Financial Procrastination: Assessing Wealth Indecision and Avoidance with a Self-Report Scale

Identifying and understanding financial procrastination, chronic avoidance or delay in wealth management, might assist individuals and financial professionals develop strategies to promote better financial decision-making. We developed a self-report scale to measure financial procrastination with 753 adults (442 men, 311 women; M age = 44 years old) through convenient sampling from northern India. We randomly distributed participants into two sub-samples for exploratory factor analysis (EFA; n = 372) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n = 381), to test reliability and convergent validity. EFA and CFA results revealed a two-factor structure of a short 9-item reliable financial procrastination scale, namely: 4 items on financial avoidance (avoidance behavior related to financial matters; alpha = 0.86), and 5 items on financial indecisiveness (irrational delays in making financial decisions; alpha = 0.84). Results demonstrated good reliability and validity. This new scale may contribute significantly to individual difference literature measuring financial procrastination.