Behavioural Characteristics and Financial Distress

to the contrary. As shown in Table 2, roughly 60 per cent of the sample are classified as
being organised with their money.

Table 2: Distribution of samples by Behavioural and Time Preference Traits (%)

3.1.3 Questions on Financial Literacy

Financial literacy has been shown to affect many different financial outcomes such as sav-
ings, wealth, debt and retirement funds (see Stango and Zinman (2010), Lusardi and Tufano
(2008), Lusardi and Mitchell (2007), for example). Unfortunately, information on financial
literacy is not available in the Irish Financial Capability Survey. However, in the UK version
(which accounts for almost 80 per cent of the total sample), respondents were presented
with several questions that I use to assess basic financial literacy. In particular, respondents
were shown a copy of a bank statement (see Table 3) and asked:

(1) Looking at this example of a bank statement, please can you tell me how
much money was in the account at the end of February?

(2) And still looking at this statement, if a direct debit of £179 comes in on
28th February and there is an agreed overdraft limit of £100 on the account,
would there be enough money in the account including the overdraft limit, to
cover the direct debit?

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