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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Masters in

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Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 2: On the latest Masters in Business podcast. My conversation with

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Speaker 2: Morgan Housel. I've known Morgan for I don't know fifteen years,

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Speaker 2: and I've loved all of his writing and his books.

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Speaker 2: The Psychology of Money is one of the best best

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Speaker 2: sellers in all of personal finance, coming up on ten

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Speaker 2: million copies sold. Amazing same as ever Timeless Stories about

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Speaker 2: Human Nature. The new book The Art of Spending Money,

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Speaker 2: Simple Choices for a Richer Life, drops today. I thought

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Speaker 2: this conversation is one of our best. Morgan is a

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Speaker 2: deeply thoughtful person. Everything he says comes from both experience

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Speaker 2: and academics. I love the way he puts stories together

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Speaker 2: with lessons. I thought the conversation was fascinating, and I

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Speaker 2: think you will also with no further ado, My conversation

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Speaker 2: with author Morgan Housel. Let's for people who may not

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Speaker 2: be familiar with you in your career, Let's give them

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Speaker 2: a little bit of background. You go to University of

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Speaker 2: Southern California, where you get a BA in economics. What

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Speaker 2: was the career plan?

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Speaker 3: The plan all along was to be an investment banker

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Speaker 3: or a hedge fund manager.

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Speaker 4: The reason why is.

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Speaker 3: Every or very many young, ambitious, young twenty something males,

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Speaker 3: particularly in the mid two thousands, that was the thing

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Speaker 3: to do. If you go back to the early mid

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Speaker 3: two thousands, tech really wasn't that much of a thing yet.

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Speaker 3: Of course it was around, but it didn't have the money,

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Speaker 3: the prestige the growth that.

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Speaker 2: Did, especially after the crash after.

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Speaker 4: The Gosh, finance was the thing.

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Speaker 3: If you were young and ambitious and wanted to make

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Speaker 3: a lot of money, you went to Wall Street, you

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Speaker 3: worked at Goldman Sachs or investment banker. That's what I

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Speaker 3: wanted to do, Plan A, B and C didn't want

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Speaker 3: anything to do. I got an investment banking internship in

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Speaker 3: what would have been I guess junior year, and it

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Speaker 3: was like, this is it, this is the dream. Here

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Speaker 3: we go, this is awesome. Within ten minutes of the

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Speaker 3: first day, I knew it was not for me.

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Speaker 4: Ten minutes.

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Speaker 3: It took ten minutes for me to be like, Nope, nope,

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Speaker 3: that's not going to work. I'm I can do good work,

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Speaker 3: but not under the hazing style pressure that was so

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Speaker 3: prevalent in banks back then. And it's not that I

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Speaker 3: didn't have the work ethic for it. It was just

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Speaker 3: it seemed like such a broken culture that I wanted

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Speaker 3: nothing to do.

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Speaker 2: It's so funny you said that I had the same

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Speaker 2: experience as a first year associate and a summer associate

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Speaker 2: in a law firm, and I'm like, oh, this is

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Speaker 2: a horrible lifestyle. You're in your twenties. Why do I

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Speaker 2: want to be spending every weekend in the law library.

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Speaker 2: It was miserable.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: They had a quote on the first day of my

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Speaker 3: investment banking internship and they said, the rule here is

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Speaker 3: if you don't come to work on Saturday, don't bother

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Speaker 3: coming back on Sunday.

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Speaker 4: And I went, nope, no, what about Monday. That's not

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Speaker 4: for me. That's great.

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Speaker 2: So I don't have to work weekends. Fantastic, see it right?

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Speaker 3: So then, so I didn't know what to do, and

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Speaker 3: I was really a drift and lost. And then I

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Speaker 3: graduated in two thousand and eight financial crisis. World is

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Speaker 3: in flames, nobody is hiring, and I stumbled haphazardly, not

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Speaker 3: by any plan or strategy. Out of desperation, I took

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Speaker 3: a job as a finance writer at the Molly Fool.

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Speaker 2: So were you an analyst or a finance writer?

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Speaker 4: A writer from day one? I was still in college

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Speaker 4: at the time, Uh huh.

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Speaker 3: And I started covering banking stocks at the Motley Fool

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Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven time, and I've been a

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Speaker 3: writer ever since.

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Speaker 2: So I'm curious talking about being a hedge fund manager

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Speaker 2: or an investment banker. I know your early life you

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Speaker 2: were both a ski bomb and a car valet. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: parking really expensive cars. Did that have any influence on

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Speaker 2: your initial erroneous career choice?

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Speaker 4: It had so much influence.

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Speaker 3: But really, I grew up in a middle class family,

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Speaker 3: great town and not a wealthy town, not poor, not

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Speaker 3: out in the sticks, but a decidedly middle class town

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Speaker 3: in California's just outside of Lake Tahoe, California. Also before

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Speaker 3: tech money infiltrated Lake Talk, So back then it was

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Speaker 3: truly just a small little mountaintown.

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Speaker 4: It's not anymore because tech money came up.

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Speaker 3: And so I didn't have much concept of wealth because

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Speaker 3: in the town that I grew up in, regular people

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Speaker 3: had old pickup trucks and rich people had new pickup trucks.

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Speaker 3: That was the stratification of wealth. That was as far

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Speaker 3: as it got. And so but anyway, I started working

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Speaker 3: at this these fancy hotels and all of a sudden,

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Speaker 3: people were starting to come in in these cars that

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Speaker 3: just blew my mind. Not just BMW's and Mercedes, but Ferraris,

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Speaker 3: Lamborghinis once in a while. And then I went to

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Speaker 3: college in Los Angeles, stayed working as a valet at

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Speaker 3: even nicer hotels in LA and then it was Rolls,

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Speaker 3: Royce's and Aston Martins, and it was just a level

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Speaker 3: of wealth.

