Behavioral Finance/Psychology

Money Scripts

Several years ago, I attended a conference session with Tim Maurer. He began by asking each of us to think of our first memory of money. Take a moment, do you remember yours? A common answer is the Tooth Fairy. I find this a hilarious first money memory, a magical fairy who pays children for…

Mine

My mother taught my son a new word this weekend. “Mine.” He’s at an age where he understands more than he can say, so he jumps on any word he can pronounce. Last weekend, the word was “ice” in the cooler that held our beers while tailgating at a college football game. This weekend, it…

We Only See a Version of the Truth

A few years ago, I attended a presentation by Terrance Odean, Berkeley Professor and famed researcher on behavioral finance. In the middle of his presentation, Professor Odean played a video and asked audience members to count the number of times the players in white shirts passed a basketball. I vigilantly went about the task, putting…

Calendar Years are Arbitrary

Time is a human invention. Sure, the Earth orbits to Sun every 365 days and rotates every 24 hours, but humans developed the concept of time. Whether it is dark or light outside, my alarm clock rings at 5:50am each morning. That wasn’t the case for humans two hundred years ago. They structured each day…