What's Your Financial Personality?

Who doesn’t love a personality test or quiz? There are lots and Buzzfeed loves them! However silly they may seem, they serve to uncover our strengths and weaknesses and help raise self-awareness. But what about your financial personality and have you ever made the connection between your personality and personal finances?

There are several money personality types and the very simple tests tend to divide the world into ‘spenders and savers’, ‘somewhere in between’ or ‘stick your head in the sand’ when it comes to our finances. What they all have in common is trying to understand what drives our financial behaviour and habits.

You may wonder why any of this actually matters? As a nation, we spend more than we save and the savings to debt ratio is expanding. We all have a money personality which plays a part in shaping our attitudes towards money, how we view spending, saving and investments. But, knowing what drives our behaviour and decisions matters, a lot, and can help us to cut back where we’re overspending or towards building a savings pot.

Just the simple fact that a study of UK adults showed a poor understanding of financial jargon leaving them seriously out of pocket to the tune of over £400 each year and the fact more than half didn’t even know what a loan was and a third didn’t know what the word ‘budget’ means, should give you some idea of why it’s important.

Every money tool in the book won’t help you if you don’t understand your relationship with money. In fact, depending on your money personality, money tools might leave you running for the hills rather than budgeting. If you want to test your money personality and financial wellness, try some of the sites we’ve listed below that take a few minutes to complete with easy to answer questions that reveal your type and give a good sense of your money patterns and behaviours to be wary of.

The Aviva Financial Personality Profiler can tell you what kind of saver, or spender, you are. Payoff has been developed by a team of scientists who used data from thousands of personality profiles and LearnVest looks at your money personality through a different angle and based on your answers, tells you about your money beliefs.

According to the Aviva test, me – your writer for today – well they tell me that I’m “All-seeing and all-knowing. You are totally in control of your (admittedly) awesome money powers, frequently passing on your wisdom. This could make you nauseatingly smug but, luckily, you have a weakness – selflessly bestowing gifts upon others without expecting anything in return”. Smug I am certainly not, but I do like to be in control of my money and share what I’ve learnt from working in the finance industry for nearly twenty years. 

There is no one money type that’s good or bad, wrong or right, but there is something we can all learn that will help us make the best decisions when it comes to money matters. Being aware of our personal preferences, as well as our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our personal money matters can help us better understand our money decisions and approach to taking better control of our financial destiny. Whether spender or saver be, we should all try to have a balanced approach to how we save, spend and invest.