Save & Invest

Following a rigorous research effort to develop a consumer-driven definition of financial well-being, the CFPB developed and tested a set of questions–a “scale”–to measure financial well-being. The scale is designed to allow practitioners and researchers to accurately and consistently quantify, and therefore observe, something that is not directly observable–the extent to which someone’s financial situation and the financial capability that they have developed provide them with security and freedom of choice.

A guide from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to help consumers retiring from a traditional pension plan navigate their payout options. The guide gives near-retirees the information they need to understand the trade-offs of taking their pension in a monthly payment or in a lump sum. The guide also provides tips and warnings about how to protect and best manage their lump-sum money.

The Teacher Online Resource Center offers teachers resources from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to help teach children from pre-K through age 20 about money or other financial topics. Also available on the site are videos that illustrate practical ways teachers can integrate core financial education lessons into the classroom. Access to curriculum, videos, and more can be found at www.fdic.gov/teachers.

Money Smart for Young People has lessons that provide a developmentally appropriate program for young students to build an understanding of key financial concepts. This standards-aligned curriculum can be incorporated into subjects such as English language arts, mathematics and social studies. In addition to the educator materials, the curriculum includes a Parent/Caregiver Guide that corresponds to the classroom materials.

Researchers have become increasingly interested in understanding the sources of heterogeneity in individual financial behaviors. In this paper, we examine how the Big Five personality traits are related to measures of young adults’ financial distress. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health in the United States, we find that conscientiousness is negatively correlated, and neuroticism positively correlated with financial distress. These correlations are robust to controlling for early life background and other demographic and socioeconomic factors.

“World of Cents” provides a fun and engaging opportunity for children to learn the concepts of earning, saving and spending money while building their very own magical world full of whimsical playhouses. The gameplay experience touches on the important building blocks for making smart financial decisions, such as math skills, good savings habits and financial literacy. “World of Cents” utilizes coin value recognition to demonstrate how to save and manage money. Users even have the option of viewing their world in 4D. The game is available in the App Store and Google Play.

We provide new and robust empirical evidence that procrastinators behave differently than non_procrastinators for five important retirement_related financial behaviors. Empirically, we define a procrastinator as an individual who waits until the last day of their health care open enrollment period to make their plan election.

Automatic enrollment has been widely embraced for raising employee participation in 401(k) plans. However, the empirical evidence is based on data with limitations that, up until now, have prevented researchers from extrapolating the effects of automatic enrollment to the broader population of workers. This paper reexamines the determinants of 401(k) participation and contributions in the presence of automatic enrollment using nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for 2006 through 2012.