Sunk Cost Fallacy


Have you heard of the term sunk cost fallacy before? Many people haven’t, and even if you have you may not fully understand the impact it has on your life. In this article I’m going to explain how it may be controlling major life decisions of yours in very negative ways, without you even realizing it.

What is sunk cost?

Sunk Cost Definition

The definition of a sunk cost is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered. So, why is this important? Well, most people fall victim to sunk cost fallacy, which means we often make incorrect decisions when it comes to sunk costs. We incorrectly value the sunk costs we have as more than $0, which leads us to suboptimal decision making. Even people who understand expected value(EV) can fall victim to this trap. We’re wired to believe that the time or money we already have invested into something should be factored into our current decision making. This is flawed logic.

This is a bigger problem than you realize, and it’s negatively impacting your life. Sunk cost fallacy leads to -EV decisions, which leads to suboptimal results, which leads to decreased long term happiness.

Take your average entrepreneur. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard, “but I’ve already invested X amount of dollars”, or “but I’ve already spent Y amount of hours”. Well, the previous time or money spent should be irrelevant to future decision making.

A lot of people allow their past to determine their future, and I don’t mean that as some regurgitated inspirational quote. I mean that specifically related to sunk cost fallacy and the impact not overcoming that mentality has on your results.

I know of many people who’ve invested money into a project, and incorrectly make future decisions based on feeling committed to the project, even after realizing it probably wasn’t optimal. Just because you happened to make a -EV decision in the past, doesn’t mean you should keep making -EV decisions.

It’s the sunk cost fallacy at work. We tend to compound our mistakes because of our failure to separate emotion from logic when in the moment. We compound -EV decisions, with more -EV decisions. Sunk cost bias has a crippling effect on the illogical mind.

sunk cost investment of time and money

Let me do a thought exercise with you. Let’s pretend you have three projects going on. You have $1,000 invested in one project, $5,000 invested in another, and $25,000 invested in the third. I tell you that you have to eliminate two of the projects, and only focus on one.

Which do you choose?

Well, if you’re like most people, you’d answer this question without even asking for more information. You don’t even know the EV of each project or your level of enjoyment from them. Not only would most people answer the question with no hesitation, pretty much everyone would choose the project they’d invested $25k in, even if the expected value or happiness from the other projects were higher. Sunk cost bias has enormous control over most people’s minds, influencing them to make incredibly flawed decisions.

At the risk of getting too philosophical on you, let me bring up one other reason the sunk cost fallacy often controls our decision making. A lot of times we make the irrational decision to succumb to sunk cost bias because subconsciously we may feel the need to justify our decision to irrational people. If someone can’t think logically, they won’t understand why you spent money on a project, then didn’t do anything with it. That’s illogical to them. Well, for a logical person, it’s illogical to think that’s illogical.

Most people want to conceal what could be conceived as a mistake. We may not have even made a mistake, it might have been +EV at the time, but is no longer +EV based on changes in the market or new information we didn’t have before. Or, we may have discovered better opportunities, so maybe it is still +EV, but no longer +EV relative to the new opportunities. The opportunity cost of bypassing a higher EV option is essentially choosing a -EV option, no matter what your sunk cost is. It’s a sunk cost, it is irrelevant. If you already invested $5k in a project where the EV is $50k, and you find an opportunity where all else is equal(time, happiness level, etc…), but the EV is $150k, most people would let the $5k they invested on the previous project keep them from gaining an extra $100k on a better opportunity.

sunk cost fallacy

Sunk cost bias would convince them that they can’t give up the initial project or they’d lose $5k. Most people have not trained their mind enough to overcome the sunk cost fallacy to make an additional $100k. Also, even if the monetary expected value has not changed, if your happiness EV(which I’ll write about in an upcoming post) has changed relative to where you’ve invested time or money, you should still cut your losses.

 

Sacrificing money or time because of a sunk cost bias is an amateur move, that even most professionals make.

 

Sunk Cost Fallacy Examples

There was a popular study done a long time ago that confirmed how strong of a hold sunk cost fallacy has on our minds. Hal Arkes and Catehrine Blumer did an experiment several decades ago about the psychology behind sunk cost. Their study asked subjects to assume they had purchased tickets for two ski trips. One was a trip for $100, and a second, even better trip for $50. The subjects soon realized that the two trips actually overlapped, so they could only go on one of them, and neither ticket could be refunded or resold. The majority of the people in the study chose to attend the less enjoyable trip, because it was more expensive. The loss seemed greater to them, even though there was no actual loss, it was just the sunk cost fallacy playing tricks on their mind. They couldn’t get the money back from either trip, and they still chose not to attend the trip they would enjoy most. They let their past decisions incorrectly influence their future decisions, and future happiness.

