Nothing Good Happens After 6pm

Happy almost-holidays, everyone!!!

Came across an interesting article on how stupid we can get with our money at night, and wanted to hurry up and pass it over to help save your wallet in the new year ;)

Here’s the post –> The Scientific Reason You Shouldn’t Make a Money Decision After 6pm

And then here’s a clip from it mentioning a new study that came out around this “decision fatigue”:

A new study reveals how this phenomenon can affect our financial lives. The authors discovered that participants who engaged in challenging cognitive tasks experienced mental fatigue that “enhanced the propensity to make impulsive [economic] choices [and] favor immediate rewards.” Translation: After spending hours churning away at work, we’re more likely to binge shop online, “overspend when going out late at night or take short-cuts when completing tax returns.”

Sounds about right! Ain’t nobody wants to use their brain come evening-time! We got hanging out to do and beers to down! Which incidentally can also impair our financial decisions, haha…

So basically, MAKE SURE TO HIDE YOUR WALLET after sundown! And also perhaps your COMPUTERS and iPHONES and literally EVERY OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICE in your home because pretty much *everything* is designed to take away all your hard-earned money…

Or you can just go right to bed, which is the only time you’re guaranteed not to spend a thing :)

Reminds me of another time-related quip I’ve heard, this time from a best friend’s father growing up and probably millions of others too: “Nothing good happens after midnight with your friends!” Haha… Also something very much true, but good luck trying to convince teens of that! As everyone knows midnight’s when the fun just gets started!

So pretty much, all rules against nighttime hours are lame ;)

But you can still do things to protect yourself from… yourself. Here are a couple ideas from Acorns who published that article above, and then another from me which has done wonders over the years:

1. Automate more! Not surprising Acorns had this listed in the #1 slot since that’s what they’re app is all about (they help people invest more by rounding up their spare change, saving me over $600 myself!), but regardless it’s a well known and super helpful thing to do. Technology these days makes it super easy to save or invest/pay off debt/etc these days without even having to think about it, and the more you can separate yourself from your (troublesome) emotions the better. Here’s a list of 14 other apps and services that have been making a splash on the scene lately as well.
2. Implement “money parameters.” Try giving yourself a max spending limit each day, or even max limits *per item!* Say, you’re never allowed to spend more than $50 on something without doing XYZ first… like getting permission from your wife ;) That way even if you ARE tempted to do a little splurging, at least there’s some sort of blockade there slowing you down a bit.
3. And lastly, take action on financial-related tasks only when *you’re in the mood.* This is one of my all-time favorite tips because just like anything, you tend to produce much better work when you’re energized and really feel like DOING THE THING vs when you aren’t. And another nice side effect is that you accomplish it in half the time as well – boom! Pretty magical stuff, at least for the things you have power over.

So we may not be able to control ourselves when it comes to the darkness, but we sure can during the day time! And thankfully there are many more awake hours in that half of the day than there are in the other, haha…

We’ll see you back here after the holidays with even more Pulitzer Prize-winning posts! Hope Santa brings you everything you want!! :)

Via Finance http://www.rssmix.com/