Episode 98: The Reluctant Spouse, Part 4

spk_0:   0:01
Hello, everybody.

spk_1:   0:03
Good afternoon, everybody. You're good morning or good evening or whatever it is, whenever it is at wherever it is you're listening to. Welcome to the show. The big show. The largest and most incredibly well received podcast that is recorded in our car. And, yes, we're in our car today. We're heading north. We're heading towards the old home instead. After a busy day of not getting having anything. Right, Well, I'm not gonna say I was not a horrible That is a beautiful day. And we did. We didn't take care of a couple of friends of ours. Got him hooked up on a on A project. So that's good. But other than that, it's been kind of Ah, whiff of a day. Yeah. So working out, pressing right one. We're gonna use this point in time too podcast. And we got an interesting subject that we've talked about before. We talk about again because it za critically important one to a lot of people. That's something. A lot of people in the prepping community and not just in the prepping community, but in a lot of communities have to deal with. That is the reluctant spouse getting the spouse on board, and Spice has been doing some learning on some reading, and she's got, if you think she wants to talk to You about and I'm going just to provide pithy examples,

spk_0:   1:31
is your color commentator. I'm

spk_1:   1:32
the color commentator. Yes, and you're likely to hear both photography and pro football references because

spk_0:   1:39
he's good at those.

spk_1:   1:41
That's what I d'oh.

spk_0:   1:43
So the basic topic I've been reading about lately is about how humans make decisions and why, and what kinds of ways their decisions aren't really maybe in their best interest or maybe the most logical. Because when I look at the reluctant spouse issue, first thing is, I would absolutely not recommend lying to or manipulating in a negative way your spouse about what's going on because I'm certainly living with him every day of my life and potential future emergencies are potential and future emergencies, sacrificing a good relationship with the person I live every day

spk_1:   2:27
as we're going home and having dinner tonight, you know,

spk_0:   2:31
not going to sacrifice the relationship with the guy I live with, so this is not about being at all dishonest. It's not even about being manipulative or sneaky. But it is about recognizing some of the ways that people as a group tend to makes strange decisions and how to frame your arguments, too. Avoid having your spouse making unreasonable decision based on those flaws.

spk_1:   3:02
Part of having the reluctant spouse. There's so many things behind lucked in spouse, you know, there's so much. We all have various different. Everybody has a different relationship with their smiles and their spouse, you know, even give a couple where both spouses have a different relationship with each other. I mean, one person may see their relationship is one thing, and one person may be that guy who doesn't want to think about the word relationship because that's not what we do. So it's It's kind of you could be on two completely different planes and still co exist, and that's okay. Well, what happens is when you're trying to convince your spouse that you want to do whatever it is we're going to say propping. In this case, if they are not on the same plane, you may well, just not be able to line up your huh your views with their views. Eso there needs to be some give and take some understanding on that used to come on both sides. And one of the things that were talking about here is to get communication going effectively and communication Going effectively doesn't say doesn't mean I need to be more forceful in what I'm trying to say. So she finally gets it or he finally understands it. I don't need I need to talk louder. I need to shout or I need to manipulate. No, that's not what we're talking about. What you needed. What you're talking about is understanding what some of the stuff is that that's helping her to remain reluctant and dealing with that.

spk_0:   4:50
This is actually part for of a Siri's that has four parts so far.

spk_1:   4:56
Yeah, Don't

spk_0:   4:57
worry. We did some time ago and you confined the reluctant spouse. Parts 12 and three. All right, places on three B. Y

spk_1:   5:04
right, And we're gonna have the story that goes along with this podcast will put links to all that. So one or four, the four things that you came up with that you wanted to talk about that are revolve around this, um dissonance.

spk_0:   5:22
Yeah. First thing, I probably want to do here. Open this up. I want Thio. Credit This guy, Dr Scott Hotel. He did a great course for on behavioral economics

spk_1:   5:36
and we're huge fans of the great courses. We've got most of them, Frank.

spk_0:   5:40
They're adult college level learning.

spk_1:   5:43
The great courses dot com They have audio books. They have DVDs, they have streaming service. We caveat. We are not in any way associated with great courses

spk_0:   5:55
we pay for.

spk_1:   5:56
We pay for them. We're not. We're not affiliates of theirs. We could probably get them to sponsor the five. Castor keeps saying nice things about that. That's not what we're doing. That's not our deal. We're not in any way associated with them. But we are a long, long time customers, huge amounts of of business. We've got on their way and they're also on audible. Were audible fans. Another one. The sponsors podcast. Maybe I should get the response is because we're giving him free ads audible. You could go on there and get the great courses. And if you sign up for the audible, it does sound like an and it's not in and I'm not getting paid. They're two books, a month plan, which is what we've been on for, like ever. Hey, they you can get two of the great courses and these courses are often 12 18 24 or longer hours long. So you could, really you really get to

spk_0:   6:49
Dio learning in.

