Every other Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a book of interest.
Over the last few years, I’ve come to believe that the biggest key to personal finance success is controlling your own psychology and impulses.
Our entire lives are filled with quick decisions we must constantly make – and, for the most part, we’re good at it. We commute to work without getting in an accident. We make constant little decisions at work – and at home, too. We’re able to effectively take several pieces of information, combine them together, and make a pretty good choice based on the result – and we do it over and over again.
Unfortunately, that same ability often doesn’t serve us well at all when it comes to personal finance. The ultra-quick decision making process that leads us to making great little choices in everyday life often leads us to making disastrous financial decisions. Very rarely do snap decisions work out well in the financial world.
This concept is the central focus of Snap Judgment by David Adler. He makes a two-fold argument. First, such snap decisions fail us financially and, if we’re able to get control over them, we’re much more likely to find financial success. Second, understanding how people make such snap decisions can help us to predict and prepare for the choices that other people will make, pushing us to further success.
Sound interesting? Let’s dig in.
I: The Psychology of Financial Decisions
The basic rule of thumb for success in any financial arena is “buy low and sell high.” It rings true in everything from stock investing to grocery shopping. The problem is that most of our normal financial cues tell us to do virtually anything but that. For example, we often believe there must be value to be found if everyone else is buying something, but quite often that means that it’s the opposite of a bargain – the price is overinflated.
Similarly, we are often wired to overlook what we view to be small amounts of risk – if we didn’t, we’d never leave our house in the morning. However, when we apply the same philosophy to investing, we overlook those seemingly small risks and chase what looks like the biggest returns – and then we get bitten by those risks. That’s why so many people got caught losing big chunks of their retirement in 2008?
II: The Track, the Stock Market, and Other Types of Gambling
Our brains are wired to see patterns in our lives, from traffic to grocery shopping to financial …