📘 Book | 2020 | Behavioural Finance Meets Everyday Decisions
“Doing well with money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave.”
Money decisions are emotional, not logical.
Like UX decisions, financial choices are based on context, experience, and emotion — not spreadsheets or perfect rationality.
Every user brings a different “life story” to the table.
What seems irrational to us may be perfectly rational to someone based on their past experiences.
People crave certainty but act on emotion.
Just like with product decisions, people use shortcuts, react to fear, and misjudge risk.
“Enough” is a moving target.
This parallels feature bloat and user behaviour in products — users often don’t need more, but we keep offering more anyway.
The biggest behavioural influence? Environment.
Housel argues that context > content — and that applies beautifully to UX design and research too.
| Money Insight | UX Research Connection |
|---|---|
| People act on emotion, not data | Focus on emotional drivers in interviews, not just functional needs |
| Context shapes behaviour | Always study users in their real context — not in your lab |
| Stories > stats | Use storytelling in findings — people act on narratives, not numbers |
| Everyone’s reality is different | Don’t assume one user type = one behavior; map variability in experience |
| “Enough” is subjective | Avoid over-designing or feature stuffing — uncover the actual job to be done |
💬 “Your users aren’t spreadsheets. They’re stories shaped by risk, fear, and hope.”
This book made me reflect on why we over-index on logic in product thinking. Like money, product decisions are deeply emotional. Users don’t always choose the “best” tool — they choose what feels safest, easiest, or most aligned with their story.
It also reinforced something I’ve been seeing in interviews for years: there’s no such thing as a rational user. There are just people navigating with their own mental shortcuts, fears, and dreams.
As a UX researcher, this book helped me deepen my empathy — not just for the “what” behind user decisions, but the “why that makes no sense until it does.”