### abstract ###
we report a study of the effects the choice set on financial decision making related to retirement savings and risky investment
the participants were presented with either a full range of choice options or a limited subset of the feasible options
the choices of saving and risk are affected by the position of each option in the range of presented options
this result demonstrated that the range of the options offered as possible saving rates and levels of investment risk influences decisions about saving and risk
the study was conducted on a sample of working people  and we controlled whether the participants can financially afford in their real life the decisions taken in the test
in addition  various measures of risk aversion did not account for the risk taken in each condition
surprisingly  only the simplest and most direct risk preference measure was a significant predictor of the responses within a particular choice set context  although the actual choices were still very much influenced by the range
thus  the results reported here suggest that financial judgments and choices are relative  which corroborates  in an important practical domain  previous related work with abstract gambles and hypothetical risky investments
### introduction ###
this article presents a study that investigated how far simple  and practically relevant  modifications in the decision making context can affect how people make financial decisions related to retirement savings and investment
specifically  we aim  using a realistic setting  to make a suggestive replication of a new and powerful context effectprospect relativity CITATION   in an important practical domain
in this article  we present a study that investigates the effects of the framing and presentation of financial information when asking people to express their preferences in relation to different retirement savings and investment scenarios
the experimental design and method are based on the recent discovery of a substantial dependence of human preferences on the set of options they are presented with
this phenomenon was termed prospect relativity and indicates a lack of stable underlying preference function CITATION
this finding  which we describe in more detail below  is striking illustration of the view that preferences are often constructed  on the fly  rather being a stable basis for decision making CITATION
a theoretically important question is how far these effects transfer from abstract low-stakes gambles to major financial decisions that could significantly affect long-term well-being
if we observe such transfer to realistic financial decisions  then this would have practical significance for marketing  sales  and provision of advice in the financial services industry
our goal was to investigate how far individual variation in saving and risk preferences is stable across different realistic decision contexts