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Speaker 4: That I didn't know existed.

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Speaker 3: And in my young, you know, nineteen twenty year old mind,

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Speaker 3: it was just so appealing to me. I was just

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Speaker 3: overwhelmed with, like, whatever that is, I want it. I

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Speaker 3: want some of that immediately. But it was also I

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Speaker 3: think I not on purpose, but I think I just

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Speaker 3: kind of started picking up the little subtle clues of

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Speaker 3: the psychology of rich people. The first thing that was

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Speaker 3: I was very apparent was that a lot of them

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Speaker 3: were not that happy. A lot of them were just

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Speaker 3: kind of old, bitter, broken men arguing with their wives,

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Speaker 3: always kind of stressed, third wives right right away, always stressed,

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Speaker 3: always barking on the phone, and it was, and it

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Speaker 3: was all the time. It was all the time, And

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Speaker 3: I remember picking up on that and being like, Hey,

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Speaker 3: on one hand, I really want that. On the other hand, like,

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Speaker 3: is that supposed to be my role model? Because it

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Speaker 3: doesn't look that great. And I know a lot of

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Speaker 3: middle class people from the town I grew up and

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Speaker 3: who seemed a hell of a lot happier than that guy.

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Speaker 3: And so I think that was I started picking up

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Speaker 3: on kind of the psychology of wealth, not intentionally, but

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Speaker 3: it was a very good window into that aspect of

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Speaker 3: wealth because in my little, p size nineteen year old brain,

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Speaker 3: it was in my what I assumed was you have

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Speaker 3: so much money, you must just be a walking ball

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Speaker 3: of happiness. That was that was the intuition that I had,

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Speaker 3: But it was so clearly not that.

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Speaker 2: So think about that for a second. And I have

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Speaker 2: so much stuff from your new book to that's relevant

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Speaker 2: to this, but we'll get to that later. Think about

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Speaker 2: when you're young and relatively broke. And I grew up

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Speaker 2: lower middle class and put myself through college and grad

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Speaker 2: school and always felt like, Gee, if only I didn't

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Speaker 2: have to worry about money, how much greater my life

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Speaker 2: would be. But chasing away the lack of money blues.

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Speaker 2: That's just a modest decrease in stress, not the secret

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Speaker 2: to happiness.

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Speaker 3: I think of what is tends to be true, and

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Speaker 3: there's no hearted fast rules here. This is not black

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Speaker 3: and white, but it tends to be true that wealthier

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Speaker 3: people might have fewer bad days than poor people. I

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Speaker 3: don't know if they necessarily have more good days. That's

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Speaker 3: a great now, that is a lifestyle improvement. To have

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Speaker 3: fewer bad days, to not have to worry and stress

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Speaker 3: about making rent and healthcare and whatnot to remove. That

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Speaker 3: is a lifestyle improvement, but it is not happiness. It

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Speaker 3: is different in the same way that you and I

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Speaker 3: are fortunate enough to wake up every morning not worrying

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Speaker 3: about catching polio, right, that's a lifestyle improve.

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Speaker 2: Or what you can eat that dell or exactly will

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Speaker 2: you eat that? Right?

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Speaker 3: And relative to the standards of one hundred years ago,

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Speaker 3: that is an unbelievable lifestyle improvement. But it's not happiness

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Speaker 3: because you and I didn't wake up this morning thinking

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Speaker 3: about it.

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Speaker 2: That is simply Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs. That's different

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Speaker 2: than happiness than contentment, which we'll talk about so let's

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Speaker 2: stay with your writing at the Motley Fool. One of

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Speaker 2: the things two of the things that really distinguish your writing. First,

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Speaker 2: you're a great storyteller and you find some fascinating stories.

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Speaker 2: But second, you figured out early that finance is not

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Speaker 2: so much about math as it is about behavior. Now

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Speaker 2: tell us how you stumbled into an interest in behavioral finance.

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Speaker 3: So much of this was moley Ful is a stock

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Speaker 3: picking organization, and I'm not I don't look down upon

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Speaker 3: stock picking, but it's not what I do. It's not

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Speaker 3: how I invest, it's not what interests me at all.

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Speaker 3: And so I kind of had to find a little

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Speaker 3: niche for myself. At the Mali Fool, they were completely

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Speaker 3: and they were completely supportive of my you know, kind

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Speaker 3: of black sheepedness being there being like, hey, you know

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Speaker 3: everyone else is picking stocks and I'm just trying to

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Speaker 3: do something else over here. You're counterprogramming, right, And so

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Speaker 3: I had to figure out what to do. For a while,

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Speaker 3: it was macro. This was post financial crisis, and I

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Speaker 3: was like, I'm going to study the forces of the economy,

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Speaker 3: and that not intentionally but kind of just pushed into

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Speaker 3: behavior in psychology, I think a lot of that was

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Speaker 3: as I was studying macro, this realization and you've been

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Speaker 3: a big part of this as well, of realizing that

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Speaker 3: there is nothing in a macro textbook that will explain

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Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, and so as a writer, as

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Speaker 3: I was trying to explain what just happened and the

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Speaker 3: aftermath of the GFC was there's nothing in there that

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Speaker 3: explained why people did what they did. Nothing in an

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Speaker 3: economics textbook or the academic framework that would explain the

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Speaker 3: housing bubble that preceded it, the behavior during the crash,

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Speaker 3: the pessimism after it, Like, not much there, but if

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Speaker 3: you looked at it through the lens of psychology or sociology,

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Speaker 3: or political science or evolution, all these other fields like

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Speaker 3: had a lot to say and could explain why people

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Speaker 3: were doing the things they do.

