If you ever go bar hopping, who do you want to take with you? You want a slightly uglier version of yourself. Similar ... but slightly uglier. Dan Ariely More Quotes by Dan Ariely More Quotes From Dan Ariely With money we really fool ourselves. We are our biggest enemies with money and there are some things we can do about it. Automatic deductions are a wonderful thing. But ideally, you should wait until the end of the month, you can see how much extra money you had, and you should put that in your savings account. We don't do that too well, and if we did that, we would never save. So, what we do, is we take money out of our pocket into the saving account at the beginning of the month, take it outside of our control and as a consequence, we spend less and we save more. Dan Ariely pockets waiting enemy We're actually trying to develop an iPhone app, now that the Droid is out, we'll do it for that as well, if we ever learn how to program on this thing. But the idea is that to make money concrete. So, you can do this app, and it's not out there, but you can do the app. And you say, "I like vacation in the Bahamas, shoes, lattes, and books." And now, when you are tempted to buy something, that thing translates in terms of the things you are interested in. Dan Ariely vacation iphone book The retail industry has its own headache: it loses $16 billion a year to customers who buy clothes, wear them with the tags tucked in, and return these secondhand clothes for a full refund. Dan Ariely clothes retail years What kind of people would be able to rationalize better than other people? Better storytellers, right? Creative people, right? Because if you're creative, you find more ways to cheat and still yourself a story about why this is okay. Dan Ariely creative would-be people I always found the appeal to the market gods a bit odd. Why would the market fix mistakes instead of aggravating them? Dan Ariely odd found mistake The problem is that people basically dangle debt in front of us. And the cost for the poor of course is much higher than for the wealthy. Dan Ariely debt cost people It is true that from a behavioral economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So from this perspective it is rather depressing. But at the same time there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches! Dan Ariely confused depressing smart Imagine you owe on five credit cards, you owe five debts. So which debt should you pay first? And the answer is very simple: You should pay the one with the highest interest rate first. But that's not what people do. Dan Ariely simple pay people What people do is they pay the small loans first. Why? Because they enjoy making the number of loans smaller. But of course it is a very ineffective way to pay debt down. Dan Ariely debt numbers people It was shocking to realize how many low-income Americans don't have savings accounts. Dan Ariely low-income saving realizing When parents have college savings accounts for their kids, their kids show higher social and cognitive performance. Dan Ariely parent college kids In a world where everyone is behaving honestly, any dishonesty constitutes a big infraction. But, in a world where many people are behaving dishonestly, and the news is filled with stories of their infractions, even big infractions can feel small to the perpetrator. Dan Ariely news stories people Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash. Dan Ariely cash cheating people When you get a checking account, you should have a savings account, and the number for the savings account should be one off of your checking account. Dan Ariely saving should-have numbers The more cashless our society becomes, the more our moral compass slips. Dan Ariely compass moral our-society Linking financial element to energy consumption I think has a huge role if you think about a display instrument that could teach us about what we are using, how much it costs us, how much it is saving, and therefore change our decisions. Dan Ariely energy decision thinking Do you know how much money you would save if you changed your light bulb to compact florescent light bubs? How much would you save if you decreased your temperature of your house in the winter by one degree, or increase it by one degree? We just don't know these numbers, but I think displays could make it a memorable change in terms of attention, and also help us translate it in terms of concrete ways on what you can get. Dan Ariely memorable winter thinking The people that lend you money basically give you an answer based on the risk that they are willing to take. But just because a bank is willing to take a particular risk doesn't mean that that is the right amount for me to spend. Dan Ariely giving mean people That’s a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity. Dan Ariely lessons break want What reminds you in your environment about saving? Nothing. Dan Ariely our-environment saving environment
