Personal finance: How to save, spend, and think rationally about money | Big Think
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Published 2020-09-23
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Whether you have a lot of money or a lot of debt, it matters how you handle your personal finances. A crucial step when it comes to saving is to reassess your relationship with money and to learn to adopt a broader, more logical point of view.
In this video, social innovator and activist Vicki Robin, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, and author Bruce Feiler offer advice on achieving financial independence, learning to control your emotions, spending smarter, and teaching children about money.
It all starts with education and understanding. The more you know about how money works, the better you will be at avoiding mistakes and the easier it will be to take control of your financial circumstances.
Check Vicki Robin's latest book Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence at amzn.to/3iYISI8
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TRANSCRIPT:
VICKI ROBIN: I was leading a session on a relationship with money. I just was curious about where people were with this at this point. This was in 2016. We had 50 people in the room. We circled up and we went around the room, just say something about your relationship with money. And I realized every person in that room was in fear about money. From the 80 year old who I know has millions of dollars to the 20 year old who's like already $20,000 in debt. And it just, honestly it infuriated me like what kind of society requires that everybody participate in something that terrifies them. This feels so amiss to me.
DANIEL KAHNEMAN: People are not fully rational and they make many choices that if they reflected upon them they would do differently. There's no question about that. The major tendency is people tend to frame things very narrowly. They take a narrow view of decision making. They look at the problem at hand and they deal with it as if it were the only problem. Very frequently it's a better idea to look at problems as they will recur throughout your life and then you look at the policy that you're to adopt for a class of problems. Difficult to do would be a better thing. People frame things narrowly in the sense, for example, that they will save and borrow at the same time instead of somehow treating their whole portfolio of assets as one thing. If people were able to take a broader view they would in general make better decisions. So that is certainly one of the weaknesses of human decision making. We call it narrow framing.
Four layers of financial independence
ROBIN: First of all, I'd like to distinguish between independence and freedom. So, financial freedom is like freeing your mind. Financial freedom is understanding that I'm me and there's an economy out there and I have a relationship with it but it doesn't run my life. It's freeing my mind from the messages of the consumer culture, the messages of the economy. The messages that a house is a starter house. No, that's my house. I could die in my house. It's like there's so many presumptions that drive us into waste slavery, debt, and it doesn't matter whether you are at the low end or the high end. If you are engaged in that sort of anxious process of more, more, more, you are not free.
So the first layer of financial independence I talk about is this freedom of the mind. This freeing your mind. Of saying like I am sovereign. The economy is secondary. I will move my sovereign self into the economy for my own purposes rather than I am a schlump, the economy is my mega-boss and I don't know, my boss seems to be as big as the sky and so I will just let my life be run by my boss and the tax system and I'm just going to let myself be run by this thing. No. So you are sovereign beings so that's your first layer of financial independence is your own sovereignty. And then the second layer is to get out of debt. And for some people debt feels endless. And the first step to getting out of debt is stop going into debt. There's many people who have written to us who flatten their debt in a couple of years. Impossible debt. Debt that was going to be endless. They would die with this debt. And once they see what the debt is doing to them in terms of the actual opportunities, the future opportunities of their lives, that's the sort of link that we try to get people to make so that something in the future is more important than the immediate pleasure of buying one more tchotchke that you're never going to use...
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/videos/personal-finance-how-to-save
All Comments (21)
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What was your favorite personal finance tip from the video?
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Invest judiciously, keep a stop loss figure. Shuffle between debt and equity wherever the ratio goes too off your target. As for the target, I recommend a Ratio like this Debt % should be equal to your age in years. If you are 20, debt is 20%, reset in equity. If the market falls or rises drastically, your debt % will change, which you should rebalance to 20% and bring back equity to 80%. Thus you would have bought low or booked profit depending on if it was a crash or a bull run.
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As an elder millennial, one of the few advantages is having lived through the Great Recession. My advice. Reduce unnecessary expenses, increase your savings by investing in financial markets and do not sell. One thing I know for sure is that diversifying your income can help insulate you from much of the craziness going on in the world.