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Speaker 2: So that was just the subtle.

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Speaker 3: Coming to terms with the idea that money and finance

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Speaker 3: is not the study. It's not the study of finance,

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Speaker 3: it's a study of how people behave with money.

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Speaker 2: So I'm pulling forward a quote from later in our

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Speaker 2: conversation that's dead on with that insight. Risk has two stages.

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Speaker 2: First one it actually hits. Then when the scars influence

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Speaker 2: our subsequent decisions. Now, so you graduate into the eight

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Speaker 2: to nine disaster, everybody post financial crisis, and I shouldn't

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Speaker 2: say everybody, but so many people post financial crisis was Hey,

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Speaker 2: that was just the first leg after March or nine, Wait,

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Speaker 2: wait for the second leg.

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Speaker 3: Nerrophrase double dip recession. That's where everybody said it for

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Speaker 3: eighteens a day. It was decades before. If you go

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Speaker 3: back to twenty ten, particularly twenty eleven, everybody in the

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Speaker 3: financial media said the phrase double dip recession every hour.

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Speaker 3: It was inevitable. It was absolutely inevitable. The other version

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Speaker 3: of this is at the end of World War Two

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Speaker 3: nineteen forty five, it was a foregone conclusion that nobody

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Speaker 3: disagreed with that the US economy would fall right back

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Speaker 3: into the Great Depression, that in the absence of military spending,

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Speaker 3: it was not just going to contract and revert to

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Speaker 3: the mean, it was going to go back to the

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Speaker 3: nineteen thirty two lows of desperation. And in hindsight it

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Speaker 3: didn't happen, but it was a foregone conclusion back then.

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Speaker 3: It is always the case that the simple narrative, and

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Speaker 3: oftentimes the simple narrative is just extrapolating whatever just happened

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Speaker 3: is going to be the most appealing, the most logical,

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Speaker 3: It makes the most sense in the cyclical nature of economies. Though,

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Speaker 3: like we all know in hindsight, what happened during those

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Speaker 3: piers that actually the end of World War Two. There

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Speaker 3: were some mild recessions in the late forties and fifties,

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Speaker 3: but by and large that was actually the beginning of

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Speaker 3: an epic boom in the fifties and sixties, and after

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Speaker 3: the GFC, you know, twenty nine twenty ten, that was

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Speaker 3: in the stock market and economically the beginning of a boom.

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Speaker 4: And it's almost.

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Speaker 3: Impossible to realize that in real time, as it was

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Speaker 3: almost impossible to realize in ninety nine two thousand that

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Speaker 3: of course in tech stocks, but also in the broader

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Speaker 3: economy that was about as good as it gets. And

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Speaker 3: when it's just about as good as it gets, that

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Speaker 3: was it was so easy to extrapolate from there, but

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Speaker 3: that was actually the end of the good days.

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Speaker 2: You know. The shocking thing about the post financial crisis period,

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Speaker 2: and I'll take a little credit for flowing this phrase

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Speaker 2: out there, it was the most hated bull market in

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Speaker 2: history by like October nine, people were talking about wait

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Speaker 2: for the next thirty forty percent dip, and you mentioned hindsight.

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Speaker 2: Our hindsight bias keeps us looking backwards and ignoring the

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Speaker 2: fact that, hey, when is a down fifty percent market

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Speaker 2: in the US not a great entry point, all right,

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Speaker 2: nineteen twenty nine, But that is the exception to rule

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Speaker 2: every other time it's been down cut in half.

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Speaker 3: I'm a buyer, right, And actually, if you go back

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Speaker 3: to you know, nineteen thirty one thirty two, when the

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Speaker 3: market was down fifty percent, it eventually fell eighty nine percent,

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Speaker 3: So if it was down fifty percent, you still lost

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Speaker 3: a fortune after that, that's right. But if you made

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Speaker 3: those purchases down to hel percent ten years later, you

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Speaker 3: were doing an absolutely incredible Now that was that's cold

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Speaker 3: comfort for the other fifty percent that you continued to

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Speaker 3: lose by nineteen thirty two. But there's all these cases

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Speaker 3: where people say they're long term investors, and they want

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Speaker 3: to be long term investors, but then, particularly when they're

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Speaker 3: trying to buy the dip, if the market falls for

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Speaker 3: another ninety days after that, they feel like they've made

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Speaker 3: a colossal error.

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Speaker 2: So I find there's a huge difference. Many people are

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Speaker 2: intellectually long term investors, but emotionally they're not, and that

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Speaker 2: tension is what drives a lot of that.

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Speaker 4: See, I would put a different spin on that.

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Speaker 3: I would say a lot of people, you know, claim

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Speaker 3: to be kind of short term investors in the sense

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Speaker 3: that on Twitter they're like, oh, this is this is

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Speaker 3: the peak, this is the top. The I mean in

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Speaker 3: Q four is not looking They say things like that,

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Speaker 3: But if you actually looked how they invest like and

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Speaker 3: therefore they dollar cost average into their four to one

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Speaker 3: ks and never sell anything.

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Speaker 2: And that's the right approach market crash. In fact, you

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Speaker 2: never pick a point as the bottom, even if you

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Speaker 2: put a big chunk of your free capital. You should

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Speaker 2: always be hey, I don't know where the bottom is.

