For 2025, saving money is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions.

But those looking to change their financial habits may find it’s not necessarily simple. That’s because how people spend their money may not come down to what they’re buying, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Boulder, but rather their personality.

And personalities are tougher to change.

When CU Boulder marketing professor Rodrigo Dias in 2021 began exploring how shoppers make trade offs when spending money, he said he didn’t have a set hypothesis at first. He and his team of researchers wanted to understand how people made decisions around quality vs. quantity and for what products. They conducted 32 studies of more than 24,000 consumers.

One of the most common situations people face when shopping is whether to buy a higher-quality, and thus pricier, product or spend the money on more things that are less expensive.

What they discovered surprised Dias.

Consumers fell into either one of the two camps. Shoppers rarely showed a mix of choosing quality or quantity across all types of products.

Even when people who said they preferred quality products for specific categories such as apparel, they still tended to buy more cheap clothes if they were a quantity shopper across the board.

Because of this, the study found the preferences for either quality or quantity may come down to something resembling a personality trait.

“In the beginning of the project, we were suspecting that these decisions for quality or quantity would vary a lot depending on context,” Dias explained. “But it turns out that there is a lot depending on the person, but not a lot depending on the context.”

Social influences can affect how a person chooses what to buy. The CU Boulder findings published in the Journal of Consumer Research found lower-income people with less education leaned toward quantity of products. The older people were, they gravitated toward quality.

The relationship between shopping and ages, incomes and education is consistent, Dias said, but not as strong as with personality.

“Personality might not tell the entire picture,” he said. “There might be social and environmental influences as well, and differences for cultures too, though I suspect that most of it is personality.”

One of the more serious examples is compulsive shopping, when people buy as a response to negative emotions — which can be categorized as a personality disorder, Dias said. People with compulsive shopping tendencies typically favor quantity over quality. Quantity shoppers also tend to have less self-control.

And since personality traits don’t change much over the course of people’s life, he said, it could have long-term effects on a person’s financial stability.

Relationship with debt

Saving money was the most popular New Year’s resolution, followed by exercising and eating healthier, according to a survey of 1,100 people conducted by YouGov in December.

Another study found an increasing number of people in the U.S. are looking to improve their finances as resolutions next year. The 2025 New Year’s Resolution study from Allianz Life Insurance Company found 38% of respondents ranked financial stability as their top focus area, up from 33% the previous year. It’s the highest percentage since the life insurance company began tracking resolutions in 2015.

Being more mindful of personality tendencies when shopping could help people reach their financial goals.

People who tend to buy more products — even though they’re cheaper — take on more debt, the CU Boulder report found.

If a person wants to buy something for $1,000, Dias explained, they are more likely to stop and think about other ways to spend the money. If someone is considering buying something for $10, they’re less likely to consider other uses of the money.

“We know that when people have these considerations, they’re less likely to spend money in the first place,” Dias said.

And because people who tend toward buying more items may not stop to think about other uses as often, he said they end up spending more longer-term. And if they’re more willing to spend, they’re more willing to borrow money.

These people are also behind in paying off debt overall, regardless of the kind of debt accumulated by shopping habits, the study showed.

For Dias, one of the most interesting findings of the comprehensive study was analyzing student debt with shopping habits.

The CU Boulder researchers looked at a dataset of 10,000 shoppers in the U.S. They found those who bought more items owed about $43,000 in student loans. Those who preferred quality products had $38,000 in debt.

Those findings stayed consistent even after accounting for factors such as income, age, education and marital status.

“Even if they are equally likely to borrow, they have less money left over in their budget to pay off debt, so it takes them longer to repay their debt,” Dias said.

When most people go shopping, the lead researcher said they don’t consider what kind of shopper they are. He hopes the study will make them reconsider.

“A lot of the time people are making this choice kind of mindlessly,” he said.

When people stop to evaluate their shopping habits, they’re less likely to spend.

“These seemingly small purchases, they can have a large effect on your financial well being,” Dias said, “and by extension, on your overall well being.”