Top 10 smartest states for financial literacy: 2015

Being financially literate is growing ever more important as investments and market forces become more complicated.

To find out where the most financially literate people live, we turned to Wallethub.com's financial literacy rankings of the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

Wallethub.com noted that there is a huge financial literacy problem in the U.S. For instance, 20 percent of Americans spend more than they make and 60 percent do not have money set aside for bad times. In addition, only about 40 percent have a budget.

Wallethub.com assessed states based on two categories: knowledge and education; and planning and daily habits.

The site looked at the high school dropout rate, results of a FINRA literacy survey and the percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree, among other things, rate states in the first category. The second category included looking at the percentage of people who spend more than they earn, how many have a rainy day fund and those paying just the minimum due on credit cards.

The rankings were designed to differentiate between financial hardship and lack of knowledge.