Resolved: More School
Jim Wasserman | Jan 5, 2022
MOST FOLKS DON’T teach and write about a topic until after they’ve earned a degree in the subject. Owing to my career path, and the nebulous nature of my specialty, I’ve done the opposite—with the next step coming in 2022. I went to law school just after college because—frankly—I had no better plan. I enjoyed being a lawyer, but I knew it wasn’t my passion, so I went into teaching. I loved it. I taught various humanities, mainly at the high school level. One subject that stuck with me was economics. A school administrator asked me to teach econ because he figured I knew about it as an attorney. The man clearly didn’t know lawyers. Still, I liked it, except that the texts kept addressing students as “future participants” in the world of economics, even while I watched them work, shop and otherwise already be a part of consumer culture. On top of that, the world of textbook theory—with its assumption of conscious rational decision-making—isn’t actual reality. I also saw how my sons, still in elementary school, were already having their consumer habits shaped like stalagmites by constant media drips. Adult marketers told them saving wasn’t as fun as spending, and that they were a nobody if they didn’t show their individualism in the same way everyone else was or didn’t collect all of whatever was the latest hot thing. I started reading. I dug up my old college psychology books. I studied behavioral economics from Thorstein Veblen to Richard Thaler. I pored over books on how to market to young people, and then used their strategies to create lessons on how to counter them and empower youth. I published articles and wrote books in the then-nascent area known as consumer economics and media literacy. The field was new, so no one had a degree. Now, I’m retired. My wife and I call this our “third life,” our time to wander and wonder. If you’ve read our stuff, you know we have done just that. We traveled and lived abroad. We have now returned to Dallas, but that doesn’t mean our wandering and wondering have stopped. We’re taking it inwards—by going back to school. There’s still no degree specifically in media literacy, but the University of Texas at Dallas offers an MAIS, or Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. With much trepidation, I wrote the dean a long letter that basically asked, “Am I crazy?” She wrote back and then we spoke on the phone, sketching out a program combining a bit of economics, marketing, communication and psychology. She offered to waive the GRE and other entrance requirements, given that I already had a law degree. She made it easy and welcoming. How could I say no? At age 60, I plan to be back at school this spring. I’m scared and excited. It will probably cost $36,000 to $45,000 when all’s said and done, plus a lot of time and effort. Can I remember how to be a student after 35 years? Can I hack it academically? And what do you wear to school dances nowadays? It’s daunting. But I feel that—in my retirement—I now have the money and time to follow my passion. It’s just taken a lifetime of experiences to figure out what that passion is.
Read more » Saving the Day
Jim Wasserman | Feb 12, 2022
I ENJOY WATCHING superhero shows. It feels good to see the hero swoop in and save the day. Truth is, however, I also get a bit annoyed, as there are always some citizens who seem to ignore imminent danger. They sometimes just stare at it coming, doing nothing to get out of harm’s way. It’s almost like they just count on the hero saving the day, and that’s a bad strategy. Strangely, many people in real life adopt the same strategy, relying on a particular financial superhero to swoop in and save them. I call this hero Future Self. I wrote about Future Self in the comment section below a recent article from Phil Kernen. Phil explained a new version of an old scheme, the buy-now-pay-later option. It sounds great—until you miss a payment and draconian interest penalties are levied. Why do people fall for such a trap? Because they imagine that their Future Self will be a hero. He or she will regularly make all payments and save present self from the burdens taken on today. Notwithstanding any financial obligations that Future Self will have of his or her own, people expect Future Self will also be able to shoulder the debts of present self. Future Self will have more money or, because of inflation, the money Future Self pays with will be worth less. No doubt folks also count on Future Self to get in shape, eat healthily, redeem all the accumulated airline points, and regularly call his or her mother. Future Self will save the day! I ended up discussing Future Self with my writing collaborator, Dave. Like me, Dave likes to take an intriguing concept and riff off it. He liked the superhero analogy of Future Self saving the day, but then he took it further. “Why do ordinary citizens always stand to the side just watching when the hero arrives, but only try to help when the hero gets in trouble? Why don't they try to help the hero earlier, distract the bad guy, give weapons or tools to the hero, or at least some water?” he asked. We then applied that question to Future Self. If we’re counting on Future Self to pay our debts and get us out of financial trouble, why don’t we start helping him now? How can we help Future Self? Give him tools, and that means money and means. Max out our retirement contributions. Keep a cash reserve for the expected unexpected villains that’ll pop up, such as an out-of-network medical bill. We can also mark the calendar with the expiration dates of airline and hotel points. Most helpful to Future Self would be to minimize debt now. Future Self will have his or her own foes to battle, and doesn’t need ours as well. When we anticipate Future Self having a big physical challenge—like running a marathon—we train, we plan and we monitor Future Self’s fitness to make sure the physical challenge will be met. Why can’t we do the same to help Future Self prepare for the financial challenges that loom on the horizon? When we do help Future Self, we should feel free to add a note saying, “You’re welcome.” Future Self will like that.
