About a week ago I was talking to a person about money and how just talking about the future can trigger a lot in your mind to the point where you will continually make good financial decisions. The example that was used was let’s pretend you were offered two choices in getting a free gift certificate for a store. You were told that if you take the offer right now you would get $20 and if you wait about two weeks you would get $50. So the question was which one would you take?
To me I obviously said the $50 as it sounded like it made more sense in the long-run. He was then saying of course people like myself would choose that. However, he was expressing how for this test if you actively engage people in conversations about what they plan to do in say the next week or two beforehand they will more than likely choose the $50 based simply on the notion that they are thinking about something in regards to their future. For people who usually don’t surround themselves in conversations such as those apparently they are more likely to simply go for the immediate gratification route.
That’s interesting I thought. If you think about it too this doesn’t mean you have to get people to talk about money or finance specifically. Instead, it could be a simple topic such as what are they planning to do for fun next week or talking about say where they plan to visit for their next vacation. The more I think about it the more this makes sense too I suppose for myself as I am usually always thinking about the future regardless of what topic category it may be.
Not a bad concept to take away I say especially if you are trying to find ways to teach like say a child on how to save money or how sometimes waiting a little can result in getting better rewards in the future.