# Decision Fish

> Decide For Yourself


## Posts

- [How to Future-Proof Your Career With Uniquely Human Capacities](https://decisionfish.com/future-proofing-your-career-in-the-age-of-ai/): The Future is AI? The pace of AI development and adoption is staggering. Tools that were experimental just months ago are now standard in workplaces and classrooms. Whether you are a recent college graduate or a mid-career professional, you have good reason to be concerned. Many jobs are already being reshaped or replaced. But there is hope for humans with careers and mortgages, and it starts by focusing on what AI cannot do. For all its advances, AI lacks a body, emotions, intuition, and the ability to form real human relationships. The skills that AI will always fail to authentically replicate, ... Read more
- [Financial Markets and the Ukraine War](https://decisionfish.com/financial-markets-and-the-ukraine-war/): We can see the effects of the Ukraine War on the financial markets in the charts below. These charts are updated daily. They help us get a sense of how investors see how the war is going, and its effects on the world economy, now and in the near future. Ruble vs. US Dollar source: tradingeconomics.com Russian Stock Market source: tradingeconomics.com Gold source: tradingeconomics.com Crude Oil source: tradingeconomics.com US Stocks: S&P 500 Customize  |  Download Data  |  FRED – Economic Data from the St. Louis Fed US Ten Year Treasury Note source: tradingeconomics.com US Treasury Yield Curve Slope https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/graph-landing.php?g=MIJg&width=670&height=475 US 5-Year Breakeven Inflation Rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/graph-landing.php?g=MIJy&width=670&height=475 US Bond Credit Spreads https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/graph-landing.php?g=MIK6&width=670&height=475 ... Read more
- [‘How Could I Be So Stupid?’: Making Decisions In A Pandemic](https://decisionfish.com/how-could-i-be-so-stupid-making-decisions-in-a-pandemic/): We make thousands of decisions every day. Under pandemic conditions, many of these mundane decisions have suddenly become life or death choices. No wonder anxiety is rippling through society. Learn how slowing down and  evaluating risk can help in uncertain times.
- [Where Did All the TP Go? The Behavioral Economics Of Hoarding](https://decisionfish.com/where-did-all-the-toilet-paper-go-the-behavioral-economics-of-hoarding/): No toilet paper…anywhere? Really? It’s not unusual that people stock up in response to storms and political uncertainty. Indeed, some groups, “preppers”, accumulate years of supplies, anticipating a large-scale breakdown in society. Hoarding is a well-known psychological disorder, but that’s about collecting and retaining huge amounts of worthless items. However, empty supermarket shelves don’t necessarily mean we have all become irrational. Hoarding appears widespread It’s not just that toilet paper is missing from store shelves, it’s also been the subject of shopper violence and burglaries.  Many commodities have become scarce. Disinfectants, soap and long-life milk, animal feed and pet food, rice and live chickens (now invaluable for their eggs) are also ... Read more
- [The Money Taboo: What Can We Do About It? Talk!](https://decisionfish.com/the-money-taboo-what-can-we-do-about-it-talk/): Ever since I changed careers to one with less income, I’ve been dying to talk to friends in similar situations about the financial aspect of their decision. How did they get comfortable that they had saved enough? How do they align their investing and spending with their values and reduced income? I likely waited too long to make the move myself because I lacked the emotional support that such conversations could have brought. I was just too embarrassed to ask for it. The Money Taboo Many of us have experienced anxiety, shame or embarrassment when there is even a risk of ... Read more
- [How To Get The Most Out Of Boredom](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-boredom/): How many things do we avoid because they could be boring? Meetings. Religious services. Chores. Waiting in line or on hold. Exercise. You can surely add your own. Intellectually, we know that each of these activities could be valuable, but we avoid them because the discomfort of boredom looms larger. What is boredom, really, how can it be good for us and how do we make the most of it?  Why do we hate being bored so much?  Boredom is a “A deeply unpleasant state of ‘unmet arousal’.” It’s that familiar feeling that you’d rather be doing something, almost anything else, ... Read more
- [How To Ask Your Parents For Money For College](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-ask-your-parents-for-money-for-college/): Dear Kids, We are very proud of you for getting into college! You’ve done a great job applying for financial aid and saving your earnings from your summer job. Now, it’s the time to have The Talk. Don’t worry, not that talk! It’s about something much more terrifying: Money. We know that your savings and financial aid won’t be enough to pay for tuition, room and board, and all the other incidentals of college life. You are going to ask us for money. It’s OK. Here’s how to figure out how much to ask us for. The big idea is that ... Read more
- [Q. Who Cares About The Future?](https://decisionfish.com/q-who-cares-about-the-future/): A. Not us humans, that’s for sure.. Any objective view of the state of our economy, politics, technology and even our own day-to-day behavior provides loads of evidence that we are living for the moment. We don’t save enough for our retirement, our planet continues to warm and our economy gets more unequal because we don’t make the required, hard, thoughtful and expensive decisions today. Finance, psychology and philosophy all have something to say about this and suggest cures. Finance Finance offers some black and white guidance. For any decision affecting the future, you should project its costs and benefits now ... Read more
- [Yes, We Can: 3 Ways to Improve the Nation's Financial Health](https://decisionfish.com/yes-we-can-3-ways-to-improve-the-nations-financial-health/): One of my best read (and Forbes.com Editor’s Choice) articles last year was about how the financial health crisis in this country is hurting our physical and mental health. When this happens, our financial health can be stressed even more, causing the circle to begin again with even worse effects. We can turn these vicious circles into virtuous ones, starting at the source, by improving financial health (see chart, below). This can mean building: control of short-term spending, ability to handle unexpected expenses, freedom to make decisions to enjoy life and progress towards long-term goals. When we improve these components of financial health, we naturally ... Read more
- [Negative Alpha: How Investors Can Stop Losing Money Unnecessarily](https://decisionfish.com/negative-alpha-how-investors-can-stop-losing-money-unnecessarily/): Alpha is finance-geek speak for an investor’s skill that allows her to outperform an index, like the S&P 500, on a risk adjusted basis. At a recent behavioral finance conference, I sat on a panel that addressed the idea of behavioral alpha. Our moderator asked, “What is it and how do we get more of it?” I offered the observation that, in a sense, all alpha is behavioral. Whether you follow an algorithm (set of automatic rules) to select investments, decision rules, gut feeling or all three. It is a human who is making the trading decisions. (Even an algorithm is programmed by humans, with all their ... Read more
- [How a Back-of-the-Envelope Plan Can Reduce Financial Anxiety](https://decisionfish.com/how-a-back-of-the-envelope-plan-can-reduce-financial-anxiety/): How can a few numbers, calculated on the back of the envelope, help a retired couple overcome their fear of running out of money? Like many retired people, money has been an ongoing source of anxiety for Sam (age 80) and Diane (age 70) (not their real names). Living on a limited nest egg, social security and a modest annuity, they are unsure how long their money will last. Rapidly rising medical costs and an uncertain health outlook created a set of unknowns that caused them to delay known expenses, like dental work and painting, which could cause the ultimate costs ... Read more
- [11 Ways To Fatten Your Wallet With A Little Psychology](https://decisionfish.com/11-ways-to-fatten-your-wallet-with-a-little-psychology/): 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, build a rainy day fund and begin saving for retirement. I have to admit: I learned more from her than vice-versa. “Yes, the numbers need to work, but more importantly your LIFE has to work. You won’t stick to a plan if it defies who you ... Read more
- [Why 100 Million Americans Are Financially Stressed](https://decisionfish.com/on-why-100-million-americans-are-financially-stressed-and-will-likely-stay-that-way/): …and Will Likely Stay That Way In January 2016 I founded a tech start-up help Americans make better financial decisions. I’ve since learned that most people are stressed out because they save little, have enormous debt, don’t know where their money goes and feel they’re not on track to meeting their long-term goals. I also found that the reasons for this are so deeply embedded in the political, economic, educational, behavioral and social fabric of our country; that our start-up, and perhaps any private-sector business, is unlikely to move the needle. I fear that, absent significant increases government education, regulation and stronger social ... Read more
- [Failing To Succeed: Use Design Thinking To Improve Your Strategy](https://decisionfish.com/failing-to-succeed-use-design-thinking-to-improve-your-strategy/): Trump’s federal government shutdown, May’s Brexit proposal, Sears’ and Victoria’s Secret’s retail strategy, even my own struggling start-up: these are all examples of potentially failed strategies. These strategies might have had a chance had they been created using a little Design Thinking. This is a creative problem-solving process that eschews grand solutions in favor of an incremental, failure-welcoming, iterative learning and building process. Organizations and individuals can use Design Thinking to build better strategies and tactics, increasing chances for success. An effective strategy begins with a mission statement, covers the whole organization, extends a year or more into the future and helps make sure we’re taking ... Read more
- [To-Do List Out Of Control? Try These 10 Stress-Busters](https://decisionfish.com/to-do-list-out-of-control-try-these-10-stress-busters/): Do you get stressed around the holidays with just too much to do?  Many of us feel more stress, anxiety and depression during the holidays. In addition to the normal demands of running a start-up and teaching, I’ve got presents to buy, travel to plan and a child to get to college. At last count, I have 166 items on my to-do list. But, I have developed a strategy which helps, using behavioral economics, and a lot of trial and error. Here are my ten best ideas for being productive, composed and sane this holiday season and throughout the new year. Reframe. Stress need ... Read more
- [Time To Choose Your Health Insurance: Don't Make A $9,000 Mistake](https://decisionfish.com/time-to-choose-your-health-insurance-dont-make-a-9000-mistake/): 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, family and personal obligations.  I have written before about how there’s no rational way for people without serious financial programming experience to choose the best health plan under these conditions. The experience is especially bad on the New York Marketplace where the self- and unemployed go to pick from ... Read more
- [Is That Website Ethical?](https://decisionfish.com/is-that-website-ethical/): Is that website or app, in which you’re pouring personal information, time, money and trust, ethical? Learn how to systematically evaluate the ethical status of any website (or business).
