Love and Money: Do Savers Seek Spenders?

This post is from GRS staff writer April Dykman.Social psychologists have found that people tend to choose their significant other based on similarities�similar attitudes, values, and even similar names.Those findings would seem to suggest that people with similar spending habits would be attracted to each other, too. But a working paper published last year found the opposite to be true. In “Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction,” Rick, Small, and Finkel, professors of the Wharton School of Finance and Northwestern University, found that while most singles say that their ideal mate would have similar spending habits, when it comes to feelings toward spending, opposites attract.The spendthrift-tightwad spectrumRick, Small, and Finkel used a survey to establish where study participants fell on a spendthrift-tightwad spectrum. According to the paper, each of us feel a degree of �pain of paying.� Spendthrifts feel too little pain, causing them to spend more than they ideally would want. Tightwads experience too much pain, causing [...]
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[Source: Get Rich Slowly]