Read more » Lucky WOOFs
Jim Wasserman | Feb 6, 2022
MY FATHER-IN-LAW was an avid tennis player and an astute coach. The first time he observed me play, he commented on how I—a soccer player growing up—had good speed and quick reactions. I had a terrible swing, however. As he put it, “You can get to any ball. You have no idea what to do when you get there.” He was correct. To this day, what looks like a great shot is often actually a mishit off my racquet frame. It still counts, so I coined a phrase for such shots: WOOFs, short for winners off of frame. Truth be told, many of my successes have been WOOFs. I’ll be in the right place and just lucky enough to connect with an opportunity. I happened to watch a Kansas City Chiefs game one Sunday, and then successfully interviewed the next day with a law firm that represented the team—something I didn’t know beforehand. Years later, I was asked by a prestigious school to teach a class—on the spot—about the Cuban Missile Crisis. I happened to see that the students were reading Frankenstein in English class. I used my own ancient remembrance of the novel to discuss the theme of disastrously losing control of technology. That lesson led to 20 years of teaching at the school. I’ve had investment tips fall into my lap. Serendipitous encounters have often led to writing topics. Most valuable of all, I stumbled upon a certain woman’s profile in the early days of online dating. She was so cheap—and remains so—that she only kept the profile up a short time during the dating site’s free, introductory period. Some awkward courting later, I WOOFed my way into a great life partner. A common adage is that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. I wonder how much of that preparation is unintentional. I was never a great soccer player. But it helped me to pick up tennis later in life, and tennis was essential to getting a certain cheap woman to marry me, not to mention connecting with some business and social partners. We need to appreciate the WOOFs of life, and be humble in the face of our good fortune. Often, the difference between successful and unsuccessful is the flying fickle finger of fate, rather than pure talent or whether a person is somehow worthy. Andrew Carnegie’s first break came when he worked as a messenger boy in a telegraph office. Reputedly, he could understand Morse code by ear without having to write it down. This not only impressed his boss, but also it meant he could get the inside financial scoop if he was in the right place. On the other hand, a talented friend of our son missed admission to a prestigious music school because a cello string broke during his audition. We should never discount an experience—good or bad—as useless. Rather, we should hoard our experiences. What can we take away from them? Since we can’t know which parts may help later in life, how do we learn as much as possible from our experiences? Our son’s friend found a successful career as an investment advisor—because he made a good impression during the job interview by discussing music. Often, “being in the right place” is a facet of privilege. Wealth buys broad exposure to both preparation and opportunity, especially when we’re young. It also gives people free time to have more experiences that might later be helpful. Yes, we shouldn’t waste money because it can help us in the future. The same holds for experiences. We shouldn’t waste them—because we never know when they might come in handy.
Read more » Under the Radar
Jim Wasserman | May 23, 2022
RESEARCH SHOWS HOW subtle sales pitches, called nudges, can influence our buying. Think of tricks like putting the more expensive potato chips on eye-level grocery-store shelves. Over time, such nudges create spending habits. Those habits become ingrained, nonthinking ways of dealing with money.
A collection of such poor habits begun in childhood can result in a hard-to-alter lifestyle of poor saving and foolish spending. Even worse, nudging sends a stealth message, especially to children, that your worth isn’t so much who you are or even what you do, but what you have.
Today’s most effective pitches are “under the radar,” a marketing term that means they’re so subtle the consumer may not be consciously aware of them. Think product placement in a movie. It can work without us even noticing.