spk_1:   6:50
Some of them are, frankly fantastic, and they come with 100% guarantee, which I've used in the audible. You could return ones that you don't like it there, several I haven't liked, but I've just been able to return him. So it wasn't the course was bad. They just weren't me or you. They weren't what I expected. You could just return it. So there's there's my one die aggression, and it was about the source of where this comes from

spk_0:   7:14
being. The reason I brought it up is because I'm a scientist and we sat our sources. It's kind of what we do, and I make jotted these notes down. While I was listening to his audio book, I stopped at the end of the drive, not while I was driving, by the way, John the notes down and these are the four points that came up 1st 1 Waas. It's about future discounting it is, they actually did some studies where they say, Okay, you've got a medical treatment. It costs X amount of money, a substantial amount of money, and they asked people if they'd be willing to do it. People were willing to spend more money to reduce their chance of getting a nasty disease from 10% to 0%. Then they were to cut their risk of getting the same disease from 90% to 50%. So it was worth more to him to bring the risk from 10 to 0. Then it was to bring the risk from 90 to 50.

spk_1:   8:15
You nine out of 10 chances of getting this disease down a 50% chance. Think about that for a minute. And most people, I would rather do the other.

spk_0:   8:25
And, yes, those people would rather they choose to spend the money in the 10 to 0, but not in the 19 to 50.

spk_1:   8:34
That makes no sense. The

spk_0:   8:36
math does not work out at all, but it reflects a tendency of human. This one is in the future. Discounting I kind of jumped ahead of myself way tend to overvalue small percentages over 1%. A really change will feel much more significant to us. At the end of the scale. The difference between 99 100% or between zero and 1% feels much bigger to us. Dust up, then the difference between 36% and 37%. Sawdust rubble. I saw that.

spk_1:   9:13
I guess it's getting dry.

spk_0:   9:14
It's been getting dry. Yes, I've been watering, so people tend overvalue small percentages. So when you one way this can affect prepping is I've had it come up in some conversations I've had with people about it, start talking about being prepared for this or that scenario. What they want to do is come up with the 10 yeah, But if Yellowstone blows up, there's nothing we can do about that. So why bother? What they're doing is overvaluing the extremely low percentage risk and ignoring the significant reduction of risk because there's a lot of other things the prepping could defend against. But those, like, kind of in the middle of the probability scale, so they're not paying much attention to those they're over focusing on the very small percentage of events that you really can't do anything about the meteor lands on your head. Sorry, A meteor just landed on your head. You're not prepped for that. So?

spk_1:   10:17
So how does this directly correlate to the reluctance files

spk_0:   10:22
that might be part of the reluctance is they see some things there. You're gonna have to make some sacrifices to problem they could bring to mind something's where that prepping wouldn't help. And they mentally overvalue that those small individual situations and mentally undervalue a wide range of situations in which the preps would help. Because the extremes of the probability scale get our attention more.

spk_1:   10:54
I got to be honest with you all. That's one of the problems that we This is a big problem in the prepping world. This whole thing is a big problem, because so much of the time and we talk about this and in our podcast in an article, we need to move beyond Thunderdome. Yeah, this is the same thing so many of the time. Not just the reluctant spouse, but the prepper themselves can't realistically understand true risk. There's their overvaluing, the very, very, very small likelihood event because they're, like dramatic because it's so dramatic. Exactly. And you never know in Yes, as we say in that podcast. And, yes, as we say all the time, Yellowstone will erupt again. Yes, it will. On Asteroid, a killer asteroid will hit the earth again. It will happen. There will will be a pandemic that wipes out a huge amount of the population. It will happen. The question is, is that MME. Or likely to affect your life than auto accident? No. Is it more likely to affect your life than ah, too weak power outage from some type of natural disaster? No more likely to. Things that are more likely to affect your life are the things that we need to concentrate on. And they're also very good selling points to the reluctant special, for example Hey, rumor. A couple years ago, when we lost electricity from that ice storm for several days, we would have been in much better shape had we blank. Yeah, it's something they can relate to. It's something that makes sense. It is the truth, and frankly, you know, it is the right approach.

spk_0:   12:50
So the cognitive behavioral researchers who discovered this mental flaw, they were looking for ways around it. They actually found one cool. People aren't good with the percentage kind of thing, so if you put it in proportions instead of percentages, it's mathematically saying exactly the same thing. But but our brains computed differently because the numbers are smaller. So if you tell people for that, one more person out of 10 will not get this disease because of the treatment or four more people out of 10 will not get the disease because of this treatment, then they understand perfectly well which treatment is worth more money in which they should pay

spk_1:   13:38
more for. So what you're saying is, the way you communicate is key.

