How The Traitors tactics can help your finances forever: Sarah Coles

If you spent a good deal of the series frustrated that the faithfuls were missing blindingly obvious clues, it’s worth knowing why. It comes down to some simple psychological traps. Getting to grips with these helps us avoid falling prey to the same things in our financial lives.

In the Traitors, people’s natural urge to trust others works against them. They see someone being friendly and confident, and decide to trust them. Even when faced with evidence of deceit, this overrides their suspicions.

Trust can dictate some poor choices in our finances too. We recently ran a piece of research that found two in five people never plan to switch their savings account - regardless of what happens to the rate. When we asked why, the most common answer (given by 44 per cent of people and 50 per cent of those over the age of 55) was that they trust their bank. It’s perfectly understandable, because most of them will be a high street giant, and moving to something that’s less familiar feels like a leap of faith, especially when you’re older and have a bigger savings balance.

However, this is trust based on familiarity rather than the fundamentals. Banks all have to jump through stringent hoops before they’re granted a banking licence in the UK. They also have the same guarantees in place, so the first £120,000 you have with any institution is guaranteed by the FSCS, so you’re covered if anything goes wrong. It means there’s no reason to trust one reputable, regulated bank with your money more than any other one. Meanwhile, you’re paying a horrible price for this reluctance to switch – because you can make four times the interest with a newer online bank or savings platform.

Social dynamics play a massive role in the game too. Faithfuls will build alliances with other players, often based on things they have in common, or how well they get on – none of which has anything to do with how likely they are to be a traitor. It means traitors who build human connections tend to be overlooked and faithfuls who are well connected can easily persuade other people to vote the same way as them.

In our finances, social dynamics can be a dangerous force, because we do things just because those around us are doing them. This can encourage us to spend more than we can afford and rack up debt on credit cards or through buy now pay later – because everyone else is doing it. Similarly, when we’re faced with decisions and we don’t have all the information to make a choice, we can fall back on what those around us have chosen. This can apply to anything from mortgages to financial apps and investments. If we haven’t done enough research to understand the choice, we can soon find that someone else’s decisons weren’t right for us.

When a Traitor understands the psychology, they can use it against the faithfuls – turning them against one another and escaping suspicion. In our finances, we also run a serious risk of being manipulated by someone who isn’t playing by the rules. Scammers stole an estimated £9.4 billion from UK consumers in 2025, and a decent chunk of this is made up of people being manipulated into handing over vital details to the scammers.

Most commonly these scams are fake investment schemes, bogus sellers or people who call claiming to be from the bank or from the police. You might not think this is something you could fall prey to, but the Global Anti-Scam Alliance research found that when those who claim to be able to recognise scams are taken in, they tend to lose the most money – at an average of £1,592.

For investors, the faithful fall foul of a few key types of bias that it’s worth paying attention to when you’re building a portfolio. One of the most prevalent in the game was confirmation bias – which is where we selectively view evidence in a way that supports the view we already have.

Faithfuls would suspect someone of being a traitor, and as a result, everything they did looked to them like proof. It could come down to something as small as who they spoke to, or what direction they looked in. Within our portfolios, this can lead people to have a strong view on a stock or fund, and only pay attention to evidence that supports that view – so they miss a fundamental risk or weakness.

There’s also the issue of recency bias. In the game, at the breakfast table, there could be a name on everyone’s lips, but by the evening, new theories meant all that was completely forgotten. It’s because they’re putting more emphasis on recent events than on those in the past.

This can equally happen to investors, particularly when they’re holding something that has performed well recently, which leads them to assume it will keep doing well – despite the fact that history shows investments rise and fall regardless of what they did yesterday.

Of course, overcoming these biases and learning the secrets from the show are easier said than done. We’re all human, which is why even the psychologist in the recent series didn’t spot all the traitors, and didn’t play the game well enough to avoid being voted out. However, knowing these things are a risk should help us think twice before human nature leads us astray.

Tax return deadline

The clock is ticking on your tax return, which is due by midnight on 31 January. If you’re yet to make a start, there are three things to do right now.

Check you have access to the Government Gateway. If you’re yet to sign up, you may miss the deadline, because you need to wait for access codes to be posted to you – but it’s worth a try. If you’ve forgotten or lost it, you can recover it, but it’s worth starting now.

Organise your paperwork. This includes details of interest on savings accounts and dividends on shares outside an ISA, pension statements, plus proof of any employment income and benefits. If you work for yourself, you’ll want bank statements, sales invoices, receipts for expenses and paying-in books. Gathering it together will reveal anything that’s missing that you may be able to sort by email or phone before the deadline.

Don’t give up if you’re putting it off because you’re worried about paying. Delaying it will just add penalties to the cost. If you act now, you may be able to set up a payment plan to pay the bill in instalments.