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Latest Posts on Taming the Pound
Author Archives: Kim Stephenson
“Know the customer”
People advising on finance are supposed to “know the customer”. They should find out your goals, what your attitude to risk is and so on. That may be tricky, since you probably don’t know what your values and goals are … Continue reading
Posted in Basic concepts
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You’ve been framed
Imagine this: You’re a contestant in a new game show. You’ve already won £1,000 and you have two options. A) You can take an additional £500 and walk away. B) You call the toss of a coin. If you call … Continue reading
Posted in Basic concepts
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Mama, we’re all guilty now.
I was asked a while ago to comment on whether changing social roles and (hopefully) greater pay equality would effect the financial relationship between men and women. Sure it will, I said, it will make everybody feel equally guilty! I … Continue reading
Posted in Couples
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Parents V. Children
We all want, “the best” for our children. So why isn’t it obvious that we’re doing things for their own good and why does it sometimes turn into a fight? What do parents actually “want” in terms of their motivation … Continue reading
Posted in Children
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Financial goals and financial capacity
There’s a theory that if we teach people about the technical side of finance, increase their “financial capacity”, that will help people. Say we apply it to archery. Imagine masses of people in a field. With them is archery equipment, so there are … Continue reading
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Chaos and the crystal ball
This article was written for a series of seminars and workshops I was doing in Sri Lanka.
It appeared in the financial magazine DailyFT.
Posted in Articles
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Personal Finance Society Conference 2010
I delivered a talk at the conference on 21st September 2010. It was for professional financial advisors. It was recorded, but unfortunately not filmed. Here’s the tape, it does still make sense but it is better with the slides. The slides … Continue reading
Posted in Advisers, Events
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Decision making
There’s lots of evidence that we aren’t rational with money. Many people writing about money and psychology think people “ought” to be more rational. Actually, it isn’t as simple as that, there are at least three problems with it [amazon-product]0713997516[/amazon-product] First, sometimes … Continue reading
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Environment
The environment humans developed in shapes the way we are. Not just our bodies (like walking on two legs instead of four) but how we think and feel as well. Some people talk about “social Darwinism”, meaning that we adapt … Continue reading
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Darwin and natural selection
The theory name always gets shortened. More completely it is, “Evolution by means of Natural Selection”. The theory also applies to brains and emotions, not just bodies. Genes try out different combinations pretty much randomly, since sexual reproduction, apart from … Continue reading
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