Optimal Finance Daily · Wednesday, July 29, 2026
The podcast's narrator, Justin Mollick, agrees with Grosz's points, emphasizing that our brains evaluate money in relative terms and by category, rather than by its absolute worth. He cites the example of saving $25 on a shirt versus a bed as evidence of this tendency.
“This is a fun one because it's not really about being bad with money. It's about the little mental tricks that fool even smart people.”
“What ties these together, I think, is that our brains judge money in relative terms and by category instead of just asking what a dollar is actually worth.”