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Speaker 2: I'll try a little in nineteen thirty and a little

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Speaker 2: more throughout thirty one and thirty two. Eventually your average

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Speaker 2: is going to be far lower with than where the

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Speaker 2: market is. But you have to have a steady source

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Speaker 2: of capital and some income.

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Speaker 3: Now, I remember in twenty eleven when there was the

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Speaker 3: double Depp recession and the market did fall I don't

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Speaker 3: know twenty or thirty percent. That was probably more pessimistic

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Speaker 3: in twenty eleven than people were in two thousand and nine.

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Speaker 4: Twenty eleven, people were.

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Speaker 2: Like, this is it, this is over going back down

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Speaker 2: to the.

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Speaker 3: Market was plunging, and the narrative was everyone's panicking, everyone's selling.

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Speaker 3: Vanguard put out a study that showed during that era,

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Speaker 3: ninety nine percent of their clients did nothing, didn't sell,

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Speaker 3: what didn't do any didn't do anything. And so the

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Speaker 3: narrative of everyone's panic, everyone's selling is usually so completely

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Speaker 3: different from what people are actually doing.

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Speaker 2: So let me share one of my favorite quotes of yours,

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Speaker 2: since you're talking about highs and lows. Every market valuation

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Speaker 2: is a number from today multiplied by a story about tomorrow.

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Speaker 2: I think that's genius. I love that quote.

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Speaker 4: Thank you.

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Speaker 3: You know it's always a number from today, like earnings

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Speaker 3: per share, multiplied by a story about tomorrow, like a

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Speaker 3: valuation multiple. And what's important is, particularly in a low

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Speaker 3: interest rate environment and particularly in a ZERP environment, those

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Speaker 3: stories are everything. The number from today almost doesn't matter.

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Speaker 3: The stories are everything. That's always been the case. But

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Speaker 3: in a social media world, the stories get bonkers. The

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Speaker 3: stories get absolutely nuts.

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Speaker 2: Narratives become memes.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, Ben.

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Speaker 3: Graham had the quote in the stock market is a

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Speaker 3: voting machine or nol miamis knees voting machine in the

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Speaker 3: short term and a weighing machine in the long run.

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Speaker 3: But he said that one hundred years ago, and it's

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Speaker 3: still true. But they're because of how the world works today,

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Speaker 3: stocks can remain voted on, not necessarily weighed. For probably decades,

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Speaker 3: Tesla has been a voted upon stock, not a weight

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Speaker 3: upon stock, for its entire existence, and maybe that will

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Speaker 3: change someday. But I think in previous eras in the

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Speaker 3: Ben Gram era, or even not even you know, twenty

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Speaker 3: or thirty years ago, you could have brief, momentary flashes

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Speaker 3: of insanity. And that was probably the late nineties you had,

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Speaker 3: you know, eighteen months of just pure insanity where everything

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Speaker 3: was narrative driven, it wasn't really earnings driven. And now

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Speaker 3: you can have that going on for very long periods

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Speaker 3: of time. I mean, how long has has Hurts and

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Speaker 3: game stock been been meme stocks?

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Speaker 2: Like years, five, five years? Is still I think it's

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Speaker 2: still a thing, still a reddit, It's still a thing.

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Speaker 3: It's still still a thing, maybe not to the extent

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Speaker 3: that it was, but these stocks did not revert all

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Speaker 3: the way back. They still have this cult meme following,

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Speaker 3: and so the point being, it's always a number from

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Speaker 3: today multiplied by a story about tomorrow. Because the world

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Speaker 3: we live in interest rates and social media, the stories

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Speaker 3: get insane.

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Speaker 2: So let me mix your Canes quote with your own quote.

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Speaker 2: In the short run, markets or probability machines. In the

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Speaker 2: long run their narrative machines. That that's a good blend

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Speaker 2: of view, and Canes there are worse people to marry.

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Speaker 2: All right, One or two more questions in this segment

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Speaker 2: before we move on. I'm you address one of my

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Speaker 2: favorite pet peeves about uncertainty in a sentence that I love. Quote.

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Speaker 2: There's rarely more or less economic uncertainty, just changes in

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Speaker 2: how ignorant people are to potential risks. That sums it

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Speaker 2: up perfectly. I hate the uncertainty meme because by definition,

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Speaker 2: the future is always inherently uncertain.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there have been some academics who have

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Speaker 3: tried to make uncertainty indexes. Where they make it in

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Speaker 3: the end, you can put it on a chart to

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Speaker 3: measure the amount of uncertainty, and there's various ways that

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Speaker 3: they do. In terms of like newspaper narratives and changes

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Speaker 3: in economic policy, and to map out uncertainty. And what's

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Speaker 3: so fascinating to me is if you look at these indexes,

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Speaker 3: which I think are pretty rationally put together, it shows

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Speaker 3: that uncertainty is the lowest, as in certainty was the

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Speaker 3: highest at two periods in modern times.

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Speaker 2: I guess three periods.

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Speaker 3: One is right before nine to eleven, the other is

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Speaker 3: right before the GFC, and the other is right before COVID.

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Speaker 3: That was when purportedly we understood the future in the

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Speaker 3: greatest degree.

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Speaker 2: And if you go to Sack time completely insane, I'm

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Speaker 2: going to tell you there was a lot of certainty

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Speaker 2: in late ninety nine. Yeah, stocks grow to the sky,

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Speaker 2: and you go back to March on nine, there was

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Speaker 2: certainty that stocks was going to zero.

