‘Sinong bias mo?’ : How Your Hidden Biases Affect Your Actual Financial Behavior

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“Sinong bias mo?”

When I first heard this question, I had no idea because I’m not “BTS literate”.

BTS fan or not, our bias is an interesting and important topic to discuss. A bias is a bias for or against a thing, person, group, idea, etc., that can be considered “unfair” because of the lack of neutrality.

But the reality is that everyone has biases. You are not a person if you have no prejudices. We have bias not only in our choice of BTS member, but also in food, time of day, clothes, movies, songs, shoes, what we consider beautiful, beautiful, among our children (they say, even if the parents will never admit that he has favorites), and in everything in fact. Guess what? All of these biases also affect how we treat money. And that’s our topic today.

Have you passed your FQ test? If not, or if you took it at least six months ago, you can do so by clicking Test FQ. After taking the test, check which parts are difficult for you. You can find the answers in YT. But in addition to the answers in the Knowledge part, check the difficulties you are having in the behavior part.

Why is it too difficult to observe the three basic laws of money? Aren’t they simple enough?

  1. Pay yourself first;
  2. Only go into a business you understand and seek advice only from knowledgeable people;
  3. Make your gold work for you. Make an army of golden slaves before buying luxury.

The answer: Simple isn’t always easy. We find it difficult to observe the simple laws of money because of your prejudices.

In “FQ Book 2”, I discuss 16 behavioral biases that affect how we handle money. Check them out by answering how affected you are by them.

  1. Loss aversion – Do I feel the impact of a loss twice as much as the impact of a gain?
  2. Framing effect – Is my choice influenced by how things are presented or framed across different formulations, contexts and situations?
  3. Sunk cost error – Am I sustaining a behavior or business with previously invested resources (money, time, effort), regardless of current and future costs and benefits?
  4. Anchor effect – Am I influenced by the first impression or number I am exposed to, regardless of its relevance to the assessment or the task at hand?
  5. The price of free – Am I more attracted to the price of zero than to any other price, no matter how low? Ang sarap ng free, whatever happens?
  6. Payment effort – Do I tend to value services and products where I can see the amount of effort put into providing them?
  7. Exhaustion of the ego – Is my ability to make sound decisions a finite resource that can be depleted by decision overload, hunger, restraint, and extreme fatigue?
  8. Pain to pay – Do I feel that some purchases are more painful than others depending on the method of payment (cash, credit card, debit card, etc.), separate fees or included in the total price, prepaid or frequently paid, progressively paid vs. on-time payment?
  9. mental accounting – Do I treat money differently depending on where it comes from and where it goes, forgetting that money is fungible or interchangeable?
  10. Neglect of opportunity cost – Do I tend to ignore what I’m giving up when deciding how to spend my money?
  11. Hyperbolic discounting – Do I tend to choose a smaller reward but sooner (now) rather than a bigger reward but later? Am I biased by the present?
  12. Availability heuristic – Do I tend to rely heavily on immediate examples and other information available at the time as a basis for evaluating something?
  13. Illusion of control – Do I believe that I can control or influence the outcome of random events when in fact I cannot?
  14. Default bias – Do I tend to stick with the default/automatic option, avoiding complex or even easy decisions, consciously or unconsciously?
  15. Endowment effect – Do I tend to value something more just because I already own it or put work into it?
  16. Confirmation bias – Do I tend to seek out, interpret, prioritize and remember information in a way that confirms or supports my prior beliefs?

So tell me, which of the 16 behavioral biases are you most prone to? What is your MakEmong (ME) score in each of the biases? (Click to know your ME score) If you are honest enough, you will admit that even if you know all these prejudices perfectly well, you still fall for them from time to time.

Does this mean we are doomed to fail in managing our money? Is a high FQ impossible to achieve?

Fortunately, the answer is no. In reality, we can all have a high FQ if we honestly call out our own financial biases and do something about them. Remember that we are not only emotional Emongs, but also Makatwirang Maks. We just need to appeal to our rational side to create designs in our everyday lives so that by doing the right thing, whether it’s New Years or not, we’ll be hungry or satisfied, happy or sad, and so on, because we have already created the correct Architecture of choice (using design to make it easier for us to choose the right things) in our environment.

Knowing what you know (and admit) now, will you do anything to protect yourself from yourself?

I hope. Kudos to High FQ!

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1. Join me on Money Lessons with FQ Mom on June 30 with my special guest JR Caparas Rosales from Sabon Depot.

2. To learn more about your financial behavior, get your copy of the FQ books and for your loved ones as well. The principles you will learn here apply not just to your financial life, but to all other important aspects of your life. https://fqmom.com/bookstore/

To learn more about “FQ Book 2”, watch this short video.

3. How good are you with money? Do you want to know your FQ score? Take the FQ test and get your hands on your finances now. Scan the QR code or click on the link http://fqmom.com/dev-fqtest/app/#/questionnaire.

This article is also published in FQMom.com.

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