There are cases when I can make myself better off by restricting my future choices and commit myself to a specific course of action.

People worry that if they buy an annuity and then die before the policy starts to pay off, their heirs will lose out. I tell them, "What you should be more worried about is if you outlive your money, you will have to move in with your kids. Ask your kids which of these outcomes they are more worried about."

The lesson from behavioral economics is that people only save if it's automatic.

Why tie to gold? Why not 1982 Bordeaux?

There's a second component of a good savings plan, which is something that a colleague of mine called Schlomo Benartzi and I developed many years ago, that we call "save more tomorrow."

I don't go by the ratings. I buy wine that tastes good. Statistically, anybody's ability to predict what will be a good wine a decade from now is limited.

The reason is they failed to learned the primary lesson we should have learned from when Long Term Capital Management went belly up ten years ago. That is, investments that seem uncorrelated can be correlated simply because we're interested in it.