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Speaker 3: And so what we know in hindsight is that those

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Speaker 3: three periods just before nine to eleven, just before two

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Speaker 3: thousand and eight, and just before COVID were the most

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Speaker 3: uncertain That was when your view of the future was

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Speaker 3: completely and utterly wrong, no matter who you were or

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Speaker 3: how smart you were. And so I think it's true

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Speaker 3: that there is never more or less uncertainty. It's just

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Speaker 3: we go through periods where we are more ignorant and

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Speaker 3: more confident in our ability to forecast than others.

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Speaker 2: Let's talk about luck. I just wrote something about this

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Speaker 2: and found a quote of yours afterwards that I would

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Speaker 2: have loved to use. Most people when they talk about luck,

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Speaker 2: increasing the surface area of your luck. Luck is where

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Speaker 2: preparation meets opportunity. Your definition of luck recognizes that it's

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Speaker 2: something fundamentally outside of your controls quote you can't believe

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Speaker 2: in risk without also believing in luck because they're fundamentally

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Speaker 2: the same thing, and acknowledgment that so much is outside

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Speaker 2: of your control.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, when people say like, oh, the harder I work,

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Speaker 3: the luckier I get, you know, those kind of they

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Speaker 3: seem like like benign quotes. I'm like, no, that's not

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Speaker 3: what luck is. If you can go out of your

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Speaker 3: way to increase it, it is not luck. It's hard work.

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Speaker 3: It's hard work, it's skill, it's a value. I commend

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Speaker 3: you for it, but it's not luck. Luck is you

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Speaker 3: were born in this era. Luck is your parents told

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Speaker 3: you X, Y and z. Luck is you haphazardly met

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Speaker 3: this person. You did not do anything intentionally to it.

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Speaker 3: It was completely outside of your control, the biggest of

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Speaker 3: which is where and when you were born that have

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Speaker 3: an unbelievable impact on this. Bill Groat's a great bond Mananagru.

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Speaker 3: I'm sure he's been on the show before. He spoke

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Speaker 3: about this one time that he was a bond manager

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Speaker 3: from the early you know, the bulk of his career

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Speaker 3: was during the largest decline in interest rates that's ever occurred.

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Speaker 4: And he wondered himself in this piece of a rope many.

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Speaker 3: Years ago, like, would he have had the success he

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Speaker 3: did if he was born ten years earlier or ten

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Speaker 3: years later. Would Buffett have had the same success if

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Speaker 3: he was born ten years earlier or ten years later.

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Speaker 3: I would, I would venture to say the answer is no.

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Speaker 3: There are both of those people, very hard working, very intelligent,

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Speaker 3: able to capture opportunity.

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 3: Were they also unbelievably lucky in something they had no

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Speaker 3: control over, which is when they were born.

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Speaker 2: Yes, as well. I'm trying to remember the book that

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Speaker 2: mentioned it's not a coincidence that so many of the

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Speaker 2: best known entrepreneurs of our era were born post War

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Speaker 2: World War two, mid fifties, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. It

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Speaker 2: goes through a whole list, and and just being born

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Speaker 2: into that vacuum when there was massive societal change, economic change,

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Speaker 2: technological change. That's what created the option of starting a

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Speaker 2: whole new company in a brand new space.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and if Steve Jobs was born twenty years later,

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Speaker 3: he still would have been extremely successful.

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Speaker 4: He's just built different.

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Speaker 3: Of course, but to the degree that he was almost

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Speaker 3: certainly not so I think rather than luck, because people

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Speaker 3: don't like that phrase. It makes you sound jealous and

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Speaker 3: bitter of other people. I think the phrase to use

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Speaker 3: is what is repeatable? What have you done in the

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Speaker 3: past that you can do again? And if if you

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Speaker 3: know what in your life, in your in your world,

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Speaker 3: if you started over tomorrow with no money, no name, recognition,

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Speaker 3: no context, could you repeat what you've done? And sometimes

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Speaker 3: the answer is yes, So that's not luck.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to say no. For me personally, I guess

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Speaker 2: it's right time. Yes and got I literally just finished

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Speaker 2: a chapter for someone else's book on how random so

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Speaker 2: much of the world is. And I have to tell you,

439
00:21:02,520 --> 00:21:05,440
Speaker 2: the first couple of times a billionaire tells you how

440
00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:08,880
Speaker 2: important luck was, you kind of shrug it off, as Hey,

441
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:13,480
Speaker 2: these guys are a little false humility. The person who

442
00:21:13,560 --> 00:21:17,399
Speaker 2: disabused me of that notion was Howard Marx, because he said,

443
00:21:18,400 --> 00:21:20,200
Speaker 2: you have to be smart, you have to be hardworking,

444
00:21:20,200 --> 00:21:21,679
Speaker 2: but you also have to get lucky. And I'm like,

445
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:24,119
Speaker 2: come on, Howard, why do you say that. You know,

446
00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:27,439
Speaker 2: look at what you've done since you graduated Columbia Business School.

447
00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:31,159
Speaker 2: And his answer was, everybody I went to school with

448
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:35,040
Speaker 2: was super smart. They were all incredibly hard working. Not

449
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:38,480
Speaker 2: all of them became wildly successful. And you have to

450
00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:42,160
Speaker 2: just acknowledge how much of this is just serendipity. And

451
00:21:42,320 --> 00:21:45,200
Speaker 2: when a guy like that, who has no false humility,

452
00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:48,320
Speaker 2: when he says, no, I could give you ten instances

453
00:21:48,640 --> 00:21:51,520
Speaker 2: where my life changed because of dun luck, you kind

454
00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:54,000
Speaker 2: of have to acknowledge that, right, was ja Paul Getty said.

