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The Secret to Saving Money Might Be… Optimism?
By Pete Grieve MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
Save money, be happy.
Although you might think that people who have anxiety about the future would save more money out of caution, that’s actually not the case. Optimists are surprisingly good savers, new research shows.
Pessimism can lead people to save money in fear of emergencies, but optimism has been found to have a stronger link with saving behavior, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.
“We often think of optimism as rose-colored glasses that might lead people to save less for the future,” lead author Joe Gladstone, a University of Colorado Boulder researcher, said in a Thursday news release. “But our research suggests optimism may actually be an important psychological resource that helps people save, especially when facing economic hardship.”
The researchers used data from eight surveys taken in the U.S. and Europe that included various measures of optimism. All together, the surveys included over 140,000 participants from the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany and other countries.
While the survey methods of the eight polls varied, all of them asked participants about their income and savings, and some inquired about their total assets. The surveys also had participants rate how much they agreed with statements like “overall, I expect more good things to happen to me than bad” and “in uncertain times, I usually expect the best.”
By definition, optimists are hopeful for positive outcomes, even when it seems like everything is going wrong. This confidence that things will improve may have a link with financial planning for the better days that lie ahead.
In fact, the connection between optimism and proactive saving habits was even more pronounced among lower-income individuals.
“For someone living paycheck to paycheck, saving can feel futile,” Gladstone said. “But an optimistic outlook may provide the motivation to set aside money despite present challenges.”
Optimism was consistently associated with better savings habits in the analysis, and the difference was significant. The researchers found that the more optimistic a respondent reported feeling, the more savings they tended to have (or, in academic terms, “a one-standard-deviation increase in optimism correlated with a $1,352 increase in savings for households with the median savings balance of $8,000,” according to the release).
Optimists were also found to have higher investment returns than pessimists and were more likely to have savings at all. This may be because they set more ambitious savings goals and have the persistence needed to achieve them.
The takeaway from the research on the connection between optimism and increased savings? The authors said “optimism-building techniques” should be incorporated into financial education and other programs aimed at increasing savings — especially with low-income populations that typically save at lower rates.
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Pete Grieve is a New York-based reporter who covers personal finance news. At Money, Pete covers trending stories that affect Americans’ wallets on topics including car buying, insurance, housing, credit cards, retirement and taxes. He studied political science and photography at the University of Chicago, where he was editor-in-chief of The Chicago Maroon. Pete began his career as a professional journalist in 2019. Prior to joining Money, he was a health reporter for Spectrum News in Ohio, where he wrote digital stories and appeared on TV to provide coverage to a statewide audience. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times and CNN Politics. Pete received extensive journalism training through Report for America, a nonprofit organization that places reporters in newsrooms to cover underreported issues and communities, and he attended the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in 2021. Pete has discussed his reporting in interviews with outlets including the Columbia Journalism Review and WBEZ (Chicago's NPR station). He’s been a panelist at the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest and he received the Institute on Political Journalism’s $2,500 Award for Excellence in Collegiate Reporting in 2017. An essay he wrote for Grey City magazine was published in a 2020 book, Remembering J. Z. Smith: A Career and its Consequence.