Wait before you spend – it’ll pay off

This is the season to experience time discounting, where the longer you wait for something you want, the less you actually want it.

Illustration by Gary Clement for The National

Tis the season to be spendy. And wanty. But don't worry. The ill effects of self-indulgence are cancelled out because … it's also the season to be waity.
And that's perhaps your biggest gift to loved ones – to help them wait for rewards.
Unless you don't mind upping their odds of becoming a criminal.
A recent research paper states this: individuals with short-time horizons have a significantly higher risk of criminal involvement later in life. The magnitude of the relationship is substantial.
In other words, if you can't wait for future rewards, you're also likely not to worry about future consequences.
You could end up stealing. From someone else, or from your future self, by opting for less money today versus more at a later point.
This is serious stuff – 13,606 13-year-olds in Sweden were surveyed every year until they turned 31. The idea was to explore the concept of time-discounting through trade-off between present and future rewards, or consequences. I'll translate: the researchers set out to discover how people's lives turn out, based on their time-discounting decisions.
Those who discounted, or ignored, future benefits for immediate reward were significantly more likely to get in trouble with the law. They were the ones who chose US$140 immediately, rather than waiting for five years and getting $1,400. These people had high time discounting.
They don't wait. They want, and they get. The cost, be it prison or just losing out on more money later, be damned.
You might think this is the same as studies like the marshmallow test, where the self control and delayed gratification of mere four-year-olds is tested by leaving them in a room with a solitary, enticing marshmallow staring back. Those who didn't devour it, and instead waited for an experimenter to return, got double. And went on to have more successful lives.
Time-discounting is different. It's about weighing up what taking something now rather than waiting for it means in terms of character traits. Traits that increase time discounting also significantly increase the chance of criminal activity – financially motivated crime to be specific. Property crime, such as theft and embezzlement, involves an element of planning, which requires self-control. Low self control, which is what the four-year-olds were tested for, tends to manifest in crimes of passion – not financial heist.
Criminal traits aside, time discounting is a fantastic tool to use on those in your life – as well as yourself – before parting with money.
A very simple, and slightly twisted way of explaining time discounting is to say that: the longer you have to wait for something, the less you want it.
You see this all the time, I'm sure. Your child, or partner, jumps up and down when they see a glittering consumery gizmo on offer. You make a mental note of who loves what, and plan on buying it for them. But, by the time they get it, they won't want it. Or at least they won't want it as much.
So, this is the season to experience time-discounting. Explore it. Don't be disappointed by your clan's dampened responses to what they were clambering for weeks earlier. Instead, be inspired. Learn from it and introduce a cooling-off period when looking at spending over a certain amount. If, after two weeks or however long you decide, you still want it as much, and have the budget to blow on it, go for it.
Having said all this, give me the choice between a dollar today or more tomorrow, I'll go for the one today thank you.
Why? Because the current economic climate means that some payments just don't, and won't, happen. Plus I'd much rather be the custodian of the purse-strings and decide what to do with my own money. Do I need to work on my time-discounting muscle? Perhaps. But I'd rather do it while I'm quids in.
Nima Abu Wardeh describes herself using three words: Person. Parent. Pupil. Each day she works out which one gets priority, sharing her journey on finding-nima.com.
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