It’s pretty mind boggling that we’re wired in a way to make suboptimal decisions even when we know exactly what we want. I believe we can overcome the sunk cost fallacy with practice. Starting with small decisions, and working our way up to where it’s natural for us to think in terms of expected value, instead of being influenced by sunk cost bias.

Let me give you an example from my own life where I practiced not falling victim to sunk cost fallacy with a conference I was supposed to attend:

See, there was a conference I was supposed to go to. I had purchased the ticket a while back, but decided it wasn’t a good use of my time.

So, I threw the $500 ticket in the trash.

Why?

Well, based on a lot of my goals changing, conferences don’t serve me much at the moment. It would have been a distraction for me.

I had many friends who couldn’t believe I was going to throw away a $500 ticket.

In hearing that I wasn’t going to attend, more than once I heard something along the lines of, “I don’t really want to go either but I already spent $500.”

That’s the sunk cost fallacy at work. Not only that, if a conference no longer serves someone, they’re losing even more in opportunity cost by allowing sunk cost bias to control their decision making, not to mention that the same people spent even more money doing something they didn’t want to do by buying plane tickets and hotels. Think about that. They admittedly didn’t want to go, but since they spent $500 they don’t want to feel like they lost it, so they spend another $500-$1,000 on room and airfare!

sunk cost fallacy psychology

Me attending the conference would have been me saying, “I will let a sunk cost that no longer serves me convince me to make a -EV decision so that I won’t feel like I lost money on the ticket”. The problem is, that decision to let a past decision influence future decision making is actually costing me money. Not just money, but time and happiness, since I know it no longer serves me.

Remember I’m not losing $500, it’s a sunk cost.

I think a lot of people feel obligated to stay committed to certain things just because you have a sunk cost, even when it’s obvious that it won’t help you achieve your goals.

Let’s look at some common examples where you may be allowing the sunk cost fallacy to negatively influence your life:

Relationships:

How many of us have stayed in crappy relationships because we’ve invested so much time already? Even when it’s obvious it’s not a fit, we choose to continue because we feel like we’ve already invested so much in it. Instead of freeing our time for someone who’s a better fit, we stay involved with someone who’s obviously not because of sunk cost bias.

Not just romantic relationships, but friendships as well. How many friendships that do not serve you are you still holding on to because of the time you already invested? You’re allowing bad choices from the past to determine future choices, even though these future choices will negatively affect your happiness. Eliminating sunk cost bias from your thinking helps you eliminate bad decisions. Eliminating bad decisions helps you increase good decisions. Increasing good decisions will ultimately increase your happiness.

good sunk cost decisions

 

Investments:

Let’s say you invest in a stock, or a piece of real estate, and you realize it was a bad investment, and may not end up doing very well. If you have already lost money on the investment, you may be inclined to stay in the investment even though you already know it’s not a good one. You’ll incorrectly want to make your money back before you get out, instead of making the correct decision to just get out. In a stock, you may watch it continue to go down in value, not selling because it’s not back to the price you paid. The price you paid is irrelevant, yet that is how you are wired, to continue losing money as if the price you paid mattered. In real estate, not only will you lose money on a bad purchase, you’ll probably end up going even further into the hole, as you’ll need to continue dumping money into it to hold it. Throwing good money after bad is obviously -EV, but most people have not trained themselves to overcome sunk cost bias, so they do it anyways.

They may as well be gambling, and this mindset is relevant to the gambler’s fallacy:

Gamblers Fallacy

The gambler’s fallacy is the mistaken belief that something with a fixed probability will start happening more, or less, based on past results. For example, a coin flip is heads five times in a row. You’ll see the gambler’s fallacy at work when you hear someone say, “oh, it has to be tails this time”. The past results haven’t changed the fact that it’s still 50/50.

When I played poker for a living, I profited from the gambler’s fallacy many times. Players would have trouble walking away from the table when they were losing, even if they were at a big disadvantage. Their mindset was, “I just need a couple big hands to get back to even”, even though it was unlikely they’d make their money back since they weren’t skilled enough to be a winner in the game. Their sunk cost fallacy of being down money, combined with their gambler’s fallacy of ‘being due a good run of cards’, kept them at the table, which often resulted in much greater losses. Good for me, bad for them.

