Speaker 1: Quick, how much do you have saved for your retirement
Speaker 1: right now? I don't know the answer to that, And
Speaker 1: if you don't either, you're not alone. Most of us
Speaker 1: aren't thinking enough about our savings. And this week we're
Speaker 1: going to try to do a little better. This is
Speaker 1: a game plan. Hi, I'm Prince Jessica Levi and I'm
Speaker 1: right back at Greenfield and this week we're talking all
Speaker 1: about retirement savings. It's on our minds because the GOP
Speaker 1: is part of its new tax plan, briefly proposed capping
Speaker 1: contributions to four oh one K tax plans, and people
Speaker 1: heard that and freaked out. Yeah, right now, a lot
Speaker 1: of us have four own case with our jobs, and
Speaker 1: we mindlessly put in as much as we can tax free,
Speaker 1: and we think that will be great our retirement. So
Speaker 1: when we see new knows that there's no longer going
Speaker 1: to be this tax free benefit, it just seems like
Speaker 1: it's going to ruin our whole lives when we're older.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to four oh one case, we
Speaker 1: are actually our own worst enemies. Most of us are
Speaker 1: really bad at saving for one case. I've become kind
Speaker 1: of the biggest vehicle for retirement savings in the US,
Speaker 1: pensions are dwindling, and we'll go away altogether pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Probably our Social Security income for most people isn't enough
Speaker 1: to retire on. So we depend on these corporate plans,
Speaker 1: and yet most people are not contributing to them, even
Speaker 1: when they have the option. Yeah, so of course there
Speaker 1: are some employers that don't offer them. There was a
Speaker 1: startling statistic that I saw in a Bloomberg article that
Speaker 1: only four percent of companies offer them. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that most people don't have the option. It's usually small
Speaker 1: employers that don't offer them, But that is so a
Speaker 1: few companies. I just think of it as this universal
Speaker 1: benefit at this point, but it's it's not. It feels
Speaker 1: like an advantage of going to work at a big
Speaker 1: company that like, you get your you get your nice
Speaker 1: retirement package for oh one k. Yeah, and most Americans
Speaker 1: do have the option. The same articles that that eight
Speaker 1: percent of Americans do work somewhere that sponsors some kind
Speaker 1: of four OW one K like plan. But even so
Speaker 1: only make contributions to those plans. So even when your
Speaker 1: employer offers them, for some reason, people are not contributing, right,
Speaker 1: And we should say that in a lot of these plans.
Speaker 1: Your employer will match your contributions, so what you put in,
Speaker 1: they will put in the same amount, you know, up
Speaker 1: to a certain amount. So like, that's free money. And
Speaker 1: there must be people who just really can't shave anything
Speaker 1: off their paychecks. But that's not everyone who's not contributing.
Speaker 1: So we should talk a little bit about the reasoning
Speaker 1: behind having access to basically this free money and not
Speaker 1: taking it. I have talked to people who are just
Speaker 1: out of school. They're young, and they're paying off a
Speaker 1: ton of student debt, and they're deciding between student debt
Speaker 1: and four oh one K, and they feel like they
Speaker 1: can't put in. But then once you don't get in
Speaker 1: the habit of doing it, I think inertia is so
Speaker 1: strong that you just never do it, and then your
Speaker 1: ten years into your career and you missed out on
Speaker 1: all this great free money. I definitely felt that way
Speaker 1: when I was first starting out. The company that I
Speaker 1: started working out after college offered a match I think
Speaker 1: after a year or two, and so in the first
Speaker 1: year or two of working there, I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be getting the match, and I'm so
Speaker 1: broke right now. My salary solo that you know, it's
Speaker 1: too soon to put it in. And then I ended
Speaker 1: up working there for five years and I never got
Speaker 1: around to signing up for the match, and I gave
Speaker 1: up that free money, and I didn't have any savings
Speaker 1: under my belt, you know, when I was like well
Speaker 1: into my twenties. I'm sorry, but that's the thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: when you're young, retirement feels so so far away that
Speaker 1: it feels like you'll always have time to get around
Speaker 1: to it um. But not only is it bad investment
Speaker 1: not to start piling on like those early returns, it's,
Speaker 1: as you say, it's bad psychology because you get this inertia.
