Researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper entitled “Self Control and Commitment: Can Decreasing the Liquidity of a Savings Account Increase Deposits?” The study deals with self-discipline and saving money, topics I comment on quite frequently.

I’ll quote from a write-up at The Atlantic:

All participants could access a regular, highly liquid bank account (like a checking account). They were then also given access to accounts that either put penalties on withdrawals or prohibited them all together.

The result: When confronted with the choice between stashing their money in an account where they could easily access it, or putting it into an account that would restrict their ability to use their cash, participants consistently stowed about half of their money in a savings account. Even when the more restrictive account had a lower interest rate than their normal account, participants still funneled about 25 percent of their money into it…[a]nd those whose accounts didn’t allow any withdrawals at all stashed the highest share of their money in savings…

In other words, the participants chose external limitations on when they could dip into their savings accounts, and then funded the accounts generously.

This demonstrates just how much people realize the need for self-discipline in their financial lives. Knowing that they probably don’t have the inner resources to stick to a program of saving, they impose external controls on themselves in the form of withdrawal restrictions.

And then they started enjoying watching their savings accounts grow, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t take money out of savings for petty reasons. They began to feel like they are doing what they “should” be doing with their finances, and responded by saving a very large portion of their money in the no-withdrawal accounts.

The lesson here is to seek out external controls on your behavior while you wait for your intrinsic motivation to catch up.