- [What Makes Us Tick? Insights From The 2018 Behavioral Summit](https://decisionfish.com/what-makes-us-tick-insights-from-the-2018-behavioral-summit/): Did you know that “knowing” is definitely not half the battle? The G.I. Joe Fallacy is but one of the many provocative and counter-intuitive ideas I learned at this year’s Behavioral Summit. Organized by ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral science consultancy, the Summit included speakers from diverse disciplines including healthcare, sexual assault, risk, fundraising, systems analysis, happiness, diversity, financial inclusion and, of course, behavioral science. Seems any field that affects humans can be understood and perhaps advanced with the help of behavioral science. Here is a selective rundown of the most interesting things I learned there. According to Robert Cialdini, behavioral science can appeal to and bridge the chasm ... Read more
- ['Hey Boss, Can You Lend Me $4,000?'](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-respond-when-an-employee-asks-hey-boss-can-you-lend-me-4000/): How You’ll Know There’s a Problem Sometimes employees’ financial stresses get so intense, they become unavoidable management issues. They can reduce productivity and engagement and increase turnover, healthcare utilization, absenteeism and worse. Employers’ resources for addressing this kind of issue are typically very limited. It’s not unheard of for employees to directly ask their managers for a personal loan to meet an unexpected expense. When personal financial stresses get this, well personal, managers want to be able to address the issues quickly, effectively, appropriately and with existing resources, that is, for free. What’s a manager to do? First, the manager has to ... Read more
- [Crowdsourcing Stormwater Solutions: Design Challenge 2018](https://decisionfish.com/crowdsourcing-stormwater-solutions-design-challenge-2018/): What happens when you invite 50 behavioral scientists and interested citizens to address one of the country’s biggest environmental challenges? On October 24, 2018, we took on the NYC Stormwater Design Challenge, hosted by The Nature Conservancy,s in New York City. The Nature Conservancy, Decision Fish, Clicksuasion Labs, participants from the ideas42 2018 Behavioral Summit and members of the Behavioral Economics NYC Meetup joined forces in our inaugural Design Challenge – the goal was to brainstorm ideas that use behavioral science to improve New York City’s approach to stormwater management. Challenge: Stormwater is a major water pollution source and is the ... Read more
- [Facts & Logic Can Save Us (Please Let Them!)](https://decisionfish.com/facts-logic-can-save-us-please-let-them/): Alternative facts and sloppy thinking. Either one can hijack our efforts to learn the truth and make quality decisions. Increasing political polarization, inequality and mistrust make it harder to reach consensus in politics, business, and society. This can slow human progress and result in catastrophic mistakes. A clear understanding of, and greater emphasis on, the nature of facts and the process of logical arguments are our best hope for improving our individual and collective decisions. Sometimes Inconvenient, But Always Crucial: Facts Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan Let’s start with facts. ... Read more
- [How To Conquer The Confusing Causation/Correlation Conundrum](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-conquer-the-confusing-causation-correlation-conundrum/): Fortnite Battle Royale at GDC 2018. Image by Official GDC. A quick headline search on the word “cause” produced this doozy as the first result: “Fortnite helped cause 5% of UK divorces this year” That’s a great headline. After all, the search engine’s algorithm placed it at the top of the list, and I clicked on it. Should pro-family politicians get concerned and divorce lawyers excited? Should allegedly addictive games come with warning labels, or should they simply be banned? Not so fast! The article reports only that some people are citing the online game as “a reason” for separating. But is this ... Read more
- [8 Ways To Make More Powerful Excel Models](https://decisionfish.com/8-ways-to-make-more-powerful-excel-models/): “So, Brett, what does GALOP say?” During my days as a quantitative investment banker, my colleagues would often ask me to convey the results of my financial models so they would know what product or strategy to offer a particular client. Programmed in Excel, my GALOP models (which stood for “Global Asset-Liability Optimization Program”), would analyze a client’s balance sheet and suggest changes to improve cash flow and reduce risk. I was struck by how my model could give me, in effect, a second vote in formulating client strategies. Excel prototype screenshot. Inputs are separate from calculations (on another tab) and outputs.SOURCE: DECISION FISH LLC I ... Read more
- [Can Financial Education & Coaching Improve Your Health?](https://decisionfish.com/can-financial-education-coaching-improve-your-health/): Can financial education/coaching break the financial stress, declining health cycle? In a previous article, I outlined three vicious cycles affecting financial stress, physical and mental health. They are vicious because, once financial stress occurs, the health impacts can lead to yet more stress, which can further impair health, causing additional financial stress as the cycle begins and worsens. After publishing that story, I learned of the efforts of Creighton University’s Financial Success Program to investigate whether financial coaching could break these cycles. The Program provides financial education that seeks to improve the lives of low and moderate income families in Omaha, Nebraska. I interviewed ... Read more
- [Finance is Personal: Your Money and Your Life](https://decisionfish.com/finance-is-personal-your-money-and-your-life/): 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 did). The most valuable aspect of the book is how it elevates self-knowledge and personal development over the nuts and bolts of personal finance.  You must understand yourself and your true motivations before doing any financial education or planning. Early on the authors acknowledge that money ... Read more
- [Will 'Decisive' Make You A Better Decision Maker?](https://decisionfish.com/decisive/): “Do you know what you want?” Those six, dreaded words haunt my otherwise happy memory of a meal my friends and I enjoyed to celebrate graduating from university. It seemed such an important occasion: I wanted to get my menu selection exactly right. You can imagine the groans around the table after the third or fourth postponement of what should have been a trivial decision. Even after years of studying and teaching decision-making and behavioral economics, I still occasionally stress out over even little decisions. So, I had high hopes for Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip and Dan ... Read more
- [Trust Me! Why You Need To Understand Trust, and How To Earn It (Part 2)](https://decisionfish.com/trust2/): As we explored in my last article about Victor, the appliance repairman, trust is increasingly necessary and valuable in modern life. At the same time, trust is getting scarcer as well-publicized betrayals in business and government add up. What is Trust? But what is trust? The dictionary defines trust as the “Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.” It’s about 1.) making yourself vulnerable to another; 2.) predicting future behavior, 3.) expecting that the behavior will be beneficial to you. We might add 4.) ascribing benevolent intentions to the person or organization you trust. In behavioral economics, trust can be applied fast, based on intuition or ... Read more
- [Trust Me: Why Trust Matters More than Ever (Part 1)](https://decisionfish.com/trust1/): From personal relationships to work, commerce, government, even our future selves, we look at Why Trust Matters. The other day, I invited a total stranger with a Ukrainian accent, “Victor,” whom I found on the Internet, to come into my house. Within 24 hours of my call, he was in my kitchen, fixing two appliances. I paid him $550 by personal check.  Why did this work so well? An underlying level of trust in our society, five-star reputation on Yelp.com and perhaps a positive experience with another Ukrainian (our partner is from Kiev) as well as some Ukrainian ancestry of my ... Read more
- [3 Vicious Cycles: Links Among Financial, Physical and Mental Health](https://decisionfish.com/vicious-cycles/): Feedback loops are powerful forces of nature. Melting polar ice caps reduce the earth’s reflectivity, causing it to absorb more heat from the sun, which accelerates the melting. The cumulative, accelerating aspects of such loops make it imperative to break the cycle before it gets out of control. Below, I identify three feedback loops among financial and physical and mental health and some ideas for breaking these vicious cycles. Financial Stress Let’s begin with stress. Stress is the body’s response to any demand made on it. It affects almost every system of the body, including digestion, heartbeat, breath, muscles and our brains. A little ... Read more