Speaker 1: You think I'll do it in two years when the
Speaker 1: match starts, or you know, I'll do it when my
Speaker 1: salary goes up and I start making a little bit
Speaker 1: more money. And then those things happen and you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't want to go back into the HR paperwork.
Speaker 1: You don't want to make the phone call and figure out, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the fifteen minutes of work that it would
Speaker 1: take to like change these you know, make these adjustments
Speaker 1: on your paycheck. And I don't know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: crazy because it's the thing that could help us so much,
Speaker 1: and it's impossible for us to see the benefits in
Speaker 1: the moment. That's definitely my problem. I am have the
Speaker 1: best of intentions. I want to contribute to my phone, okay,
Speaker 1: and I do and I always have. But sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: want to go in and check on it or figure
Speaker 1: I'm gonna raise my contributions, but I get stuck somewhere
Speaker 1: and like a paperwork hole or like on a website somewhere,
Speaker 1: and then I just give up and I forget about it.
Speaker 1: And then a year later, we're doing an episode on it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I should start that again. Yeah, yesterday
Speaker 1: we said, as preparation for this episode, we would both
Speaker 1: take a look at what was in our four oh
Speaker 1: one case and what we have saved in social Security.
Speaker 1: And I didn't do it. I also didn't do it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's partly this fear of looking at money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's a scary thing in our culture, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show. When I started at Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: I signed up for the four oh one K and
Speaker 1: then I actually made some decisions about my investment. Like
Speaker 1: I thought, I knew enough to just like diversify my
Speaker 1: portfolio and leave it alone. And I I thought I
Speaker 1: was making good decisions at the time, but I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what those decisions were, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: scared to go back and look at them because what
Speaker 1: if they were really dumb and like I would have
Speaker 1: just been better off leaving it alone. Yeah, and definitely
Speaker 1: just ignoring it and not looking at it is is
Speaker 1: going to change whatever bad decisions you made. Or that's
Speaker 1: what it feels like, right Like, if we don't look
Speaker 1: at it, it's not there. It's not there. And you
Speaker 1: said something a second ago that struck me, which was
Speaker 1: that sometimes you think about starting to look at this
Speaker 1: stuff and then you just you just kind of get
Speaker 1: you know, you get stuck in a paper work, Cole.
Speaker 1: Or it feels too inconvenient in the moment, because it's
Speaker 1: this thing that just never feels urgent. Retirement to me
Speaker 1: feels really far away, and it feels just as far
Speaker 1: away as it did ten years ago. And I'm ten
Speaker 1: years closer to retirement, so it should feel a little closer.
Speaker 1: And I think this is true for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It's just very hard to do something where the payoff
Speaker 1: is going to be decades away, and I think that's
Speaker 1: just human nature. I refused to say that this is
Speaker 1: a personal moral failing. Yeah, it's just hard to envision
Speaker 1: even the sum of money I would need. There was
Speaker 1: another bloom regardicle about how much a million dollars would
Speaker 1: get you, and it was like not enough. And in
Speaker 1: my mind, I was like, how how could could not
Speaker 1: be enough? I understand, but I guess that's something I
Speaker 1: should know. Well, it's not a personal moral failing. It
Speaker 1: is kind of the way our brains are wired. We
Speaker 1: don't think about long term solutions. We think about short
Speaker 1: term gratification. But fortunately, behavioral economists are here to help
Speaker 1: people are thinking about this stuff. They know human beings
Speaker 1: are not wired to make good savings decisions. Richard Faylor
Speaker 1: was just awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in
Speaker 1: the field. And they're doing all kinds of stuff to
Speaker 1: try and help us overcome the biases, these natural biases
Speaker 1: we have that keep us from saving and from just
Speaker 1: like making the obvious right choice. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk to one of those behavioral economists right now. Our
Speaker 1: guest today is Steve Wendell. He's the head of behavioral
Speaker 1: science at morning Star, which is an invested research firm.
