Swedish households are getting deeper in debt and house prices keeps on rising. This is what happened in USA and it was one of the major causes of the recent financial crisis. To avoid a similar crisis in Sweden we think one part of the solution is to make sure that those who are students today and soon will get jobs, buy houses, take loans etcetera have necessary knowledge to do so. Students’ saving is an area that almost completely lacked researchers’ attention, and one goal with this thesis is to point out why it’s an important subject and to increase interest among other researchers. We want to give other researcher a foundation to start from, to give an idea of what students saving looks like, so they can continue to explore this important subject. Our research is using theories developed on private saving in American households as a background, and two psychological theories, The theory of planned behavior by Ajzen (1991) and Self-determination theory by Deci and Ryan (2000) as a foundation. This thesis primary focus is on researching students attitude towards saving, students attitude towards stocks and students motivation towards saving. This is researched by distributing a Likert Scale based questionnaire to two groups, business students and technical energy students, a total of 133 students. The answers were collected in two classrooms and all students agreed to fill in the questionnaire leaving us with no non-response bias. The result was very positive and quite surprising. A majority of the students in our study have a positive attitude towards saving, a slightly positive attitude towards stocks and they are motivated to save. Our conclusion is that although the result is positive students saving and students knowledge about saving can be further improved by more education.

Title: The individuals private savings – A quantitative survey of the individualssavings in relationship to age Authors: Fiola Fejzullahi & Elin Westerlund Study topic: Business Economics, Administration Bachelor Theses, 15 hp Advisor: Bodil Sandén Differences in age can, based on economic theories, explain differences insaving and consumption behaviours for individuals. The study deals withprevious research and factors which explain how and why the individual saves.Based on previous research, the following theories referred to are: the life cyclehypothesis, the permanent income hypothesis and Ricardian equivalence. Thestudy examines whether saving differs between age groups in relation to selectedfactors and theories. The method used is a quantitative survey which dividedinto 417 respondent participations. In this study, we could not see any significant associations for individuals savingand consumption behaviour in different age groups. However, the study hasshown several interesting relationships and non-relationships for selectedfactors in relation to given age groups and savings. For example, the factorincome, according to a cycle hypothesis, is higher for those individuals who arein the middle of their life cycle. Despite this, it was not possible to find anysignificant relationship for factor income in relation to the factor saving. Thiscontradicts the assumptions made in the life cycle and permanent incomehypothesis, which mean that an individuals savings depends on the size of theindividual's income. Additional factors that have contributed to an interesting result for studiesinclude individual financial knowledge, savings management, interest rates andinflation. For the factors financial knowledge, interest rates and inflation, wewere able to find significant correlations in relation to age group. Regarding themanagement of savings, we could not find any significant connection in relationto age group.

Efter det svenska pensionssystemets reform 1998 har ett missnöje väckts hos många pensionssparare. Den allmänna pensionen tillsammans med tjänstepensionen räcker inte alltid till och därför finns det möjlighet till ett eget avdragsgillt privat pensionssparande. Det har dock visat sig att det avdragsgilltiga privata pensionssparandet är en ekonomisk förlustaffär för 76 procent av pensionsspararna. Då ett privat pensionssparande inte alltid är lönsamt, finns det frågeställningar angående om hur spararna bör agera. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka långsiktiga sparalternativ som finns för ett privat pensionssparande, utifrån en sparares perspektiv. Vidare ska vi belysa vilka faktorer som påverkar en individs val mellan de långsiktiga sparalternativ som finns. Slutligen ska vi förklara hur ett långsiktigt sparande skiljer sig åt beroende på vilken beskattningsbar förvärvsinkomst individen har. Studien har använt sig av metodtriangulering, genom att först genomföra en kvalitativ undersökning med bankaktörer, för att sedan genomföra en kvantitativ webbenkät. Analysen ledde fram konklusionen att det finns många långsiktiga sparformer att välja mellan, dock är valet av sparform högst individuellt. Vad gäller ett privat pensionssparande är denna sparform lönsammast för höginkomsttagare, på grund av skattesystemets utformning. Enligt denna uppsats empiriska resultat, har ett privat pensionssparande vissa fördelar jämfört med ett alternativt sparande. Detta indikerar att ett privat pensionssparande aldrig bör bytas ut, utan bör ses som ett komplement till ett alternativt långsiktigt sparande. / The aim with this paper is to examine which long-term saving alternatives there are for a private pension saving, from a savers perspective. Furthermore, we shall illuminate which factors that influence an individual’s choice between the long-term saving options that exists. Finally, we are going to explain how a long-term saving deviate due to which taxable income the individual have. In the frame of reference we introduce how the saving looks like in Sweden. Furthermore, former research and theories are introduced, which aims to illuminate the factors that influence the saver’s decision about saving alternative. The paper uses method triangulation, by first implementing a qualitative interview study with bank participants, followed by a quantitative questionnaire study online. The analysis leads to the conclusion that there are many saving forms to choose amongst, but the choice of saving form are very individual. In terms of a private pension saving this saving form are most profitable for high income earners, due to how the tax system is designed. According to the empirical results of this paper, a private pension saving have certain advantages compared with an alternative saving. This indicates that a private pension saving should not be replaced, but rather should be seen as a compliment to an alternative long-term saving.