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 … Read more
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
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 … Read more
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
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 … Read more
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.
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
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.” … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more