Rip Van Winkle would be the ideal stock market investor: Rip could invest in the market before his nap and when he woke up 20 years later, he'd be happy. He would have been asleep through all the ups and downs in between. But few investors resemble Mr. Van Winkle. The more often an investor counts his money - or looks at the value of his mutual funds in the newspaper - the lower his risk tolerance.

Is there a market for somebody selling a credit card that helps people pay down their balances? I think the question is yes. But it would have to be sold by a bank that's really willing to invest in being a trusted partner with its consumers, because they will make less money on each consumer.

One simple step firms can take is make sure that people that are getting paid a lot of money, say more than a million or two, that a big chunk of that money is deferred. That's going to change the whole ballgame.

It would be much more consumer friendly for them to beep you when you swipe your card that says, uh-oh you're over your limit, are you sure you want to use that?

"Save more tomorrow" is a nudge to help people do what they know they want to do, which is save more, but they can't bring themselves to save more now. Just like many of us are planning to go on diets next month, or maybe in two months, certainly not tonight.

People exaggerate their own skills. they are optimistic about their prospects and overconfident about their guesses, including which managers to pick.

It turns out, that men, when they're taking care of their business, they're not fully attending to the task at hand, but, I'm sure there's an evolutionary explanation for this, if you give them a target, they will aim.