Behavioral Economics | The Curiosity Vine

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Jeff Hulett

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Featured Posts

Seeking Less, Living More: Rethinking How We Seek Success

Are we seeking the wrong things? In a world saturated with curated lifestyles, comparison-driven ambition, and endless information, the impulse to achieve more is hardwired into us. Left unchecked, it can run amok—pushing us toward pursuits that promise fulfillment but often deliver anxiety instead. Professional wins, luxury goods, validation, and certainty may seem like worthy goals, yet they can quietly erode our well-being. Economic and financial educators appreciate an e

Personal Finance Journey

How Not to Be Fooled by Statistics

Modern life is surrounded by data and statistics. From scientific breakthroughs and medical diagnoses to policy decisions and everyday purchases on consumer marketplace platforms. Yet, for all their power, statistics prove profoundly misleading if we do not understand the fundamental assumptions which underpin them. To truly navigate this data-rich landscape, one needs a holistic approach to inference, one thoughtfully considering the full context of beliefs and the world ar

Thoughts & Inspirations

The Real Failure of Financial Education: We Don't Teach Students to Invest Their Time

The Real Input to Wealth: Time and Attention As a personal finance professor and the president of Personal Finance Reimagined, I'm constantly talking about wealth generation. It's the "output" we all strive for, but the conversation around it, particularly concerning wealth inequality, often misses the mark. It focuses too heavily on the outcome and not enough on the fundamental inputs that drive the entire system. Every four years, the Federal Reserve releases its massive st

Personal Finance Journey

The Blue Pill Trap: The Simple Step to Escape the Matrix of Endless Partisan War

Are you trapped in the RepDem Matrix? This is a place where you feel emotionally drained by political theater, experiencing intense feelings about budget shutdowns, government layoffs, or your "most hated politician." While exhausting, you feel strangely compelled to reengage the anger, even as it exhausts you. What if you are being played? The 1999 sci-fi classic The Matrix was an amazing, once-in-a-generation movie. It offered an incredibly original dystopian future sto

Voting Journey

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Seeking Less, Living More: Rethinking How We Seek Success

Personal Finance Journey

Jeff Hulett

8 hours ago15 min read

The Tyranny of the Average: Incentives, Interdependence, and the Failure of the Bell Curve

-- The "Normal" Fallacy: Why the Bell Curve is an Abnormal Distribution. The bell-shaped curve, or Normal distribution, is arguably the most recognizable image in statistics. Its mathematical ubiquity has led many to believe it is the default, or "normal," state of nature. However, when we apply this distribution to the complex, interdependent realm of human affairs—from wealth and social media engagement to market returns and social influence—the Normal distribution proves

Econ Connections

Jeff Hulett

Oct 910 min read

Racism Rewired: How Neuroscience and Economics Expose a Broken Logic

A simple image, a profound implication. First, extend your two hands in front of your face and make fists. Hold them together, thumbs...

Thoughts & Inspirations

Jeff Hulett

Oct 67 min read

When Maps Melt: The Limits of Knowledge in Decision-Making

At Personal Finance Reimagined (PFR) we often remind students and entrepreneurs of an essential point: Good decisions depend on clear thinking, yet one recurring confusion is between probability and frequency. The error arises because historical frequencies—what has happened—are often incorrectly treated as certain probabilities for the future. As the physicist E.T. Jaynes suggested, frequency is merely an observation of the past terrain, while probability is the map we use

Personal Finance Journey

Jeff Hulett

Oct 19 min read

The Laws of Life: Social Physics for Better Decisions

Why We Need Social Physics. When most people hear the word law , they think of physics or government. Newton’s laws describe motion....

Thoughts & Inspirations

Jeff Hulett

Sep 268 min read

Embrace the Power of Changing Your Mind: Think Like a Bayesian to Make Better Decisions, Part 1

Why Changing Our Minds Matters Changing your mind is not weakness; it is disciplined strength. We live in a world rewarding certainty, slogans, and quick takes. Yet the choices shaping our careers, finances, health, and relationships usually unfold under uncertainty. The risk is obvious: when we cling to yesterday’s belief in a shifting world, the accuracy of our future judgments drifts away from reality. The result is avoidable regret—missed opportunities, inefficient effort

Personal Finance Journey

Jeff Hulett

Sep 2426 min read

The Power of Practice and Specialization: Why Market Economics Expands Human Potential

As a behavioral economist, I often look at how timeless economic principles blend with human psychology to explain not only why societies...

Start-up

Jeff Hulett

Sep 511 min read

Why Self-Interest Is Not Selfish: How to Decode the Decisions That Shape Our Lives

Let us start with a fundamental truth: people don’t make decisions in a vacuum. They make dynamic trade-offs—between time and money,...

Econ Connections

Jeff Hulett

Jun 249 min read