The gambler’s fallacy is also called the Monte Carlo fallacy because of what happened at the Monte Carlo Casino. In 1913, some gambler’s lost millions at the roulette table when it spun black 26 times in a row. They kept betting more and more money thinking it had to land on red the next time. While the probability of it coming up black 26 times in a row is extremely unlikely, the probability of each following spin did not improve based on past results, it stayed exactly the same. If they’d understood the gambler’s fallacy, as well as not getting caught up in the sunk cost fallacy of needing to make their money back, they would have saved millions of dollars.

Consumption:

‘I must consume, because I have purchased’ is a common way of people falling to victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Watch someone at a restaurant attempt to eat all their food even though they are already full. Even people who are on a diet often allow this bias to control their actions: “I need to finish my plate”. They even attempt to justify it with illogical statements like, “there’s people starving”, as if that’s related to their decision. Well, then how does eating it help them? A more logical question would be how to get the food you won’t finish to the starving people if that’s a real concern of yours, otherwise you’re just making illogical statements while getting fat.

Endowment Effect

Like anyone else, I’m often bad at throwing things away. I’ve got all sorts of clothes that I never wear. So, why do I still have them? For some reason I still value them, even though they’re of no value to me. The reason for this is less related to sunk cost fallacy, and more about the endowment effect, which is when people place more value on things they own, only because they own them. The reason I wanted to include this example is because it relates to the mindset entrepreneurs have about projects they’re involved in. They tend to hold on to projects they shouldn’t be involved in because of a combination of the sunk cost fallacy, or how much time or money they have invested, and the endowment effect, where they’re overvaluing the project, only because of their ownership in it.

A long time ago my mom taught me a good way to deal with my clothes, that I think will help you deal with your business decisions. She said, “if you saw this shirt in the store today, would you pay $5 for it?” I was amazed how many clothes I wanted to hang onto, that after applying the $5 rule to, I quickly got rid of. I was able to fill up many bags of clothes to donate, that would have just collected dust in my closet.

How can you apply the $5 rule to your current job or business situation? Let’s take a look:

The sunk cost fallacy of your job or business venture

This is probably one of the most vital for you to think about. A common line of thought:

“I’ve been at my job for X years already, I can’t leave now.”

It’s irrelevant that you made the bad decision of getting that job in the past, don’t continually make more bad decisions because of your sunk cost bias. Maybe it was a good decision for you at the time but you’ve since realized you want more out of life. Great, make the decisions that allow you to get more out of life. Every day that you wake up and fail to leave your job or business if it’s not the optimal situation for you, you’re likely falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy.

If you’re involved in a job that is no longer a good one, or no longer makes you happy, you need to leave it. It does not have to be more complicated than that. Don’t allow the time or money you have previously invested to influence your future time and money commitments. Always make the +EV decision.

If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s the same for you and your business venture. It does not matter what previous time or money you have into something. The sunk cost fallacy will only confuse your thinking in a way that leads you to less profits, or less happiness.

bad sunk cost decisions

So, how would I apply the $5 rule to your job or business venture?

I would ask the question that if I had never been involved in the project up to this point, would I still want to get involved? Would you pay to get involved, or is it no longer as enticing when you’ve eliminated sunk cost bias from your thought process? You’ll find that it has often lost it’s appeal.

That shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing. It’s a good thing, because sunk cost fallacy was influencing your decision of what you should be working on. With the sunk cost bias eliminated it will allow for more clarity as to what you should actually be doing.

Still having a hard time overcoming sunk cost bias with your current opportunities? Try this:

Write down every project you’re involved in. Imagine you are no longer allowed to be involved in any of these projects. Next to each project, write down exactly how much you would pay to get back in. It’s a quick way to get honest with yourself. If you’re not willing to pay good money to be involved, there’s a good chance sunk cost fallacy has a hold of you, or else you’d already have quit being involved. This should help give you clarity about which projects you should actually be working on. If there’s projects on the list that you wouldn’t be fighting to get back in, you shouldn’t be letting the sunk cost fallacy hold a cloud over you and be using you as a puppet to work on projects you shouldn’t be in.

cutstrings

Can you ever use the sunk cost fallacy to your advantage?

Yes!

Sometimes having a sunk cost bias can be good. Now that you understand that our mind is made to react in this illogical way, you can actually use it to your advantage. Let me give you an example:

If you invest in a gym membership, you’ll feel more obliged to go, when you normally might have stayed on the couch. The same sunk cost fallacy justifications you use against yourself, can be used for you as well. You’ll be likely to justify going to the gym with statements such as, “oh, I have to go to the gym today I already paid”. Even though you having paid is not relevant to whether or not you go to the gym today. You’re allowing sunk cost bias to influence your decision, which happens to be a good thing in this case.