- [Student (And Lifetime) Financial Health Begins With A Budget](https://decisionfish.com/student-budget/): Budgets. Yawn. Why bother? I prefer the uncertainty and anxiety of never knowing that I have enough money to pay rent (said no one ever)? My Paris Budget So, I created my first budget when I went to Paris during my junior year in university. I had limited funds, an exchange rate to manage and I was too proud to go to my parents if I fell short. My simple budget gave me security, flexibility, and confidence while building mindful spending and other financial health skills that would pay dividends for the rest of my life. Here’s what my budget for February 1987 looked like. First, ... Read more
- [Seven Good Reasons NOT to Save](https://decisionfish.com/seven-good-reasons-not-to-save/): You’re saving too much…said no financial expert ever. It’s America Saves Week, which is all about saving more. If you’re in your twenties, you’ll be told to save ten to 15 percent of your income.  Older? You’ll be advised to save 20-30 percent or more! At the same time, one-third of Americans have saved precisely zero for retirement and the the average savings rate in the US has declined to an 10 year lows of just 2.4 percent. Bear with me while I address that elephant in the room: could the experts be wrong? If only for a moment, let’s consider ... Read more
- [Make Your Money Make More Money](https://decisionfish.com/saving/): 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 this easier, with our Happy Budget®!) It’s also risky: we know how much we’d enjoy spending that $100 now. Maybe the investment we put it in craters. Even if does become $400 later, do we even care about that future self who gets to spend it? ... Read more
- [Interview: Michelle Gilmore on Behavior-Centered Design](https://decisionfish.com/behavior-centered-design/): We were delighted to have Michelle Gilmore, Design Director and Founder of design firm Neo, speak at a recent Behavioral Economics-NYC meetup about her cutting-edge work in the design of products, services and systems. Her presentation led to a lot of interest and discussion among those who were there and particularly among those who missed out. So, we asked Michelle to respond to some questions, which she graciously agreed to. If you have queries of your own, please leave a reply at the bottom of the page. Here are our questions, and her answers: What’s the difference between design thinking and human-centered ... Read more
- [Best Wishes for Failing Successfully in the New Year! 😏](https://decisionfish.com/failure/): Failure, much more than success, helps us grow professionally and personally. And yet, it’s so hard to account for our failures. We prefer to think of ourselves as competent, effective people (see cognitive dissonance). And it’s embarrassing to share those failings because it’s counter to social norms. However, a frank appreciation of one’s shortcomings is necessary for learning and to prevent their re-occurrence. I also think sharing one’s failures could begin to normalize the practice and make people more comfortable with their own bloopers. In a world where one’s carefully curated, high-gloss persona on social media means so much (too much?), this ... Read more
- [Ariely Redux: Dollars and Sense Explains How We Make Money Mistakes](https://decisionfish.com/ariely-redux-dollars-and-sense-explains-how-we-make-money-mistakes/): 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 at times provided a chuckle and other times, groans.  The authors seem to share my worry that companies, especially technology, financial and other businesses, are getting better and better at manipulating our behaviors so that they can profit from our mistakes. Here some of the most ... Read more
- [Beat the Budgeting Blues](https://decisionfish.com/budgeting/): The Budgeting Blues. Like flossing one’s teeth, everyone knows we’re supposed to budget regularly. Yet it’s not surprising that less than 40 percent of Americans floss daily and a similarly low proportion have saved enough to meet an unexpected $500 bill. Coincidence? The benefits of both are intangible and in the future, while the inconvenience and annoyance are concrete and immediate. Our present bias, self-control limitations, and life circumstances, can cause us to neglect what we know is best for us in the long run. But budgeting has additional baggage. While many people don’t floss correctly, the consequences are delayed until ... Read more
- [The BSPA Conference: Behavioral Insights for Better Policies](https://decisionfish.com/the-bspa-conference-behavioral-insights-for-better-policies/): I attended the Behavioral Science and Policy Association conference last month and learned a great deal about the latest thinking in nudges, choice architecture, social norms, persuasion and how these can improve policies and decisions that people make. I went hoping to get some good ideas to apply to my company, Decision Fish, and to ensure that the economic policy class that I teach at CUNY City College has the latest thinking. Here are some very brief highlights from most of the sessions that I attended. Authors Shaping New Perspectives Bob Cialdini and “Pre-Suasion”: There are lots of things you can ... Read more
- [Decision Fish Named Best for NYC by Mayor's Office](https://decisionfish.com/decision-fish-named-best-for-nyc-by-mayors-office/): On Tuesday, September 19, 2017, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development and B Lab recognized Decision Fish as one of 14 Best for NYC Changemakers.  According to the awards committee, “Best for NYC Changemakers are redefining business success by creating quality jobs, building stronger communities, and supporting a more sustainable environment.” Decision Fish is very proud to be a part of this progressive community. Decision Fish won the 2017 Best for NYC award in the category of Financial Empowerment, along with coffee purveyor Cafe Grumpy. The category reflects our mission to help people make wise financial decisions step-by-step with ... Read more
- [Can You Teach Leadership Decision Making?](https://decisionfish.com/ken-spero/): Can we build better decision making skills using video simulations? What are some of the biases and challenges facing managers who want to make the best decisions? What's the proper role of intuition/hunches and deliberation/analysis for managerial decision making? How do you build resilience when any decision is likely to make at least some people irate?! Get answers from Ken Spero, CEO of Ed Leadership Sims in our video interview.
- [Make Any Decision](https://decisionfish.com/make-any-decision/): 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 learn about the more optimistic, glass half-full, side of BE: under certain circumstances, experts can be very good at using intuitions and experience to make the decisions that matter. With the right kind of education and training and in the right contexts, we can all make excellent ... Read more
- [The "Mystery" of Intuitive Decision Making](https://decisionfish.com/the-mystery-of-intuitive-decision-making/): A High Stakes Hunch I had just got the news: the bank I worked for was going to sell the business I was supporting. This was going to be the seventh transition of my 27-year banking career. Should I try to find a new job in the industry or start my own business? Somehow, I just knew the answer right away: I wanted to start a business that could potentially have a huge impact. It was only later that I could come up with reasons (or rationalizations) for taking such a leap. Was this intuitive decision rational? When is it best ... Read more
- [Prescriptions for Precarity: Highlights from EMERGE](https://decisionfish.com/emerge/): Financial wellness is a trending priority among business managers, policy makers, financial institutions, consultancies, entrepreneurs and, not least, consumers themselves. In fact, we created Decision Fish to build scalable tools that help people achieve financial wellness.  What really is financial wellness, and how are the parties above working to promote it in the US (and Canada)? I attended the EMERGE Financial Health forum in Austin, hosted by Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) to answer these questions. I was also hoping to find an enlightened corporate partner to pilot our beta, when it’s ready. Here are the highlights of what I learned: ... Read more
- [My Super-Simple Retirement Investment Strategy](https://decisionfish.com/retirement-investment/): 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? I use these criteria: Type: I look for a Target Date Retirement Fund around the year I intend to retire. Target Date Retirement Funds automatically change their allocations to stocks, bonds and cash over time so that you take less risk as you age.  Typical glide path ... Read more
- [Making Change Stick](https://decisionfish.com/making-change-stick/): No matter how compelling a new change is, it’s tough to override the brain’s natural resistance to new behaviors. Fortunately, there is hope. The SAGE Question Framework uses knowledge about habit formation to help you plan and execute your change in a way that will stick.