Over the past 30 years, the primary avenue for messaging has evolved from cable channels, to streaming services, to today’s popular social media and internet channels like YouTube. Social media and internet salespeople are now disguised as “influencers.”
These are media personalities, like Ryan Kaji, whom kids and young adults enjoy watching for entertainment. What viewers don’t realize is how often the influencer is selling. The casual off-hand mention of a product—which is actually scripted—or having guests wear a promoted brand are among the under-the-radar techniques that are used. Like children, adults can also be influenced, including their financial decisions.
Psychologists have recently identified the extra nudge of what they call a parasocial relationship. This is when a fan feels a bond born out of affection for a celebrity. The celebrity isn’t aware of that particular fan, so the relationship is one-way. But the viewer still feels an affinity, connection or even “friendship” with the celebrity that makes him or her open to consumption suggestions. Think of “Swifties,” Taylor Swift's ardent followers. The celebrity expresses seemingly earnest appreciation for fan support—along with a nudge that fans should show that support through more consumption. Scripted authenticity is powerful.
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The result is that young consumers—younger millennials plus the Gen Z generation born since 1997—are having lifelong financial habits and spending triggers molded without them even being aware of it. Marketers know it works better that way.
Researchers are now figuring out the tools of persuasion that can turn consumers into habitual spenders, thereby grooming them to serve the industries that feed off their dollars. It’s not all doom and gloom, however. There are countermeasures. For adults, being aware is the best defense.
For kids, many schools are initiating media and financial literacy programs. The best guardian of your children, however, is you. You can be the primary influencer in your children’s development, helping them to develop sound financial habits and sensible spending judgments.
You can turn back the one-sided parasocial influencers with actual two-way conversations. Watch what your children watch—together. Make it a family event. Don’t criticize. Instead, ask your children what they like about this person or that show, and why.
You can also introduce them to the idea that people are trying to secretly nudge them in one direction or another. Can your children figure out the trick? Tots to teens love to say, “I see what you’re doing.” Harness that. There are also media literacy organizations and personal finance education websites that will help you, along with articles on HumbleDollar.
Some parents say they don’t have the time or energy to constantly monitor the messaging to their child, or that they have more important priorities. Make no mistake: The marketers are counting on that.
Jim Wasserman is a former business litigation attorney who taught economics and humanities for 20 years. He's the author of a three-book series on how to teach elementary, middle and high school students about behavioral economics and media literacy. He's also authored several educational children's books. Jim lives in Texas with his wife and fellow HumbleDollar contributor, Jiab. Together, they're currently working on a book, “Your Third Life: Reflections on Finding Our Way by Taking the Long Route.” Check out Jim's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
Read more » Pay to Play
Jim Wasserman | Feb 27, 2023
EVEN IN OUR consumer-driven society, some things are looked down upon if bought. One of those things is companionship.
I’ll leave the topic of sexual intimacy for another day. What I’m talking about here is paying—directly or indirectly—for social interaction. We might buy a younger colleague lunch simply to have somebody to dine with. We might continue therapy long after we’ve finished exploring the issues that prompted us to sign up. We all have a need to connect with others and thereby have our own existence validated.
It’s a basic human need and yet, if folks admitted they pay to have such companionship, many would cluck their tongues and argue it’s not genuine friendship. People would then feel shame and not do it. But in truth, we all need human interaction and we all pay to have it—one way or another.
For more than 15 years, I’ve belonged to the same United States Tennis Association (USTA) team. In that time, we’ve had a core group of guys playing together. Record-wise, all we have achieved is new heights of mediocrity.
We’ve played in 100-degree heat and near-freezing cold. We’ve all sidelined ourselves with embarrassing injuries. For those losses and discomforts, we must pay ever-rising USTA membership dues and player registration fees for each league we compete in, plus we split the cost of tennis balls.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love tennis. But it’s the interaction with the guys—the jokes about how lousy that shot I made was or how incredibly lucky my opponent was to eke out a 6-1, 6-1 win—that I’m really paying for. We text like schoolboys before and after matches, inventing words like “pushdink” or WOOF (winner off of frame) that become our inside jokes.
The COVID-19 lockdown exposed and exacerbated a hidden societal ill—pervasive loneliness. Even afterward, many people continue to feel isolated and alone, yet balk at the idea of buying companionship. They see it as desperate or demeaning.