Speaker 1: Why don't you explain to us a little bit about
Speaker 1: what you do and how you study human behavior and
Speaker 1: how you make recommendations based on that. We study the
Speaker 1: gap between intention and action. When people want to save
Speaker 1: for the future and save for retirement or invest in
Speaker 1: a in a thoughtful, diversive wide way, but yet they
Speaker 1: struggle to actually do it. We study why that happens,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, what individuals and their advisors and our
Speaker 1: companies can do to help them do better. And we
Speaker 1: do this primarily through experiments, so formal randomized control trials
Speaker 1: that test if we try talking about retirement savings a
Speaker 1: somewhat different way, does that help people save more and
Speaker 1: really reach their goals? For example? And in general, why
Speaker 1: would you say we make retirement savings decisions, for example,
Speaker 1: that are sort of against our own interests. So when
Speaker 1: I think about saving for the future, I really think
Speaker 1: about four distinct problems that we face. One is our biases,
Speaker 1: right are focused on the present, Our difficulty um planning
Speaker 1: for emergence, for emergency expenses, for regular expenses, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: that's the one. So many people focus on these biases,
Speaker 1: but there's more. The second part, and I think often
Speaker 1: more important, is why we spend, why we find it
Speaker 1: difficult to control our spending and keep on to court budget.
Speaker 1: Third is why we don't always keep the money in
Speaker 1: the plans once we get it there, so why we
Speaker 1: often cash out when there's a job change, especially when
Speaker 1: it's when it's relatively small balance. And fourth, why we
Speaker 1: don't manage the money and our plans very well. Why
Speaker 1: we think, okay, well, I just I'm saving enough that
Speaker 1: should be fine, and then we don't think about, well,
Speaker 1: am I contributing up to the max? And I panicking
Speaker 1: during downturns and pulling the money out, etcetera. So given
Speaker 1: this bias, we have to not think about the future.
Speaker 1: What are some of the common mistakes that people do make.
Speaker 1: The most common mistake, of course, is that is that
Speaker 1: people don't plan for the future at or they don't
Speaker 1: plan for retirement savings, and they don't figure out how
Speaker 1: much they'll need, they don't actually put aside the money
Speaker 1: for it, etcetera. I think that's your first and foremost
Speaker 1: and nuts in our world. We call this the the
Speaker 1: present bias. Our natural focus on the present um, but
Speaker 1: there are many others. There are many others that come
Speaker 1: into play as well. Similarly, we were not great at
Speaker 1: at um at plant and understanding how we're going to
Speaker 1: respond in the future. So we have a we have
Speaker 1: a planning fallacy, and that we think, Okay, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be you know, right now, maybe I'm not ready
Speaker 1: to save for retirement, but next year I'm going to
Speaker 1: be in a great position to do so. Well. Probably not.
