The Simple Mind Trick That Will Boost Your Savings in No Time

TIME:

Human nature being what it is, probably the best strategy to ensure you’ll sock money away and achieve long-term savings goals is to involve your fickle, easily distracted brain as little as possible. As renowned economist Richard Thaler explained in a recent Q&A with MONEY, it’s very difficult for humans to control our impulses, and therefore the wisest approach to saving is to remove it as a choice. Invariably in our lives, stuff comes up, and if it’s an option, we’ll find more pressing and seemingly good uses for money other than incrementally trying to hit goals that won’t be realities for decades.

“Here’s a model of saving for retirement that’s guaranteed to fail: Decide at the end of every month how much you want to save. You’ll have spent a lot of the money by then,” Thaler said. “Instead, the way to really save is to put the money away in a 401(k) even before you get it, via a payroll deduction.”

A new study published by Psychological Science has other insights about how to boost savings. In this instance, the trick isn’t turning your brain off but tweaking the way you think about savings goals. The gist is that you must think about the future as now, rather than, well, way off in the future. And the way to go about this is to consider deadlines for your goals in terms of days rather than years.

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