UCLA Economics Professor Claims Linguistic Knowledge Affects The Way We Save Money

Consumers all over the world are wondering what they can do to improve their financial situation. Taking full control of one’s money would be a good start, but there are other determining factors as well. Depending on one’s linguistic knowledge, saving money can be far more challenging than originally anticipated.

Embracing A New Language For Financial Gain?

As is always the case when it comes to financial advice, one has to take research into these matters with a few grains of salt. UCLA economics professor Keith Chen provided the world with some rather intriguing findings that may affect the way we think about saving money. It is always prudent, however, to do your own research before following the research findings blindly.

What Chen did was to compare saving’s rates in several dozen countries. Taking into consideration how these rates will impact the level of development and economic growth, the information also tells an intriguing story. As it turns out, according to the research, there is a competitive advantage when using specific languages.

To be more precise, there are several languages which have “weak” future time references. While this may not seem like a scientific basis on which to make an assessment, these people tend to deposit funds into their bank savings accounts more often.  This is a rather strange correlation, but there could be some merit to taking this information into consideration.

Native English speakers have a very large vocabulary in which to reference future times. German, on the other hand, is a very straightforward language, with a far more direct approach. While this does not indicate that language has anything to do with saving money, it showcases the mindset of those native speakers. In turn, that mindset affects how people behave and operate on a daily basis.

Despite what this research seems to indicate, the exceptions are always more attractive. Some languages which emphasize future time references seem to do equally well when it comes to saving money. This appears to discredit the research a bit, yet also shows that there are always interesting connections to be made between finance and external factors.

The best advice would be for consumers to always do their own research, including comparing offers and trying to get the most “bang for the buck”. Blindly spending money is never a very good idea, regardless of how rich or poor one may be. Whether or not a bank savings account is the best way to store financial wealth is a topic for a different discussion, though.

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