🌱 Why Optimists Save More Money

New research suggests that a positive outlook may quietly shape how much money you save, especially if you have a lower income

When we think about saving money, we tend to focus on concrete factors such as income, expenses, interest rates, and financial tools. Mindsets rarely make the list, but the way we think about life and perceive the future undoubtedly affects our decision-making. One particular psychological tendency—a general bias toward optimism vs pessimism—may in fact be pivotal in our decisions about whether to spend money today or save money for tomorrow.

Optimism could be portrayed as financially dangerous. If you generally expect positive outcomes in the future, why sacrifice comforts today? Why waste money building a financial buffer if you’re confident that things will work out well even if you don’t? But conversely, perhaps pessimism is the real deterrent to healthy savings. Why save money for an unknown future that feels intimidating or dark when you can live for the certainty of today?

A large new research project puts this question to the test by examining how optimism interacts with people’s willingness to save money. In a race of long-term wealth accumulation, does the optimist or the pessimist come out on top?

🧪 What did the researchers do?

In a 2025 paper published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers analyzed data from eight large-scale studies spanning multiple countries, income levels, and research designs (total N = 143,461).

The studies included both cross-sectional data (snapshots at a single point in time) and longitudinal data that tracked the same individuals for up to 18 years. This allowed the researchers to examine not just who saves more, but whether changes in optimism for a given person are associated with changes in their financial outcomes over time.

Across studies, dispositional optimism was measured using validated psychological survey scales such as the Life Orientation Test–Revised (LOT-R). These are questions that assess a person’s general tendency to expect positive outcomes in the future.

Savings and wealth were measured with a range of methods:

• Self-reported savings

• Objective bank-reported savings data

• Total household assets and net worth

• Long-term investment returns and wealth accumulation

The studies were all correlational analyses, so the researchers controlled for a wide range of potential confounds, including age, employment, financial literacy, personality, and health. This allowed the researchers to try and isolate the role of optimism itself by accounting for other important life factors that affect financial behaviors.

The researchers also tested whether income moderates the relationship between optimism and saving. Higher-income individuals often save automatically (e.g. through pensions or predetermined investment strategies) so optimism might be less important, whereas lower-income individuals need to save deliberately and actively through motivation and persistence.

🔍 What did the research find?

Across the datasets, higher optimism consistently predicted greater savings and wealth accumulation over time. This held even after controlling for income, education, personality traits, financial literacy, and demographic factors. In fact, optimism predicted savings behaviors at least as strongly as more established predictors such as financial literacy and risk tolerance.

In longitudinal analyses, within-person increases in optimism were associated with later increases in savings, suggesting this isn’t just a static personality difference. As optimism fluctuated across people’s individual lives, savings fluctuated similarly in response.

Income levels added some interesting nuance to the picture. The relationship between optimism and saving was substantially stronger among lower-income individuals. In other words, optimism was most predictive of greater savings when people had to think carefully about how best to allocate their limited financial resources. When higher incomes provide the luxury of passive, automated investment, optimism no longer matters so much.

Optimism and pessimism both exerted an influence and mirrored each other in their effects. Lower pessimism and higher optimism predicted greater savings, with neither clearly dominating the other across the studies. So if there’s a causal link at play, you could improve financial savings behaviors by either fostering a positive future outlook or mitigating your chronic pessimism.

Taken together, the findings suggest that optimism facilitates future-oriented motivation and persistence. Instead of making people financially impulsive, optimism encourages people to believe that it’s worth setting aside money for their upcoming bright futures.

⭐️ Takeaway tips

#1. Practice being an optimist

• Optimism is often framed as naive or idealistic, and it may indeed get a little irrational in some contexts (e.g. the optimism bias), but it’s also a powerful psychological tool that supports long-term planning. When you expect a bright future, you’re more likely to sacrifice short-term luxuries in the service of your long-term self. Even outside the context of finance, an optimistic outlook helps you interact with the world through a positive, encouraging, and motivated mindset.

#2. With limited resources, optimism matters more

• When saving money demands careful attention, decision-making, and self-control, your expectations about the future are particularly influential. When you’re financially comfortable enough to automate your savings, you can simply set and forget your savings approach so that pessimism is less likely to interfere. For everyone else, it’s important to cultivate a belief that progress—even slow progress—is rewarding and worthwhile so that your future self gets the respect they deserve.

#3. Celebrate efforts as much as outcomes

• Optimism doesn’t require believing everything will go perfectly. It requires a belief that effort is meaningful and that future goals are attainable with motivated persistence. Instead of tracking outcomes and waiting for big wins before celebrating success, focus more on your efforts. Celebrate sending important emails rather than receiving important replies. Celebrate forging interesting connections rather than waiting for payoffs from meetings. Celebrate sending $100 into your savings account rather than gaining $100 in interest. By celebrating the efforts, your motivation comes from your action rather than your outcome, which is essential since outcomes are not entirely within your control. Seeing efforts rather than outcomes as the win also helps to bolster your resilience during the inevitable failures along the way. It’s not about effort for effort’s sake—it’s about incentivizing the right actions to maximize your probability of getting the right outcomes.

“I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

~ Carl Sandburg

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