Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes
by Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich
An early popular treatment of behavioral economics for personal finance: mental accounting, loss aversion, sunk costs, anchoring, herding, overconfidence, with quizzes and fixes. It predates Ariely and Thaler's popular books and remains clear and practical.
Read it if…
you want a concise, practical tour of money biases with fixes.
Skip it if…
you have read the behavioral economics canon; the material overlaps.
Three things you will actually use
- A dollar is a dollar; stop labeling them.
- Losses hurt twice as much as gains please; plan for it.
- Ignore sunk costs.
Do this first
Find one sunk cost you are honoring, a subscription, an investment, a project, and release it.
Our verdict
Concise and practical.
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