That’s a shame. There are many ways to feed the soul’s need for being with others. I’ve seen writers’ groups that spend little time improving their prose in favor of sharing experiences that they’re “going to write about.” I have been to Bible studies where people discuss the food everyone brought at least as much as Bible verses.
Seniors especially need companionship, and should be encouraged to seek it out and even pay for the opportunity. My mother was hesitant at first to move into a senior living center, preferring to stay in her home of 50 years—alone and complaining about her back. A few months after moving, she was a new woman.
With a gleam in her eye, she would tell me of the gossip about romantic liaisons. People passing her in the hall would ask if she was coming to the card game later because they needed her. She stopped mentioning her back pain. I’m convinced that socialization alone extended her life and made her happier.
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Recently, my wife Jiab and I committed tennis treason by delving into pickleball on a rainy day. We went to the local community center, paid for membership and then paid to join the open play session in the gym.
The bleachers were intermittently filled with people ranging in age from their 30s to their 70s. They seemed to be waiting their turn, although I would swear that many never played. They just hung out.
Between matches, we struck up conversations with strangers who asked if we’d come back. Pickleball was fun, but the people were the selling point. Just don’t tell our tennis friends.
Alfred Hitchcock popularized the term MacGuffin in storytelling. A MacGuffin is the thing you think the movie is about, like an object or a quest, while the movie’s real subject is the evolving relationship of its characters. It’s time to acknowledge that activities and professional and personal goals are great, but that seeking companionship and building relationships are also worthy objectives.
There’s no shame in spending money in their pursuit. If it’s okay to pay for clothes or a trip that makes you happy, why not for a friend?
Jim is a former business litigation attorney who taught economics and humanities for 20 years. He's the author of a three-book series on how to teach students about behavioral economics and media literacy. Jim lives in Texas with his wife and fellow HumbleDollar contributor, Jiab. They have a two-book series coming out in 2023, Behavioral Economics: A Guide for Youth in Making Choices and The Social Media Diet: A Guide for Young People to Be Smarter Online Users and Consumers. Check out Jim's earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
Read more » The Dao Is Up
Jim Wasserman | May 25, 2021
WHEN PEOPLE MENTION Eastern philosophy, Westerners often have images of mystic monks in saffron robes, surrounded by clouds of incense and speaking in cryptic riddles like, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” In fact, Asian philosophy can be very pragmatic in addressing everyday decisions, from family matters to investment choices—and many Westerners welcome the different approach to facing life’s challenges. Daoism (also called Taoism) is one of the world’s oldest philosophies. It’s believed to have emerged more than 2,000 years ago during a period of dissolution, decline and prolonged warfare in China. Amid the chaos, many had a sense they lacked control over their life. Daoism helped address what to do when faced with such anxious times. Here are some of Daoism’s key points: De (Te). There is a natural flow (Dao or Tao) to all things, with everything acting in its own way within that flow—birds gotta fly, trees gotta grow toward light. It’s their innate power (De) of tapping into the greater flow (Dao) to thrive. When we feel out of sync or even going against the flow, it does no good to rail against the way things are or fight against them. It’s better is to see how we can operate within what’s happening. Aware of our own De, we can each take advantage of our unique qualities, natural skills and power to make the best of things. Don’t waste our breath saying the market is irrational. Instead, we should figure out the best way to move within the flow. Wu wei. This is one of the most misunderstood ideas of Daoism because it is often translated as “nonaction,” seeming to imply that we should sit tight and hope all will be well. A better translation is “effortless action.” Imagine a rock in a stream. The rock seems to “win” by parting the stream. But come back after some years and you’ll find the stream has slowly eroded the rock away. That’s wu wei. We tell our children to work through seeming setbacks, because the payoff is in the long game. We need to remember this for ourselves, perhaps socking away that little bit extra every year into a retirement account or paying a little more than the minimum due on debt. Such effortless actions can be the key to great long-run success. Pu. As in Winnie, this concept originates from the idea of an uncut, rough piece of wood. Basically, don’t