A three-minute test · no numbers needed
Does your spending fit who you are?
A few quick taps about you, a few about where your money goes. Then a map of how well the two line up, and which kinds of spending are most likely to make you happier.
In a study of 76,000 bank transactions, people whose purchases matched their personality were more satisfied with their lives, and that fit predicted satisfaction better than income or total spending did. This test rebuilds the measure from self-report: your Big Five personality, your spending across twenty everyday categories, and the personality profile of each category as rated in the original study.
Nothing you enter is stored or sent anywhere. The scoring runs in your browser.
Part 1 of 2 · You
I see myself as someone who…
The short Big Five measure used in the study. Go with your first reaction; it takes about a minute.
Part 2 of 2 · Your money
Compared with people like you, how much do you spend on…
One tap per row, thinking of a typical month. Relative spending is what matters, not exact amounts.
Your results
Spending–personality fit
Biggest gap
You against your shopping basket
Five traits, two profiles.
The red marks are you. The grey marks are the personality of your spending: the average character of the categories you spend on, weighted by how much you said you spend. Where the marks sit close together, your money is going where your personality would send it. Where they are far apart, it isn't.
What to do with this
Spending that is likely to fit you.
Ranked by how closely each category's rated personality matches yours, across all the discretionary categories in the study. The first list is where the research suggests your money buys the most satisfaction. The second is where it probably buys the least, however much everyone else enjoys it.
Most likely to fit
Least likely to fit
How to read this
The original finding is about fit, not about any category being good or bad in itself. Extraverts were happier after an evening in a bar; introverts were happier after an afternoon with a book from a bookshop; swap them over and the effect reversed. The categories' personalities come from 100 raters in the study who were asked to imagine each category as a person. Your side comes from a ten-item questionnaire, which is short by design and rough by nature, so treat this as a sketch. The study scored the fifth trait as neuroticism; the chart shows its mirror image, emotional stability, so that higher means calmer on every row. Nothing in the scoring changes. The effect in the bank data was real but modest; the point is to notice spending that runs against type, not to reorganise your life around a quiz. And fit is about satisfaction, not wisdom: a category can suit your personality and still be bad for your health or your budget.
Based on Matz, S. C., Gladstone, J. J., & Stillwell, D. (2016). Money buys happiness when spending fits our personality. Psychological Science, 27(5), 715–725. Category personality ratings are Table 1 of that paper. Personality measure: Rammstedt & John (2007), BFI-10. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.