Well occasionally, they do cool things worth sharing and I think this one qualifies.  They periodically survey customers for feedback about various aspects of their services, financial feelings and overall consumer insight.  Well they recently posted some data from these surveys and the results are an interesting peek at how people think about their money and the context of their decision-making.

How are you feeling about…?

I think its interesting to see that while the respondents are slightly more pessimistic about the economy, they are overwhelmingly optimistic about their own jobs and retirement plans.   Feels a bit like a “Bad things will only happen to other people” kind of mentality. Though there is a noticeable shift in confidence from “My Job” to “My retirement plans” indicating that people aren’t too worried about losing their jobs, but aren’t too sure their 401K will be there to meet them at the end.

Would you rather permanently lose 20lbs or get $10,000 in cash?

This one doesn’t strike me as too shocking… I think that I could start going to the gym and eating a bit healthy and drop 20lbs for less effort than I would need to expend to earn $10,000.  I would definitely take the $10k… and then promptly stuff it in a mattress.

Would you rather retire modestly at 55 or retire wealthy at 65?

Given the option of retiring modestly at 55 or wealthy at 65 is a bit more complicated than it seems at first.  If you retire at middle class at 55, thats an extra decade of options as to what you want to do… though those options may not be as extravagant as they would be if you were wealthy.  But it seems that the happiness you would get from 10 years of not working would be a nearly equal substitute of self-perpetuating wealth; I suppose there is something to be said for the peace of mind you would have if you retired wealthy at 65.

I don’t know which I’d chose- I don’t know if I could ever just stop working all together but I think I would love the idea of having 10 years to work on whatever I want to in an attempt to get the happiness of doing what I enjoy along with the potential of achieving wealth sometime in the decade before 65.

I thought it was interesting data from their customers- though it must be said that I know very little about collection methods or anything else that would speak to the data validity- it does seem to me that it would likely be skewed to younger, higher-income consumers in more urban areas with unrestricted access to broadband so its likely not perfectly representative of the nation as a whole.  But good stuff to check out nonetheless.  Be sure to read their entire blog post on the survey.