Working closely with people and their money for almost 35 years, I've seen and learned a great deal about human behavior. As doctors observe the physical impact of bad health habits and counselors uncover the personal and relational damage of bad life choices, caring advisors contend with...

The BrickMy wife is a genius, and I will tell you why. Whenever we go out to eat, no matter where we go, she is strictly "no phones." I don't care if we're having a conversation about movies and one of us might be tempted to IMDB an actress, or if out of habit I pull out my phone to tweet something dumb--doesn't matter. NO PHONES AT DINNER.

Are your options wide enough? Have you ever noticed when filming activities like children playing, school plays, or sporting events, how difficult it is to capture the whole story? There's so much going on outside the tight focus of the camera's lens we can't possibly capture it all. Regrettably, the phenomenon also explains a significant part of our lives and how we make decisions and plans. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Decisive, use teenagers to illustrate how narrow our frames of reference can be for most of our decisions, even the most important ones. They are called single-option decisions. For example, 'should I break up with my boyfriend or not?' is a single option decision.

If you knew there were things you could do today to improve your lifestyle both now and in the future, why would you wait? In fact, if you could see into the future to learn how much more wealth you might generate with just a few tweaks and adjustments to your current course to get you on an optimal course, would you act? After all, every day you wait has a compounding effect on your wealth improvement in the long run.