"Precision Line" — Mariano Rivera
Live the Life you Desire

It’s amazing how fast later comes when you buy now!

~Milton Berle

Saves are often as important as runs in winning championships. Likewise, saving money can be as important as how much money you make.

Yet, research shows that when making decisions, most people opt for a small amount of immediate gratification over a larger amount of future gratification. This is because we often make decisions with the emotional rather than the rational part of the brain.

Emotions help us experience and anticipate pleasure and pain. Yet, because emotions are stronger when anticipating imminent pleasure or pain, we often give greater weight to instantaneous gratification than to delayed gratification.

So, if you want to maximize your happiness, employ your emotions in listing the costs and benefits, or pleasure and pain, of any purchase. Then take some time using your reason to make decisions objectively rather than impulsively.

Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.

~Spike Milligan

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “No money: I get really unhappy not to be able to buy clothes when I see all my friends shopping.”