The impause Blog

Behavioral economists have a favorite trick for catching present bias in the wild: ask someone if they'd rather have $10 today or $15 tomorrow, and most…

Table of Contents What is wedding financing? Why wedding financing feels different: key psychological drivers How environment and social cues trigger…

Investors who trade the most tend to earn measurably less than investors who trade the least, and the gap isn't about picking worse stocks, it's about…

The IRS is clear on this one: unemployment compensation is fully taxable income, and every dollar of it gets reported to the government on Form 1099-G.…

Only 36% of Americans have a written financial plan, and among those who do, three in four say it makes them feel more in control of their money. If your…

The average federal refund this year came in at $3,462, up 11% from last year, and nearly 70% of people who filed got one. You know the moment: the…

The average American made about 10 impulse purchases a month in 2025, roughly $254 worth, and most of those purchases evaporated from memory before the…

When Kahneman and Tversky measured how people weigh wins against losses, they found that losses hit roughly twice as hard as gains of the same size. That…

Nearly half of Americans say money is hurting their mental health, and most of them are not broke. They have a paycheck, a bank account, and a set of…

In the first half of 2026, 227,548 U.S. properties had a foreclosure filing, up 21 percent from the year before, and a growing slice of them are ending up…

64% of people who impulse spend say they regret it, and most of them have tried tracking their expenses at least once. You know the drill: you download…

A meta-analysis of 33 studies on just-in-time interventions found that support delivered at the exact moment of need outperformed the same support…

In one set of experiments on how people estimate compound growth, about 96% of participants underestimated how much money grows over time. You have…

The typical American home is worth roughly $370,000 in 2026, and there is a decent chance you already know your own number to the dollar, because you…

Paying bills and expenses tied for the single biggest source of anxiety in the American Psychiatric Association's 2026 mental health poll, at 62%, level…

Americans spend an average of $282 a month on impulse purchases, which adds up to roughly $3,400 a year on things nobody planned to buy. You already know…

A standard real estate appraisal runs $300 to $450 for a typical single-family home, and most 2026 quotes land somewhere between $350 and $550 once…

The average new car sold for $49,855 in July 2026, and somewhere in the last hour of one of those purchases, a person in a small office asked whether you…

Money in the United States moves fast enough that the Federal Reserve settles same-day ACH payments in three separate windows every business day, and slow…

A family of five eating every single meal at home runs between $1,151 and $1,848 a month in groceries, according to the USDA's June 2026 Cost of Food…