- [Nudges: For Your Own Good?](https://decisionfish.com/nudge/): 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).
- [Objective: Decision](https://decisionfish.com/objective-decision/): In short an objective decision is a just and fair one, supported by verifiable facts, with which rational and informed people will tend to agree. That said, subjectivity has its place. It's up to us to determine mindfully the degree of objectivity is required in each case.
- [Taking the Red Pill: Into the Decision Matrix](https://decisionfish.com/matrix/): 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 job offer, choosing a home or selecting an investment? That calls for a more powerful tool, like a decision matrix or decision tree. Since we’ve already discussed the decision trees, let’s take the red pill and dive into the Decision Matrix. “You take the blue pill, ... Read more
- [Help Millennials Make Better Financial Decisions](https://decisionfish.com/millennials/): On January 31st, Decision Fish led a lively session on how to Help Millennials Make Better Financial Decisions as part of Impact Hub NYC’s 100 Days of Impact program. 100 Days of Impact is a community program to find out what we can do as a community to address concerns and make an impact.
- [The Roots of Decision Making: Decision Trees](https://decisionfish.com/decision-trees/): I’ve learned (and re-learned) a lot from tutoring middle-schoolers in math at Top Honors.1 For example, if a math problem is too hard to solve in your head, I counsel my student to draw a picture. That’s one of the best features of decision trees: it allows you to draw a roadmap for complicated, multi-stage decisions.  Trees help you to manage two key complications: uncertainty and path dependency. Let’s start with uncertainty. We’ve already discussed how the outcomes of our decisions are uncertain because they depend on people and things over which we have little or no control. The outcome of ... Read more
- [How to Decide…How to Help People Decide](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-help-people-decide/): 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 in your decision? Did you feel that the help you received made you smarter or kept you dependent? Policy makers, employers and not-for-profits all have an interest in how well their constituents, employees and customers make decisions. When they select an intervention, they obviously need to ... Read more
- [Health Insurance Enrollment: A Superhuman Decision](https://decisionfish.com/health-insurance/): 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 the way we’re asked to make them, are unjust, maddening, frustrating and disrespectful. No wonder 81% of the American public hate their health insurance. First, see below how the choices are presented in the New York Marketplace. There are 14 pages, each with ten plans.  Each plan is described ... Read more
- [The Behavioral Finance Symposium: Simple Fixes & Deep Challenges](https://decisionfish.com/bf-symposium/): 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 number of take-aways for my app-development and lecturing. Here’s a summary of most of the talks: Stephen Duneier, in Better Decisions, Better Results, discussed how marginal improvements in decision processes, when accumulated over many decisions, can lead to enormous gains in performance. For example, maintaining control ... Read more
- [Six Ways to Avoid Regret](https://decisionfish.com/regret/): 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 interested in big financial planning decisions and budgeting than real estate so we could’ve better focused our development efforts. I regret some impatient words I said to one of my students last week. Fear of regret has always slowed down my decision-making. My interest in decision theory ... Read more
- [Good Behavior? What I Learned at the Behavioral Summit (and How it Freaked Me Out a Little)](https://decisionfish.com/good-behavior/): 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, public policy and personal productivity hacks. I also met some very interesting people in consulting, government, NGOs and medicine. I even got to stand this || close to Daniel Kahneman! Here are some quick highlights from the day and a half of excellent presentations and discussions. Panel: ... Read more
- [Selling my Darlings](https://decisionfish.com/selling-my-darlings/): Let’s do something completely different this week. How about a photo-essay? When I began my study of decision-making, I assumed that the coldly rational, quantitatively financial-economic approach was the best. How else can you avoid making the systematic errors that our cognitive biases can cause? I’ve since learned that emotion, intuition, empathy and even unconscious thought are crucial to effective and ethical decision-making. To better understand how emotions intertwine with decision-making and get to know my neighbors, I interviewed and photographed people selling their things at the West 104th Street Block Association 2016 Yard Sale. This annual event brings folks from eight neighborhood buildings ... Read more
- [How to be Ethical in Under Four Minutes*](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-be-ethical-in-under-four-minutes/): Ethical Decisions are Everywhere The homeless guy I walked past. The hamburger I ate and the tip I left. The verbally abusive parent on the subway that I ignored. The $20 bill I found in the back of a cab. The elections. Life, at work and at home, is full of ethical decisions, choices about how we ought to behave. Sometimes the answers are obvious. Often, the answers become less clear the more we think about them. Are there moral facts or is ethics just about feelings? Are there objective and universal truths or are moral values merely social conventions? I ... Read more
- [Interview With a Skeptic](https://decisionfish.com/interview-with-a-skeptic/): 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 summary of a conversation we’ve been having on decision-making, happiness, emotions, government policy and more: You used to be a financial adviser before you went back to school to learn occupational psychology. Why? You don’t get paid (as an adviser) to understand people, help them get what they truly want, help ... Read more
- [Decision Fish Needs Guinea Pigs](https://decisionfish.com/decision-fish-needs-guinea-pigs/): Time for a Quick Update Besides blogging and tweeting about decision-making, Decision Fish has been building apps that help people make wise financial decisions. If you ever feel under-prepared, overwhelmed or intimidating by big financial decisions, we’ll be there. We are building trusted, easy to use apps that give people just the education and analysis they need to make decisions themselves, with confidence. Our First Prototype Many thanks to the folks who spent time with our first effort, an app to help figure out how much one can afford to spend on a new home. Your feedback was helpful! Next Up: Self-Driving Jet-Packs! Just kidding. We are ... Read more
- [Career Advice from a Stoic](https://decisionfish.com/career-advice-from-a-stoic/): I recently visited with a 27 year old who asked me for help in figuring out what to do with his life. He is about to start at a prestigious graduate school and is feeling pressure to make some big career decisions quickly.  Here’s the letter I wrote him, inspired by Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. Before you can figure out what career path to take, you have to decide what’s important to you in life. What are your values? What is your mission? Without the answers, you may be driving very hard and fast, but without a road-map, end up lost. If a ... Read more
- [How to Make a Qualitative Decision](https://decisionfish.com/how-to-make-a-qualitative-decision/): Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is a decision process that makes you put a number—usually dollars—on the costs and benefits of every alternative. One chooses the alternative that has the greatest total benefit net of total cost. We can estimate the value of hard costs like construction, opportunity costs like alternative uses of money as well as benefits like improved productivity. CBA is helpful in getting people to think rigorously about whether a proposed project or investment makes sense. However, it does not handle well qualitative factors, which can be just as important. These include:* Ethics Company culture/politics/public relations Environment Aesthetics Product/service/experience quality Competitors and SWOT ... Read more
- [How is your Financial Health?](https://decisionfish.com/finhealthquiz/): Just in time (actually a day late) for #FinHealthMatters day, try this quick financial health check up! Don’t worry: zero co-pays here and your answers are confidential because they’re not tracked. The Center for Financial Services Innovation has developed an eight-point scale to help financial institutions adjust their products and services to “… focus on improving consumers’ lives.” This was driven by their discovery that 57% of Americans are struggling financially. Whether or not we think we’re among that 57%, we can use the same metrics as a self-test to make sure that we’re managing our financial lives well and haven’t missed anything big. So, we ... Read more
- [Can One Become Great at Decision-Making?](https://decisionfish.com/can-one-become-great-at-decision-making/): Our decisions, and the actions they lead to, make us who we are. In that sense, decisions are fundamental to our identities, our humanity and even the future of our planet. But what is a good decision and how do we get great at making them? I want to share with you my answers to these questions in the form of my proposal to participate in Freakonomics podcast’s Peak project. “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” – Malcolm Gladwell What do you think? [yop_poll id=”6″] Dear Mr. Dubner, ... Read more
- [Catch of the Day!](https://decisionfish.com/catch-of-the-day/): Try Decision Fish’s First Release We are proud to share our first (not even beta yet) release of our mobile website to a select group of valued supporters—like you. Please: We will donate $1 for each survey completed by June 15 to New Visions for Public Schools, a 4-star charity dedicated to helping students achieve their fullest potential.* In addition, we’ll be proud to mail you a limited-edition Desi button as our thanks, while supplies last. Thank you for supporting our vision that everyone is empowered to make their most important financial decisions with confidence. Warmly, Brett Noreen Sergei CEO COO CTO …andDesi, ... Read more
