Preface

As we move forward through the twenty-first century, it's more and more important for investors to understand the unconscious drivers that affect the way they make decisions about money because increasingly we're being left to fend for ourselves. It wasn't so long ago that retirees could look forward to a comfortable old age supported by employee sponsored, defined benefit pension plans and a generous social security system. Those days have gone, and more often than not we're being left to make our own investing decisions using 401(k) plans and other individually managed accounts.

At the same time, a vast expansion of the financial services industry has put us in charge of many more financial decisions—no longer are we limited in how much we can borrow by a wise old bank manager, but we are left to decide how much we can repay—and we must take the consequences when these decisions go wrong. This is especially so as a huge industry has grown up to exploit our biases, in order to part us from our money. The securities industry is a gigantic machine for extracting money from ordinary investors, and does so in a way that makes it all seem perfectly reasonable.

All this is happening as lifespans are lengthening due to improvements in medical care and a better understanding of healthy living. So the decisions we make about our money will determine whether our lengthening old ages are played out in comfort or misery. Learning how, and why, we make these decisions, and how we can ...

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