455
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:56,920
Speaker 3: He said the three successes, the three rules for getting

456
00:21:56,960 --> 00:21:59,760
Speaker 3: rich are go to work early, stay late.

457
00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:06,760
Speaker 2: Oil fantastic. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Morgan Housel,

458
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 2: author of the best selling book Psychology of Money, discussing

459
00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:16,280
Speaker 2: how he writes books, essays and columns. I'm Barry Results.

460
00:22:16,320 --> 00:22:34,440
Speaker 2: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm

461
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:38,440
Speaker 2: Barry Redults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

462
00:22:38,840 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 2: My extra special guest is Morgan Housel. He is the

463
00:22:42,080 --> 00:22:45,080
Speaker 2: best selling author of Psychology of Money as well as

464
00:22:45,119 --> 00:22:49,159
Speaker 2: Same as Ever his latest book, The Art of Spending Money,

465
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:52,639
Speaker 2: Simple Choices for a Richer Life. Before we get to

466
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:55,400
Speaker 2: the book specifically, I want to talk a little bit

467
00:22:55,920 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 2: about your writing process, and you know you're Some of

468
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 2: my favorite essays of yours take historical stories, world wars,

469
00:23:06,119 --> 00:23:12,000
Speaker 2: business failures, unlikely successes, and I specifically recalled Kitty Hawk's

470
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 2: story and the solo sale competition around the world, and

471
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:20,639
Speaker 2: you connect them to timeless lessons on behavior and money.

472
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:23,600
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about your research process. How

473
00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:27,160
Speaker 2: do you find these amazing and crazy stories.

474
00:23:27,920 --> 00:23:30,800
Speaker 3: I think it started with a survival technique as a writer,

475
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:33,240
Speaker 3: because as a finance writer, if I got up every

476
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:36,720
Speaker 3: day and wrote, here's what the Dow did today, you're

477
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:38,439
Speaker 3: out the people who can do that faster than you.

478
00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 3: You're not really adding much value if you do that.

479
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:42,320
Speaker 3: And so as a writer it was like, hey, if

480
00:23:42,359 --> 00:23:44,320
Speaker 3: I need to get people's attention, I need to make

481
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:46,679
Speaker 3: it interesting. So and one of the ways to do

482
00:23:46,720 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 3: that because myself, as a reader, what I enjoyed when

483
00:23:49,119 --> 00:23:52,199
Speaker 3: other people did is when they tied the rest of

484
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:54,440
Speaker 3: the broader world into finance. Here's a story that has

485
00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:56,760
Speaker 3: nothing to do with money. It's a story about evolution

486
00:23:56,920 --> 00:23:58,960
Speaker 3: or World War two, whatever it might be, and let's

487
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 3: take the lesson from that entire I loved when people

488
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 3: did that.

489
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:03,080
Speaker 4: I loved it, loved it, loved it, and wanted to

490
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:03,720
Speaker 4: do it myself.

491
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:05,639
Speaker 3: The second part is I think I got you closer

492
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 3: to the truth that when you study those fields, whatever

493
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:11,640
Speaker 3: it might be politics or military history, you're studying behavior

494
00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:14,480
Speaker 3: and it's the same behaviors that impact investors in the

495
00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:17,400
Speaker 3: same way. And so a lot of even finance professionals

496
00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 3: get into trouble when they view and study finance through

497
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:24,360
Speaker 3: the very narrow lens of finance without realizing that it's

498
00:24:24,359 --> 00:24:27,159
Speaker 3: a very broad field of how people behave.

499
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:28,479
Speaker 2: So that was the first of it.

500
00:24:28,600 --> 00:24:30,960
Speaker 3: The second is when you start looking for it, when

501
00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 3: you have the little seed in your head that when

502
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:36,320
Speaker 3: you're reading about a broad array of fields, if you

503
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:37,879
Speaker 3: have a little bird in your head that says, how

504
00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:39,800
Speaker 3: does this tie back? Like what is the behavior and

505
00:24:39,800 --> 00:24:41,359
Speaker 3: how can tie it back to money? You see it

506
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 3: everywhere you can't stop seeing it, and you realize, like

507
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:47,159
Speaker 3: how interconnected our behavior is, because the same way that

508
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 3: you and I think about risk and investing also impacts

509
00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 3: a lot of things that we think in life. Our friendships,

510
00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 3: our relationships, our health tie back to the same framework

511
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 3: of how we think about risk and money. It's very

512
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 3: tied together. The whole world is kind of woven together

513
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:04,560
Speaker 3: in those and so you start seeing these same themes

514
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 3: over and over and over again about how compounding works,

515
00:25:06,960 --> 00:25:08,639
Speaker 3: how risk works, how envy works.

516
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:09,560
Speaker 4: It's the same.

517
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:12,280
Speaker 3: And I also think if you see a behavior repeat

518
00:25:12,320 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 3: in several different fields, you found something that is like

519
00:25:15,119 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 3: infinitely important and then you can be like, oh, that's

520
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 3: a good one.

521
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:19,320
Speaker 4: I need to talk more about that.

522
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 2: In finance, how often when you're doing research you have

523
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:26,360
Speaker 2: that WTF moment that's like, oh my god, how can

524
00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:29,600
Speaker 2: this possibly be true? And you research it and it's like, Wow,

525
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:32,119
Speaker 2: not only is this true, but it applies to so

526
00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:35,880
Speaker 2: many other things. Is that a monthly occurrence a weekly occurrence?