- [The Promise and Peril of Group Decision-Making](https://decisionfish.com/promise-and-peril/): Group Decision-Making is Really Hard Whom should we hire, promote or fire? Who should we put on this proposal writing team and what should we propose? I’ve made or participated in such group decisions hundreds of times and I’ve never felt confident in the process or the outcome. Did we come up with the right alternatives, in sufficient number? Did we weigh the alternative outcomes according to their expected costs, benefits and probabilities, relative to common values and objectives? Was the process too political, dominated by one extroverted or senior individual, or ended arbitrarily? Hiring Decisions are Just the Worst At several points ... Read more
- [My Most Embarrassing Financial Failures](https://decisionfish.com/my-most-embarrassing-financial-failures/): So this is embarrassing: I’ve been advising institutions and individuals about financial decisions for nearly three decades and yet I’ve failed many times to make good choices myself. I want to share a list of my failures with you both so you can avoid them and as a commitment device, so I don’t keep failing (the same way). But, before I can do that, I needed to understand why just remembering them was so hard. If you can’t even remember a mistake, what’s to prevent you from repeating it? Here’s what I found: First, cognitive dissonance made recall difficult: I like ... Read more
- [How a Finance Guy Looks at Exercising, Inoculations and Fruit for Dessert](https://decisionfish.com/how-a-finance-guy-looks-at-gym/): When I exercise, get a check-up, get my flu shot or skip dessert (too rarely), I do it because I’m supposed to. I have a vague impression that the cost, pain or other inconvenience I experience today should be more than offset by savings or other benefits in the future. One thing I’ve never done, which will surprise those that know me, is try to calculate those costs and benefits. If I did such a calculation, would it change my behavior? As a finance guy, I’d approach these decisions as an investment in my future ability to produce value, which could be higher ... Read more
- [Framing 1, Facts 0?](https://decisionfish.com/framing-1-facts-0/): 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 Kahneman, the fathers of behavioral economics, wrote in “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice” in 1981, that the way decisions are presented can drive our decisions as much as the facts themselves. They can even drive us to irrationality, that is, decisions that ... Read more
- [Hide Your Clothes: How to Coerce Your Future Self](https://decisionfish.com/hide-your-clothes/): Yesterday, I was 15 minutes late for an appointment, notwithstanding my New Year’s vow (repeated—and failed—annually) to be more prompt. Last week, I published on my blog and social media my intention to create a web site that will apply best practices in decision science to help people make better financial decisions. Just the thought of not following through sets my stomach churning. Even more: I’m feeling irritated at my earlier self for coercing my current self to keep this commitment. My personal vow and public promise are examples of commitment devices: arrangements that limit one’s future options in ways that seem beneficial ... Read more
- [Decision Fish Decision Tools are on the Way!](https://decisionfish.com/announce/): We are delighted to announce the formation of Decision Fish, LLC, a startup whose vision is to empower individuals to make their most important financial decisions with confidence. Here’s how we see things: Consumer finance is broken. 270,000 homes are in foreclosure. 40% of households with people aged 55-64 have saved zero for retirement. Student loan delinquencies have doubled in last ten years. Is it any wonder that financial services are the least trusted sector? The game is unfair. Financial institutions’ marketing efforts outspend financial literacy education 25-to-1. Many people  don’t have enough saved to get personalized, much less unbiased, financial ... Read more
- [The Myth of Financial Literacy Education](https://decisionfish.com/the-myth-of-financial-literacy-education/): 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. There are more borrowing choices too: rewards cards, reverse mortgages, peer-to-peer lending, rent-to-own and more. Perhaps not coincidentally, we know people are making poor decisions. Bankruptcies have been increasing steadily for forty years. There were 269,751 foreclosures in process as of the third quarter of 2015.  Forty ... Read more
- [Decisions into Old Age: The Forecast is Partly Cloudy](https://decisionfish.com/decisions-into-old-age-the-forecast-is-partly-cloudy/): Here’s a question that just about everyone approaching (and passing) middle age will feel ambivalent about: how does getting older affect our ability to make rational decisions? On the one hand, it’s common knowledge that our cognitive abilities begin to decline in our fifties. On the other, as I’ve written before, the accumulation of experience and, yes, wisdom, may offset the effects of this decline. The research on this topic is a mixed bag: In a clinical study involving lotteries, some where subjects could make money and others where they could lose money, seniors managed risk inconsistently. They took too little ... Read more
- [Your Gender: Your Destiny?](https://decisionfish.com/your-gender-your-destiny/): How do men and women approach decision-making differently? An evidence-based answer to this question is important: If we want to make better personal, policy and business decisions, the tools and strategies we use will depend on our strengths and weaknesses, which may be correlated with gender. If we want to help others, we need to understand their gender-related decision-making tendencies as a starting point to understanding them individually. To be sure, many gender differences in decision-making may well be culturally determined—the result of discrimination and other injustices. Even so, we need to understand typical differences to better address those inequalities. Moreover, ... Read more
- [The Surprising Power of Honest Ignorance](https://decisionfish.com/the-surprising-power-of-honest-ignorance/): Decision-making is hard because there is a fundamental and unavoidable ignorance about the future. We are especially uncomfortable about outcomes produced by processes that we don’t understand well. We’re much more comfortable with risks that we can quantify, model and forecast. This is called “ambiguity aversion“. We are so uncomfortable with the former (uncertainties) that we’ll fool ourselves into believing they’re the latter (risks), with potentially catastrophic results. When we’re talking about making decisions subject to ignorance, there are two helpful categories, first described by economist Frank Knight (1921). There is risk, where we understand the process that produces outcomes and ... Read more
- [How to 'Architect' Your Investment Behavior](https://decisionfish.com/how-i-got-it-wrong/): 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 the 2.5% returns of stocks this year, my procrastination penalty. As an (ex-)investment banker who has made a career of applying the latest research in behavioral economics and decision science to real world problems, how could I explain (if not excuse) this lapse? More importantly, how could I ... Read more
- [Mortgage Market Fail](https://decisionfish.com/mortgage-market-fail/): How is it that, eight years after the financial crisis, there are 549,000 homes currently in some stage of foreclosure? A recent study found that 20 percent of American households should have refinanced in 2010, but did not. Potential loss: $45,000 over the lifetime of the loan. Another study found that 25 percent had interest rates more than two percent above the current market and that such costly mistakes especially affected those with less education or lower incomes. According to Consumer Mistakes in the Mortgage Market, the US mortgage market is fundamentally flawed in ways that transfer wealth from unsophisticated homeowners to financial institutions and ... Read more
- [Lessons From the Global Financial Crisis](https://decisionfish.com/lessons-global-financial-crisis/): Why Did So Many People Make So Many Ex Post Bad Decisions? The Causes of the Foreclosure Crisis has a really interesting alternative explanation the global financial crisis of 2008: Maybe it wasn’t about financial industry insiders deceiving investors and homebuyers, financial innovations run amok, securitization that allowed mortgage originators to avoid having skin in the game or even about feckless, conflicted rating agencies assigning AAA ratings to junk. Maybe investors and homebuyers knew exactly what they were doing, had reasonably complete information and made wise decisions at the time, based on circumstances and expectations at the time. In fact, the paper argues, ... Read more
- [Got a Tough Decision? Fuggedaboutit!](https://decisionfish.com/fuggedaboutit/): I’ve got a wickedly complex decision to make. What should my priorities be now that I no longer have a full-time banking job? I’ve got at least a dozen different alternatives, each with subtle-to-obvious differences with respect to my key values including impact on my family, benefit to society, intellectual challenge, financial security and leverage of my skills and experience. Am I more likely to make a wise decision by 1) deliberating carefully, say by performing a cost-benefit analysis of my options; 2) distracting myself with a video game and letting my unconscious figure it out or 3) just decide right away? ... Read more
- [Solar Power in New York: A Foggy View?](https://decisionfish.com/solar-power-in-new-york/): I have always been an ardent fan of solar power, ever since that balsa wood solar powered toy boat I built in elementary school. Free, unlimited and clean power would change the world if and when it can made practical. As I was preparing for a series of lectures on Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) for the City College of New York’s MPA program, I was happy to come across a CBA for increasing the use of solar power in my home State of New York. At least until I saw the bottom line: the costs of increasing the use of solar in ... Read more