overcomplicate things and instead keep them as simple as possible. How many times do we start with a simple goal, but our diversions and clever workarounds take us in a far off and unwanted direction? [xyz-ihs snippet="Mobile-Subscribe"] Make simple goals and maintain those goals. One goal might be time with loved ones. We shouldn’t derail it by spending 10 hours at work so we can somehow give more “quality” to the 30 minutes we end up devoting to the kids. Another goal might be retirement. We shouldn’t derail that goal by diverting boring steady growth investments into a get-rich-quick scheme. When we need something, we should try to get it and nothing more. Fu. Many people are familiar with the yin-yang (Taijitu) symbol associated with Daoism. What most people don’t know is that the symbol is supposed to be rotating. This is to remind people that not only is life composed of opposites, but also that all things return (Fu) so that balance is restored. Sometimes darker, bad times (yin) prevail, and sometimes it’s lighter and better (yang) times. We need to be mindful of this constant phasing in and out, and that it’s the totality that makes life what it is. A new job with a big raise doesn’t mean we need to stop saving for future bad times. A setback is not the end of our dreams, but perhaps a delay or an opening for a new direction. A balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds can hedge against the vicissitudes of the long-term market. Daoism also puts great emphasis on timing, that we need both the right outlook and right plan at the right time. In many ways, a great overall “Daoist” investment is a low-cost target-date fund built around indexing. It doesn’t gamble by trying to “time” the market. It’s simple and goes with the flow of the market, good or bad, over time. It requires minimal maintenance and almost effortless action by investors, who merely need to contribute. The fund will adjust and rebalance at key moments, including shifting to less volatile investments as retirement gets closer. There’s an old joke that the ancient Chinese invented the first complex bureaucracy, and then had to create the first philosophy to deal with the frustrations wrought by that bureaucracy. We have so many things that are different today. But the frustrations and anxiety that come with feeling things are in flux and beyond our control are timeless. Perhaps that means a philosophical outlook from long ago also still applies. Jiab and Jim Wasserman just returned to Texas after spending the first three years of their retirement in Spain. Check out earlier articles from both Jiab and Jim. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
Read more »
Jonathan Clements is the founder and editor of HumbleDollar. Follow him on X @ClementsMoney and on Facebook, and check out his earlier articles. [xyz-ihs snippet="Donate"]
Enriching Our Collective Wisdom
Mark Crothers | Oct 1, 2025
Right Day, On Time and at the Right Place: A Rare Trio
Mark Crothers | Sep 30, 2025
Free Lunch?
Howard Rohleder | Aug 11, 2025
The 1% Club: Our Unnoticed Wealth
Mark Crothers | Sep 26, 2025
Thank you, Jonathan
DrLefty | Sep 23, 2025
The real world of saving, income and retirement beyond the HD community – cause for guilt?
R Quinn | Sep 29, 2025
Why Bitcoin?
Dan Murray | May 31, 2025
The C Word
Jonathan Clements | Jun 15, 2024
ON SUNDAY MORNING, May 19, I was enjoying croissants and coffee with Elaine at the kitchen table, while watching the neighborhood sparrows, finches, cardinals and squirrels have their way with the bird feeder. All was right in our little world, except I was a little wobbly when walking—the result, I suspected, of balance issues caused by an ear infection.
It was going to be a busy week, and I figured that it would be smart to get some antibiotics inside me, even if visiting the urgent care clinic on Sunday might be more expensive than contacting my primary care physician on Monday and perhaps having to go in for an appointment.
Long story short, I ended the day in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, where the staff discovered lung cancer that’s metastasized to my brain and a few other spots. This, as you might imagine, has meant a few changes in my life, and there will be more to come.
I have no desire for HumbleDollar to become HumbleDeathWatch. But my prognosis is not good. I've had three brain radiation treatments and I started chemotherapy yesterday, but these steps are merely deferring death and perhaps not for very long. I’ll spare you the gory medical details. But as best I can gather, I may have just a dozen okay months ahead of me.
Weirdly, as of right now, I feel pretty darn good, and perhaps better than most 61-year-olds. Every morning, I’m stretching and lifting for 20 minutes, and then riding a stationary bike for 40 minutes. And in case you’re curious, I was never much of a smoker and last had a cigarette in 1987, when I was age 24. Instead, it seems my lung cancer is the result of a defective gene—one that's rare and without a promising treatment plan.
