Tag: personal-finance
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The Arrival Fallacy or Why You Won’t Be Happy at $1m (or $2m, or $5m…)
Have you ever played the “when-then” game? It’s a pretty good way of instilling self-discipline. When I finish this page of homework, then I’ll reward myself with these M&Ms. When I finish studying, then I’ll watch an episode of Friends. When my exams are over, then I’ll go out with my friends. The problem is…
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Don’t worry about things outside of your control
There’s a lot to worry about. Interest rates. Market returns. Global geopolitical uncertainty. Death. The problem is that a lot of these aren’t within your control. And if they’re not within your control, there’s no point worrying about them. Our financial goals and plans cannot foresee all that the world holds in store. So it…
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The End of History Illusion – Why you make poor decisions for your future self
People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment at which they have finally become the person they will be for the rest of their lives. Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2013) We make poor choices for our future selves. We choose tattoos that we later remove. We divorce those we marry. We regret drinking…
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The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. Morgan Housel Do you know what social class is the largest? It’s the upper middle class. It stretches from the rich, to the richer, to the richest. Yet everyone in this group thinks they are upper middle class. People who are classified as Ultra…
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Investing mistakes that financial advisors/RMs make
Your financial advisor/RM is likely making investment mistakes. This is not because they are malicious. Rather, it is because they truly believe in their (misguided) advice. They are also influenced by their incentive structure, which is simple: Sell. No sales = no income. If you want to put food on the table, you have to…
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Questions to ask yourself in financial planning
In financial planning, we seek our values and life goals in making decisions. We then structure our financial plans to help us achieve those life goals while sticking true to our values. But uncovering these values and life goals are not easy. In fact, we are normally unaware of these values and life goals. Yet,…
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We don’t know what to buy to make us happy
We commonly come across advice to spend on the things that make us happy. Great advice. But it suffers from one fatal flaw. We aren’t very good at spending on the things that make us happy. This ability is called affective forecasting, or predicting what makes us happy in the future. A paper by Dunn,…
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How to stop your parents from being scammed
The elderly are easy prey for scammers. Not a day goes by without news about another elderly scam victim being targeted. This isn’t a coincidence. Your parents are older than you (citation needed). Older adults are more vulnerable to poor financial choices, and this includes scams. Often, their children (that’s you!) are the first to…
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The biggest personal finance lessons from 2025
2025 has come and gone. There are many things that have changed. There are many lessons to be learnt. But if we don’t learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it. Here are the most important personal finance lessons from my 2025. 1. One-off expenses will keep coming I have a house and…