Which European country worries the most about money?

I just got pinged with some research about which countries are trying to save money the most from Finansvalp, a Swedish price comparison service and information site that writes about and compares banking services. Usually I ignore such surveys and press releases – as they are generally not that exciting – but this one intrigued me because they asked the question: how many times people Google a term related to saving money and banking, and then analysed it by country.

Upfront, it’s worth seeing how they did it, as this may skew the result. 43 European countries were analysed based on how many times each country has a Google search using a term related to saving money, and individual banks.

The number of searches for each term was then added to give a total for each country. This was then compared to the population to calculate the number of searches per 100,000 people.

This resulted in a ranking for countries, banks and money saving related search terms.

So which country is most worried about money?

Denmark.

Denmark citizens are twice as worried about money as the rest of Europe. Why? Well, I guess it’s because they are the country that asks for the highest taxes in Europe. If you fall into the higher tax bands, then half of your income is taken by the government.

But there the correlation stops as the next countries worried about money are Icleand and Greece. Maybe that’s because they are two countries that suffered a lot in the financial crisis? Iceland’s banks imploded in 2008 and rejuvenated like a Phoenix from the ashes, whilst Greece is the country that suffered the most from the Sovereign Debt crisis of EU countries in the 2010s.

Then comes the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Norway in a close grouping. Northern Europeans worry about where to invest, save, bank and plan.

After that the list goes on, but what is surprising is that Spain, Portugal, Italy and other nations are bottoming the list. Maybe that’s because they don’t use Google so much or aren’t so digital but, as the nations that were most affected by the Sovereign Debt crisis, I thought they would be up there with Greece.

The top countries looking to save money

Rank	Country	Money-related keyword searches (per 100K Population)
1	Denmark	26,710
2	Iceland	14,586
3	Greece	14,515
4	United Kingdom	9,880
5	Germany	9,595
6	Norway	9,554
7	Netherlands	8,544
8	Sweden	6,763
9	Poland	6,549
10	Finland	6,289
11	Hungary	5,091
12	Estonia	4,958
13	Austria	4,725
14	Ireland	4,395
15	Belgium	4,228
16	Czechia	4,114
17	Switzerland	3,193
18	Spain	2,949
19	Romania	2,736
20	Italy	2,664
21	Albania	2,566
22	Bulgaria	2,369
23	Luxembourg	2,190
24	Latvia	2,135
25	Portugal	2,051
26	Lithuania	1,682
27	Malta	1,399
28	Croatia	1,274
29	France	1,194
30	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1,028
31	Montenegro	922
32	Slovakia	783
33	Serbia	743
34	Slovenia	679
35	Moldova	646
36	Ukraine	417
37	North Macedonia	344

 

Postscript:

A European friend sent me feedback on the above:

Very interesting to see the ranking and the difference between Northern Europe and Southern. One of the answers to the "why" can probably be found in Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904). I would say that capitalism has a better match with the Protestant ethic (Northern Europe) than with the Catholic ethic (Southern Europe). Quoting Wikipedia : "According to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation (German: Beruf) with as much zeal as possible. A person living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money."