527
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:36,879
Speaker 2: How often does that happen?

528
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 3: I think it's very often that you find behaviors that

529
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:43,959
Speaker 3: also have a ven diagram overlap with with money. That's

530
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:46,200
Speaker 3: pretty often in terms of them being like a slam

531
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 3: dunk of like, oh, that is just a phenomenal interesting story,

532
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:51,639
Speaker 3: and it is so identical to what happens in investing.

533
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 4: That's probably a once a.

534
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 2: Year kind of thing.

535
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 4: Oh really, I think. So that's a lot of slam

536
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 4: dunk in psychology.

537
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 2: And money, you have a bunch of those. And same

538
00:25:59,040 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 2: as ever, you have a run of those. There's a

539
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,920
Speaker 2: lot of that in this you're less than fifty years old.

540
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:07,120
Speaker 2: You have more than fifty of these stories.

541
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:08,720
Speaker 4: Some better than others, though. There's a couple.

542
00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 3: There's a couple that I've come across over the years

543
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 3: where I remember just sitting back in my chair and

544
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:13,560
Speaker 3: being like.

545
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 2: That's that's just a jackpot.

546
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:18,080
Speaker 3: That story is just could not be better seeing it,

547
00:26:18,080 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 3: and you find it in these areas that have nothing

548
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:21,120
Speaker 3: to do with money.

549
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:21,520
Speaker 4: I remember it.

550
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:23,360
Speaker 3: So you mentioned in the artist spending money the story

551
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 3: about the sailors, Yes, has absolutely nothing to do with

552
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:26,560
Speaker 3: money whatsoever.

553
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 2: And I remember reading everything to do with ego and behavior.

554
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:31,920
Speaker 3: And behavior, But I remember reading an old New York

555
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 3: Times article is from not that old, maybe two thousand

556
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 3: and seven, and it had one line it said there

557
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 3: was a sailing race back in the nineteen sixties, and

558
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 3: one of the sailors was about to win, but decided

559
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 3: he liked sailing, so he quit the race and just

560
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 3: kept sailing.

561
00:26:44,400 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 2: And I didn't want the publicity and all the nonsense

562
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 2: around the opposite of ego.

563
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:50,719
Speaker 3: And I remember reading that like that's interesting, Like can

564
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,120
Speaker 3: we pull on that thread a little bit more?

565
00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:52,919
Speaker 4: And you start doing.

566
00:26:52,800 --> 00:26:55,479
Speaker 3: Research and you're like, oh, this is this is ego

567
00:26:56,160 --> 00:26:58,439
Speaker 3: or the lack of it, And of course that applies

568
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:00,440
Speaker 3: to money in what I thought was just a slam

569
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:02,919
Speaker 3: dunk way, Like that's a rare story.

570
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 2: Fine, you know, pull on that thread. People don't understand

571
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:08,479
Speaker 2: the original quote from the professor who said it was

572
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:12,440
Speaker 2: the plural of anecdote is data. And what was meant

573
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 2: by that is you start pulling on the thread of

574
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:17,560
Speaker 2: these one offs and you find these broader things applical

575
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,960
Speaker 2: to other things. You shouldn't just dismiss the one off

576
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:26,120
Speaker 2: because it's anecdotally really kind of fascinating. So the other

577
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:29,960
Speaker 2: one that has always stayed with me involved Kitty Hawk.

578
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 2: How long was it before the first Right Brothers faster

579
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:39,160
Speaker 2: heavier than air flight made it into the New York times.

580
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:41,959
Speaker 3: It took them about four years to build the airplane,

581
00:27:42,000 --> 00:27:44,080
Speaker 3: and then after they flew it in Kitty Hawk, it

582
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 3: took them about another four years before virtually anybody was

583
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 3: paying attention. And there were years after the right brother's

584
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 3: first flight.

585
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 4: We all seen the.

586
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 3: Picture, one of the most famous pictures of all time. Now,

587
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 3: it was literally years after that took place that The

588
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:58,280
Speaker 3: New York Times was writing things along the lines of

589
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:00,880
Speaker 3: humans will never fly, it will never happen.

590
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 2: It's already happened. Then they're staying the wrong thing.

591
00:28:02,880 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 3: And there was even periods back in Dayton, Ohio, where

592
00:28:05,280 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 3: they were from. After Kitty Hawk, they went back to Dayton,

593
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 3: and Dayton is where they truly mastered flying. They figured

594
00:28:10,119 --> 00:28:12,119
Speaker 3: out the two hardest parts, which were turning and landing

595
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 3: and h and Danon was a big city in the

596
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:17,439
Speaker 3: early nineteen hundreds, and they're flying like over people's backyards

597
00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 3: and there's virtually nothing written about it. There was in

598
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,000
Speaker 3: one of their biographies it basically says that people in

599
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 3: Dayton that saw them flying assumed it must have been

600
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 3: some sort of magic trick, asking like where's the rope.

601
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:30,120
Speaker 4: Kind of kind of thing, like.

602
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 2: The rope attached to exactly exactly well, it's it's you know,

603
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:36,200
Speaker 2: it's all turtles all the way down.