In future articles, I’ll be writing more about the personal finance and other implications of my diagnosis, which I believe have an intriguing relevance even for those without an incurable disease. I also suspect readers want to know my plans for the site. The Reader’s Digest version: I intend to keep HumbleDollar going, though there'll be some notable changes. But before I get to those changes, here are some initial financial thoughts, which I hope to discuss further in the weeks and months ahead.
Managing money is fraught with uncertainty, but never more so than now. There’s much I don’t know—how long I’ll live, how long I’ll be able to do the work I love, what my medical and other costs will be. Still, on this score, I’m hardly alone. In varying degrees, we all face this sort of uncertainty, and it’s one reason managing money is so fascinating.
Money is intimately bound up with regret. We often berate ourselves for the foolish purchases and investments we make. This one has been a pleasant surprise: Until the past few years, I’ve lived quite frugally, and yet I find myself with almost no regrets about that lifestyle. Yes, if my health allows, I’ll be ticking off some bucket-list items over the year ahead. But mostly what I feel is profound gratitude for the life I’ve had. I’ve had amazing opportunities and wonderful experiences, and that allows me to face the time ahead with surprising equanimity.
The cliché is true: Something like this makes you truly appreciate life. Despite those bucket-list items, I find my greatest joy comes from small, inexpensive daily pleasures: that first cup of coffee, exercise, friends and family, a good meal, writing and editing, smiles from strangers, the sunshine on my face. If we can keep life’s less admirable emotions at bay, the world is a wonderful place.
We can control risk, but we can’t eliminate it. I’ve spent decades managing both financial risk and potential threats to my health. But despite such precautions, sometimes we get blindsided. There have been few cancer occurrences in my family, and it’s never been something I had reason to fear. Chance is a cruel mistress.
It’s toughest on those left behind. I’ll be gone, but Elaine and my family will remain, and they’ll have to navigate the world without me. I so want them to be okay, financially and emotionally, and that’s driving many of the steps I’m now taking.
Generosity suddenly feels so much sweeter. No doubt part of the reason is that I’ll no longer need most of my retirement savings, plus there’s scant reason to acquire new possessions. Perhaps part of me is also more anxious to earn the good opinion of others, while I still have the chance.
But there’s another aspect to this: As I watch friends and family react to my diagnosis, it makes me appreciate that most folks have an inherent goodness and they’re constantly struggling to do the right thing, and a little generosity is a way to acknowledge that.
Life’s priorities become crystal clear. Even at this late stage, I believe it’s important to have a sense of purpose, both professionally and personally. I can’t do much about the fewer years, and I have no anger about their loss. But I do want the time ahead to be happy, productive and meaningful.
I’ve been moving to further simplify my finances, organize my affairs and make things right with those around me. Underlying this is a desire to control what I can—hardly surprising, given the uncertainty swirling around me—and I’m probably overdoing it.
There’s one aspect of my life over which I have a fair amount of control: HumbleDollar, this little world I created and that all of you, with your comments, articles and support, have helped build. That brings me to my plan for the site. Even before my diagnosis, I had been noodling how to scale back the site in 2025, with a view to having a little more time for travel and such.
I’ve accelerated those plans. Starting next month, my goal is to run four or five new articles each week, rather than the dozen or so that the site publishes today. But that’ll partly hinge on how I react to treatment and how quickly my health deteriorates. Meanwhile, next week, I hope to unveil a new feature that'll allow the site's writers and readers to continue to interact with one another.
One change I’ve already made: I’ve removed the site’s donation feature and cancelled all recurring donations. Many thanks to those of you who have supported HumbleDollar financially over the years. With the site posting fewer articles, I didn’t feel it was right to continue accepting donations.
Farewell Friends
Jonathan Clements | Sep 22, 2025
Throw, hit or kick … it all add$ up
R Quinn | Sep 27, 2025
Try to Be Satisfied
Ken Cutler | Apr 25, 2024
ONE OF MY FAVORITE books is The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. Its subtitle is Why More Is Less: How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction. The principles that the book discusses have important implications for how we manage our money.
Schwartz distinguishes between “maximizers” and “satisficers.” A maximizer is someone who needs to be assured that he or she is making the best decision possible. By contrast, a satisficer can feel settled with a decision that’s good enough, and doesn’t spend time worrying whether a better alternative might have been missed.
