Personal Worldview Conviction Is a Missing Piece in Financial Well-Being

This paper introduces a novel and potentially essential financial well-being variable—worldview conviction—for financial professionals, researchers, and policymakers to more accurately predict an individual's financial well-being. Using the results from a sample of 492 participants, this paper finds evidence that having convictions about how life works (i.e., personal worldview) predicts financial well-being indirectly through an individual's aspirational life goals (i.e., values). More specifically, evidence was found that higher levels of conviction in a personal worldview predicted more intrinsic values. Intrinsic value types (goals related to personal growth, deeper relationships, or community contribution) were found to be associated with higher financial well-being, while extrinsic value types (goals related to acquiring wealth, fame, or image) were found to be associated with lower financial well-being.