I’ll purposely put myself in this situation. I travel often, and one of the first things I do is to get a gym pass somewhere. I know it will make me want to go, simply because my mind doesn’t want to feel like I’m losing something by not using it. Short term memberships are often more expensive, and I’ve found that the more expensive it is relative to what a normal membership would be, it actually increases the chance you’ll go. For example, last year I was in Melbourne, Australia for a few days, and I bought a three day pass to a gym for around $40. That’s a lot for three days in the gym, so even though I fully understood the sunk cost fallacy I could feel myself being more driven to go to the gym because subconsciously I felt like I was wasting $13/day if I didn’t go. So, sometimes sunk cost fallacy can be helpful, and you can use it to your advantage.

Whether that’s investing in a gym membership, a trainer, a business coach, or something else where you can take advantage of the flaws of your mind, for your own benefit.

Take advantage of the flaws of your mind, for your own benefit.

 

What to remember about the sunk cost fallacy:  

Whether it’s money or time related, you need to consider the influence sunk cost fallacy has on your mind. Consider the opportunity cost of operating with sunk cost bias driving your ship, instead of logic. Correctly evaluating your expected value, and opportunity costs will help you.

Don’t think like this: “I’ve already got $5,000 into it, I need to make my money back first before I can move on.” Well, no you don’t. If it’s a crappy business project you’ll make $5,000 back much faster by focusing on a good one.

“But I’ve already got 6 months into this idea, I have to make it work!”. The months you have into something is irrelevant to whether or not you should be spending future time on it.

sunk cost bias

Think like this instead: would I still invest in this project if I wasn’t already involved? Disregarding previous time and money invested, how does this compare to other opportunities?

A lot of people’s failure to understand expected value means they consistently make -EV decisions, that they attempt to justify with emotional rationalization, a common one being sunk cost fallacy.

The funny thing is any time you allow sunk cost fallacy to influence decisions, you’re actually going to make it harder and harder on yourself to let go in the future. Essentially, falling victim to sunk cost bias not only means you’re making a -EV decision now, but increases the chance you’ll make a -EV decision in the future because at that point you’ll be even more invested.

Is there anything you’re currently spending time, or money on, that one of the main reasons you’re doing so is because of the time or money you already have invested?

If so, I urge you to step back from what you’re doing, and evaluate the situation logically.

Is this the best use of your time, or money at the present moment?

If not, for your financial future, and happiness, it is imperative that you realize sunk cost fallacy is driving your ship, and you must take over the wheel. You will make substantially more money long term if you understand the concept of sunk cost fallacy, and more importantly how to make sure you only let it influence your decisions when it’s to your advantage. The rest of the time you need to make sure it’s not taking you off course.

This will open you up to more + EV opportunities, and less stress.

More +EV decisions + less stress = increased happiness.

 

how to achieve goals

 





36 Responses to “Sunk Cost Fallacy”


  1. Grégoire sicallac

    Thank you for this, really well put article.
    It’s good to have that kind of reminders, sunk costs can be found everywhere in our lives and it’s easy to be dragged down by them.
    Constantly have this in mind so you can stop and ponder on the Ev of your action is invaluable.

    Keep good articles like this coming!

    Reply
  2. Andrei

    Another grate post. Thank you.
    Surprisingly I tend to make a lot of decisions without basing it on sunk cost. My friends call me cold hearted sometimes because of it :D. This article has definitely given me a bit more awareness about this.
    When I first read the title I was thinking in the direction of opportunity cost by having a very large stock of a product you haven’t sold yet and it’s costing more to keep than it’s making.

    Reply
  3. Jim

    Great article Billy! I’m certainly guilty of falling victim to this. I like your suggestion on taking a step back and evaluating whether or not you would you would pay to be a part of a project if it was brand new to you today. I think it puts things into a proper perspective.

    Reply
  4. Vlad Jantuan

    You just helped me identify 3 sunk cost projects. Thanks!

    Reply
  5. Daniel

    Amazing article! Lucky me that i’ve never been a victim of this fallacy 🙂

    Reply
  6. Ilias Tsagklis

    Great post Billy. I have struggled a lot of times with this. The last one, I had already spent over $600 on FB advertising for a project. It was obvious that it would not go anywhere, so I dropped it and never looked back. But I have to say, at other times I failed to do so and only ejected when it had already been too painful. Thanks for writing this. Looking forward to your Happiness EV post!

