Written by: Bryant Rivera Colón | Fiduciary Financial Advisors

This is a planning gap

There is a real financial planning gap in Latino communities, and I do not think our profession should pretend otherwise.

Not because Latino households do not care about money. Not because they are less disciplined. And not because the answer is to publish more generic financial literacy content.

The gap is real because many Latino households are making important financial decisions while dealing with tighter cash flow, less room for error, lower participation in some of the systems that build long-term wealth, and, in many cases, language or trust barriers on top of that.

That is not a motivation problem. It is an access, usability, and planning problem.

The need shows up in the numbers

In the Federal Reserve’s 2024 SHED survey, 47% of Hispanic adults said they would cover a $400 emergency expense completely using cash or its equivalent, compared with 71% of White adults.

FDIC data adds another layer. In 2023, 9.5% of Hispanic households were unbanked, compared with 1.9% of White households, and 7.6% of Hispanic households were cash-only unbanked, compared with 1.1% of White households.

The long-term picture is uneven too. Pew found that Hispanic households lag White and Asian households in ownership of retirement accounts and market-based assets like stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

And when wealth does build, it is often less diversified: among Hispanic homeowners, home equity represented a median 66% of net worth in 2021.

This is where planning should matter

This is exactly where financial planning should matter.

Not as a luxury. Not as a portfolio service looking for a problem. And not as a product pitch disguised as education.

What many households need first is coordination.

They need help deciding how emergency savings, debt payoff, retirement contributions, insurance, taxes, estate basics, and long-term investing fit together.

Those are not separate decisions. They interact.

And when a family is also supporting relatives, navigating first-generation wealth-building, or simply trying to translate financial jargon into something usable, good planning can create structure where there was previously just friction.

Planning is associated with stronger preparedness

The broader planning research supports that idea.

CFP Board’s 2025 Financial Planning Longitudinal Study found that households working with CFP® professionals reported stronger preparedness than both unadvised households and those working with other advisors.

Among CFP®-advised households, 94% said they felt confident about achieving financial goals, 83% reported at least three months of emergency savings, and 61% had a will.

That is not Latino-specific evidence, and it does not prove that every household will get the same result.

But it does support a more modest and credible point: structured planning is associated with better preparedness and stronger follow-through.

Delivery matters

The Latino-specific evidence is important because it shows that delivery matters.

A community-based randomized controlled trial among low- and moderate-income, predominantly Spanish-speaking Hispanics found that a Spanish-language retirement education intervention increased retirement account opening.

Among 142 participants, 14% of the treatment group opened a myRA, compared with 0% in the control group, and the study also found increased self-reported retirement knowledge and preparedness.

That does not mean one workshop solves the whole problem. It does mean that when education is linguistically relevant and designed to be actionable, people respond.

Why Spanish-speaking advisors can matter

Trust and language are not side issues here. TIAA Institute’s 2024 research found that distrust of financial institutions remains meaningful for many Hispanics surveyed, and that their ideal advisor is one who educates and empowers them while understanding Hispanic cultural norms and complexities.

CFPB has also said that about 26 million people in the U.S. are limited-English-proficient, which helps explain why language access still matters in consumer finance.

To be clear, speaking Spanish does not make someone competent, and shared identity does not automatically create trust.

But it can reduce friction in a way that is hard to fake.

A Spanish-speaking advisor who actually understands the client’s world may be able to explain concepts more clearly, catch misunderstandings earlier, ask better questions around family obligations, and make planning feel less foreign.

That advisor is not just translating words. They are translating systems.

The real opportunity

CFP Board reported 3,016 Hispanic CFP® professionals, or 3.1% of all CFP® professionals, at the start of 2024. That representation gap is still hard to ignore.

So the opportunity here is not to market harder to a growing demographic.

It is to serve better where the need is already obvious.

The need is real. And the need is not mainly for portfolio construction. It is for planning: cash flow, emergency savings, debt strategy, retirement access, protection planning, estate basics, and long-term diversification.

Related: Pivot Corner: Starting Over with Purpose at 42

Sources

  1. Federal Reserve, Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), 2024

  2. FDIC, 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households

  3. Pew Research Center, The Assets Households Own and the Debts They Carry

  4. CFP Board, 2025 Financial Planning Longitudinal Study

  5. Blanco, Duru, and Mangione, A Community-Based Randomized Controlled Trial of an Educational Intervention to Promote Retirement Saving Among Hispanics

  6. TIAA Institute, The State of Hispanic Financial Wellness in the U.S.