Indeed, and in the North Eastern, US, I feel this is common knowledge. Italians are frugal, own lots of property, and businesses. Moreover, they live in some of the best neighborhoods in the entire country. They've done far better for themselves, than the majority of other immigrant groups in the USA imo. My friend who is a banker (also Italian), says it is mostly Italian-Americans, and Irish-Americans who are his colleagues.
I was thinking about the fact that Italians are known to spend a lot on food, to be generous hosts, to like to go out and have a good time, to dress well etc. In Europe there's a perception that Italians are a bit spendthrift. One of my Croatian friends would tell stories of the differing patterns of spending money on vacation of Italians versus Germans on her Adriatic island. She said the Germans would apportion out the money at the beginning: so much for each day, for food, for entertainment etc., and also would do a lot of cooking in their lodgings etc. and stay longer. The Italians would go out more, take advantage of all the sites, entertain each other, and when the money was gone, go home.
The operative fact for this discussion is that when the money they had allotted for the vacation was gone they went home; they didn't use a credit card to stay longer.
It's just that most Italians would never be cheap with a guest, or a family member, or on food for their families. The economies take place elsewhere. Yes, they want to dress well, so they buy a few good pieces, and know how to accessorize. That's of course a generality, and a generality more true the further south you go in Italy. I regret to say that some of my father's Emilian relatives were pretty tight fisted even with family and guests, and Ligurians are perhaps even more stereotypically cheap than Emilians. My father's relatives were thrilled when he married my mother with her Ligurian frugality about money, because my father, contrary to most of his family, was indeed born with "holes in his hands" as the saying goes.
They also don't gamble with their money, by and large, investing in "safe" things like real property, apartment buildings being a popular one, or bonds, or safe blue chip stocks. This ties in with other studies showing they're very risk averse, and distrustful of what the future might bring. Part of that is genetic, I think, and part of it their history.