I imagine everyone lives on a spectrum somewhere between pure maximizer and pure satisficer. By temperament, I tend to be a maximizer. Still, I’ve been working on becoming more of a satisficer.
What are the downsides of being a maximizer? Maximizers enjoy positive events less than satisficers and don’t handle it as well when negative things occur. When something bad—like a financial setback—happens to maximizers, their sense of well-being takes longer to recover. Maximizers ruminate more than satisficers. They experience more feelings of regret. In general, maximizers tend to be less happy than satisficers.
I think those of us who take in a lot of financial information can find ourselves nudged toward the maximizer end of the spectrum. How often have you read a financial article and afterwards had an uneasy feeling that maybe you don’t have the optimal mix of stocks and bonds, or that you lack the appropriate exposure to international markets, or that you have too much cash in your portfolio?
There are many areas of my financial life where it isn’t clear that I’ve made the best decision—if maximizing wealth is the ultimate goal. Indeed, some choices I’ve made have clearly reduced my net worth. To be a good satisficer, I need to feel comfortable with these decisions. Here are some examples of financial decisions I’ve made that have resulted in wealth not being maximized:
Pension choices. In the middle of my career, I had to decide whether to stay with my traditional pension or move to a cash balance plan. Using the best information available to me at the time, I selected the cash balance option. Years after I locked in my decision, changes were made to the cash balance formula that made it less lucrative. I had no way of knowing that would happen when I made my initial choice.
When I retired last year, I had the option of taking a cash lump sum or receiving a monthly payment for life. Again, I made what appeared to be the best choice at the time: I took the monthly payments with a 100% survivor option. The amount of the monthly payment is clearly less than what I would have received had I stayed with the traditional pension formula initially.
Whether the monthly payment option was the right choice for my cash balance pension remains to be seen. If my wife and I both die younger than expected, it would have been better—in hindsight—to have taken the lump sum. Being dead, we wouldn’t care, but our heirs might.
Retirement savings. I’ve discussed before that I didn’t contribute much to my 401(k) early in my career and that I didn’t invest aggressively. I certainly didn’t maximize my 401(k) account’s growth potential. Still, the percentage of my financial wealth in tax-deferred savings is uncomfortably high. The tax implications of managing that account are thorny enough already. Had I maximized my 401(k) over my entire career, Uncle Sam might have ended up being a major beneficiary of my frugality.
Charitable giving. I’ve shared previously how charitable giving is a priority for my wife and me. In fact, we’ve given away more money over the years than I contributed to my 401(k). Had maximizing wealth been our objective, this would’ve been quite counterproductive.
But here’s the thing: For us, our ultimate goal is to be good stewards of the wealth entrusted to us, not necessarily to maximize it. Money has deep spiritual implications for our lives. We follow someone who said you cannot serve both God and money. Giving money away is the best way we’ve found to avoid serving it.
Social Security. The decision of when to start receiving Social Security benefits still lies ahead for my wife and me. There are varying philosophies regarding when you should begin. The conventional advice is for the family’s main breadwinner to defer taking Social Security until age 70 if possible.
Still, when I input our specific information into an online calculator, the recommended commencement age for me was computed to be just under age 63. I’m sure we won’t make the optimal decision, whatever that might be for us. Still, I don’t plan on agonizing over it or feeling regret. Without foreknowledge of one’s date of death, it’s impossible to know whether you’re making the “best” choice.
I’m satisfied with our retirement savings. I don’t want to feel compelled to maximize the balance. Given that my wife and I appear to be on track for a financially successful retirement, gratitude seems more appropriate than rumination and regret.
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Traits of “successful” people
Brian Kowald | Sep 27, 2025
- Integrity / Respectful - trumps everything else.
- Embrace Challenges or Difficult Work - while there may be more opportunity for failure, there is also more opportunity to get noticed and advance your career and be successful.
- Ability to Pivot - the ability to be self-critical, understand when your ideas may not be the best path or something isn't working.
- Is Committed and Dependable -speaks for itself
- Has High Standards - hold yourself and others to high standards. Consistently produce quality and accurate work.
- Takes Advantage of Luck/Good Fortune - sometimes you get lucky, run with it and work hard to make the most of those opportunities.
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