Building Good (& Avoiding Bad) Financial Habits I Masterclass with Anastasia Buyalskaya

Why do good financial intentions so rarely turn into lasting habits? And why are some bad money behaviors so hard to break? In this interactive RESKILL masterclass, Anastasia Buyalskaya, behavioral scientist and Assistant Professor of Marketing at HEC Paris, will explore the behavioral science behind the financial habits that shape our everyday decisions, from saving and investing to spending and impulse-driven choices. Drawing on her research published in leading journals including PNAS and Management Science, as well as her HEC Executive Master in Finance (EMiF) course on cognitive biases in investment decision-making, Anastasia will explain how habits form, how to spot them, how long they really take to build, and why our brains so often default to automatic behaviors even when we know better. She will also unpack how today’s financial environment — from friction-free payments to the gamification of investing — can quietly reinforce bad habits. With a PhD in Social and Decision Neuroscience from Caltech, and more than ten years of experience applying behavioral science in the financial services sector, Anastasia brings both academic rigor and real-world perspective to this session. What you’ll learn: • Why so much of our behavior is habitual • How to identify a habit and understand how it works • How long it takes to build a new habit • Which good financial habits are worth building — and how to make them stick • Why bad financial habits are so difficult to break • Practical ways to automate good behaviors and add friction to bad ones