It's the best times, it's the worst of times for financial education. It's the best of times because everyone now sees its importance and promotes it for all Americans. It's the worst of times because efforts at financial education, taken as a whole, have to be viewed as a failure.

Take the case of 401(k) education. Americans still don't save enough, aren't preparing for retirement, fail to properly diversify their portfolios, are prone to quickly loot their 401(k) savings for emergencies and don't maximize their match opportunities.

Compounding financial education's problems are disagreements over when it should occur, where it should occur, how it should occur and who should pay for it. Currently, financial education is a patchwork quilt of efforts that include a wide range of age groups, conducted in many different private and public venues, employing a wide range of pedagogies with mostly third parties paying for it.

One common theme that emerges in discussing when and where financial education should be taught is the "younger the better" argument - with schools responsible for teaching Americans money management skills. This strikes me as an unworkable strategy. Given that U.S. K-12 schools struggle with teaching reading, writing and math, it's hard to believe that they would do a credible job with such topics as portfolio allocation.

My own experience as an economic educator is that the average person is more open to financial education later in life. Give me a group of adults who are in their late 20s to early 40s, can't pay their bills and are far behind in their savings goals, and I can work magic on them.

Whatever plans emerge in the future to help Americans deal with their personal financial issues - as I write, government commissions are busy at work designing financial literacy strategies - I believe that the main responsibility for Americans to prepare for retirement will fall on the shoulders of private and public employers. They must figure out the proper strategy to prepare Americans for retirement.

While employees who work for companies that offer 401(k) plans continue to struggle preparing for retirement, solutions are beginning to emerge that increase the likelihood workers become enrolled in company retirement plans and matched to portfolios that take into account individual risk profiles and retirement horizons. For example, many companies that offer a 401(k) are giving up on their employees managing their own retirement and are beginning to retake control of their employees' investment choices.

Two popular steps now taken by employers are to automatically enroll new employees in the 401(k) and automatically place them into a diversified portfolio. These two steps are now part of an emerging paternalism that will increase over time. Companies also are offering employees financial advice and personal financial counseling. I have argued for jettisoning the entire retirement caboodle by delegating responsibility for it to a professional fiduciary.

Unfortunately, getting employees enrolled in a retirement plan and getting them matched to a sensible portfolio is only half the battle. Even after accomplishing these two steps, companies will discover that employees save too little and thus aren't preparing for retirement.

The real black hole in employee retirement planning is in helping employees solve their pre-investment financial problems. This is where employers should begin investing training dollars.

Everyone knows the details of the average American's financial woes - too little saving, too much debt. Companies that really want their employees to be financially healthy need to help their workers get their financial house in order so that they can afford to save for their family's future financial needs.

HR/benefits pros need to orient their financial education efforts away from investment education toward good basic personal finance.

At minimum, employees need to be taught and motivated to set realistic financial goals, create a budget, pay off their debt, learn to balance a checkbook, use a legitimate financial institution, carry the right forms of insurance, claim the right number of deductions and get into a fixed mortgage.

Companies put "the cart before the horse" in emphasizing employee investment education. What employees first need to do is to straighten out their personal financial mess.

Once this is accomplished, then they will have the money to invest in their company's 401(k). Given emerging strategies like automatic enrollment and personalized financial advice and counseling, companies need to reallocate training dollars away from personal investment education toward basic personal finance.