Dollars and Sense shows how to make better decisions about money. Dan Ariely and Jeff Kreisler talk about the bad habits we develop that cost us every time we spend cash or credit. My favorite part of Dollars and Sense dealt with the ways we “lose control” over spending. I fight that battle daily when AMAZON sends me recommended suggestions for books, Blu-rays, and music CDs. And AMAZON’S insideous 1-CLICK buying option just makes it so EASY to buy! If you want to solve some of your money problems in 2018, reading Dollars and Sense would be a good place to start. GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction ix
PART I WHAT IS MONEY?
1 Don’t Bet On It 3 (4)
2 Opportunity Knocks 7 (8)
3 A Value Proposition 15 (6)
PART II HOW WE ASSESS VALUE IN WAYS THAT HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH VALUE
1 We Forget That Everything Is Relative 21 (20)
5 We Compartmentalize 41 (20)
6 We Avoid Pain 61 (32)
7 We Trust Ourselves 93 (18)
8 We Overvalue What We Have . 111 (20)
9 We Worry About Fairness and Effort . 131 (18)
10 We Believe In the Magic Of Language and Rituals . 149 (18)
11 We Overvalue Expectations 167 (16)
12 We Lose Control 183 (14)
13 We Overemphasize Money 197 (16)
PART III NOW WHAT? BUILDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF FLAWED THINKING
14 Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is 213 (12)
15 Free Advice 225 (2)
16 Control Yourself 227 (10)
17 It’s Us Against Them 237 (16)
18 Stop and Think 253 (6)
Thanks 259 (2)
Notes 261 (8)
Index 269 (7)
Since we don’t have any real money problems at the moment – until Paul Ryan’s minions get their grubby hands on Social Security – I’m not really looking for solutions. But I’ll be interested to see how you solve your Amazon problem!
Hey George, USA Today is predicting 58 degrees in Buffalo tomorrow. True?
Jeff, yes! Western NY temperatures may hit 60 degrees tomorrow! But, there’s also a chance of 12 inches of snow on Saturday! Roller coaster weather!
Of course, no sooner did I write that than I went on Amazon and bought a book.
Jeff, we all have buying issues with AMAZON. It’s too easy to give into Temptation!
George, don’t buy a book until you’ve read – and disposed of – a book. Turn off One Click, cancels the A-zon e-newsletter, ignore their emails, just have them go directly to trash.
Rick, that’s sounds sensible. But, AMAZON’s algorithms can predict with high accuracy books, Blu-rays, and music CDs I’ll be interested in based on my previous purchases. It’s a diabolical system! But, it also delivers great products at a great price!
George, I’m thinking of all the money I’ll save if I borrow the book from you instead of buying it.
Jerry, exactly! I borrowed DOLLARS & SENSE from my local public Library. Except I used the money I saved by NOT buying this book to buy some other books on AMAZON! It’s a vicious circle!
I’d borrow all these books from you here – if it weren’t so extremely expensive to ship them to Europe!
Reminds me of my biggest shopping trip re science fiction books to Forbidden Planet on Broadway – mor than 25 years ago.
I found so much stuff (much of it cheap second hand, old ACE doubles etc) that I just couldn’t take all on the plane. The store had offered me a generous discount so I asked them to send the books instead via cheap mail. It must have been more than a hundred books – about 300$ without the discount.
More than a month later I got a postcard from the local Hauptzollamt (main customs office) in Tübingen that several packages had arrived for me so I went to get them – and pay the customs duty which luckily is (like the sales tax aka VAT) only 7% on books. The customs people looked closely at the books, asked whether I wanted to sell them (tax and import duty would have been much higher then) but I showed them: All different titles, I was a collector, have a look at my list of books …
So in the end there wasn’t much to pay.
And another story of another visit to NYC and Forbidden Planet:
I found a cheap offer for a weekend trip including a hotel so I went with just hand luggage, my list of books wanted and the essentials: toothbrush and underwear …
The hotel might have been the Skyline in Hell’s kitchen – with an indoor swimming pool on the 10th floor, my favourite! Nothing beats relaxing in the pool after a hard day’s shopping!
The immigration guy in the JFK airport looked at me: Only hand luggage? Yes, I said, only staying three nights and I’ll buy a trolley because I’ve come to buy books …
He probably thought I was crazy but harmless!
I’m still feeling sad that almost all the bookstores I remember closed or downsized, whether in Manhattan, San Francisco or London – it was such a marvelous experience to walk around,have a look at the new books etc …
Great story, Wolf! For our 25th Anniversary we decided the only thing we wanted to do was go to London, so we went for the weekend with only carry-on luggage. I remember that we missed the first two games of the World Series between Atlanta and Cleveland while we were away.
YAWN!