Speaker 1: We don't forecast our own future behavior. We haven't forecast
Speaker 1: the state will be in very effectively. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that your team has done experiments to try to
Speaker 1: test some of your theories and come up with recommendations
Speaker 1: to help people save better. Can you tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more about some of those studies or experiments. Sure? Sure,
Speaker 1: So we've we were in a variety of different experiments
Speaker 1: to help investors, as I mentioned, close this um gap
Speaker 1: between intention and action. One of the one of the
Speaker 1: simplest ones we've done, for example, in their in the
Speaker 1: retirement space is to show people all the work that's
Speaker 1: involved in calculating this retirement savings so that it isn't
Speaker 1: a proof magic number that comes out and says you
Speaker 1: should save this amount, but give them a sense of
Speaker 1: the of labor in the calculation that's involved behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: and we find that then that that calculation is more
Speaker 1: trustworthy and they say, Okay, there's thought that's been gone
Speaker 1: into that's gone into this, even if it's even its
Speaker 1: computer thinking about it, and therefore let me myself think
Speaker 1: about this more seriously. We did another study actually with
Speaker 1: our own employees, I should say, UM, where we in
Speaker 1: many cases people don't go in and change their contribution
Speaker 1: from the default because they forget because they're doing other things,
Speaker 1: and so we UM we did a reminder that that
Speaker 1: very clearly indicated hey, here's the deadline, here's the here's
Speaker 1: the time required for it, UM. And we found that
Speaker 1: that was that was helpful to UM to get people
Speaker 1: who are in the finance industry and think about this
Speaker 1: all the time, just to spend a moment of time
Speaker 1: to think about their their retirement savings in their own company.
Speaker 1: That's such a small thing that seems to have such
Speaker 1: a huge impact. And also what the Nobel Prize and
Speaker 1: Economics basically was given to for. Are there other small
Speaker 1: things that companies are people can do to check themselves
Speaker 1: into saving better. One, obviously is is on the company side,
Speaker 1: the order enrollment, great technique, very factive, probably the single
Speaker 1: most powerful thing that America has ever done to increase savings.
Speaker 1: We can also very explicitly use mental accounts. So actually,
Speaker 1: what as you mentioned sailor um one of the things
Speaker 1: that that he worked on in that the new that
Speaker 1: the Newel Prize Committee awarded him for in the in
Speaker 1: the newbel for for Economics. So mental accounts is thinking
Speaker 1: about thinking about the money you're saving, not just as
Speaker 1: vaguely for retirement, but rather for specific purposes. This is
Speaker 1: the money I'm going to give to my children, This
Speaker 1: is the money that we're going to live off. This
Speaker 1: is the money that we're going to have that we're
Speaker 1: finally going to check off those items on the bucket list.
Speaker 1: Make it more real, make it more real, make it
Speaker 1: more vivid, give it a purpose. Those are some of
Speaker 1: the many techniques. Let me give you a specific example
Speaker 1: and see what you have to say about it. Recca
Speaker 1: and I both have four O N case from previous
Speaker 1: jobs that we just haven't gotten around to rolling over.
Speaker 1: You're helping me understand kind of why that is we're
Speaker 1: focused on the president, there's no urgency around. It feels
Speaker 1: like too much work. What could we do to kind
Speaker 1: of force ourselves to take the steps we need to
Speaker 1: do this? Obviously good savings decision first, I would say
Speaker 1: if it is a if it's a large balance and
Speaker 1: the plan from the previous employer is a good one,
Speaker 1: we don't always have to roll it over, right. In
Speaker 1: many cases, set it and forget it is a good thing.
Speaker 1: If the money being set aside means hey, you're not
Speaker 1: going to touch it and you're not going to um
Speaker 1: it's it's already past the phase where you might cash
Speaker 1: where you might cash out on a job change. Great,
Speaker 1: But let's say you do want to to roll it over,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, but you're just not quite getting there right,
Speaker 1: or we have this gap between one's intentions and one
Speaker 1: actions well as as you mentioned before, many of the
Speaker 1: techniques are are just really simple and obvious in hindsight.
Speaker 1: So one thing to do is you set a deadline.
Speaker 1: You say this is the day I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I have to do it by this day. You put
Speaker 1: it on the calendar, so you set up a reminder,
Speaker 1: You set up a deadline, and you also do what's
Speaker 1: known as and this is slightly more exotic implementation intentions.
Speaker 1: As you're thinking about it right now and you're saying, ah,
Speaker 1: I wish I would finally get around rolling over this money.
