The impact of wealth on financial mistakes: Evidence from credit card non-payment

Recent research finds that poorer individuals make financial mistakes when the decisions are difficult and rare. We examine who makes financial mistakes involving decisions that are easier and more frequent – specifically, the inadvertent failure to pay monthly credit card balances when sufficient funds are available. On the one hand poorer individuals may make such mistakes because of lower levels of financial literacy. Alternatively, richer individuals may make such mistakes because of the relatively lower costs to them of such mistakes. We examine this question using confidential individual credit card statement data, with over a million data points. Our results show that poorer individuals are more likely to make these mistakes, even after controlling for education.