Mental Accounting & Money

We don't treat all money the same. We give it different jobs and attach different rules to it, depending on where it came from or what we've set it aside for. That's the basic idea behind mental accounting.

The topics here include budgeting, how prices feel, and the pain of paying. They also cover why a bonus can feel easier to spend than regular pay, how bundling products changes the way we judge a deal, and why "free" gets our attention. The amounts matter, but so does how we think about them.