One Of The Big Lessons From Behavioral

Money Is Very Difficult To Think About. So, We Think About Money As The Opportunity Cost Of Money. So, We At Some Point Went To A Toyota Dealership And We Asked People, What Will You Not Be Able To Do In The Future If You Bought This Toyota? Now, You Would Expect People To Have An Answer. But People Were Kind Of Shocked By The Question. They Never Thought About It Before. So, The Most We Got Was People Said, "well, If I Can't Buy This Toyota, If I Buy This Toyota, I Can't Buy A Honda." What Is This Thing? What Is This Value Of Price? Very Hard To Think About It.

Money Actually Becomes Even More Difficult Than Other Things Because It's Very Hard To Imagine What The Benefits Are To Saving. So, Imagine That You See A New Bicycle, A New Pair Of Shoes, Or Something Today. You Know Exactly What You Are Giving Up If You Are Not Buying It, What Are You Gaining In The Future If You Are Not Getting It. So, You Are Giving Up The Bicycle Today, What Is It In The Future? What Will Happen If You Send Another $1,000 To Your Retirement Fund? What Difference Will It Make? It Is Very, Very Hard To Figure Out.

Once You Break The Social Norm And Create A New Social Norm, All Of A Sudden It Can Stay With Us For A Long Time.

We Have Very Strong Intuitions About All Kinds Of Things — Our Own Ability, How The Economy Works, How We Should Pay School Teachers. But Unless We Start Testing Those Intuitions, We’re Not Going To Do Better.

Money Is A Great Way To Get Happiness. Right? Lots Of Wonderful Things You Can Do With Money. The Question Is, Are We Really Optimizing On That? So, If You Think About Getting Lattes And Getting Cable. Which One Of Those Is Actually Giving You A Greater Happiness, And If You Have To Cut On One Of Those, Which One Would You Cut? So, I Think Thinking In Terms Of Concrete Terms Would Help Us A Great Deal.