Keith Chen, behavioral economist and economics professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, discusses how the language we speak could be holding us back from getting rich.
Languages can either be "futureless" or "futured," he explains in his TED talk. His research has found that languages without a concept for the future — "It rains tomorrow," instead of "It will rain tomorrow" — correlate strongly with high savings rates.
If the future feels more distant from the present, that's going to make it harder to save money, he explains. On the other hand, if you speak a futureless language — where the present and future are spoken about the same way — you're going to feel the same way about them, making it easier to save in the present moment for the future.
According to Chen, this subtle difference in grammar could help explain why citizens of the US (English is a futured language) save much less than people in other countries.