This dissertation presents four independent papers that advance experimental methods and test theories on saving using experimentally elicited characteristics. The first two papers test two behavioral theories on precautionary saving based on the characteristics loss aversion and prudence by using a combination of survey data and experimental measures of these preferences from a sample of poor households in Bogota. In that context, the second paper presents a new method to elicit risk preferences with their intensities. The last two papers make a methodological contribution to binary and multiple treatment group assignment in experiments by presenting a new theoretically derived method with a simulation study and a software implementation for its convenient application.