I've tried explaining this to most of my staff before, albeit in the form of their "Bonuses Disbursements".

Interestingly, almost of all them preferred a lump sum end of year payout instead of taking half in the midyear and another half at the end of the year. No penalties, still the same amounts, but they were afraid of spending it all at once instead of having the company "save" it for them.

Had a pretty long discussion trying to tell them that it was more advantageous to take the bird in hand, and then dump it in a HYSA to earn some interest on it, even if they were risk adverse and did not want to enter the stock market.

The lesson from all this? Clearly not everyone is "A Rational Economic Man" as we've learnt in Econs 101.