了解今日课堂：

【听力文段】mp3

We all know that saving is important and is something that we should be doing. And yet, overall, we're doing less and less of it.

We know what we need to do. The question is: How do we do it? And that's what I'm here to teach you.

Your savings behavior isn't a question of how smart you are or how much willpower you have. The amount we save depends on the environmental cues around us. Let me give you an example.

We ran a study in which, in one group, we showed people their income on a monthly basis. In another group, we showed people their income on a weekly basis.

And what we found was that people who saw their income on a weekly basis were able to budget better throughout the month. Now, it's important to know that we didn't change how much money people were receiving,

we just changed the environment in which they understood their income. And environmental cues like this have an impact.

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So I'm not going to share tricks with you that you already know. I'm not going to tell you how to open up a savings account or how to start saving for your retirement. What I am going to share with you is how to bridge this gap from your intentions to save and your actions. Are you ready?

Here's number one: harness the power of pre-commitment. Fundamentally, we think about ourselves in two different ways:

our present self and our future self. In the future, we're perfect. In the future, we're going to save for retirement, we're going to lose weight, we're going to call our parents more. But we oftentimes forget that our future self is exactly the same person as our present self. We know that one of the best times to save is when you get your tax return.

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So we tried an A/B test. In the first group, we texted people in early February, hopefully before they even filed for their taxes. And we asked them, "If you get a tax refund, what percentage would you like to save?" Now this is a really hard question. They didn't know if they would receive a tax refund or how much. But we asked the question anyway. In the second group, we asked people right after they received their refund, "What percentage would you like to save?"

Now, here's what happened. In that second condition, when people just received their tax refund, they wanted to save about 17 percent of their tax refund. But in the condition when we asked people before they even filed their taxes, savings rates increased from 17 percent to 27 percent when we asked in February. Why? Because you're committing for your future self.

And of course your future self can save 27 percent. These large changes in savings behavior came from the fact that we changed the decision-making environment. We want you to be able to harness that same power. So take a moment and think about the ways in which you can sign up your future self for something that you know today will be a little bit hard. Sign up for an app that lets you make savings decisions in advance. The trick is, you have to have that binding contract.

【地道美语，长句精练】

1. It isn't a question of how smart you are.

2. We asked people right after they received their refund.

3. We want you to be able to harness that same power.

【课堂纠音，上节连读】

1. You said you'd get that email to me by eleven.

2. I really liked how you added those stories.

3. This is what I'm thinking we should do.