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Having money doesn’t necessarily make you happy but not having money will make you miserable
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Managing money is different from accumulating wealth, and the lack of investment education in schools may explain why people struggle to maintain their financial gains. The examples you provided are relevant, and I personally benefited from the market crisis, as I embrace challenging times while others tend to avoid them. Well, at least my advisor does too,
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Thank you. Just what I needed to watch. My hubby and I are directors of our farm business and own property, plus small pensions. I am nearly 52, hubby is 55. We have started to save to retire from the farm, and possibly live on rental income, I'd really appreciate you go LIVE and talk about how to earn passive income online and retire comfortably, let’s say $1M.
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Currently I'm just being smart and frugal with my money, I'm in the green 47% over the last 23 months and l've accumulated over $700K in pure profits from DCA’ing into stocks, ETFs, dividends and futures. However I’ve been in the red for a month now. I work hard for my money, so investing is making me a nervous sad wreck. I don’t know if I should sell everything, sit and just wait.
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I'm disabled and eager to work, but doctors won't allow it. I inherited $200,000, held by my sister in a bank. It's not earning interest, which seems unfair. I want to explore options for it- (stock market investing).
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Freeing your mind from consumerism is so important. We're literally trained from young to always want more, to never be satisfied to compare ourselves to our neighbors and what they have. I was always a natural saver, but struggled a bit in not comparing myself to others. It's still something I work on, but over time have gotten better. It definitely helped that I realized the image others put forward, the majority of the time is financed by debt! That's not something I'm interested in at all. I hope more people learn this concept and actively practice it. I'll definitely talk about it on my channel as well.
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I started stacking to SAVE wealth. I've always been the type of person to spend my entire paycheck. I hate having money just sit in the bank. I am under pressure to grow my reserve of $950k. before I turn 60, I would appreciate any advice on potential investments.
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I'm not even kidding when I say that the market crash and high inflation have me really stressed out and worried about retirement. I've been in the red for a while now and although people say these crisis has it perks, I'm losing my mind but I get it, Investing is a long-term game, so I try to focus on the long term.
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Understanding personal finances and investing will most likely lead to greater financial independence. By being knowledgeable about money and investing, individuals can make informed decisions about how to save, spend, and invest their money. A trader made over $350k in this recession influenced market
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Creating wealth entails establishing positive routines, such as consistently setting aside funds at regular intervals for sound investments. Financial management is a vital subject that many avoid, often leading to future regrets.
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So much knowledge! Absolutely free! I was never taught anything about money, I am praying and working to change that. I am 46 no retirement no savings because I made a lot of mistakes when I started investing, trying to correct that now. Already have a few thousand$ saved up to invest for long term. I would like to know what advice you could give to start my investing journey. Listening to you gives me inspiration and wisdom. Thank you so much!
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I'd be retiring or working less in 5 years, and I'm curious how others split their pay, how much goes into savings, shopping, or investing; I earn roughly $250K per year but have nothing to show for it.
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Nobody can become financially successful overnight. They put in background work but we tend to see the finished part. Fear is a dangerous component, hindering us from taking the bold steps we need in other to reach our goals.
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My spouse and I are adding a variety of stocks/ETF to my present holdings for the long term, We've set aside $250k to start following inflation-indexed bonds and stocks of companies with solid cash flows, I believe it is a good time to capitalize on the market for long-term gains, but it wouldn't hurt to know means of actualizing short term profit.
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1. Pay yourself first · 2. Save for emergencies · 3. Spend less, save more · 4. Lose a habit, gain some savings
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I was advised to diversify my portfolio among several assets such as stocks and bonds since this can protect my inherited portfolio of about $2.5m. I’m used to just buying and holding assets which doesn’t seem applicable to the current rollercoaster market plus inflation is catching up with my portfolio. I’m really worried about survival after retirement.
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Now with the recent economy, To get financial FREEDOM you have to be Making Money while you're asleep
