The failure to respect recommendations of the relevant international institutions might be a token of financial illiteracy of the government. Even after the “small” pension reform, the Czech public pension pillar continues to lack transparency and is incomprehensible for its common participants, which may also have significant impact on public finance. In order to determine the potential effect of the lack of transparency and of the financial illiteracy, the paper analyses also the differences between the Czech and the U.S. public pension pillars, including the different statutory retirement ages.