Examination of teachers' financial attitudes within the framework of behavioral finance

The vast majority of investments made in daily life are made by non-professional individual investors. In the investment portfolio, where different instruments such as time deposits, gold, foreign exchange, stocks, and crypto money purchases are used in addition to behaviors such as buying a house, land, and vehicle, individual investors usually make investment decisions by relying on their personal knowledge and experience. Here, the situation that individual investors ignore is the necessity of making the investment decision within the framework of knowledge and experience. In cases where this requirement is not fulfilled, regrets and losses become inevitable. Financial literacy, which has become a popular topic in recent years, basically aims to make individual investors act consciously and systematically in their investment decisions. Teachers are role models in our society for reasons such as making decisions or consulting on a subject. From this perspective, teachers also make financial decisions like other people and explain these decisions to both students at school and people in the community. At this point, an attitude that can be developed in teachers because they transfer their current knowledge to other people also affects other segments of the society. Therefore, in this study, teachers' current financial attitudes were examined within the framework of behavioral finance, and suggestions were made according to the results of the analysis. The universe of the research consists of educators working in public and private institutions affiliated to the Ministry of National Education throughout Turkey. Data of 517 teachers were used in the sample of the study. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics cross-tests, Chi-Square test, t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson Product-Moment correlation analysis. As a result of the research, it is seen that some behavioral tendencies are effective in the financial decisions of teachers. In addition, the preferred financial investment instruments also differ according to gender, financial education status, and length of work in the profession. It has been concluded that the financial education of teachers will reduce behavioral finance tendencies and enable them to make rational decisions and will positively affect the financial profits of both themselves and others around them. Keywords: Behavioral Finance, Financial Attitude, Teacher