If you have loans, the first thing you want to do is say, "Okay, look I have a credit card, if I really need to borrow, I have this emergency money that I can get, but for now there is no reason for me to keep cash at zero percent interest rate and at the same time, pay all of this money out. So, I think people need to figure out quickly how to pay loans and how much cash they should really keep.
Dan ArielyWith money we really fool ourselves. We are our biggest enemies with money and there are some things we can do about it. Automatic deductions are a wonderful thing. But ideally, you should wait until the end of the month, you can see how much extra money you had, and you should put that in your savings account. We don't do that too well, and if we did that, we would never save. So, what we do, is we take money out of our pocket into the saving account at the beginning of the month, take it outside of our control and as a consequence, we spend less and we save more.
Dan ArielyWe can think about how we reduce the pain in paying. So, for example, credit cards are wonderful mechanisms to reduce the pain of paying. If you go to a restaurant and you are paying cash, you would feel much worse than if you were paying with credit card. Why? You know the price, there's no surprise, but if you're paying cash, you feel a bit more guilt.
Dan Ariely