Mon. Apr. 20 - 10pm on WKAR-HD | An exploration of the psychological factors at play in spending and saving money.
Thinking Money follows host Dave Coyne from Wall Street to Main Street, and from Yale to the Santa Barbara wine country, to find out how our brains — and the marketplace — maneuver to get us to spend money we shouldn't. It's a mix of fascinating theory and practical takeaways.
Behavioral economists have found we all have a natural desire to buy things even though our long-term futures depend on saving, not spending. An unrealistic optimism about our future wealth — a bias towards overconfidence — combined with an illusion of invulnerability make us not just poor savers, but more susceptible to fraud and risky investments. In the documentary, we learn these natural biases tend to affect us most when we are dealing with complex, long-term decisions.