Several months ago I wrote about the Secret Millionaires Club, a website that teaches kids about how to start a business and how to handle money. Warren Buffett helped create the site and his character, actually voiced by Buffett, stars in the animated videos on the site. It is a great resource for teaching kids…
In fact, most of the time you should eat the marshmallow. I am referring, of course, to the famous marshmallow test conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in which he gave young children marshmallows and told them if they waited 15 minutes to eat them he would give them another one. Follow-up studies showed that the…
Carl Richards is a financial planner and best-selling author. In his book The One Page Financial Plan he tells the story of talking to his friend, Brad, who was saving for a long-term goal that seemed almost unreachable. Brad was married and had a child. It was all he could do to meet his current…
The Hindu holy man Swami Gnanmuni is the administrator of the magnificent Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in New Delhi, India. As such, he has taken a vow of absolute poverty. His material possessions consist solely of two robes, some prayer beads, and a wooden bowl. Gnanmuni took a rather unconventional path to reach this position.…
Many years ago, when my now grown children were in elementary school, we attended a special evening activity at their school with Richard Paul Evans, author of The Christmas Box and many other best-selling books. Evans had just written a book called The Spyglass which he read to us. Evans had never written children’s books…
Our current behavior has consequences in the future. One interesting way to think of this is to think of a present you and a future you. For example: The present me loves to stay up late, but the future me pays for it dearly when the alarm goes off the next morning. The present me…
It’s Hard to Save for a Stranger In an effort to understand how our brains work scientists have done a lot of research using brain scans. They have discovered that the activity in our brains differs depending on what we are thinking about. These studies have shown that our brains are very good at distinguishing…
Famous investor and billionaire Warren Buffett has never lost his Midwestern values. He still lives in the same house he purchased in 1958 for $31,500, and his taste in food doesn’t go much beyond hamburgers and steak. There are stories told of Buffett attending multi-course dinners prepared by world famous chefs where Buffett wouldn’t touch…
Humans hate to lose. In fact, behavioral economists tell us when it comes to money we hate losing more than twice as much as we like winning. This is called loss aversion, and if we are not careful it can lead to irrational investing decisions. Paul Samuelson, noble winning economist, once tested this theory…
A cat who sits on a hot stove will never sit on a hot stove again, but he will probably never sit on a cold one either. – Mark Twain A recent survey by Bankrate.com found that over half of Americans don’t have any money invested in the stock market. While those that don’t invest…
