The key to retirement planning (ZT)

来源: 色大胆小 2012-12-04 08:28:26 [] [博客] [旧帖] [给我悄悄话] 本文已被阅读: 次 (4973 bytes)

A delightful video recreates the famous " marshmallow experiment ," a study on delayed gratification originally conducted in 1972 by psychologist Walter Mischel of Stanford University (now Columbia).

See video.

As the video shows, an adult offers a young child a marshmallow and tells the child that s/he may eat it; but if s/he waits until the adult gets back, s/he will get another marshmallow. The study then analyzed how long each child resisted the temptation and later whether or not doing so was correlated with future success.

The kids' struggles to hold out for the extra marshmallow are poignant and hit home with all of us.

As in the video, Mischel observed that some children would "cover their eyes with their hands or turn around so that they can't see the tray, others start kicking the desk, or tug on their pigtails, or stroke the marshmallow as if it were a tiny stuffed animal," while others simply ate the marshmallow as soon as the adult left the room.

Of the over 600 children who took part in the experiment, only a small minority of them ate the marshmallow right away. Of those who attempted to delay, one-third deferred gratification long enough to get the second marshmallow, with older children being more likely to hold out. Since Mischel's daughters knew and grew up with many of the original test subjects, Mischel later came to suspect (and later establish ) that there was a correlation between the results of the marshmallow test and the success of the children many years later.

Despite the myriad of books and papers written about retirement planning, the bottom line is that we are all pretty much just like the kids in the marshmallow experiment. If we are able to delay gratification — save more/spend less — we will be far more successful later. But doing so consistently is really hard. Good retirement planning requires us to keep putting money aside for decades instead of spending it for (seemingly?) important or fun stuff now in order to fund an unknown, uncertain and often far-off future. Not surprisingly, we aren't very good at this hyperbolic discounting .

This isn't news of the man bites dog variety, of course. We're well aware of what we should do. Unfortunately, our behavioral biases conspire to convince us that indulging now ("just this once") is okay. Indeed, our brains are such incredible rationalization machines that we readily believe not only that "it's okay," we can even convince ourselves that we are somehow doing the right thing by saving less and spending more right now . After all, I (or my kids) really need this marshmallow or the researcher may not be coming back or we may be dead by the time s/he comes back with the second marshmallow. The possibilities are endless.

Marketers are well aware of our weaknesses, of course (see below).

They can make eating the marshmallow right now seem like the only plausible option. It is certainly the option that's the most fun.

Retirement planning deals with many complicated issues. But its essential element — the key to retirement planning — is remarkably and deceptively simple. Will we eat the marshmallow right away — or not?

 

 

所有跟帖: 

a big assumption is that -用户名被占用了- 给 用户名被占用了 发送悄悄话 用户名被占用了 的博客首页 (89 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 08:58:32

中大奖。 -jin_yin_hua- 给 jin_yin_hua 发送悄悄话 (0 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 09:01:42

so far, relative to other major currencies, yes, dollar has been -老忽叔叔- 给 老忽叔叔 发送悄悄话 (188 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 09:18:55

Istant or delayed gratification -色大胆小- 给 色大胆小 发送悄悄话 色大胆小 的博客首页 (27 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 09:33:46

举例不恰当,据文中之例,等待的回报是双份。你82要有两个老婆才行 :-) -色大胆小- 给 色大胆小 发送悄悄话 色大胆小 的博客首页 (0 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 09:47:42

这个同意,年轻时的爱缝,也许就是年老后的衣食。 -色大胆小- 给 色大胆小 发送悄悄话 色大胆小 的博客首页 (0 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 09:54:08

这个不赞同。俺知道很多在曼哈顿里有楼的家伙 -二忽悠- 给 二忽悠 发送悄悄话 二忽悠 的博客首页 (221 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 10:09:06

你问一下会计师就知道了,好像是死之前5年内的才有遗产税的 -二忽悠- 给 二忽悠 发送悄悄话 二忽悠 的博客首页 (39 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 10:19:29

actually it's a risk/reward situation -徒劳- 给 徒劳 发送悄悄话 (0 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 09:39:12

一早就看到这种刺激人的文章 -也潜水- 给 也潜水 发送悄悄话 (140 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 10:52:55

诚心跟自己过不去?你咋不提你都退休了?家后院就能当打靶场?羡慕死他们 -色大胆小- 给 色大胆小 发送悄悄话 色大胆小 的博客首页 (59 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 10:58:00

失业和退休还是有很大的距离的。 -也潜水- 给 也潜水 发送悄悄话 (53 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 11:13:00

草木皆敌?阶级斗争的意识不要那么强嘛,没有那么黑暗吧。 -色大胆小- 给 色大胆小 发送悄悄话 色大胆小 的博客首页 (0 bytes) () 12/04/2012 postreply 11:34:46

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