Saving for retirement can often be a daunting task, especially for those who perceive it as a distant goal with little immediate urgency to prompt action.
New research has emerged that proposes a potential remedy: making the future feel more immediate.
“People often find it challenging to save for long-term goals, partly because they struggle to connect with their future selves,” explains Katherine Christensen, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University and the lead author of the study. “We questioned whether increasing the connection to our future selves would enhance the likelihood of saving.”
Following the analysis of 20 distinct experiments designed to examine this hypothesis, Christensen confirmed that the findings support their theory.
The study revealed that when individuals consider their future, they predominantly begin the thought process with a focus on the present. Over 80% of the time, the thinking starts in the here and now.
“Our approach essentially reversed that dynamic,” Christensen notes. The strategy involves envisioning a future scenario before redirecting thoughts back to the present, highlighting the necessary savings objectives to achieve that vision.
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Though the shift in approach may seem subtle, it has proven to effectively encourage higher savings rates. In one particular experiment involving over 6,700 clients of a Swedish fintech company, participants with low account balances were found to be 14% more inclined to invest in long-term savings when prompted with future-oriented notifications.
Hal Hershfield, a professor of marketing, behavioral decision-making, and psychology at UCLA and co-author of the study, explained that the prompts were crafted using straightforward language. He describes the messaging as resonating with concepts like: “The year is 2034… rewind back to 2024 and think about saving for the 2034 you.”
While the research aims to provide banks and other institutions with insights to help customers save more effectively, Hershfield suggests that individual savers can leverage similar phrasing for personal motivation.
“The critical insight here is to begin with a future perspective and then work backwards,” he advises, contrasting it with the more traditional approach that starts in the present and moves ahead.
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The foundation of this study is grounded in previous findings regarding perceptions of time and travel. Specifically, people tend to feel that journeys to unfamiliar destinations are longer than return trips of the same duration. This phenomenon suggests that the perceived distance to the unknown is greater due to the uncertainty it entails.
This cognitive tendency, referred to as the “going home effect,” is relevant to how individuals perceive both time and space—an insight that connects to the challenge of saving for future milestones.
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According to Christensen, individuals are more likely to commit to saving for a future that appears immediate. “By anchoring people with a clear and familiar reference point in the present, we reduce the uncertainty that typically clouds future planning,” she elaborates. “Our nudge effectively steers individuals toward a greater sense of certainty.”
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Originally published in the March 10, 2025, print edition as ‘Set Savings Goals By Picturing Future.’
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