Speaker 1: Take that moment to think through the steps that are
Speaker 1: required to do it. So, Okay, I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to go to this site, I'm gonna have to go
Speaker 1: look up my password. If I don't remember my password,
Speaker 1: or if I can't find my password, I'm going to
Speaker 1: you know, I'll all the company. So it's especially the
Speaker 1: things that might get in your way, like not having
Speaker 1: the password at that moment, those are the ones you
Speaker 1: want to think through beforehand, because what it does is
Speaker 1: in the mind, it creates the script you can go
Speaker 1: off of that. Okay, tell him is hit Now it's
Speaker 1: time to do the rollover. You're just executing these steps
Speaker 1: you've already thought through, and you can't and you don't
Speaker 1: hit a roadblock that says, oh man, I don't know
Speaker 1: the password. Okay, I'll just come back and worry about
Speaker 1: this thing later. So you're mentally working through all those
Speaker 1: obstacles beforehand. I hope that's helpful. Yeah, it feels so
Speaker 1: sort of sad to me that these little roadblocks like
Speaker 1: not remembering a password are enough to keep us from
Speaker 1: making really important investment decisions. But you're absolutely right. It's
Speaker 1: things like that that just block you. Yeah, overwhelming, that's
Speaker 1: that observation is the Nobel Prize. Congrats, fantastic. So often
Speaker 1: we talk about what we can do to remind ourselves
Speaker 1: to say for the future, but then there's the phenomenon
Speaker 1: of freaking out about your savings. Now you're looking at
Speaker 1: the stock market and thinking, oh, like, what's happening to
Speaker 1: my far oh? One K? So what are ways we
Speaker 1: can better set ourselves up to make good decisions in
Speaker 1: those moments? How do people stop from well destroying the
Speaker 1: money that they've They've saved so hard, And the biggest
Speaker 1: lesson is do what you can to not look, to
Speaker 1: not check. Actually, one of one of Richard Sailor's original
Speaker 1: research in this field is on myopic loss version, which
Speaker 1: is the more often that you check your portfolios and
Speaker 1: hinted it with with traders so professionals, even the more
Speaker 1: often you check your portfolios or often you check your investments,
Speaker 1: the more it works your behavior in this case, the
Speaker 1: more it makes you loss a verse in many cases
Speaker 1: more conservative in your trading. And so stay away. Don't
Speaker 1: don't feel that temptation to look, oh, how's my retirem planning,
Speaker 1: how's my retirementlan, how's it doing? All the time, it's
Speaker 1: terrible for you. UM. And you can replace that, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's not just a matter of self control. You
Speaker 1: can replace that with this particular expectation. Okay, I'm going
Speaker 1: to look once a year. I'm gonna look whatever twice
Speaker 1: a year on this date specific and I'm going to
Speaker 1: look at the projection towards my goal, not at the
Speaker 1: price moving up and down, because that is very noisy
Speaker 1: and it's well, it's distracting. Instead, I'm going to look
Speaker 1: at how's the portfolio doing. UM. We find that certain
Speaker 1: vehicles do seem to help people stay on track. More
Speaker 1: so the target date funds that so many people are
Speaker 1: defaulted into now UM. Previous studies have shown that that
Speaker 1: folks were less likely to panic and pull out their
Speaker 1: money during the during the eighth nine UH downturn. UM.
Speaker 1: And and some of that is because people were defaulted in,
Speaker 1: and some of that is because it's this expectation of
Speaker 1: set and forget it it's a vehicle where everything is
Speaker 1: taken care of. You just don't have to worry about it,
Speaker 1: you know, just don't have to watch it. Other techniques
Speaker 1: that you can use to help yourself stay on track
Speaker 1: and not touch that money. One is to really take
Speaker 1: a value center approach that savings. That's vague. Yes we
Speaker 1: know it's important, but it's not really us it's not
Speaker 1: really vivid. Instead, right out, why retire? Why this retirement
Speaker 1: savings matters? Is it about your family? You don't want
Speaker 1: to be a burden on them? Is it because you
Speaker 1: want to give back? You want to give back to
Speaker 1: your community, You want to give back to your society.
