Here's Why "Sleeping on It" Is Golden Money Advice
Big emotions + snap decisions = financial disasters
Most self-help gurus repeat some platitude about “trusting your gut.”
I prefer to look at the evidence when making important decisions.
The affect heuristic refers to the human tendency to make crucial decisions based on emotions rather than the facts and information available.
People rely “on their gut” to make life alternating decisions with their money rather than reviewing the data in front of them—What could go wrong?
In this article, I answer that question and give simple advice to prevent your emotions from driving financial decisions that could impact the rest of your life.
When making important decisions, always ask for more time
A guilty pleasure of mine is watching the reality show Shark Tank.
My wife and I watch it together, and one tactic we noticed Mark Cuban—one of the “sharks”— consistently use when he makes an offer is to demand an immediate “yes, or no” response from the entrepreneur. He will say something like, “Say yes right now, and we have a deal, but if you talk to any of the other sharks, my deal is off the table.”
Whenever he does this, I turn to my wife and say, “That’s a sh*tty thing to do.”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant tactic on his part, but it puts the entrepreneur in a terrible situation.
A study published in the Journal of behavioral decision making found that when people are forced to make an important decision with a time constraint, they tend to throw logic out the window and rely on their emotions to make a decision.
So, if a famous billionaire makes you an offer to invest in the business that you spent years building but demands an immediate response, you’re less likely to think about whether the offer is fair and more likely to “feel” that this is an opportunity you can’t pass up.
The tactic often works, and Cuban gets the deal he wants. But I always wonder what better offer the entrepreneur might have been able to get if they were allowed to hear all the offers.
It’s not hard to imagine other scenarios where you might be forced to make an important financial decision in a limited amount of time.