spk_0:   13:44
Yeah, and you put it in proportions. Instead of talking about percentages or abstract math, or when you say low risk, high risk. Some people's eyes just glaze over because they turn off that mental switch, which I hate. That says, Oh, no good move and that it gives them an excuse to shut their brain down entirely. Most excellent wine. Perhaps I've heard it a time or two well done. So that's a good way around that one. But you brought up another good one while you were on the ice storm one future discounting. Another thing people will tend to do is that if you make him two choices, you can have $100 now or you can have 100 and $10 a week from now. And both of those things are absolutely guaranteed. So they know what's gonna happen either way, barring the meteorite falling on their head, a surprisingly high percentage of them will take the 100 bucks right now, even though that is a 10% increase in value in a single week, they people value things they can get their paws on right this very instant, much more than they value things in the future.

spk_1:   15:02
They got a perfect example of this from the football world. Okay, football analogy here. This just happened in. The draft team has already chosen chosen a player in the second round draft. They don't have a second round of the draft, they don't have another second rounder or they don't have 1/3 round. It is still a player after they really, really want, so they trade for somebody else's second round draft pick and give them next year's second round draft pick. So it's a trade for trade even up, assuming that the team's finished about where they did this year, right? So what team is going to make that trade? Nobody's gonna make that trade, because why put off getting a player this year when you have to wait a lecture? So what they have to d'oh is they throw in another draft pick next year or this year? Ah, second draft pick. So you're trading two for one.

spk_0:   15:58
The second draft pick is the future discount right at People do significant future discounting, particularly when they don't know exactly when the future is gonna be. As is true in many prepping situations

spk_1:   16:11
like in this NFL draft, for example, the rule of thumb is if you trade for a second round pick this year, you have to give up 1/3 round, additional third round pick one round below where you are. You have to give up not only your picking that round, but on additional pick

spk_0:   16:33
a second and 1/3 next year to pay for a second

spk_1:   16:35
this year, exactly a second this year and 1/3. That's how it works, is a full round discount, and that's a huge hit. Now, if a team can be smart about it that could get ahead of the curve. Ah, very good way to build through the draft is to say, OK, I'm willing to trade off this year's and moved out. I'm willing to move down. I'm willing to move down and pick up future draft picks, and this is a good way to build a team if you can do it, because they value this year right now, much more than next year. Future discount.

spk_0:   17:10
So what you do about this guy is part of the reason apparently people are doing it is because their future Selves and their future situations are sort of hazy, ephemeral, vague things in their mind where their needs right now are very direct and in front of them, and they can describe them very clearly. So the more concrete you could make the future situation, the more believable to the person you're talking to. You make the future situation, the less they will discount the future, and the more they'll be willing to give up now to be prepared them. So not only can you mention hey remember that ice storm last year, wouldn't it have been nice two. Be prepared, you condone. Rephrase that in the form of Hey, if we have another ice storm like this next year and instead of being worried about the pipes freezing all night and instead of spending all night downstairs, running that propane heater and worrying about Theo to build up and maybe poisoning ourselves to death, if instead we have this ah heating system backup heating system we knew that was gonna work and we had it tested. And the power goes out and everybody's freaking out about their pipes freezing. And it's dark and it's cold. And all we gotta do is walk right in there and we flick that switch and the backup heating system comes on and we sleep nice and comfortable and cozy, very concrete.

spk_1:   18:53
And the other really good thing about what we're doing is this is a high probability event. You're gonna lose power again. Yeah, we're just going to this is Ah, hi. Problem. High probability events makes it a nisi. So

spk_0:   19:07
yeah, and it's a very honest so because this is a highly likely situation. It in fact happened too salty. And I this year wait. Our primary heating system die just before the before the snow died and we just walked over there. They're back up heating system and clicked it on, and life was good.

spk_1:   19:26
We still have replaced it. So we've got we've got the replacement here. We just haven't done it yet. Put it in. So what's up next?

spk_0:   19:35
Loss aversion. People hate losses. Stock traders know this a lot. It's like if a stock goes down, people will hold on to it rather than sell it. Because if if they sell it, they've admitted that they lost money on it. So they keep a hold of it and it keeps going down and I keep a hold of it and it keeps going down, and they end up selling it for far less money than they could have got if they'd have cut their losses and run. That is loss aversion. And when you're prepping, there is some loss involved. There's a loss of current resources and current effort in time,

spk_1:   20:10
and sometimes perhaps just need to be discarded.

spk_0:   20:13
Sometimes they do, because it's like an insurance policy you bought then never needed, thank goodness.

spk_1:   20:18
But that's exactly what it's like. An insurance policy. You buy an insurance policy and you never need it. So that's a good way to sell it.

spk_0:   20:26
Yeah, actually, that's part of one of the other prepper reluctant spouse things we talked about that and one of the other ones.