Speaker 1: Is it um that you're finally checking off items on
Speaker 1: your bucket list? Is it? Is it um the dreams
Speaker 1: of how you want to uh get these unique experiences
Speaker 1: with your spouse, Write those out, make it vivid, make
Speaker 1: it real, And then when you're tempted, go back and
Speaker 1: look at that description and say, well, do I do
Speaker 1: I really want to give up these things? Are these? Uh?
Speaker 1: These are the things that you know I don't care
Speaker 1: about anymore? Probably not, because these are durable. These are
Speaker 1: the things that these are values and they're much more
Speaker 1: real to us than just I should really be saving
Speaker 1: for retirement. That's really helpful, um, because it's more about
Speaker 1: a frame of mind, I think, than you know, just
Speaker 1: a tip or a trick. And I want to ask
Speaker 1: you as a parting question, um, since most of us
Speaker 1: want to make the right decisions for our retirement, but
Speaker 1: obviously our minds are conspiring against us to keep us
Speaker 1: from doing that. What's like the one most important thing
Speaker 1: to remember, the thing that we should keep top of
Speaker 1: mind as we're trying to, you know, get all these
Speaker 1: little things done. So ironically, I would say the answer is, um,
Speaker 1: don't try to keep it in mind, So automate as
Speaker 1: much as possible, remove yourself from the picture. So make
Speaker 1: a wise decision up front to save in in in
Speaker 1: a in a in a thoughtful, diversified way to save
Speaker 1: and improp it rate, and then play with your kids,
Speaker 1: do your job, do other things. Most people aren't wired
Speaker 1: to think about the future, and especially their financial future
Speaker 1: all the time. We fundamentally aren't going to change human nature,
Speaker 1: look our own or otherwise. I can tell you I've
Speaker 1: tried for myself. Instead, we can change our environment. So
Speaker 1: our decision or once off decision can can pull us
Speaker 1: through this long time between now and retirement, right, we
Speaker 1: can set it and forget it. That I think is
Speaker 1: the one overriding lesson. Yeah, it's like behaviorally easy to spend,
Speaker 1: behaviorally hard to see. Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: all your help in thinking through these things. Happy to
Speaker 1: happy to be here, and thanks so much for having
Speaker 1: me on the show. H m hmm. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I feel a little bit better now
Speaker 1: about being such an dump me about investing in savings,
Speaker 1: because I feel like that's how we're wired. It's not
Speaker 1: my fault. It's just human nature. We're all like this.
Speaker 1: It's not only that he told us that people are
Speaker 1: wired to be dummies. He was like, be a dummy,
Speaker 1: like set up the alerts. Yeah, do your thing, don't
Speaker 1: think about it too much. Um. Yeah. With regards to
Speaker 1: rolling over our for Owen care, are you gonna take
Speaker 1: his recommendation, Well, apparently I don't even have to, which
Speaker 1: brings up or I don't necessarily have to, um, which
Speaker 1: is another kind of interesting thing to think about. You
Speaker 1: and I talked about this before the show. We're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're four one please, We're so dumb. That we haven't
Speaker 1: rolled them over, and we both just assumed that the
Speaker 1: that was the right thing to do, because I don't know,
Speaker 1: it feels responsible. You hear about it in your orientation
Speaker 1: materials when you start a new drab, like here's how
Speaker 1: you roll over your four O n K. But sometimes
Speaker 1: like no decision is the is a fine decision. So
Speaker 1: maybe it's not that daunting because he talks about making
Speaker 1: that list of like, you know, what are the steps
Speaker 1: that we need to get there? And for me, maybe
Speaker 1: the first step is just figuring out what for a
Speaker 1: one case I have floating out there and whether they're
Speaker 1: just find being left alone um or whether it makes
Speaker 1: more sense to roll them over. Maybe I'll just email him.
