FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AMONG HOUSEHOLDS WITH DIFFERING RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS

In the last decade there has been renewed interest in consumers' financial management practices [3,4]. However, relativelylittleattention has been given to the financial management practices of low-income households. Thisarticlereports the resultsofaninvestigationcomparing low-income households with more affluent households on the basis of their use of five widely recommended financial management practices: budgeting, record-keeping, comparing records to thebudget, estimating net worth, and saving on a regular basis. Knowing what low-income households are and are not doing to manage their finances can help consumer educators to design appropriate programming for this clientele. Procedures Thetarget populationwas non-metropolitan householdsinKansas. The researcher drew a two-stage cluster sample, selecting counties in the first stage and residential telephone listings in the second stage. A questionnaire based on the management framework developed by Deacon and Firebaugh [1] was mailed to the sample households in the spring of 1984 following procedures recommended by Dillman [2]. Of the 1,200 households contacted, 672 returned usable responses. The majority of respondents (79 percent) were married. The mean education level was two years post-secondary. Over one-half had received some formal education beyond high school. The mean age for the sample was 48 years; the mean household size was 2.7 persons. Median household income before taxes was between $20,000 and $25,000. Information on total household income before taxes for the 1983 calendar year was collected as a set of 11 ordinal categories. Th