system.
The changes introduced income limits for eligibility to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy. It also required people to get credit counseling before filing to see whether there was any way they could avoid bankruptcy. It also added a new obligation: Americans now take a course in financial management after they file for bankruptcy to reduce the chance of future money troubles.
One interesting study regarding the legislation’s impact found that it lowered credit card interest rates, but it also prevented some people without health insurance from wiping out their medical debts.
The 2005 changes caused the number of personal bankruptcies to plunge. That ended with the Great Recession, which lasted from late 2007 until mid-2009.
This economic downturn pushed up the number of bankruptcies dramatically. But then the number fell from 2010 until 2022, as the Great Recession’s impact gradually receded. The decline continued into the early 2020s because the stimulus checks and more generous unemployment insurance payments the government provided at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic helped keep millions of U.S. consumers afloat.
Bankruptcy stays on your credit report for up to 10 years. After that, creditors are supposed to treat people who filed for it like anyone else. A study I worked on with law professor Lois Lupicatracked what happened over two decades to both people who had and had not declared bankruptcy. We wanted to see whether those who had filed for bankruptcy really got out of their financial hole.
Our findings were a good news, bad news story. The good news was that bankruptcy was not causing permanent financial stigma. The average person who declared bankruptcy eventually caught up financially with their peers who hadn’t.
The bad news was that it took 15-25 years to recover in almost all financial dimensions. This is longer than those 10 years that the bankruptcy filing stays on your credit report.
In short, we determined that bankruptcy does give people a fresh start, but getting that reprieve takes longer than the law’s intent.
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Strategies that can stave off bankruptcy
My wife and I avoided bankruptcy primarily by doing two things.
First, we switched to using cash for most of our day-to-day purchases. When our wallets were empty, we were done spending. I talk more about this in my 2025 book “The Power of Cash.”
Second, we contacted the financial company where we owed our biggest monthly payment. After providing proof of financial hardship, they were surprisingly flexible.
If these two steps are not enough for you, the next step is to consult an attorney who specializes in bankruptcy law. While there are lots of things most people can competently do on their own, filing for bankruptcy is not one of them.
Life insurance is on the to-do list. Right under cleaning out the garage.
No matter how you define “adulting,” getting life insurance tends to be one part of the to-do list that keeps getting set on a procrastination loop. New survey data backs that up: there are plenty of other tasks adults would rather focus on first.
(Sheeka Sanahori) Being an adult comes with a never-ending list of responsibilities: Cook dinner. Scrub the bathroom. File taxes. The tasks grow even longer when sharing a household with a partner, building a family, or taking care of others. No matter how you define “adulting,” getting life insurance tends to be one part of the to-do list that keeps getting set on a procrastination loop.
New survey data backs that up: there are plenty of other tasks adults would rather focus on first.
The Adulting Task Americans Keep Avoiding
According to the 2026 Life Happens Life Insurance Survey, a financial literacy nonprofit organization, 39% of U.S. adults would rather clean out their email inbox than figure out their life insurance needs. Another 31% would rather clean out the garage or basement. One in five U.S. adults would be willing to sit on hold with customer service for three hours before life insurance planning. Even though many adults have it somewhere on their list, nearly half (46%) say they’ll either deal with it later or not at all.
They Know It Matters
Nearly a third of adults have already figured out a life insurance plan, and they feel good about their decision. Others are feeling more conflicted: 14% have a policy, but they’re not sure if they have enough. Another 12% say they either don’t know where to start or they think it’ll be too expensive.
It’s no wonder people are putting it off: Navigating a new-to-them form of financial planning can come with a lot of complicated emotions. Four in 10 feel either overwhelmed, anxious, or some combination of both. Sixteen percent of U.S. adults feel guilty for putting it off, but when the outcome is more procrastination, that feeling lingers.
Why Later Keeps Winning
If you’ve ever faced an important decision without having enough information to make an informed choice, you know how stressful it can be. While the generations have different takes on making major decisions with a gut feeling or “pure vibes,” most of the time, people want to feel like they’re making an informed choice. Forty-five percent of U.S. adults say cost concerns, confusion or procrastination are the main reasons they have delayed or would delay looking into life insurance. For more than one in five, the plan is to seriously look at it when they feel more financially stable. For 12%, they say they’ll do it when they’re older.
Men tend to feel more confident about their life insurance decisions to date; 53% of men vs. 41% of women feel confident their family would be financially protected.