Speaker 1: I'll like find all the four O one case and
Speaker 1: I'll email them to him and let him tell me
Speaker 1: offload your problems to someone else. That's that's the thing
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to do well. That is kind of
Speaker 1: the upshot, right, like stop feeling so bad about being
Speaker 1: bad about this stuff, like don't imagine that there's a
Speaker 1: future you that's going to be better about savings and
Speaker 1: better about retirement and four own case. Just accept that
Speaker 1: we're not really cut out for this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: and then do all the little things that you have
Speaker 1: to do to trick your brain into getting better at it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not to say that you shouldn't and best I
Speaker 1: remember when we had Salid cottack on, she was very
Speaker 1: aggressive about taking advantage of your company's for a one
Speaker 1: k and people should definitely do that. But once you've
Speaker 1: opted into that, I think it's like, then do as
Speaker 1: little as you can to maximize how much you said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the obstacles to opting into things like that, the things
Speaker 1: have just I mean, he didn't call it laziness, but
Speaker 1: that is kind of part of it. It's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it feels like too much work. Even that stuff is psychological.
Speaker 1: So if we know that, we can just be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna hack this so that I do it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna set up a calendar appointment, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write a little list. I'm gonna do these things that
Speaker 1: are going to help me remember my password and get
Speaker 1: over my laziness about this. And and it's it's not
Speaker 1: my fault. I'm not so flawed. Well I am, but
Speaker 1: we all are. And now it's time for half bag
Speaker 1: takes half fake takes. You can call us with your
Speaker 1: half big take, leave us a voicemail at two and
Speaker 1: too six one seven zero one six six. This week
Speaker 1: we have a listener on what to do at the
Speaker 1: end of emails. Hi Disilini from Massachusetts. My half take
Speaker 1: take is about email closing. Some people don't use them
Speaker 1: at all. Some people use the same generic ones like thanks.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll see a fun one like cheers. But then
Speaker 1: even after your email closing, if you have a signature,
Speaker 1: do you write your name to make it personal or
Speaker 1: do you just use the name that's in your signature
Speaker 1: and send it kind of off generically. Thanks for the show, guys,
Speaker 1: Luckily for this listener. I am an expert on email
Speaker 1: sign offs or the authority on this wrote a very
Speaker 1: important piece on the sign off best saying best is
Speaker 1: the worst and best Comma Becka Greenfield. I ever read that. No,
Speaker 1: I have very strong opinions on this and it's worked
Speaker 1: so well for me, and maybe listeners of the show
Speaker 1: already know this. But I do no email sign off,
Speaker 1: just my name, first name, and you know what, it's
Speaker 1: a power move. It feels so good. Wait, so you
Speaker 1: do have a sign off, but you don't have like
Speaker 1: a salutation like you say, you don't just say my
Speaker 1: name abruptly. Right, But then I think, once you've been
Speaker 1: emailing for a little bit, you stopped doing that. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, just just your name. It's a power move.
Speaker 1: It feels great. There's no you don't need to we
Speaker 1: don't need the frills. We all know what's happening. I
Speaker 1: want to build. Yeah, I like it. You're like, I'm
Speaker 1: too important to be thinking about regards thanks a professional course?
