The retail industry has its own headache: it loses $16 billion a year to customers who buy clothes, wear them with the tags tucked in, and return these secondhand clothes for a full refund.

Rainy day savings are incredibly important, because from time to time, bad things happen. And if you're not prepared for that, it's going to be really terrible.

In the U.S., I think there is an ideology of not telling kids what to do. Nobody to tell you who to marry, not tell you what job to pick. You're your own person. You have the freedom to choose, including the freedom to fail in magnificent ways. And I think that's the big difference. In other countries there is basically a social norm about saving that is passed from generation to generation. In the U.S. there isn't.

The idea that you will make the right decision every time is very unlikely.

When you're in pain, tomorrow doesn't exist - just the pain - and the only thing that you want in the world is for it to go away.

When parents have college savings accounts for their kids, their kids show higher social and cognitive performance.

That’s a lesson we can all learn: the more we have, the more we want. And the only cure is to break the cycle of relativity.