These results are consistent with the more general finding within
research on retirement preparation that instrumental retirement planning
activities are associated with increased retirement savings (Croy et al.
2010; Lusardi and Mitchell 2007; Stawski et al. 2007). For example,
our finding for the low group that husbands and wives had forecasted
the money required to retire “rarely-to-sometimes” during their lifetime
is similar to Lusardi and Mitchell’s (2006) finding that less than onethird
of a subset of the 2004 Health and Retirement Study (HRS)
respondents (aged 51–56 years, similar to our participants) had attempted
to “figure out” the money required to retire. Furthermore, our finding
that the husbands in the high group reported engaging in this behavior
“sometimes-to-often,” compared to those in the low group who, as stated,
engaged in this behavior “rarely-to-sometimes,” is reflected in a related
study by Lusardi and Mitchell (2007) of HRS respondents. In this study,
the more respondents reported thinking about retirement, from “hardly
at all” through to “a lot,” the greater was their reported net worth.
The fourth hypothesis involved other variables concerned with financial
education activities and financial behaviors that had been the foci of
prior studies due to their hypothesized positive effect on wealth accumulation
(e.g., Bell et al. 2009; Hi