- [Future & Present: Where Brains, Math and Ethics Collide](https://decisionfish.com/future-present-where-brains-math-and-ethics-collide/): Many of the most important decisions we make involve trade-offs between the present and future. How much of my income should I save today for my retirement? What costs should governments incur today to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change in the (hopefully) distant future? How should businesses allocate investments that pay off in the short run (advertising) and those with riskier, long-run benefits (R&D)? The finance profession has used the concept of net present value to answer such questions for more than a century. It’s a mathematical formula that allows us to compare and decide between present and future ... Read more
- [Why We Chose a College with Massively Negative Return on Investment](https://decisionfish.com/choosing-a-college/): My family recently faced a bit of drama when my daughter was accepted to both a great state school and a wonderful, but much more expensive, private school . Naturally, my daughter strongly preferred the latter. As a finance guy with what I’d like to think is a disciplined approach to decision-making, how could I possibly justify the price difference? Is it even possible to make a rational decision with my baby’s puppy dog eyes imploring me to support her choice? I am not alone facing this conundrum. A recent study by Pew Research Center suggests that Americans are deeply ambivalent ... Read more
- [Rationality: Our Humanity, Our Planet](https://decisionfish.com/rationality-our-human-and-planets-imperative/): 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? Judging from history, I’m not too sure. To make good decisions, we clearly need to understand fundamental concepts like rationality and reason. Generally speaking, philosophers divide rationality into theoretical and practical rationality. Theoretical rationality is about creating right judgements, opinions and beliefs from prior experiences, beliefs ... Read more
- [We Use Feelings to Make Decisions, and that's OK](https://decisionfish.com/we-use-feelings-to-make-decisions-and-thats-ok/): One of the most important and surprising things I’ve learned about decision-making is that we rely on, even require gut feelings to make important decisions about the future. Naqiv, et. al. (2006) write about findings in neuroscience that support the somatic-marker hypothesis, which suggests that when we make decisions under uncertainty, we choose among different options based on the different feelings each elicits. Neuroscientists are doing exciting work illuminating how the brain makes successful and unsuccessful decisions and which areas of the brain are instrumental. One way they do this is by examining people with brain damage. For example, it has ... Read more
- [Can Robots Save Us?](https://decisionfish.com/can-robots-save-us/): 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 eyes glaze over when you start hearing about financial planning, asset allocation or stock picking?”* With fewer people being able to rely on defined benefit pensions, social security’s long-term solvency uncertain and questions about conflicts of interest in the investment advice industry, people need to be more ... Read more
- [Push the Limits on Rational Decision-Making](https://decisionfish.com/push-the-limits-on-rational-decision-making/): There are three things we need to make wise and rational decisions with confidence: time, information and smarts. Unfortunately, as mere humans, we know that these resources are in short supply. Indeed, the vast range of choices we have to make daily and the overwhelming influx of information and stimuli can limit or confuse all three, leading to decision fatigue. Which career path to take, which asset-allocation to follow or (in my case) what to order from the restaurant menu are questions whose answers we can never be entirely confident of because of limits on our time, information and smarts. These ... Read more
- [Cognitive Biases: Flaw or Feature?](https://decisionfish.com/cognitive-biases-flaw-or-feature/): Cognitive biases, prejudices and short-cuts, are bad, right? Anything that gets in the way of making rational decisions necessarily reduces our welfare. Our natural inclination towards the current moment, aversion to loss, inattention and procrastination leads many of us to under-save for retirement, with potentially disastrous consequences for ourselves and society. Do these self-sabotaging biases reflect a flaw in our brains? Perhaps not. Martie Haselton et. al. (2014) and here suggests humans may have developed these biases over millenia because they were adaptive; they improved our species’ chances of survival and procreation. Since we have had so much time to develop these biases and associated rules of thumb (“heuristics”, ... Read more
- [Bias Among Us: How to Influence Others & Ourselves](https://decisionfish.com/bias-among-us-how-to-manipulate-others-and-ourselves/): A bias is an unconscious, natural and immediate prejudice or tendency to a particular action. Bias-driven decisions may or may not be consistent with that which may result from a more deliberative or thoughtful process. Biases can be harmful: think of prejudices in employment, housing and education. They can be helpful as when we slam on the car brakes to avoid that deer crossing the road. In decision-making, I admit to a prejudice against most fast, “system one” decision-making because I’m more comfortable deliberating (a lot!) first. Certain biases may be hard-wired into who we are as human beings as a result ... Read more
- [Your Decision-Making Personality: Myers-Briggs & TAIS](https://decisionfish.com/your-decision-making-personality-myers-briggs-tais/): My college-era friends enjoy reminding me of the time decades ago when I sent the waiter at a fancy restaurant away several times as I struggled to select an entrée from the menu. It was an important decision for me: the dinner out was a rare splurge to celebrate graduation with close friends who were about to disperse to jobs around the country. Certainly, the extensive menu contributed to choice overload. But I also think my perfectionist tendency to try to optimize all my decisions, no matter how trivial, contributed to my embarrassing delay. I’m sure that perfectionism can be a useful ... Read more
- [Teen Brains and the Meaning of Life ](https://decisionfish.com/teen-brains-and-the-meaning-of-life/): As the father of two teens who happens to be fascinated by decision making, I had a special interest in “The Terrible Teens“, in the August 31 New Yorker. It opens with vivid visual of (male, of course) adolescent mice drinking alcohol to oblivion. According to author Francis Jensen, teens’ frontal lobes aren’t yet that well connected with the rest of the brain. Since this part of the brain is responsible for ‘executive’ function, deliberative decision making, planning, self-awareness and judgment can be lacking. Development may not be completed until one’s thirties. On this theory, teens should be educated as to ... Read more
- [Choice Architecture:  Don't be Evil](https://decisionfish.com/choice-architecture-dont-be-evil/): HBR’s recent article, Leaders as Decision Architects, is a detailed investigation of how business managers can improve employee choices by adjusting the framework, context and process in which those decisions are made. The authors draw from two of my favorite books in behavioral economics, “Thinking Fast and Slow” and “Nudge”. There’s no doubt that in the right hands, these techniques could lead to more productive, healthier and wealthier employees. However, while the ends are laudable, some of the means are not consistent with a modern view of human dignity and integrity. The article begins with a roadmap for identifying when behavioral economics can ... Read more
- [Introversion, Entrepreneurialism & Decision Making](https://decisionfish.com/introversion-entrepreneurialism-decision-making/): My favorite article this week was Why Introverts Make Great Entrepreneurs, (WSJ) for three reasons: 1) it dispels the myth (which I held) that an entrepreneur must be extraverted; 2) it summarizes the relative strengths that introverts bring to business leadership, which can apply equally well to decision making in general and 3) It quotes Susan Cain, the author of one of my favorite books of the past few years, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking“. According to Webster’s, an entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”. In other words, they make ... Read more
- [Career Decisions & the U-Shaped Happiness Curve](https://decisionfish.com/career-decisions-the-u-shaped-happiness-curve/): The Atlantic recently ran this terrific article by Jonathan Rauch about the nearly universal u-shaped path of happiness that most humans and some primates follow: Happiness starts relatively high in early adulthood, declining steadily until late 40s or early 50s, when it picks up again until the final years. It appears to be much more difficult for people in their middle years to be happy than at other times in adulthood. Several important takeaways for better decision-making follow from these observations. In the early adult years, people have the mistaken impression that they can accomplish anything and thus set unrealistically high ... Read more
- [Approach and Avoid: How to Use the SCARF Model to Set Better Conditions for Career Decisionmaking](https://decisionfish.com/approach-and-avoid-how-to-use-the-scarf-model-to-set-better-conditions-for-career-decisionmaking/): We can we improve our ability to make wise choices in business and personal life by better understanding our brains and setting up conditions conducive to good decision-making. A good example is when we are confronted with a major life decision such as whether to seek (or accept) a new job. While few would argue this is ever an easy decision, it turns out the conditions under which we typically make such decisions can set us up for future disappointment. Thankfully, there is a model of social interaction that can be used to increase our chances of making a wise decision. David ... Read more
- [We are all Yes-People](https://decisionfish.com/we-are-all-yes-people/): The New York Times published a great, short article, complete with quiz, about confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is our innate preference to have our expectations, prejudices and assumptions confirmed. We can pay attention to confirming evidence and ignore contradicting evidence. The article measures this bias with a short quiz and argues that, when making a decision or solving a problem based on certain assumptions, we should try harder to disconfirm those assumptions to help avoid making big mistakes. Reminds me of the idea of pre-mortems to identify how things could go catastrophically wrong before making a major decision.