The First Step Feels Bigger Than It Is
Learning more about life insurance, how it’s priced and how it works could help get many consumers out of their procrastination loop. A quarter of people say they’d make a decision if they learned it was easier to get than they previously thought. Thirty percent would make the purchase if they learned it was more affordable than they believed it to be. Others need an experienced professional to talk to or an online calculator tool to give them guidance.
Methodology: Life Happens commissioned Atomik Research to conduct an online survey of 2,000 adults, including 700 Gen Z respondents, 700 millennials, and 600 Gen X respondents throughout the United States. The margin of error for the overall sample is +/- 2 percentage points and +/- 4 percentage points for each generational sample, with a confidence level of 95 percent. Fieldwork took place between July 14 and July 20, 2026. Atomik Research, part of 4media group, is a creative market research agency.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock (couple using computer)
Financial Confidence: Economic uncertainty, fueled by persistent inflation, stagnant wages and a cooling job market, has led many Americans to feel like they’re falling behind, even when they’re doing many of the “right” things financially. This expert guidance can help you be more intentional with the choices you make so your spending reflects your priorities.
(Feature Impact) Nearly everyone is carrying some level of insecurity about their financial future, even those who are trying to plan ahead. Economic uncertainty, fueled by persistent inflation, stagnant wages and a cooling job market, has led many Americans to feel like they’re falling behind, even when they’re doing many of the “right” things financially.
Though many are paying down debt, saving for retirement and building an emergency fund, they’re still asking, “Am I doing enough?” In fact, only 21% of Americans are financially prepared and assured in their ability to protect their futures, according to Mutual of Omaha’s 2026 Protection Index Survey – a proprietary research study conducted with quantilope – which shows overall financial confidence has declined.
“Many people believe they need to wait until they have more money, more certainty or the perfect plan before taking action,” said Nate Hobson, vice president of sales, Advisor Network at Mutual of Omaha. “But financial confidence is usually built through consistency rather than perfect timing. Even small steps today can make a meaningful difference over time.”
While being financially secure means different things to different people, according to the survey – such as having little or no debt (34%), owning a home (29%), maintaining emergency savings (27%), saving for retirement (26%) or having insurance coverage (26%) – building financial confidence doesn’t have to translate to cutting out everything you enjoy. Instead, this expert guidance can help you be more intentional with the choices you make so your spending reflects your priorities.
Create a Financial Cushion
Whether it’s a car repair, medical bill or temporary loss of income, unexpected expenses happen.
Having even a modest emergency fund can reduce financial stress and reliance on credit cards or loans. If saving several months of expenses feels overwhelming, start with a smaller milestone. Consistency matters more than the starting amount.
Put Good Financial Habits on Autopilot
One of the easiest ways to make progress is removing the need to make the same decision every month. Consider setting up automatic contributions to savings and retirement accounts, regular investment deposits and automatic bill payments, which can help you build financial security even during busy or uncertain times.
Taking a look at everyday spending habits can also make a difference. The survey showed small, everyday choices add up over time, such as cutting non-essential spending (57%), using rewards programs (54%), comparing prices or switching providers (39%) and following a monthly budget (38%). That could mean bringing your lunch to work instead of grabbing takeout, taking a few extra minutes to compare prices at the grocery store or using rewards to get more value from the purchases you’re already making.
Protect What You’re Building
Saving and investing are important pieces of financial protection, but they’re only part of the equation. Protecting income, loved ones and other financial assets is equally important.
For families, life insurance can provide financial protection during key earning and caregiving years, helping replace income if the unexpected happens. For those focused on covering final expenses, guaranteed whole life insurance can help cover funeral and other end-of-life costs. If you’re approaching or living in retirement, an annuity may provide a reliable stream of income that can complement other retirement resources and reduce uncertainty.
A financial professional can help determine which options best fit your goals and circumstances. To see how much coverage is right for your situation, Mutual of Omaha’s Life Insurance Calculator can provide a personalized estimate based on your income, financial obligations and long-term goals.
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For more practical advice to build financial confidence, visit MutualofOmaha.com.
Taking Action with an Extra $1,000
If you unexpectedly received $1,000, your response with the extra cash may reveal your financial priorities and where additional planning could strengthen financial resilience.
Providing a window into Americans’ financial priorities, respondents in Mutual of Omaha’s 2026 Protection Index Report said they would:
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Put Good Financial Habits on Autopilot
