Mental Accounting

Mental Accounting

A concept stating that investors and people divide up their current and future assets into different categories. These categories may be roughly thought of as "safety capital," which one uses to fulfill personal needs and make low-risk investments, and "risk capital," which one uses for high-risk transactions. Mental accounting is important to understanding certain investment decisions: rather than treating each unit of money as if it were exactly the same, people generally assign it into what they need and what they do not need. This effectively turns money, which is fungible, into something that is not fungible. See also: Behavioral economics.