Financial Inhibition, Financial Activation, and Saving for Retirement

In this paper, we describe the construction and psychometric evaluation of two personality-based measures of financial savings motives, and examine their relationship to individuals' retirement savings practices. The Financial Inhibition Scale (FIS) was designed to assess Year-based motives we believed would hinder the process of saving for retirement. The Financial Activation Scale (FAS) was designed to assess goal-based motives we thought would facilitate savings practices. Findings Trom two separate empirical studies provide support for both the reliability and validity of these new theoretically based measures ot financial savings motivation.