Increase Savings With A Cyclical Approach

Increase Savings With A Cyclical Approach

Having trouble saving money? Think of time as a set of cyclical experiences instead of a linear goal-oriented approach.

Piggy bank picture from Shutterstock

That shift in your mindset could end up increasing your short-term personal savings, according to findings published in the journal Psychological Science.

People who think about savings in linear terms may be overly optimistic, assuming they can always save more down the road.

A cyclical mindset, on the other hand, encourages people to think of life as a series of interconnected recurring experiences. As such, the researchers hypothesized that a cyclical mindset should make people less likely to defer saving money by boosting their ability to make concrete plans and decreasing overly optimistic thinking about the future.

The study found that participants prompted with a cyclical mindset saved roughly 82 per cent more money than those prompted with a linear mindset.

So instead of planning goals such that the future will be easier, start thinking of routines and habits that you can build now, which will repeat over time. It makes you develop more concrete plans and be less optimistic about future money-making.

How a Cyclical Concept of Time Can Boost Your Bank Account [Association for Psychological Science via Business Standard]


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