From the early days of research on decision-making it has become clear that we choose from among descriptions of various things, not from among the things themselves.

Another effect of free is that once something initially costs us nothing, it becomes very difficult to start paying for it later. Let’s face it: When the pain of paying is zero, we often get overly excited—and we get accustomed to that price.

The main psychological force of credit cards is that they separate the time that we consume from the time we pay. And because credit cards allow us to pay for things in the future (when exactly is our payment due?), they make our financial horizons less clear and our opportunity costs more blurry, and they lessen our current pain of paying.

The reputation of a wide range of schools often shapes the expectations of everyone from parents to admissions officers, job recruiters to blind dates. This isn’t to say their reputations aren’t deserved, but their brand and reputation certainly affect people’s opinions, and expectations, of their graduates.

People often say they’d prefer being the highest-paid employee of a company rather than the lowest-paid one—even if it means making less money.

This is where expertise, knowledge, and experience matter, but these are also the exact same things we fail to value, we lose sight of, when we make value judgments based primarily on effort.

Expectations alter the value of our experiences during two different time periods: before we experience a purchase, or what we might call the anticipation period, and during the experience itself.

Money is not the only attribute that is easily used for points of comparisons.

A simple swipe of a card is easier than getting out our wallet, observing how much money we have, grabbing some bills, counting, and waiting for change. When we use cash, we actually think about, notice, touch, grab, remove, sort, and count the money we’re spending. In the process, we feel the loss. With a credit card, that loss is not as vivid and