Melissa Browne

But what they found as they watched is they would use distracting techniques.

They'd sing or they'd hide under the table so they didn't have to look at the marshmallow.

Or they'd face away, whereas some kids just ate it.

Or if you put two kids in the room, they would either encourage one another not to or one would encourage the other kid to eat it to make you feel better.

And so that's often both the innate way we behave around self-control and whether we have a propensity to have high self-control or if we're hopeless and need to set up a money environment that's right for us.

Or are we surrounding with people who are encouraging to eat our financial equivalent of the marshmallow?

Or are we with people that are saying, you know what, think of your future self as well as enjoying today and encouraging you to have good habits?

So that's the confluence of the nurture and the nature.

And I think in that marshmallow test, if you think of the financial equivalent of the marshmallow, you can start to think about, huh, yes, there are absolutely things and people or moments in my life where I'm encouraged to eat my financial equivalent.

And how can I minimize that?

Or how can I amplify the effects of those that do encourage me towards the goals that I want to set for myself?

Yeah.

And I guess Kate, to that point, and in the book I make this same point, you're not going to cut the people out of your life that are financially distracting to you because that's just cold.

You might minimize the effects of them by either where you go to interact with them or

putting other people in place, which you sound like you've done, that will counteract the effects of those people that perhaps encourage you to spend more readily than you might want to otherwise.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think also being able to talk about it, to have those conversations where you can say to people, you know, I'd love to come out with you, but

what are these money goals that are really important to me?

So going and window shopping Saturday mornings, probably not going to work for me, but I would love to hang out with you.

So how about we do this instead?