What Can Monkeys Teach Us About Saving for Retirement?

It's hard to save money. It's really hard. It's hard for monkeys and it's hard for us humans as well. Laurie Santos, associate professor and director of Yale University's Comparative Cognition Laboratory, and her colleagues conducted some very interesting experiments involving capuchin monkeys and financial decision-making. If you buy into evolution, capuchin monkeys are believed to be closely akin to us in the evolutionary chain making them a good proxy for human behavior. Santos' research involves empowering monkeys with currency in the form of coin-like tokens (quite possibly the first-ever non-human currency). The monkeys were put through a series of experiments involving risks and rewards related to different food items. Some very simple, but important, observations came out of this research, including: Monkeys look for the best deal to maximize rewards. They want the reward now and they are more likely to spend all of their tokens (money) now rather than save them for later. They hate to lose anything. It is extremely hard for them to be patient and wait for a reward to emerge. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerry-patterson/monkeys-teach-us-retiremen...