Abstract

This paper studies the determinants of financial anxiety and the role that anxiety plays in consumers' credit card repayment behavior. Exploratory estimates with anxiety levels as dependent variable, first, and repayment frequency on credit card second, provide robust support to the hypothesis that issues relating to consumer's perception of self, regarding consumption and borrowing behavior, such as poor mental accounting on expenditure, combined with impatience and present-bias behavior result in higher levels of anxiety. To this end, higher financial literacy does not cause less anxiety, yet it does improve repayment rates on credit cards. In addition, it appears that parental driven financial education while having the desirable effect to improve repayment behavior on credit card debt, also has a negative effect on the anxiety level. A robust result of our study indicates that higher financial anxiety increases the probability to accumulate a month-to-month balance on credit cards.