Ainslie draws a valuable distinction between three means by which people can avoid making choices that are attractive in the short term, but disadvantageous in the long term: suppression, resolve, and habit. I want to consider whether this distinction can be helpful in understanding the inter-temporal choices that arise in everyday economic life, and in supporting people to make more advantageous decisions in those situations.

Depending on their current financial situation, consumers in a modern economy are faced with three inter-temporal choices, all of which typically occur repetitively or even continuously. If we receive money, we have to decide whether to spend it or to save it for later expenditure. If we hold savings, we have to decide whether to maintain them for our future benefit, or to spend from them. And if we have little money, we have to decide whether to put up with some degree of deprivation of goods or services, or to go into debt. Logically, these three decisions should be mutually exclusive, but in reality most people are involved in two or even all three of them at any time: an unwillingness to run down savings may even be a cause of going into debt (Sussman & O'Brien, Reference Sussman and O'Brien2016).

Although many of the experiments underlying Ainslie's discussion of willpower have been carried out using money incentives, applications involving real everyday financial decisions are rarer: applications have more often involved addictions of various kinds. Most addictions have an economic component, in the cost of obtaining the substance or activity that is craved, and some are more directly economic, as is the case for compulsive buying. But everyday financial behaviours are different: they affect almost everyone, and they tend to lack the visceral intensity of addictions. One well known application of inter-temporal choice theory to ordinary financial behaviour is the use of a commitment response to enhance saving, in the “save more tomorrow” strategy of Thaler and Benartzi (Reference Thaler and Benartzi2004). But this is an exceptional case. Can more be done, and in particular, can the analysis in the target article leads to more ways of helping consumers make better decisions?

Although “willpower” is a valuable concept analytically, it can have unhelpful moralistic overtones. For most people with serious debts, it is not lack of willpower, but lack of money, that has caused their situation, and reduction of the social problems caused by debt can only come about through economic and social policies designed to alleviate poverty (Lea, Reference Lea2021). The same is true of the widespread failure of young employees to make adequate pension provision, which is better explained by the low wages and insecure employment that characterize the “gig economy” than by fecklessness. It is critical that we do not seek to explain away social problems, resulting from political choices, by pathologizing individuals (Walker, Burton, Akhurst, & Degirmencioglu, Reference Walker, Burton, Akhurst and Degirmencioglu2015). Nor should we mistake the shortened time horizons that are an inevitable and rational consequence of poverty (Shah, Mullainathan, & Shafir, Reference Shah, Mullainathan and Shafir2012) for a lack of willpower. Nonetheless, the processes that are thought of as strengthening willpower can all be considered as means towards better inter-temporal choices.

Suppression through avoiding arousing appetite and diverting attention can play a part in avoiding spending that is not in our better long-term interests. Regulating the display of “tempting” products such as tobacco and confectionary in shop displays is a common strategy to reduce their consumption (Ejlerskov et al., Reference Ejlerskov, Sharp, Stead, Adamson, White and Adams2018; Paynter & Edwards, Reference Paynter and Edwards2009), although that is more in the interests of public health than of helping people manage their budgets. On both traditional media and the internet, consumers frequently choose to block advertisements (Speck & Elliott, Reference Speck and Elliott1997; Tudoran, Reference Tudoran2019), although again that tends not to be in the interest of budgeting, but related to general attitudes and beliefs about advertising and its role in society.

What about resolve? Finances often feature in New Year resolutions: in one study, a third of such resolutions concerned saving or repayment of debt, in a roughly 2:1 ratio (Woolley & Fishbach, Reference Woolley and Fishbach2017). Planning is a key component of successful money management in difficult conditions (French & McKillop, Reference French and McKillop2016). Also, the behaviours and mental processes that Ainslie describes as “resolve” are very similar to those that have been considered under the heading of attitudes to debt. Adolescents with no experience of debt tend to be highly hostile to it – but if, as is commonly the fate of students nowadays, they are forced to take out loans, their intolerance of debt is much reduced, and this effect takes a long time to wear off (George, Hansen, & Routzahn, Reference George, Hansen and Routzahn2018; Lea, Webley, & Bellamy, Reference Lea, Webley, Bellamy, Scott, Lewis and Lea2001). This is closely akin to the process Ainslie describes in which a lapse from a personal rule can undermine future adherence to it.

Habit is the area where we have most evidence for a role of willpower-related processes in everyday financial behaviour. It has long been known that much of both spending and saving is habitual (Katona, Reference Katona1975). Bank marketing, and consumer advice agencies, routinely urge consumers to “get into the savings habit,” and propose tips and tricks that will enable us to do it. Academic research on the acquisition of savings habit is thin on the ground, however. In one study, indeed, saving money proved to be one of the hardest of good habits to acquire (Van der Weiden, Benjamins, Gillebaart, Ybema, & de Ridder, Reference Van der Weiden, Benjamins, Gillebaart, Ybema and de Ridder2020). But, once acquired, savings habits certainly make a difference; for example, acquiring even a small savings account early in one's independent financial life predicts higher savings and lower debts years later (Friedline & Song, Reference Friedline and Song2013).

Ainslie's earliest study on hyperbolic discounting in inter-temporal choice (Ainslie, Reference Ainslie1974, Reference Ainslie1975), has played a key role in establishing the need for a psychological and behavioural approach to economic behaviour. It has been less influential in the study of everyday finances. The brief review I have given here suggests that the analysis in the present target article could be of significant value in this applied field.