Thinking curtails debt
Three simple strategies to help you change your behaviour and money decisions. The first? Get your head out of the sand
The best way to pay off debt is to stop thinking about it and just do it.
But what if your brain is stuck on the “thinking” part, preventing you from acting on a repayment plan?
“The biggest hurdle is that people have to try and change their behaviour,” says Melaina Vinski, behavioural insights lead for PwC Canada.
“If you understand why, it gives you the power to be able to take charge, and change your behaviour for the betterment of yourself and your family.”
As a behavioural scientist, understanding the challenges of changing human behaviour is Vinski’s speciality. I asked her for some advice on how best to tackle our growing debt issues with behavioural economics — the study of how mental shortcuts can lead to biases and predictable patterns in life and money decisions. The Ostrich Effect: The first challenge to paying off debt is to find a way to face those bills.
“If we know we’ve spent a lot of money that month, it’s really hard to check a credit card bill in the mail. We tend not to open it,” says Vinski. “We call this
‘the ostrich effect,’ where people have a tendency to bury their head in the sand, even though that means we’ll pay even more interest. We don’t want to look and see what that number is.”
But there are two behavioural strategies that can help you overcome your bill-opening fear.
“Get automatic statements from the bank, so it’s a message that automatically comes into (your) email instead of the mail,” she says. “Another thing is putting into your calendar ‘check credit card bill’ when you know its due, and then you’ll be more likely to check it.” Increase the pain of payment with cash: Which shopping scenario makes it easier to spend: Paying cash at a physical store, or ordering online with a credit card?
Most people find it easier to charge online due to a behavioural bias called loss aver- sion, in which we’re more motivated to avoid losses than to attain gains.
Paying with plastic doesn’t feel like we’re parting with money, so a way to reduce spending could mean making a switch to cash.
“A big reason why people don’t end up saving money is because every transaction doesn’t necessarily stand out. Your money leaks out of your wallet or your bank account in a lot of ways that we don’t really remember because it almost seems redundant,” says Vinski.
“You can still use the Visa card for big purchases because they’re significant and we remember them — like buying a couch or buying a TV.” Look to the future with a commitment device: To plan ahead for a debt-free future, you need two things: a plan and a way to get over a behaviour called the present bias: the tendency to overvalue immediate rewards at the expense of long-term goals.
Choosing to spend $25 today on fun stuff over contributing that money to an RRSP or paying down a student loan is an example of how present bias can work against us when trying to increase savings or reduce debt.
There are two tricks Vinski suggests to help overcome a present bias to financially benefit your future self.
The first is “setting a default,” or making a scheduled automatic payment every month to tackle debt or build savings. The second is to use a behavioural science technique called ‘a commitment device’ — a way to lock yourself into following a plan that’s good for you tomorrow despite being hard today.
“Look back over three months of data to see where you are spending money and what isn’t essential. What can be given up? Come up with those items and put them into a ‘I will not do X, Y and Z list,’ ” she says.
“The commitment piece would be at the bottom of that page where you sign it and say, ‘Yes I will not do these above actions,’ and have somebody that can hold you accountable sign it.”
Share your commitment for debt reduction with your parents, partner or best friend to help you achieve your goal.
“Commitment devices are habit breaking so it’s good for getting people to eat healthy, to go to the gym, and it’s been shown to be one of the best ways to get people to contribute to their long term savings goal.” And if you slip up? “We live in a different environment than when our brains were built, and this is the consequence of it. There’s a reason you’re doing this, and it doesn’t make you not human — it makes you very human.”