I am a statistic

A marketing firm recently contacted me via a group I belong to and asked me to complete a survey about my financial beliefs and habits. The survey was anonymous and asked for no financial information beyond opinions about various financial statements.

Though I usually disregard surveys (especially nonpaid ones!), I decided to do this because I was interested in what they were going to ask.

A lot of the statements were what I would expect: rating on a scale of “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree” statements like, “Dealing with my finances stresses me out,” or “I believe I know a lot more than most people about finances.” At the end of the survey, they asked for my gender, age range, salary range, and marital status.

So, I am officially a statistic in someone’s study on how people feel and think about finances. I am in the box for single woman, 25-34, XXX-XXX annual salary. And it made me think about how people from different situations would respond: would a married homemaker in the 65-74 age range say that she feels “overwhelmed by the volume of financial information on the average financial website”? Would a newly retired person say that they strongly agree that they are “on track to meet [their] financial goals”? Would someone who makes half my salary respond that they “lose sleep over financial matters”?

I don’t know, but I read studies (financial and otherwise) voraciously (blame the psychology minor in me), and it’s really interesting to me to speculate.

*For the record: I answered “Mildly disagree” with “Financial matters stress me out;” “Mildly agree” with “I know a lot more about financial matters than most people;” “Disagree” with feeling “overwhelmed by the volume of financial information on the average financial website;” “Mildly agree” with “I am on track to meet my financial goals;” and “Disagree” with “I lose sleep over financial matters.”