Jae is concerned about the trade-offs the DMP requires across her many financial responsibilities, including utilities, gas for the car, and school expenses. She went to see a specialist about her back, but the required copay was $400. She is not sure if she will be able to afford future treatment.
Jae struggles to keep her motivation up. She doesn’t feel like she has made much progress since beginning the DMP, and has no simple way of seeing how far she has come.
Particularly when dealing with many pressing needs, people have a tendency to focus more on the present than the future when making a decision, a phenomenon known as present bias. This can lead them to avoid current actions that feel unpleasant, even when they would result in future gains. It also means people often choose to settle for a smaller reward in the near term rather than wait for a larger reward in the future.
Through conversations with clients, we learned that the short-term costs of being on a DMP often loom larger on their minds than future benefits. To meet their Credit Counseling Agency (CCA) payments each month, clients may need to make sacrifices or difficult trade-offs. They must contrast these immediate sacrifices with benefits that are further away, like when they have paid off a credit card.
