Spin, a Soft Toy, and a Life Lesson: Behavioral Finance in Singapore

You’d think my interest in finance began with a fancy economics class, or a professor scribbling game theory on a whiteboard. But no. It began on a warm, glowing street in Singapore with a spinning wheel, a small soft toy, and the most irrational decision I have ever made.

It was April 2023, and I was walking through the lively lanes of Singapore at night. The streets were buzzing with lights and energy. There were market stalls, music playing somewhere in the background, and that strange yet perfect mix of bubble tea and chili crab hanging in the air. Everything about that night felt adventurous and full of possibilities.

That’s when I saw it, a spin-the-wheel challenge glowing under the streetlights. The wheel had fifty little sections, and only five of them had the big prizes. It didn’t take much math to figure out that the odds were not in my favor. But there was something about it, the thrill, the suspense, the slightly ridiculous temptation of risking my little travel allowance that made me walk up and say, “I am doing this.”

So I did. I spun the wheel with all the hope in the world, the click-click-click of it slowing down building just the right amount of tension. I didn’t win. Of course I didn’t. I didn’t even come close. But they handed me a tiny soft toy as a consolation prize, and weirdly, I felt… satisfied. I was strangely proud of this tiny, unimpressive, slightly squished bear-like thing I now owned.

Later that night, back at the hotel, I started wondering why I felt okay about what was technically a very bad decision. I had made a poor financial choice, given up my snack fund, and received something worth maybe a tenth of what I paid and yet, I wasn’t mad. I actually liked the toy. I liked the story. And that’s when I stumbled into the world of prospect theory which is a branch of behavioral economics that explains exactly this kind of human behavior.

It turns out that our brains tend to overvalue small probabilities. We get too excited about the tiniest chance of a big win and completely ignore the odds. We don’t always make decisions based on logic, we make them based on emotion, hope, and the story we want to tell ourselves. And suddenly, it made perfect sense. I wasn’t just being silly. I was being human.

A few months later, this realization came back to me in an unexpected place while working with local artisans. I had been helping them understand basic financial literacy: things like budgeting, saving, and reinvesting in their businesses. And the more I interacted with them, the more I saw how emotional money really is. Many of them were hesitant to spend even a small part of their income to expand their work. Even when logic said the return would be worth it, they clung to the little they had because the fear of losing it outweighed the potential of gaining more.

That was loss aversion in action, another concept from behavioral finance that I now saw playing out in real life. People weren’t just managing money. They were managing emotions, histories, insecurities, and a whole lot of what-ifs. Just like me, standing in front of that wheel, they were making decisions that felt right even when they didn’t make mathematical sense.

I still have that tiny soft toy. It now lives on my bookshelf next to a stack of economics and psychology books, its big round eyes always judging me a little bit. But every time I see it, I smile. Because in its squishy little presence lives a big lesson: sometimes we learn the most about ourselves when we make the least logical decisions.

And that’s the funny thing about finance, it’s never just about the money. It’s about people. It’s about feelings. And if you pay close attention, even a silly spin-the-wheel moment can become the beginning of something a lot bigger.