Personal Finance: Intentions & Reality

A couple of days ago I ran across this interesting article. The article outlines the often huge distance between intentions and actions as far as personal finance is concerned. Here is a summary of one section that I thought was especially informative:

Attendees at a retirement planning seminar all claimed that they would be joining their company's 401K plan. In reality, only 14% of un-enrolled seminar participants actually joined the plan. For comparison it should be noted that only 7% of those that did not attend the seminar joined the same plan. This information could lead you to the conclusion that the seminar helped motivate people to take action, however, it could also be argued that there is selection bias at work: i.e. people that chose to attend the seminar did so because they were more serious about taking action regarding their retirement planning. This means that the seminar itself may not have influenced people's actions at all, rather it simply provided a gathering venue for those more serious about retirement planning.

The article also shows that a large majority of people who were already enrolled in their 401K but needed to take certain actions, such as increasing their contribution rate also failed to follow up on their intentions after the seminar.

Here is what I take from this article: people procrastinate. It is in our very nature. We mean well, but our intentions do not always translate into action. Take me for example. I have been meaning to take my car in for an oil change for the past three weeks, but somehow I just can't seem to get it done. I have many good excuses: work has been crazy; my brother is in town for a visit; I have to pick up the kids and so forth. All excellent reasons. Still, no oil change.

What does that mean for people who care about personal finance? A couple of things: first, recognize your tendency to procrastinate, and combat it by building a plan and attaching schedules and goals to it. You want to do something? When are you going to do it? Second, don't develop personal finance plans that require too much activity or that rely on perfect timing. Those would be the most susceptible to procrastination damage.

What does this mean for public policy planners? If you think people are going to plan for their own retirement or make provisions for their long term economic well-being, there is a very strong chance that a majority of the population, while very well intentioned, will never actually get around to doing so. In fact, Congress and regulators are trying to use people's procrastination and laziness as tools to promote healthy retirement savings. One of the ways to achieve this is automatic enrollment of people in their 401K plans. Congress ok'd auto-enrollment in the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Hopefully procrastination now becomes a tool for good, as people who otherwise would never have saved now don't actually get around to opting-out of their retirement plans.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I was actually planning to write it last week, but never got around to it...