spk_1:   20:32
So does insurance. It's food insurance. There's a company out there. The calls of food injures.

spk_0:   20:37
I've actually got another tactic for a loss aversion that was recommended by the cognitive behavioral science guys. And it's to reframe the same situation in terms of what you're gaining. So they're talking about, Well, we won't have the money to do to go on this vacation. We won't be able to upgrade to the new car as soon as we wanted to. Whatever it is, they see the money. Now. They regret not being able to spend the money on today. Instead, you turned that around and you can use the It comes right in, holds hands with the last one about making it concrete. You make it clear to them exactly what all they're gaining, and you make that as explicit and obvious and up front as whatever thoughts were going through their head about what they're giving up right now. So you focus on what's being gained not on what's being lost. And that simple shift of focus. All of the facts haven't changed, can really change people's attitudes

spk_1:   21:37
and then you make it concrete. That's your fourth point.

spk_0:   21:40
Yeah, I actually, before we ever talked about making it concrete with the future discounting Thea fourth point was well of told, your photography was gonna come in here.

spk_1:   21:55
Yeah, Yeah, I

spk_0:   21:58
suppose that he wanted to spend the $800 on a Tamron lens, which was a pretty darn good lens.

spk_1:   22:08
Yes, in fact, the bits the 24 or 28 74 whatever it is two point, it's just being released from the Sony Alfa my R E amount,

spk_0:   22:17
almost a CZ. If we had been discussing what runners earlier today and further suppose I don't even know if this is true that there's a cheap knockoff of this that cost 200 bucks, which is not nearly as good

spk_1:   22:30
there is not. But there are other options that are not nearly as good to cost 200 bucks. So, for example, the 24 to 70 that is up 5.6. Yeah, it's it's the kit Linds. It's the killer

spk_0:   22:42
salt ese setting up to do this professionally. So he actually needs something better than that. And I get that it was actually not a reluctant spouse in this equation,

spk_1:   22:56
because you realize that these are tools to make money with

spk_0:   22:58
you. But if I had been, then if he wanted to get me to agree to this $800 lens, happily, the best tactic would have been for him to tell. Tell me about this $2500 Sony, Linds,

spk_1:   23:11
right? The G bastard, which is It is the dogs and cats Miao. But it's 300 bucks. Yeah, and I would. This is the lives that I would never buy simply because I don't like it that much. $2500. But I could still use it as a tool. It's kind of a cannibal new, but one thing I could still use it is to was an example,

spk_0:   23:33
and it won't be a slightly better lens for the mission than the $800.1 he's talking about getting.

spk_1:   23:40
That's true, it would be.

spk_0:   23:42
And if he told me about that lens, it would be much easier to get me to agree to the $800.1. So the mission here is if there is a more expensive option presented, people are a lot less more likely to agree to an intermediate option that if you only put the low option in the middle option on the table, they're like, Nope, that middle options too high. So speak with low, the middle and the high out there. They're like, Well, that the middle one sounds pretty reasonable. Why don't we go that way?

spk_1:   24:14
Says people do this all tall, all the time all over.

spk_0:   24:19
They know about this one, and they'll often Sometimes they don't even stock some of the ridiculously expensive high option because they know almost nobody will choose it on. They'll stick it on top of the menu, too. They call it decoy. Uh, I don't want you to intentionally mislead your spouse, but I don't think it would be a bad thing to lay options on the table that you are. You actually would think of a good idea and would like but think the spouse won't go for that one. You might well be right, but if you at least show that option it might incline somebody to be more open to the intermediate option.

spk_1:   25:05
All right.

spk_0:   25:07
Not talking about deception. Just talking about keeping our the way human brains naturally work from getting in your way When you're trying to get these ideas across to your spouse And if you can't make things make sense to your spouse well, then maybe ought to rethink of yourself, because maybe they are completely reasonable. All of us are unreasonable human beings at times, But those were just, ah, some ways to phrase your arguments that might be helpful.

spk_1:   25:42
Okay. And I'm gonna wrap this up with a pro tip. And, you know, actually, we're talking about photography and lenses and stuff like that. This is just for any winds in photography geeks that happens to be out there. No, I'm not normally a ah person who will use a discount. Third party lens. I don't really I just don't generally buy things like Cameron's. However, um, with the quality of the Newlands they've got coming out, and from what I've seen of it, I'm gonna take a good look at it. I'm gonna buy it. I've got it. I'm buying it for a place that I could return it if I don't like it. And I want to get a try because that is a huge price difference. And from what I've seen from the charts and the and the specs on and the samples, it's pretty good. So you had normally I'm a manufacturer only type guy. Justin F Y I I know you really don't. But what? You know, if we don't like it, all right. Thank you for listening. And bye bye.