Sarah Stanley Fallaw's Blog, page 4
February 14, 2020
Is Your Risk Tolerance Assessment A Cosmo Test?
If you have ever taken a quiz entitled “How to tell if your boyfriend is cheating on you” or “Answer these five questions to learn to see if you’re a good friend,” then you’ve probably taken something akin to what we call a “Cosmo test.” Your answers to just a few questions will result in[...]
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November 6, 2019
Financial Psychology Assessments: Holding Up The Mirror
“My neighbor is driving me crazy. She always says she’s the most frugal person she knows, but she’s spending every dime on *$* at Target. It’s not frugal. It’s stupid.” A friend recently shared this sentiment with me, and it is an excellent example of the fact that some of us aren’t great at evaluating[...]
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September 4, 2019
China Sees Generational Changes In Savings Attitude
In a Wall Street Journal article this week, the perils of debt-supported spending by Chinese Gen Z-ers and millennials was contrasted with the potential benefits of a hyper-charged consumer economy. The upshot from a macro-economic perspective is that while some amount of borrowing can be good for an economy (leading to job creation and more productivity), it can also lead to unhealthy levels of household debt, which in turn can lead to an overall economic[...]
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August 22, 2019
A Partnership for Financial Wellness
One of the main missions of DataPoints is to help individuals improve the way in which they manage their financial lives using behavioral science. This mission has two important components: first, we have to understand our own patterns of money-related behaviors, personality, attitudes, and other characteristics as a starting point. Then, if we have the desire to change our financial trajectory, we have to modify the way in which we save, spend, invest, and manage[...]
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July 10, 2019
The Investing Mistakes of Millionaires (And The Rest of Us)
Sometime around 2000, I gambled some of my money away while fooling myself into thinking I was doing something very sophisticated. I wasn’t in Las Vegas: I was sitting at my computer buying shares of Krispy Kreme Donuts on eTrade. I had seen the front page of Forbes or Fortune or some other publication touting the company’s success and its future prospects, and decided on my own, without seeking the counsel of my wiser and[...]
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June 5, 2019
Psychological Schemas & Spending: Children’s Birthday Parties
When our first daughter was very young–not quite two years old–we attended our first-ever birthday party for a three-year-old. (I recently talked about this experience on the Afford Anything podcast with Paula Pant). We went as a family of three. It was 2:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday. We arrived and were somewhat taken aback by the scene: was this a wedding reception? Considering the evidence of the multitude of adults milling around the[...]
April 17, 2019
Openness to Change in Personal Finance
If you’ve spent any amount of time contemplating how you might improve the condition of your health, career, finances, family, spirituality, or other important element of your life, you may inevitably reach the conclusion that a change of some kind is required. Many readers of our blog and books share a common conundrum: they acknowledge a change is necessary (either for themselves or for their client), but they also instinctively know that actually making the[...]
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April 9, 2019
On Using Assessments to Screen Prospects
While visiting Santa Cruz last year in August at the FPA Far West Roundup, I stepped into a surf shop on the wharf and saw a magic 8-ball for sale (I’m still not exactly certain what magic 8-balls and surfing have to do with each other). I hadn’t seen one of these things in quite some time, and it reminded me that, much like many of the other toys and games our children play with, the[...]
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March 25, 2019
Technology For The Relationship-Side of Financial Planning
We recently met with Bill Winterberg from FPPad to demonstrate the DataPoints platform for advisors and chat about financial planning, what keeps all of us from succeeding in meeting our goals, and how behavioral science can help us improve our financial decisions. In this video, you’ll see how behavioral assessments can identify key wealth factors and how a framework for talking about financial decisions allows for better conversations and guidance. Watch the demo here, and[...]
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March 11, 2019
Picking Yourself Requires Some Serious Planning
Who will you pick to do the work that matters most to you? There are problems to be solved, ideas to grow, and injustices that need to be addressed. Who have you decided will take on these tasks and this work? If you are considering the creation of a new business, volunteer effort, or any other project where YOU will be the one doing the important work, then you are considering “picking yourself”. Here is[...]
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