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The antidote to sunk cost bias

Sunk cost bias causes otherwise smart people to make irrational decisions when investing resources, based on previous investments that can’t be recovered.

A simple example is choosing to go to an event because you already spent money on tickets, despite being sick and not wanting to go.  A longer term and more toxic example might be the desire to fix an awful, abusive relationship, or continuously endure a job you hate just because you have so many years “invested”.

The antidote to overcoming this bias is to ask yourself: What would my choice be if I had no previous investment, and was starting from where I am now, with what I know now?

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