investing Archives – Decision Fish: Decide For Yourself

11 Ways To Fatten Your Wallet With A Little Psychology

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 15:40:05 +0000

I never could have imagined how important managing emotion, cognitive biases and behavioral hurdles is to saving enough, spending wisely and managing financial risks. For about a year, I informally coached a woman (we’ll call her “Leigh”) in her late twenties who wanted to eliminate the $5,000 of expensive credit card debt she was rolling over each month, ... Read more

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Finance is Personal: Your Money and Your Life

Brett F. Whysel — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 15:50:14 +0000

Do you know someone going off to college who’s clueless about money? What if they’re clueless about why they’re going in the first place? Then Finance is Personal by Kim Stephenson and Ann Hutchins should be on their summer reading list. Even those further along in their careers will benefit from portions of this book (as I ... Read more

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Make Your Money Make More Money

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 06 Feb 2018 07:00:12 +0000

Saving money is hard. It requires self-control in the face of continuous bombardment by scientifically engineered marketing messages, peer-pressure and brains “designed” for immediate gratification. For many of us, it requires investing some quality time to mindfully design a sustainable budget that’s in line with our values. (We think we’ve figured out how to make ... Read more

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Ariely Redux: Dollars and Sense Explains How We Make Money Mistakes

Brett F. Whysel — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 15:03:58 +0000

Dollars and Sense is an enjoyable, non-technical overview of some of the ways we make bad money decisions and a few ways we can get better. The primary author, Dan Ariely, is a well-known behavioral economist who has written extensively about how predictably irrational we can be. The other author is a comedian (with a middle-aged white-guy sensibility), which ... Read more

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Make Any Decision

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 12:01:33 +0000

Behavioral Economics (BE), a mash-up of psychology and economics, originally interested me because it promised a way to understand and predict mistakes that people make. This helped me do a better job as a banker to governments and nonprofits, because I could help them (and me) avoid those mistakes. It took a while for me to ... Read more

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My Super-Simple Retirement Investment Strategy

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 14:19:22 +0000

A 29-year old friend of mine asked me recently, “How do I get started investing for retirement?”* Since I prefer education and coaching to “advice”, here’s what I told him. For me, investments should be simple, cheap and take only smart risks. There are more than 9,000 mutual funds out there. How do I choose one? ... Read more

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Taking the Red Pill: Into the Decision Matrix

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 22:49:55 +0000

Do you want a simple and easy tool for making an important decision? The simplest “tool” is a heuristic. A short-cut like “take the default” or “do what everyone else is doing” may be fine for selecting a restaurant entrée or route to the grocery store. But what about more important decisions like taking a ... Read more

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The Behavioral Finance Symposium: Simple Fixes & Deep Challenges

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 15:00:16 +0000

I recently attended the Behavioral Finance Symposium at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. The speakers were academics and practitioners speaking on the behavioral challenges to good investment and trading decisions. The crowd seemed to be mostly left-coast traders, investment managers and consultants. Many of the talks were thought provoking and left me with a ... Read more

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Six Ways to Avoid Regret

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 12:50:42 +0000

I wish I had picked a different airline or maybe shelled out more money for a better seat. (I’m writing this squeezed into a coach seat near the lavatory on a six-hour flight to attend the Behavioral Finance Symposium in San Francisco.) I wish I had known six months ago that people were much more ... Read more

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Interview With a Skeptic

Brett F. Whysel — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:09:49 +0000

Decision Fish Interviews Kim Stephenson, an occupational psychologist. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the World Wide Web, is contained in the first two words. Decision Fish’s blog has readership worldwide, self-selected to be some of the most thoughtful and smartest people anywhere. Kim Stephenson, an occupational psychologist from the UK is one of those people. Here’s a ... Read more

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