## Pages

- [🔭 Find Affordable Homes to Buy in NYC](https://decisionfish.com/find-affordable-homes/): How to use this page 1️⃣ Pick the resources that fit your situation with the help of a HUD-approved housing couselor.2️⃣ Create free accounts on the sites listed.3️⃣ Set up email alerts so you don’t miss openings.4️⃣ Area Median Income (AMI) is the baseline income programs use it to set income limits. Check yours against this official NYC AMI Chart.5️⃣ Have proof of income, assets, and household members ready. You may have only a few days to submit if selected.6️⃣ Processing can take many months. Apply to multiple programs to improve your chances. Resources 1) NYC Affordable Home Lotteries 🎟️Make a ... Read more
- [DF Basepress](https://decisionfish.com/df-basepress/)
- [Resource Library](https://decisionfish.com/resource-library/)
- [Our Team](https://decisionfish.com/our-team/): Brett WhyselCo-Founder, CEO Brett’s goal is to help the greatest number of people make wise financial decisions. He is a 30-year veteran of Wall Street, where he built a reputation as a leading quantitative analyst, new product developer and manager at BMO, Citibank, and Smith Barney. He teaches finance and decision making courses at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. He holds a BS degree in Economics from Carnegie Mellon University and an MA in Philosophy from Columbia University. Noreen WhyselCo-Founder, COO Noreen is a digital innovator and experienced operations manager, specializing in designing usable information spaces and communities. She has over ... Read more
- [Homebuyer Accelerator 🚀](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/hba/): Speed clients to the finish line with a comprehensive task manager including major to-dos and milestones, progress bar, and more. Edit, skip, and save to-dos as needed. Decision Fish helps you learn—not make decisions for you. It’s not financial advice. See our Terms of Use.
- [Happy Budget® Helper 💁](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/hbh/): Before planning your Happy Budget®, it helps to know your historical spending habits and your feelings about them. The Happy Budget® Helper takes you through a series of questions to estimate your historical spending and support reflections about it. Users can save their data locally. 📱 Mobile phone users: please hold the phone sideways for best results. Here’s the direct link.
- [CNYC Test](https://decisionfish.com/cnyc-test/)
- [Homebuying Toolkit 🧰](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/): For too long, housing counselors and individuals have struggled with a patchwork of websites and Google Sheets to do their work. In a world of high interest rates and rising home prices, this is simply not good enough. Decision Fish is developing the Homebuying Toolkit, a suite of tools designed to accelerate and streamline the client’s journey to homeownership—freeing time for counselors to build connections, educate, and perform outreach. Smarter Tools for Homebuying Success Try Our Next-Generation Tools To use these tools, please read and agree to the Terms of Use: I agree to the Terms of Use. Thank you! When ... Read more
- [Happy Budget® 😁](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/hb/): Can you imagine a budgeting tool that people enjoy using? Unlike traditional budgeting apps that focus solely on numbers, our revolutionary approach to budgeting helps users rank their financial priorities and align their spending accordingly—making budgeting feel more like a personal values exercise than a chore. Start making your Happy Budget’® today! 📱 Mobile phone users: please hold the phone sideways (landscape) for best results.
- [Holding Period Return Mad Lib Demo](https://decisionfish.com/hpr/): Mad Lib: Investment Value Change Mad Lib: Investment Value Change Fill in the blanks below to create your story and calculate the change in the value of your investment! Brand Name or Product Social Media App Number Smaller Number Even smaller number Favorite NYC Snack Generate Story Your Story Change in Investment Value Calculate the change in the value of your investment in percent, rounded to the nearest 1% Check Your Answer
- [Homebuying Assistance Explorer 🧭](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/hae/): Keeping up with the latest down payment assistance and affordable mortgage programs is a challenge. The Homebuying Assistance Explorer simplifies the process by surfacing programs that match your criteria, returning key benefits and direct links for more information—all in one place. 📱 Mobile phone users: please hold the phone sideways (landscape) for best results. You can also access the page directly.
- [Affordable Home Calculator 🧮](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/ahc/): Designed specifically for NYC, this interactive web tool calculates debt-to-income ratios, closing costs, and monthly housing expenses for co-ops and condominiums. It also provides clear, actionable feedback on how clients can improve their affordability profile. 📱 Mobile phone users: please hold the phone sideways for best results. See the direct page.
- [Housing Counseling Homepage 🗽](https://decisionfish.com/toolkit/hch/): We transform agency websites into dynamic engagement tools. Our prototype homepage generates leads, educates clients on the role of housing counseling, and prepares them for their first meeting. Featuring a simple calculator and interactive quizzes, this highly customizable page can integrate seamlessly into your website. 📱 Mobile phone users: please hold the phone sideways (landscape) for best results. Contact us to tailor it to your needs.
- [3 Vicious Circles](https://decisionfish.com/3-vicious-circles/): 3 Vicious Circles Presented by Brett Whysel In this presentation, I explore the intricate connections between financial, physical, and mental health, emphasizing how stress can create vicious cycles that impact our well-being. By understanding these relationships, we can identify the signs of excessive stress and its effects on our lives. We can also identify concrete steps to improve financial wellness and wellness of our whole selves. This talk is especially valuable for organizations dedicated to supporting the planning and financial wellbeing of employees and community members involved in big decisions, like buying their first home or planning for retirement.
- [Affordable Home Calculator (Excel) 👩‍💻](https://decisionfish.com/ahc-excel/): We are building an easy-to-use affordable home calculator in Excel for HUD-approved housing counseling agencies. Counselors: What if you could replace your patchwork of Google Sheets and websites with a single, powerful tool? One that cuts client meeting times in half? The Affordable Home Calculator does this. It handles affordability calculations, budgets, assistance programs, and home-buying steps in one place, speeding clients to homeownership. Fifth Avenue Committee and five other agencies are already using it. See the Affordable Home Calculator flyer below to learn how it can help you Speed Your Clients to Homeownership: Join these agencies using the Affordable Home ... Read more
- [Events](https://decisionfish.com/events/): Decision Fish supports events and educational engagement around financial planning, decision-making and behavioral economics. We currently co-host the Behavioral Economics-NYC meetup with the Borough of Manhattan Community College in addition to our financial wellness workshops. Our speakers have included spectacular researchers, practitioners and authors such as: Dolly Chugh (NYU, author of The Person You Mean to Be, A More Just Future), Annie Duke (author of Thinking in Bets, How to Decide), Jeff Kreisler (co-author with Dan Ariely of Dollars and Sense), Pamela Pavliscak (author of Emotionally Intelligent Design), Dan Pink (author of When, Drive and much more), and Elke Weber (Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs, Princeton University) Join the Meetup group and to ... Read more
- [Financial Wellness for You](https://decisionfish.com/home/): STOP… Living Paycheck to PaycheckOur Financial Wellness Program is Friendly, Convenient & Trusted [masterslider id=”2″] BENEFITS Control Your Monthly Finances Have control over your finances, for example by effectively and routinely budgeting and planning. Handle Unexpected Expenses Be able to handle a large, unexpected expense (think medical and repair bills) or job loss. Get On Track to Meet Long Term Goals Make progress toward big goals like retirement, home purchase and higher education. Have Flexibility to Enjoy Life Have the financial freedom to make choices that allow you to enjoy life, such as the occasional “splurge”. FEATURES Plan Your Future Imagine ... Read more
- [Fun, Trusted Financial Wellness Tools and Services](https://decisionfish.com/): Make wise financial decisions with our Homebuying Toolkit and Happy Budget®️. We offer decision consulting, coaching and workshops. We offer tools for homebuyers and their advisors decision consulting, coaching and workshops and are creating a suite of easy to use apps that empower people to make wise financial decisions step by step, using techniques our founder, Brett Whysel, has perfected over nearly 30 years in finance. Read our blog and Contact Us to learn why hundreds of people trust Decision Fish to help them make their most important decisions with confidence.