    Reply
  7. ilya N

    Well written, but may i ask you what should i do if i don’t know the expected value of my project? Or for example this is the only project i can work on? Even if it’s a bad one it surely is better than nothing and by working on it i can improve and turn -EV into a +EV. I think you are forgetting that even losing poker players can get better with time.

    Reply
    • Billy

      If you don’t know the EV, you should work to figure it out :). Hire someone who does to help you.

      If you only have one project, that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you enjoy it and the EV is good.

      Reply
  8. Seungjin Kim

    I believe that as a starting entrepreneur, one must learn how to finish a project, from idea to realization.

    During that chaotic event of “learning and sprouting”, I don’t think reading a post like this will help.

    There will be moments, heavy moments of doubt along any project. One will be burned out probably most of the time. A lot of people will say negative things about the project.

    These will be biased to use an idea like this to quit, often right before increased output efficiency.

    Reply
    • Billy

      I see your point, but disagree with parts of it.

      Most beginning entrepreneurs do everything wrong, fail and/or quit, and then go back to or stay in their job. Well, if they learned how to do things a more optimal way when they started they’d be better off, as they’d have success, or at least enough to where they can learn the things they need to learn and succeed on the next one.

      Yes, it’s great to learn when you do startups, but most people make it much harder on themselves.

      You should not keep pursuing opportunities you hate or that aren’t a good idea, just to “not quit”. That’s a flaw that hinders many entrepreneurs.

      Reply
  9. Sam

    Spot on again Billy,

    Going to potentially sell a real estate investment that’s looking like it may have been a dud. Was putting it off before due to the cash invested!

    Reply
  10. Tom

    DEEP!

    Went through once but don’t feel I totally understand everything…

    Right, that’s it… I’m going back to read again, back in a second.

    OK, there we go, just had to refresh my memory to the post a while back that went deeper into Expected Value.

    Thanks for these posts Billy, they are a refreshing change from the 650 word, “two line max paragraph” length I spend most of my reading time with 😉

    I am off to share with my 3256 Twitter Followers
    Tom

    Reply
    • Billy

      You won’t find the 2 paragraph posts around here Tom 🙂

      That’s part of the reason I started writing- I was reading articles that were over before they’d begun, and always wondered why they never finished.

      Reply
  11. Arthur

    Hey Billy,

    Found your through Charles Ngo. Started reading your content like crazy and always open your emails (100% of them; pull my Aweber profile if you don’t believe 😉 and this post exemplifies why. Great piece!

    I’m going to pose a rather lengthy comment with healthy critics for debate purposes, but I promised I’ll not waste your time as you have not wasted mine.

    So, I agree with the clobbering majority of this text. The thing is, there’s a very thin line between persistence and cutting losses and moving on. I’ll illustrate that with a real story of mine.

    Recently, I found a 1000-piece puzzle and thought it’d be fun to put it together. I mean, I remember loving puzzles when I was a kid and now I had the mental capacity to do a thousand-piecer. Halfway through, I started thinking on giving up. It was a time sink, way more time-consuming than I anticipated and I had other projects to devote time to.

    Still, I didn’t want to quit because I had already devoted around 15 hours to it and had completed 50% of the puzzle. So it was a sunk cost in parts. But soon I realized that businesses are very similar to puzzles:

    – You have to persist on it until you complete, even if you hate it sometimes, otherwise you’re not gonna finally see the complete picture
    – Puzzles have asymmetrical returns (just like businesses); They’re insanely difficult in the beginning, but when you have most of the picture complete and not many pieces to go down the road, things flow easier

    I think it’s of the uttermost importance that you define your stop-loss order BEFORE you get involved into a project. Stop-loss order is an investment term. It means to place an order with a stock broker to sell your shares whenever a stock reaches a certain price.

    Quick example: you wanna buy stock from a company that is currently $450 a share. You have reasons to believe that it will go up $100 during the following days, so you buy a share. However, you accept the possibility you might be wrong and the stock could drop by $100 a share. But you don’t want to lose $100, so you set a stop loss order for $400. If the stock drops to $400, it automatically triggers a sale. You’ve limited your losses to $50.

    For instance, my stop-loss order is finishing the puzzle. Once I’m done, then I’ll apply your sunk cost rule:

    If after I completed the puzzle and someone offered me a brand new 1500-piece puzzle “wanna try this one now?” I’d say HELL NO.

