SHLOMO BENARTZI

Save More Tomorrow: Practical Behavioral Finance Solutions to Improve 401(k) Plans

One of the world’s top experts in behavioral finance offers innovative strategies for improving 401(k) plans.  Half of Americans do not have access to a retirement savingplanattheirworkplace.Ofthosewhodo about a third fail to join. And those who do join tend to save too little and often make unwise investment decisions.  In short, the 401(k) world is in crisis, and workers need help.

Save More Tomorrow provides that help by focusing on the behavioral challenges that led to this crisis inertia, limited self-control, loss aversion, and myopia—and transforms them into behavioral solutions. These solutions, or tools, are based on cutting edge behavioral finance research and they can dramatically improve outcomes by, for example, helping employees:

• Save, even if they aren’t ready to do so now, by using future enrollment.
• Save more by showing them images of their future selves.
• Save smarter by reshuffling the order of funds on the investment menu.

Save More Tomorrow is the first comprehensive application of behavioral finance to improve retirement outcomes. It also makes it easy for plan sponsors and their advisers to apply these behavioral tools using its innovative Behavioral Audit process.

The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior

A leading behavioral economist reveals the tools that will improve our decision making on screens

Office workers spend the majority of their waking hours staring at screens. Unfortunately, few of us are aware of the visual biases and behavioral patterns that influence our thinking when we’re on our laptops, iPads, smartphones, or smartwatches. The sheer volume of information and choices available online, combined with the ease of tapping "buy," often make for poor decision making on screens.

In The Smarter Screen, behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi reveals a tool kit of interventions for the digital age. Using engaging reader exercises and provocative case studies, Benartzi shows how digital designs can influence our decision making on screens in all sorts of surprising ways.

For example: 

• You’re more likely to add bacon to your pizza if you order online. 
• If you read this book on a screen, you’re less likely to remember its content. 
• You might buy an item just because it’s located in a screen hot spot, even if better options are available. 
• If you shop using a touch screen, you’ll probably overvalue the product you’re considering. 
• You’re more likely to remember a factoid like this one if it’s displayed in an ugly, difficult-to-read font. 

Drawing on the latest research on digital nudging, Benartzi reveals how we can create an online world that helps us think better, not worse.

Thinking Smarter: Seven Steps to Your Fulfilling Retirement...and Life 

From the acclaimed behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi, a powerful new approach to thinking smarter when making important life decisions.

Although we’ve been blessed with a very powerful thinking machine—our minds—there’s good evidence that we don’t like to think. In fact, one study shows that many people prefer receiving electric shocks to thinking and reflecting. Other studies show that even when we do think, we tend to think in too narrow and shallow a fashion. With these shortcomings, how can we be smarter when thinking about life situations like retirement? For example, once we have built up a financial nest egg, how can we become better thinkers about what to do in retirement?

To help us, behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi introduces the notion of thinking architecture and thinking tools. In this book, he offers one such thinking tool—a unique seven-step system called the Goal Planning System (GPS)—and explains the science behind it. When applied to retirement planning, this system helps readers identify what they value most, what they want to achieve in retirement, and ultimately, who they really are. By going through GPS, readers will then have a solid foundation upon which to build a tailored action plan that can help them attain their goals.

To illustrate the impact GPS can have, Thinking Smarter considers the cases of Phillip and Francesca, actual retirees, and the action plans they developed after using GPS. For example:

• Spend More Today: While many people spend too much and outlive their assets, Phillip discovered that he errs on the side of spending too little, so he will plan to spend more on something he values a lot—traveling with his wife.
• Claim More Tomorrow: GPS taught Francesca that she places a high value on financial independence. An action plan that makes sense for her is to reap the financial benefit derived from deferring Social Security until she’s seventy, rather than claiming it as soon as she becomes eligible at age sixty-two.

Thinking Smarter will become your indispensable guide to making better life decisions and achieving the future you really want.