Self-handicapping is a short-term defense mechanism where individuals create obstacles to their own success to create a proactive excuse for failure. Despite numerous reasons to expect individuals lower in socioeconomic status will engage in more self-handicapping, no previous research on this potential relationship existed. We first review evidence suggesting that self-handicapping and socioeconomic status would be related. We then conducted correlational surveys, which established that subjective socioeconomic status is negatively correlated with both claimed and behavioral self-handicapping. The purpose of the current experiment was to extend this work by examining the relationship between socioeconomic status and self-handicapping behavior while controlling for potential confounds. In the current experiment, we gathered participants' subjective socioeconomic status as well as objective childhood and adult socioeconomic status. Participants were randomly assigned to either a threat or no-threat condition on an intelligence test. Participants were then given the opportunity to engage in behavioral self-handicapping (by choosing to listen to distracting noise) as well as claimed self-handicapping (by claiming stress) before the intelligence test. The current study provided further support for the inverse relationship between subjective socioeconomic status and both claimed as well as behavioral self-handicapping subscales. Additionally, results indicated a potential inverse relationship between subjective socioeconomic status and propensity to claim a self-handicap (by claiming stress), as well as identified potential intervening variables. We also found that parental education may predict self-handicapping propensity. Finally, results provided further support for gender effects in self-handicapping, wherein males and females tend to utilize behavioral and claimed self-handicapping more, respectively.