- [Decision Consulting and Coaching](https://decisionfish.com/decision-consulting-and-coaching/): Got a Tough Decision? Need to Run the Numbers? Clarify Why You Need to Make a Decision? Or Understand Who the Decision Is For? We work with government, nonprofit, social enterprise executives and individuals to maximize decision quality via rigorous quantitative and qualitative analysis, processes and tools. Through quantitative decision models, trainings and research, we can help set you up for the best approach to decision-making. Results Expertise Quantitative Qualitative Deliverables Excel Modelsand Tools Web and MobileApp Design White Papersand Research Coaching andWorkshops Portfolio Excel Models and Tools Neighbors Helping Neighbors: Home Affordability Calculator CNYC: Comparison Study of Operating Costs GIS ... Read more
- [Financial Wellness for Your Employees](https://decisionfish.com/employers/): HELP… Employees Reduce Financial Stress Financial Wellness Program Friendly, Convenient & Trusted [masterslider id=”2″] BENEFITS Low COST, High ROI Low, per-employee subscription. Improve productivity, retention, recruiting and benefits usage. Easy to Implement Separate URL; nothing to integrate. Kick-off workshop. Help with messaging and incentives. Happy Employees Demonstrated management concern for employee wellbeing; reduced financial stress, improves engagement. Increased Productivity Reduce absenteeism, presenteeism and on-the-job distraction so employees can get the job done! FEATURES Mobile & Desktop Convenient mobile web app (nothing to download!). Latest behavioral economics & financial algorithms. Workshops Fun, in-person workshops use play money, mindfulness exercises and goal-setting. Messaging ... Read more
- [Careers at Decision Fish](https://decisionfish.com/careers/): No current vacancies.
- [Testimonials](https://decisionfish.com/testimonials/): “It’s very straightforward. I feel more confident than I would’ve expected.” – Susan & Saul R. “I tried it out and really liked it, it’s so much easier to input the personal budgeting part compared to the existing tool that we have.” – Shuling L., HR Manager     “It’s a simple way to understand your finances.” Greg B, 401k Plan Advisor “You’re challenging me to rethink my spending.” – Don M.     “I know that this is really important for when I get real money.” – Sean & Mona N.   “I know that this is really important for ... Read more
- [Please check for an email from Desi@decisionfish.com.  Just click on the link to get started!](https://decisionfish.com/please-check-for-an-email-from-desidecisionfish-com-just-click-on-the-link-to-get-started/): When you’re done, you can: Check out our blog Drop us a line Tell a friend
- [Almost there (check your email)!](https://decisionfish.com/almost-there/): Check for an email from me, desi@decisionfish. Open your email application or select from the list below: When you’re done with the app, you can: Read our blog Drop us a line Go fishing!
- [Financial Wellness Workshops](https://decisionfish.com/workshop/): Are you financially well? According to a recent research report, 85% of Americans are anxious about their finances.* In this workshop participants will come up with a few personalized, easy next steps you can take right now to get more: Decide for yourself. We will use a paper version of our Decision Fish app (with play money!) to: set realistic goals for a rainy day fund and long-term savings; create a Happy Budget® that directs your spending to make you happier by design; prioritize debt repayment and investing options; and even weigh insurance options. We have designed this workshop to give ... Read more
- [Security Policy](https://decisionfish.com/security-policy/): Introduction We at Decision Fish LLC take security extremely seriously. We have made a significant investment in security precautions for Decision Fish at app.decisionfish.com (“DF”). This includes addressing relevant web application security risks, including the 2017 OWASP Top 10, the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group privacy and security requirements for protecting personally identifiable data, and other security precautions. Security Audits We have hired an outside security consultant to: 1. Identify application risks including how data flows to third parties and how data is stored; 2. make recommendations on strategies to improve security currently and to implement best practices for future development; and ... Read more
- [Privacy Policy](https://decisionfish.com/privacy-policy-2/): Acceptance of Terms If you visit or use Decision Fish at decisionfish.com or www.decisionfish.com, collectively (“Decision Fish” or “DF”) then you are agreeing with this policy. Description of Service We provide web sites (DF) that are designed to help you make decisions with confidence. We provide a decision-making framework, calculations and financial education to support your financial decision-making process. We may develop more features and services in the future. Your privacy is very important to us. That is why we created this policy and commit to comply with it. Information Collection We collect personally identifiable information like your name, email address, ... Read more
- [Terms of Use](https://decisionfish.com/terms-of-use/): Acceptance of Terms Description of Service Accessing the Website and Account Security Intellectual Property Reliance on Information Posted Registration User Conduct Links Prohibited Uses Release and Indemnity We Provide No Warranties Privacy and Data Transmission Limitation of Liability Termination We Want to Earn Your Trust Other Legal Terms Changes to this Policy
- [CNYC Building Cost Comparinator](https://decisionfish.com/cnyc/): Welcome! We’ve created this handy Building Cost Comparinator tool for CNYC members to help you compare your building‘s costs to others’.  Here’s how: The tool shows the percentage of buildings in the selected Comparison Group whose costs per room are less than the building whose code you entered. Want to address those high expense categories? Check out the resources at CNYC. The CNYC’s Comparative Study of Operating Costs is for information only. The CNYC and Decision Fish LLC provide this model “as is,” and you use it at your own risk.  The above parties make no warranties as to performance, merchantability, fitness for ... Read more
- [Try The App!](https://decisionfish.com/app/): Have you ever felt too overwhelmed, under-informed or just too busy to make important financial decisions? We have, too. That’s why we founded Decision Fish. Decision Fish is an online financial wellness program that helps you decide for yourself: about a plan for your future, a budget designed to make you happier and more. It’s like TurboTax® for financial wellness. What’s unique about Decision Fish? Our carefully crafted decision process, just-in-time financial literacy and business-to-business model, all of which earn your trust. The mayor’s office even named us Best for NYC. Please join us by testing our beta and introducing us to ... Read more
- [About Us](https://decisionfish.com/about/): A familiar problem: The Decision Fish solution We all know how overwhelming, confusing and time-consuming it can be to make big decisions like how much to spend on a new home or how to save for retirement. Decision Fish is creating a suite of easy to use apps that empowers people to make wise financial decisions step by step. It’s like TurboTax for decision-making. Many folks lack access to quality financial education or unbiased advice; our competitors are conflicted and clueless but Decision Fish is trusted and uses techniques the founder has perfected over nearly 30 years in finance. We have a ... Read more
- [UWS Coop Cost Comparison](https://decisionfish.com/cost-comparison/): Explanation This chart indicates how your building’s operating costs compares to other upper west side coops. It shows the percentage of coops whose costs are lower (the “percentile”). For example, if mortgage bar reads 75 percent, then 3/4 of coops have mortgages that are smaller. Costs are measured on a per-room-per-year basis. Instructions Type your building code in the blue box below. Your code is available from the CNYC. Questions, comments or suggestions? Comment below or send us a note here. Source, etc. Source: CNYC Comparative Study of 2014 Operating Costs The above is provided “as is”, with no warranty of any kind, ... Read more
- [Read My Lips](https://decisionfish.com/read-my-lips/): How will the proposed flip tax increase affect you? Try this quick and dirty calculator. Your cost or benefit depends on how long you remain a shareholder: Got a question or comment?
- [Contact Decision Fish!](https://decisionfish.com/contact-us/)
- [Thank You!](https://decisionfish.com/thank-you/): Thank you for signing up. Please check your email to confirm your decision! What’s next? If you asked to try our app, we’ll be in touch as soon as we reach your spot in the queue. Check out our blog. It’s all about decision-making, personal finance, behavioral economics…and happiness. We want to hear from you! Send us your questions, comments and suggestions. For further reading, we have created the following series of articles that describe the philosophy behind the Decision Fish App and Workshops: Planning: Seven Good Reasons NOT to Save Budgeting: Beat the Budgeting Blues Saving: Make Your Money Make More ... Read more
- [Yop Poll Archive](https://decisionfish.com/yop-poll-archive/): [yop_poll_archive]
- [Why You Need This Blog](https://decisionfish.com/why/): Decisionnoun  de·ci·sion  \di-ˈsi-zhən\: a choice that you make about something after thinking about it : the result of deciding: the ability to make choices quickly and confidentlySource: www.merriam-webster.com Why should you read this blog on decision-making? Select a topic:
- [Blog](https://decisionfish.com/blog/)

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