Ask Trim Review – Save Money with Trim Automated Finance Personal Assistant

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If you find yourself struggling to save money or find other areas of your budget to cut back on, then you’re not alone. Millions of Americans want to save more money, but it’s easier said than done in many cases. After all, it doesn’t just come down to an individual’s financial discipline. For instance, consumer cable bills have risen 40% between 2012 and 2018, which isn’t something you can easily control for, thanks to the relative monopoly status that cable companies have in their markets. Fortunately, free personal finance apps like Trim have been developed specifically for the purpose of saving you money with as little effort as possible. Even if you think you’ve done everything in your power to … Read more

Is Sunk Cost Fallacy Ruining Your Finances?

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The popular A&E television show Hoarders features a range of people struggling with extreme compulsive spending and hoarding behaviors that often impact their living circumstances, relationships, and mental health in a myriad of negative ways. A common pattern that arises during the clean-up phase is the hoarders’ unwillingness to part with items they perceive as having a lot of value, even when those items are clearly broken, useless, or even contaminated. Their rationale for holding onto an excessive amount of items often involves their desire to sell the items, which they paid a lot of money for in the past. However, most non-collectible items begin depreciating the moment you buy them, even if you never use them or even take … Read more

How Your Cognitive Biases Can Hurt Your Investment Returns

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In his book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, author Dan Ariely writes, “Wouldn’t economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave?” It’s all about our cognitive biases. In the same vein, investors of all backgrounds and net worth levels generally know how they should invest but nevertheless make bad investment decisions like getting deeply involved in penny stocks, gambling on the potential of a new cryptocurrency, trying to “time the market,” or investing much too conservatively for their age, goals and risk tolerance. Unfortunately, beginning and seasoned investors alike are prone to making their own unique, seemingly irrational investment decisions. While it may … Read more

Top 6 Ways Online Retailers Trick You Into Spending More

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Well-known psychologist Robert Cialdini published a book in the 1980s entitled Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Although the book is nearly 40 years old at this point, the six principles of persuasion that Cialdini outlined in the book are perhaps even more prominent in the world of retail marketing today. There are many ways retailers trick us into spending more money. How Online Retailers Trick You Into Spending More Those six principles include: Reciprocity: referring to our innate desire to give back when we receive something Scarcity: the perception of limited resources or time Authority: how we perceive things as more legitimate when supported by an “expert” Consistency: we’re more likely to remain loyal to a person or organization who … Read more

Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging

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The following is reprinted from Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old?: The Path of Purposeful Aging with permission of Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Copyright © 2021 by Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro. This is a book by two old friends who have known each other for more than half of their lives. It is a book about a subject of which no one can claim absolute expertise, but which each of us learns a little bit more about every day. It is a book whose purpose is purpose. It is a book about how to grow old, with the emphasis on “grow.” Our focus is on not just getter older, but on how to grow as … Read more

Review of Acre Gold – How to Easily Buy Physical Gold Every Month

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Investors often flock to gold and other precious metals when the stock market heads south because these tangible investments tend to be less prone to fluctuations based on government policies, global economic conditions, corporate profits and losses, and other common factors influencing the price of financial assets like stocks, bonds, and Treasury notes. I personally love investing with Acre Gold. This isn’t a sales pitch. I simply just love the service and wanted to share it with the Money Q&A readers. But is gold really all it’s hyped up to be? Let’s do some math: in the span of one year (Dec. 2018 to Dec. 2019), the value of gold per ounce rose from approximately $1,220 to $1,463. On a fifteen-year … Read more