Your Financial Decisions and Willpower

The tricky thing about willpower is that for certain actions, we don't hesitate. Things just happen. For some people, it's incredibly easy to avoid the dessert tray, for others not so much. Some athletes think nothing of heading out the door every morning to get in their five miles. For the rest of us, the thought of breaking a sweat keeps us seated on the couch.
The same issues exist with our decisions around money. Whether it's saving $100 for your kid's education each month or adding money to your 401k out of every paycheck, you shouldn't make this decision every single time it's supposed to happen. At the Times this week, I covered this topic of automating certain financial decisions, and one of the commenters, while agreeing in general, insisted that willpower still needed to be a part of our efforts.
Funny enough, a new book on willpower (Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
) has started popping up everywhere. While the authors make a strong case for things you can do to improve your willpower, one aspect of their research caught my attention.
Willpower, like a muscle, can get tired if you overuse it.
We have so many decisions we'll be asked to make about money, why tempt ourselves to fail on the easy ones? If you think of willpower like a muscle, then you know from past experience how difficult it is to keep going when you're exhausted.
So on the "easy" decisions, like saving regularly for your kid's education or your retirement, embrace the option to automate. Save your willpower for the really tough decisions, because they will come.
via us2.campaign-archive2.com
Berk: It's the most important thing to do -- start now and automate your savings - direct deposit right to your broker account every month.