In a scene from the 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, financial trader Gordon Gekko — played by Michael Douglas — defines moral hazard as a situation in which “somebody takes your money and he is not responsible for it.” A team of European researchers cite this cinematic example More
Forbes: Trying to buy a house? Save for retirement? Finally pay off your student loans? Then you know that saving thousands of dollars doesn’t happen overnight. And you also know that your good intentions (“This year I’ll save $20 a week!”) can easily get pushed to the side when life More
US News & World Report: Impatience, it turns out, can be costly. Research suggests that people who opt for smaller rewards today over bigger rewards later tend to have lower credit scores. In the study by Columbia Business School associate professor Stephan Meier, the most impatient people had credit scores More
The New Yorker: To commit to a New Year’s resolution is to gamble. Gym memberships and weight-loss programs are expensive, but they’re good investments if they bring health and happiness. Unfortunately, as I learned eight years ago, people don’t take the prospect of losing money lightly. In the summer of More
NPR: Let’s hear now about a new book that explores a major source of stress. The book is called “Scarcity” and it’s a look at what happens to us when we’re pressured with too little time or too little money. The authors say “Scarcity” actually changes how we think. NPR’s More
Pacific Standard: Whether it’s a lack of decent-paying jobs or an advertising-induced confusion between wants and needs or a propensity to spend without simultaneously practicing the refined art of saving, many Americans reside in financially precarious conditions. National household debt, for example, is on the rise, with consumers currently owing More
