What makes some people thrifty savers and others shrewd investors? Experts find it's probably not just personality or intelligence that influences how you handle money and investing. Your age and the economic conditions prevailing during your various life stages shape how you perceive financial matters, and learning about your age bias may help you overcome it.

One of the surest ways to frustrate my mother was for her to accompany Grandma Ethel, then in her mid-90s, to her favorite delicatessen near the assisted-living facility she called home in Chicago. It had a menu as big as a billboard, and Ethel relished the chance to consider almost every dish before she settled on an old favorite, no matter how long the process took.
 

De onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Stanford lieten 110 mannen en vrouwen van verschillende leeftijd kiezen uit drie aandelen met een verschillende naam. Twee van de aandelen hadden een regelmatige opbrengst, de ander was erg risicovol.

The common perception is that older people are more conservative investors than their younger counterparts. But brain imaging studies combined with economic analysis are causing neuroscientists to question that idea.

Despite our stereotyped notions of the predictable elderly investor, new research suggests certain regions of the brain make for increasingly irrational decisions as investors age.

New studies help explain why, despite having more experience, senior citizens often make unprofitable financial choices

The young are fearless and bold. The old are scared and cautious. That’s the conventional view of how we feel about risk over the course of a lifetime. New research in behavioral economics and neuroscience, however, is complicating this simple picture.

Contrary to the popular notion that young people are reckless, while older people avoid risks, new research shows that in an investment task that involves balancing risk to make the most money, older people make more mistakes than their younger counterparts.