Speaker 1: Why do I need to? What do I need to
Speaker 1: show my sincerity? Yeah? Try it out if you don't
Speaker 1: like it. I don't know best is okay, I know
Speaker 1: I said it's worst. It's bad. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: a best person. I do say best. Sometimes I say thanks,
Speaker 1: but often I'll write it, erase it, write a sentence
Speaker 1: before I write my name. That basically gets that the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm thinking them. Basically, any sign off can
Speaker 1: be changed into a final sentence. No sign off. It's
Speaker 1: a bold let me know if you have any questions
Speaker 1: is a great one. Okay, okay, Becca, what is your
Speaker 1: half big take this week? My app big take is
Speaker 1: you're using your weather app wrong. It has come to
Speaker 1: my attention that people look at their weather apps and
Speaker 1: it says high of sixty five, low forty three, and
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, I'm dressing for it to be sixty
Speaker 1: five degrees out, but it's probably gonna be sixty five
Speaker 1: degrees out at twelve or one or two when you're
Speaker 1: inside your office building and you're really only outside between
Speaker 1: the hours of eight and ten and six and ten pm,
Speaker 1: and you need to check the hour by hour of
Speaker 1: those hours, and that's the temperature for the day, which
Speaker 1: tends to be lower than the high. I'm guilty of
Speaker 1: this for sure. I think I use my weather app
Speaker 1: to help lie to myself. Like I hear like high
Speaker 1: of seventy and I'm like, great, it's t shirt weather. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be seventy degrees for like fifteen minutes at noon,
Speaker 1: and like there's there's some other number. It's the weather
Speaker 1: app's fault. Really, like they need because an hour by
Speaker 1: hour like it can't be that accurate, right, so they
Speaker 1: need to give us some other measure. That's like what
Speaker 1: is the mode? Isn't the mode the most common number
Speaker 1: and a thing? So it's like, what's the most common
Speaker 1: temperature that it's going to be. What you know, let's
Speaker 1: get rid of this high low from the day paradigm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need a whole I think we have an app idea. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is more than sorry, guys, we're quitting the podcast.
Speaker 1: We're going to become millionaires with our new weather app.
Speaker 1: All right, Francisco, what's your half pig take? I have
Speaker 1: a lot of angst about what what's the appropriate time
Speaker 1: when you're coming in late, after which you have to
Speaker 1: email people that you're coming late, and also whom do
Speaker 1: you email? So like, to me, it feels like if
Speaker 1: it's going to affect somebody, like if you're gonna miss
Speaker 1: a meeting or something or be late for a meeting,
Speaker 1: then you you know, you email the people that it's
Speaker 1: going to affect. But other people anytime they're going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit late in this office will email
Speaker 1: like their direct supervisor and five people that they work with,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I couldn't care less that you're going
Speaker 1: to be late. But then also that kind of behavior
Speaker 1: gives me anxiety when I'm running a little bit late,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, should i'd be doing that? Should I
Speaker 1: be putting the whole office on alert that like they're
Speaker 1: gonna be seeing me fifteen minutes later this morning, so
Speaker 1: they don't worry about me. What? Yeah, what is that move? Why?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a person about less accountability is best.
Speaker 1: I email as few people as possible about my goings on,
Speaker 1: update that calendar as little as possible. People a little mystery,
Speaker 1: But yeah, what is the What is the move of
Speaker 1: telling people you're going to be five minutes late? I
Speaker 1: think it's to say I'm usually not late. So this
Speaker 1: email shows how unaccustomed I am to being late and
Speaker 1: how on time I usually am. It's like, it's very performative.
Speaker 1: If you see me walking in at nine thirty today,
Speaker 1: don't assume that that's sometime becomes every Meanwhile, nobody is
Speaker 1: thinking about these things except for that one really annoying
Speaker 1: person in every office who knows when everyone gets in.
Speaker 1: I have the opposite thought, where it's like, if I'm
Speaker 1: coming in at nine and thirty today, I'm gonna assume
Speaker 1: you think that I'm just running late. I mean probably
Speaker 1: most people are thinking nothing. You're right, nobody's thinking about
Speaker 1: you ever. Yeah. No, that's a really good rule of
Speaker 1: thumb for life and this has been half big takes,
Speaker 1: half baked takes. Thanks for listening to game Plan. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter at Francesca Today and I'm
Speaker 1: at rs Greenfield. You can tweet us your half big
Speaker 1: takes are call into our hotline at two on two
Speaker 1: six months seven year one six six. If you like
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Speaker 1: Plan box and then it's yours. This show was produced
Speaker 1: by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson, Head of Podcasts is me.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week. Ye. Behavioral economy is that
Speaker 1: the field economics economics? Okay,