The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal

The exact age when you make your best financial decisions

By Clare Ansberry

27 Aug 2023 · 4 min read

informed Summary

  1. The prime years for making smart financial decisions are, on average, 53 and 54, according to a 2022 study led by Rafal Chomik, an economist at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research in Australia. This is when people have accumulated knowledge and experience about money, spending, and saving, but haven’t begun losing key analytic cognitive skills.

The prime years for making smart financial decisions are, on average, 53 and 54.

At around that age, people have accumulated knowledge and experience about money, spending and saving, but haven’t begun losing key analytic cognitive skills. It’s also roughly the age when adults make the fewest financial mistakes, related to things like credit-card use, interest rates and fees.

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