Richard Thaler Quotes

Retirement savings is probably behavioral economists' greatest success story. It is a prototypical behavioral-economics problem because saving for retirement is cognitively hard - figuring out how much to save - and requires self-control.

The reason that I proposed health savings accounts for everybody starting at birth, is because you very quickly accumulate an amount of money that you can use for your interactions with those health care providers.

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

If you want to save, put money into superannuation, you will never find a better savings vehicle.

Voluntary personal savings accounts would enable future retirees to harness the power of the marketplace when saving for their retirements.

Automate your savings so that you have money taken directly from each paycheck and deposited into a 401(k) or other workplace retirement account. If that's not an option, automatically have money transferred out of checking into savings each time you get paid.

Use visual cues to prompt yourself to put away more. A photograph of the beach house where you and your husband can envision spending your retirement will remind you to bump up the contribution to your 401(k); a snapshot of your child in a college sweatshirt can encourage you to put more into a 529 college savings plan.

Americans living longer than ever must save more than ever.

Workers are most likely to save for retirement if they have access to a workplace savings plan and are automatically enrolled in that plan.

Get your money in balance. One rule of thumb is 50/30/20. Spend about 50% of your money on must-haves - things like rent, car payments - and about 30% on wants, while 20% should go toward savings and paying down debt.

When you get a checking account, you should have a savings account, and the number for the savings account should be one off of your checking account.

"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.

you wanted saving didn't you?

Start saving your pennies now. People spend $300 on crazy things all the time, things like handbags. So work all year, scrape the money together, and come to my show. I’m worth it.

If a woman is making $85,000 a year, putting aside 20% of her income, putting it in a bank, earning very little...Over the course of her life vs. investing, this can cost her $1.5 million, $2 million, $2.5 million. Life changing amounts.

I am 42 years old and I have $9000, and I am out of ideas. I've nothing to spend it on. I'm bored shitless. I will die with that $9000.

I always tell people, it's never too late to start saving for retirement. It's not that important how much you have already saved. What's important is that you start saving. And save as much as you can. You will be amazed at how quickly it will build up.

Only in very recent times has the average man been a source of savings.

Everyone's lost a lot of money on their 401k plans. I've heard some people calling them 201k plans. So it's even more important to get people to be saving more for retirement. Behavioral economics has helped us learn a lot about how to do that.

A company invites their employees to sign up for a plan where every time they get a raise, some part of that raise goes to increasing their contribution rate to the 401k plan. In the first company we convinced to adopt this plan, saving rates tripled.

As an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing and not unbecoming. It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win in the long run. . . . What an interest it imparts to life!.

What you should do is wait until the end of each month, and then say, "OK, how much money do I have? How much do I need? Let me send the rest to retirement."

It seems like for the last 10 years, I've just been investing in the future.

The people have an incentive to spend wisely. So the health care savings accounts are such a good thing. It's such a good idea. And it's time for it.

By definition, saving - for anything - requires us to not get things now so that we can get bigger ones later.