One reason why people – especially people in their twenties and thirties – don’t save for retirement is because our future selves are so distant. But if what you can come face to face with your Future Self? What if, you will be able to see your own face, digitally aged to 68 or 70, with wrinkles, creases, and white hair? Well, you just might be encouraged to stash more cash for retirement, so says the Wall Street Journal article on behavioral economics.

Why is it so difficult for people to set aside money for the long-term future? Low earnings and high temptations are obvious reasons. But perhaps the most basic cause is a fundamental human frailty: We view our future selves as strangers.

Estimating with any precision what you will want 30 or 40 years from now is almost impossible. You don’t know your future desires, because you don’t know your future self. What will you want or need when you are 65 or 70 or 80 or older? Who knows?

Viewed this way, it isn’t surprising that the young typically don’t want to save for their retirement, since that stage of life feels as if it will be lived by someone else. And when you save money today on behalf of your remote future self, you deprive your immediate present self of cash you could use right now.

Of course, if you spend tomorrow’s savings today, you won’t have cash when you need it in the future—but that day of reckoning is decades off. That is true for those of all ages, but the lost opportunity is greatest for young people, because money set aside at an early age has more years to grow.

Yet it is highly unusual for people to think more vividly about their future selves than about their present selves, say psychologists.

Imagine yourself as “grandma” or “grandpa”

One way I reach a connection with my Future Self is to imagine the 70-year-old me as a close loved one, a grandparent or a doted aunt, perhaps. Her welfare and comfort rests on my shoulders. Grandma’s source of income comes from Social Security and whatever I have put aside for her. Grandma can’t work, because she is old. Her health might not be up to snuff. Employers might be more reluctant to hire older workers. If I put nothing away now, grandma gets nothing extra in her retirement.

She will have to subsist on ramen and rely on library books for entertainment when she might have loved to eat sushi and visit Latin America. Even worse, what if grandma gets sick? If I don’t have funds for her, she will only have first-generation drugs with heavy side effects. She will not be able to pay for a in-home aid or a private room at the hospital. Do I want grandma to be in such sad straits? Of course not!

Grandma’s friends might plan a big trip cruise to the Mediterranean but she can’t go because she doesn’t have the money. On the cold days, she might not have enough money for heat. Or she will have to choose between heat and food, or food and medicine. Or she lies awake at night worrying about her future. How will she live? Will her house be foreclosed on?

That doesn’t sound like a fun retirement for grandma, does it?

Now we don’t not know what we will be like, exactly, when we are old. But looking at my grandparents, I know what matters: a nest egg that will provide for them in their old age and prevent them from being financial burdens to their children, family who loves and takes care of them, trips and lunches with friends, and a dignified death when the time comes.

ALL of the above is made easier with sound financial resources.

I think it’s a great idea that scientists are figuring out ways for people to save. But I don’t understand how people don’t think they will be old. Everyone grows old – or dies young. But I don’t need a sophisticated facial progression software to encourage me to save. I just imagine the plight of sad, old, grandma, who is confined to a life of bare subsistence because I didn’t make her a priority.

Does the “grandma” (or “grandpa”) trick work for you? Would you be more likely to save if you saw a digitally aged photo of yourself?