choice architecture Archives – Decision Fish: Decide For Yourself

Time To Choose Your Health Insurance: Don’t Make A $9,000 Mistake

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 20:23:42 +0000

Is there any financial decision that we dread more than the annual chore of choosing a health insurance plan? It’s got everything we hate: choice and information overload, time pressure, ambiguity and confusion, consequences worth thousands, uncomfortable scenarios involving disease and injury, inscrutable jargon coming at a time of the year full of other business, ... Read more

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Nudges: For Your Own Good?

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 19:00:12 +0000

What do classical music in the train station, binge-inducing pre-loaded TV show episodes in Netflix, and those "I voted stickers" you get after voting have in common? Read our latest article, "Nudges: For Your Own Good?" about how government and businesses "nudge" your behavior for your own good...or maybe not (5 minute read).

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How to Decide…How to Help People Decide

Brett F. Whysel — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 14:08:50 +0000

Think back to the last time you had to make a hard, important decision. Were you picking an asset allocation for your 401k, selecting a health insurance plan or deciding whether it was time to refinance your mortgage? What kind of help did you seek and what kind of help was available? Were you confident ... Read more

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Health Insurance Enrollment: A Superhuman Decision

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 00:58:58 +0000

Open enrollment for health insurance began November 16 and the decision isn’t any easier than last year. On the contrary, not only are premiums higher and benefits lower, there’s greater uncertainty about the future of the Obama health care act. On a cold, cloudy Sunday afternoon, I analyzed my health insurance choices. Our choices and ... Read more

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Good Behavior? What I Learned at the Behavioral Summit (and How it Freaked Me Out a Little)

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 16:54:56 +0000

I just attended the best conference ever. And I’ve been to a lot of them. The ideas42 Behavioral Summit 2016 was billed as offering “…an inside look at the latest developments from the field of behavioral science and how these insights drive innovation in the private sector.” Indeed it went beyond that, touching on politics, ... Read more

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Framing 1, Facts 0?

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 01:52:13 +0000

When we make decisions, we often take the way they are presented to us at face value. Maybe a sales person offers you a menu of investment options or maybe a single recommendation; either way, you can bet a lot of thought went into the architecture of the choice presented to you. Amos Tversky and Daniel ... Read more

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The Myth of Financial Literacy Education

Brett F. Whysel — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 02:07:34 +0000

The quantity, complexity and importance of the financial decisions we have to make keeps increasing. For example, as traditional defined-benefit pension plans going extinct, people increasingly have to manage their own retirement plans. There are more investment choices than ever: structured CDs, marketplace lending, crowdfunded start-ups not to mention thousands of ETFs and mutual funds. ... Read more

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How to ‘Architect’ Your Investment Behavior

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 21:08:13 +0000

I took my annual look at my investments this week, and boy did I get it wrong. A few years ago, I determined I should have about 70% of my investments in equities. Instead, as of yesterday, I had less than 60%. Most of the excess was in cash, earning essentially nothing and missing out on ... Read more

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Rationality: Our Humanity, Our Planet

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 06:37:06 +0000

Rationality is supposed to be integral to our humanity. Indeed, the “sapiens” in homo sapiens is from the new Latin sapere, meaning know, learn and know how. As a matter of fact, our subspecies is actually homo sapiens sapiens. Does this mean we have twice the intellectual capacity of our extinct ancestors from the Pleistocene? ... Read more

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Can Robots Save Us?

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 17:40:27 +0000

Can we design decision tools to offset or even leverage the hurdles that our brains put in front the most important decisions that we face? Take planning and saving for a comfortable retirement. How much and in what one invests are two of the most important decisions any adult needs to make and take responsibility for. “Do your ... Read more

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