Friday, December 21, 2012

Face Retirement

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Merrill Edge have launched Face Retirement, a social tool that ages a picture of consumers, enabling them to see how they will look in the future.

"In a Stanford University experiment, people who saw age-enhanced images of themselves were more likely to save more for retirement, compared to those who weren't exposed to their future selves," said Alok Prasad, head of Merrill Edge. "Face Retirement is designed to minimize that gap by giving consumers a preview of their future self, encouraging them to take control of long-term financial planning."

According to a recent CNBC article, individuals who interacted with a happier version of their future self saved even more for retirement. The academic research related to this intervention was published last year in the Journal of Marketing Research.

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