    The reason this is important if because your mind can play tricks when you’re reevaluating whether something is +EV or -EV. For instance, let’s say you set out to commit packing 15 lbs of muscle this year. But after a month your mind start saying that you have this new +EV opportunity and it’s better use of your time to stay home (i.e., half-ass yourself).

    The same could be said about that $500 conference ticket of yours. Maybe you had a rough month and REALLY wanted to get some rest, and then you “logically” convinced that you’d be better off by not going. The moment you decided to buy, probably months prior, you probably had a fresh mind and evaluated the pros and cons and went for it. You may now half-assing it because it means work.

    (The gym analogy you gave isn’t that valid because there’s absolutely no negative outcome sticking to a gym routine; you’re not gonna feel bad avoiding heart attacks and back pain for your entire life, so you know it will be always +EV. It’s tougher on things like businesses where EV is variable.)

    Overall, I think this posts gives invaluable insight as I love the EV analogies you make. It was eye-opening learning about them. Plus, I always wanted a simples and effective system to evaluate whether it was a intelligent decision or not to devote time to project X I’m working on.

    The only reservation I have is because when you first made that decision, you (probably) had a fresh mind and mental coldness to decide what would be better to stick to as opposed to when you are in the heat of the moment (“I can’t stand this puzzle anymore!”).

    What do you think? Maybe I’m missing something or you think it would be beneficial to establish some checkpoint where you’re not allowed to abandon ship if you have not reached them?

    P.S. I’ll look my email everyday from now expecting a reply from you!

    Reply
    • Billy

      100% open rate, that’s what I like to see! Aweber couldn’t find your email but I trust ya!

      Yes, I’m not advising people to quit just to quit, just advising that there’s many times that people should, and don’t.

      For conference, you’re giving different reasons than mine were- so, yes, if someone had different reasons for not going and it still served them to go, sure, it could mean they are being lazy about not going.

      I think you’re missing the point with the gym one- yes, gym is good for you. Most people still don’t go, so included how sunk cost fallacy can work to their advantage to get them to show up.

      Reply
      • Arthur

        I was waiting for your reply, but I don’t know why the email warning that you had replied ended up in spam. I’m only reading about it now.

        By the way, are you subscribed to Charles’ newsletter? He just mentioned sunk cost fallacy and decision making in the last one.

        I always find funny to read shit I wrote some time ago because it’s weird how much things can change in that period of time and I didn’t even remember most of it.

        For instance, that puzzle is still just halfway through.

        I think the original problem I had remains: I don’t know how to evaluate whether it is a time sink or whether I’m half-assing myself and changing directions too quickly whenever I learn something is harder than I anticipated.

        Right now I have a series of autoresponders to write, which is way more important than the puzzle… but I don’t know man, it seems like I’m just half-assing something that I set out to do earlier and I think that moving on ultimately cultivates bad habits. It could be going to the gym. It could be dressing well every time I leave home. It could be eating healthy.

        It’s a small thing but I’m more worried about the negative habit-setting than the puzzle itself.

        Maybe an article diving further into this thin line would interest you?

        Arthur


  12. Ender Aydin Orak

    Hi Billy,

    Awesome article as always. I just wanted to say you better consider writing a book with a collection of your blog posts, “how to achieve your goals” being the main one. Cause the way you explain the concepts is very sound, clear and enjoyable.

    Best wishes. Thank you so much.

    Reply
  13. Jared Ackerman

    Definitely something I needed to read this month!! Thanks Billy!

    Reply
  14. Lewis Eisen

    Great article, Billy. Nicely written.

    Reply
  15. Dave

    Fantastic stuff yet again Billy. Please don’t ever get bored of writing these posts! I’m 10 years working online and have never read such consistent gold from one website in all that time. We very much appreciate you bro!

    This one has made me stop and think long and hard about a $10,000 investment I made in a program last year that never sat right with me but I’ve been ‘sticking with it’ due to the original investment. Going off to do some EV calcs on my options! 🙂

    Reply
    • Billy

      Really appreciate it Dave, comments like that are what make me want to keep writing. Thanks for taking the time.

      Reply
  16. Victor Silva

    Billy, you write such good texts. Always enlightening to read them.

    Reply
  17. Petar

    Halfway through the article I realized the only reason I wanted to read to the end was that I’d already invested time reading up to this point – classic sunk cost fallacy 🙂

    Joking obv 🙂

    Please keep writing more articles about important mindset related topics. Especially about other -EV inducing fallacies!

    Reply

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