All behaviour is rational

Last week I went down a YouTube rabbithole of credit card optimization.

I watched loads of videos of extremely smart people showing off how they maximized their credit card reward rates. Not just smart people – rich smart people. Folks whose time is money.

Somehow, each of them determined that spending hours of their lives studying credit card strategies was a good use of their already precious time. All to save a few thousand rupees a year.

It made no sense to me.

But all irrational behaviours must be rational to the person performing them. They're rational on parameters that you (in this case, I) fail to see.

On the surface, it seemed obvious to me that these folks would be better off spending time maximising their already high income instead of wasting it trying to become credit card gurus.

But would it give them a thrill of finding a good deal? No. Can I put the price on that dopamine rush? No. Would it give them a status boost by creating YouTube content that is consumed by thousands of other thrill seeking credit card maximisers? No. Would it give them the feeling of being smarter than everyone else every time they swiped the right credit card for the right type of transaction at the right time? Definitely not.

So maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to judge.