Squared Away Blog

Field Work

September 20, 2011

Which profile describes the most common victim of investment frauds like Bernie Madoff’s?

a. Tech-savvy young adult
b. Man over 50 earning high income
c. Elderly widow on fixed income

Widow, you say? That’s the stereotype, said Laura Carstensen, founder of Stanford University’s new Research Center on the Prevention of Financial Fraud.

“The old woman who’s demented and living on her own, and the guy who knocks on her door and sells her the policy – that does exist, but it doesn’t represent older people,” she said. Older people who have a history of long-standing relationships are often better at determining who they can trust, she said.

The correct answer is b: Man over 50 earning high income.

Fraudsters feed successful men’s egos by appealing to their investment savvy, enticing them to get into a deal others might not understand. By building up their egos, a fraudster ensures that the victim isn’t thinking clearly when he agrees to invest, said Doug Shadel, a member of the Stanford Center’s board who co-authored the AARP Foundation National Fraud Victim Study.Learn More

September 15, 2011

With more college graduates piling up debts, an increasingly popular program on campus is trying to help them stay out of trouble.

More than 600 colleges are now enrolled in the National Endowment for Financial Education’s (NEFE) online program, so they can offer free assistance to four-year and community college students. CashCourse is a sort of private-label personal finance program: each academic institution puts its logo and school colors on NEFE’s online package of cash- and debt-management tools, tips, and workshops.

The University of California, the University of Texas, Purdue University, and State University of New York are among the schools posting NEFE’s materials to their websites or customizing financial programs to meet their students’ unique needs.

“We want every school to figure out what works for them,” said Ted Beck, NEFE’s chief executive.

Student Debt

Leticia Gradington, program director for Kansas University’s program, said it’s not unusual for students to have $20,000 to $30,000 in college loans and credit card debts.

“You’ve got students every day who are worrying about how they’re going to pay their debt back,” she said. If students can learn just how expensive the debt is before they borrow, “They pay more attention to it.” …Learn More

Research

September 13, 2011

Economists’ explanation for why people don’t save for retirement is that they “discount” the future, placing a higher value on today’s pleasures. Educators argue that people don’t have the information they need to save.

Psychologists have a new theory: people can’t relate to their older, retired selves.

To test this theory, Hal Ersner-Hershfield and collaborators at Stanford University devised a way to help their research subjects – college students – identify with those nebulous figures out in the future, their older selves. When they did, the subjects were more likely to save money.

The national media have already covered this research. But it’s worth sharing as The Journal of Marketing Research plans to feature it in a special November issue on financial decision-making. The experiment demonstrates the contribution by psychologists to our understanding of how we handle money. …Learn More

Research

September 8, 2011

Every entrant to the workforce should be subjected to the same questions posed to California undergraduates in a new experiment about how well people understand compound interest.

Better to show the math than to explain it. Franny and Zooey just started working. Franny immediately begins depositing $100 per month – $1,200 every year – into her new retirement account, which pays 10 percent interest annually. Zooey doesn’t start saving for 20 years, but he puts in $300 every month — $3,600 annually — and also earns 10 percent interest.

In 40 years, Franny retires with $584,222 in her account – more than double Zooey’s $226,809.

Asked to calculate these future savings on their own, 90 percent of the undergraduates had vastly underestimated the totals in the experiment by Craig McKenzie at University of California, San Diego and Michael Liersch at New York University. Yet, this mathematical calculation is central to the financial well-being of most Americans. In 2009, more than half of all households were at risk of not having sufficient assets to retire, according to Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, which hosts this blog. …Learn More

September 6, 2011

The Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) will devote a special issue to interdisciplinary research on the hot topic of financial decision–making and behavior.

The issue is a smorgasbord of 15 articles on behavioral, marketing, economic, and psychological research on various financial activities, from borrowing money to establishing trust in financial transactions.

The November issue’s guest editor-in-chief, John G. Lynch, a psychologist who “wandered into marketing and consumer decision-making,” said the interdisciplinary approach advances everyone’s understanding of complex financial decisions.

“A given field understands a part of the answer. But we’re missing the larger whole,” he said. The special issue “would bring people together to read each other’s work and have an effect of causing more cross-fertilization.”

Squared Away plans to cover some JMR articles in a series of blog posts in coming weeks. Here’s a preview: …Learn More

September 1, 2011

I keep bumping into Tim Maurer’s videos – he’s an active tweeter – and decided to share the fun. This Baltimore financial planner’s clients include a lot of 30-somethings, so he produced a series of humorous 90-second videos that knock down the barriers to understanding the basics of various personal finance topics.

With many people either returning from or heading out on vacation this week, he suggests in this video how to eliminate the anxiety around spending money on trips.

But a couple of Maurer’s funniest videos include “The Bias of Life Insurance Agents in 90 Seconds or Less” and “How to Spend $1 million at Starbucks in 90 Seconds or Less.” At a time of historically low mortgage interest rates, a new video may be of interest to pre-retirees: “Pay off the Mortgage in 90 Seconds or Less.” Learn More

Money Culture

August 30, 2011

Are Americans suffering from financial-decision fatigue?

After the relative calm of rising financial markets though the 1980s and 1990s, Americans have lived through a series of booms and busts. First came the Internet boom of the late 1990s, which busted. Then the real estate market took off just as “emerging markets” plummeted. That was only a prelude to the worst financial-market collapse since the Great Depression. The stock market is now bouncing around like a bungee jumper.

Roiling markets in recent years have spurred decision after decision – about retirement, home buying, downsizing, mortgage refinancing, spending on large purchases such as a car, and where to find a good job.

Investors are advised to stick with a long-term plan and not react to every market fluctuation. In reality, there’s a history of research showing that dramatic gains and losses do cause people to change their behavior. Many Americans decided to abandon the stock market after the 2008-2009 decline, which pummeled 401(k) balances.

Researchers at Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research (CRR), which hosts this blog, identified a related set of decisions. The Center surveyed people who had lost 10 percent or more of their retirement savings: 57 percent decided to delay retirement, save more money, or both.Learn More