There is a version of you that checks your portfolio after a bad day and sells. Another version that holds a losing stock for years because selling would mean admitting you were wrong. Another that spends a bonus differently than a paycheck, even though it is the same money.
None of that is random. These are patterns, and they have names.
Cognitive Biases That Cost You Money is a book about the 8 biases that do the most damage to everyday financial decisions. It is 15,000 words across 8 chapters, each built around a single bias — what the research says, how it shows up when real money is involved, and what you can actually do about it.
The 8 biases
- Anchoring — the first number you see quietly sets the ceiling for every decision after it
- Loss aversion — losing $100 feels roughly twice as bad as gaining $100 feels good, and that asymmetry shapes more of your financial life than you think
- Confirmation bias — you are not looking for the truth, you are looking for agreement, and the market is happy to provide it
- Sunk costs — the money is already gone, but your brain will not let you act like it
- Present bias — your future self keeps losing arguments to your present self
- Overconfidence — 93% of drivers think they are above average, and most investors think the same about their portfolio
- Herd behavior — you know crowds can be wrong, and you follow them anyway
- Mental accounting — a tax refund and a paycheck are the same money, but you will not treat them that way
Every chapter starts with the research, not with a conclusion. We did not decide what to say and then find studies to back it up. We read the studies first and wrote around what they actually showed — including the parts that were more complicated or less dramatic than how they usually get told.
What reading it is like
Short chapters. Plain language. No jargon, no formulas, no prerequisites. Each bias gets its own chapter so you can read straight through or jump to whatever is most relevant to you.
The goal is not to make you feel bad about past decisions. It is to help you notice these patterns while they are happening, which is the only time you can do anything about them.
Get the book
Available as an EPUB for A$4.99.
Every claim in this book is traceable to peer-reviewed research. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the book is no exception.