604
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:38,239
Speaker 3: But it was the analogy that was given in their

605
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 3: biography by David mccallough was if you and I saw

606
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 3: a demonstration of time travel today, we would be like, okay,

607
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 3: but it's just an illusion, like you didn't actually do that,

608
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 3: Like I saw what you did, but that's but there's

609
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:52,120
Speaker 3: there's a trick here. And that's how they viewed flying

610
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 3: at the time. And it really took almost about half

611
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:58,000
Speaker 3: a decade before people were like, oh, this is this

612
00:28:58,040 --> 00:29:00,120
Speaker 3: is the thing, this is this is big. And I

613
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 3: think that's true for a lot of new technology that

614
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 3: the gap between discovering it and it becoming a world

615
00:29:06,840 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 3: changing thing can be years of not decades. It's almost

616
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 3: never that it happens overnight that we come up with

617
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 3: a new technology and people are like, that's it.

618
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 4: That's the thing.

619
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 3: People talk about how quickly chat GBT was brought into

620
00:29:19,200 --> 00:29:20,880
Speaker 3: the fold. You know, within a year of it coming out,

621
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:22,880
Speaker 3: there were hundreds of millions of users. But AI has

622
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 3: been a thing for.

623
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 2: Thirty years, forty years.

624
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 3: So the idea that like, oh, we recognized it immediately,

625
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 3: like no, it took a lifetime to get there.

626
00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 2: You know. I saw I saw a Reddit map and

627
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 2: I thought of you. It showed here's how far you

628
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 2: could travel one hundred years ago from London, and it

629
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:41,840
Speaker 2: was a map of this is a day, this is

630
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 2: a week, this is a month, and then modern times

631
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 2: you could get anywhere on Earth today within thirty six hours. Now,

632
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 2: the polls whatever, but back then you couldn't even get

633
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 2: to America in a month from London. It was It's

634
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 2: just insane how that changed. And that's what made me

635
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 2: think of Kitty Hawk. There's another quote of yours I

636
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 2: love that's related to all of your books, which is

637
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 2: getting rich and staying rich are different things that require

638
00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 2: different skills.

639
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,160
Speaker 3: To explain that well, we all know the stories of

640
00:30:15,200 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 3: the hedgeplom manager who was very good at getting rich

641
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,040
Speaker 3: and had no ability to stay rich whatsoever.

642
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stories about that. Art you ghosts

643
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 2: very recently, very many billions.

644
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 3: To zero and the more famous, more famous examples long

645
00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:31,560
Speaker 3: term capital management or Jesse Livermore. I mean, going down

646
00:30:31,600 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 3: the list of people who are unbelievably skilled at getting

647
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 3: rich and completely brainless at staying rich, they're two very

648
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:40,760
Speaker 3: different skills. And when you see either a person or

649
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 3: a company that has both equal skills of getting rich

650
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 3: and staying which, it's a rare thing, and some companies

651
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:48,640
Speaker 3: have this. Microsoft has had that Apple. You know, no,

652
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 3: I would take that. I'd take Apple back if there

653
00:30:51,040 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 3: Microsoft since ninety nine. They went through a very rough

654
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 3: period before that. Microsoft is probably the quintessential example of

655
00:30:56,120 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 3: a country that a company that is or unbelievable, unbelievable

656
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,040
Speaker 3: getting rich and has an equal ability at staying rich

657
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:04,840
Speaker 3: in terms of how it manages its balance sheet and

658
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 3: staying relevant whatnot. It's a very rare skill, and it's

659
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 3: often a contradictory skill, because to get rich you need

660
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 3: optimism and risk taking, and to stay rich you need

661
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 3: almost the exact opposite. You need a level of paranoia

662
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 3: and conservatism to keep you around. You need that jeckal

663
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 3: and Hyde personality to do well over long periods.

664
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 2: And so the interesting thing about the examples we both

665
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,480
Speaker 2: gave arch ghosts and long term capital management. They got

666
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 2: rich through an excessive use of leverage. But in your

667
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,880
Speaker 2: book you talk about the Vanderbilts now, which is kind

668
00:31:34,880 --> 00:31:39,960
Speaker 2: of fascinating. They got wealthy through just wild business success,

669
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 2: oil and railroads, and go down the list. And yet

670
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 2: once they had that money, all they could do is

671
00:31:47,920 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 2: spend it at a profligate rate, derived seemingly no joy

672
00:31:53,080 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 2: out of the process. And it took three or four

673
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 2: generations and they were the money was all gone pretty much.

674
00:31:58,680 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 4: You know.

675
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:00,960
Speaker 3: Of all the robber baron families here in New York

676
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 3: who managed the money, the Carnegie and the Rockefellers did

677
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 3: very well at using their huge wealth to better society

678
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:16,240
Speaker 3: and to make their errors, to give them good lives,

679
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 3: and to keep it around for several generations. The Vanderbilts

680
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:20,760
Speaker 3: did by far the worst, by far and away the worst.

681
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 3: So when Cornelius Vanderbilt died a justed for inflation, he

682
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 3: had about three or four hundred billion dollars, just an

683
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:29,760
Speaker 3: unbelievable fortune. As you mentioned, within about three generations there

684
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 3: was virtually nothing left. And in between those three generations

685
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:36,880
Speaker 3: were a series of errors who, by and large, with

686
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 3: few exceptions, were miserable. Were miserable, miserable people, and the

687
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 3: reason why was very clear when you study their biographies.

688
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 3: The money completely controlled their personality. It told them who

689
00:32:47,600 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 3: they could be, It told them where they could live,

690
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 3: It told them the lifestyle they had to live. It

691
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:53,440
Speaker 3: told them who they could marry, It told them who

692
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 3: they could be friends with. It had complete and outer

693
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 3: control about it. They had all of the financial independence

694
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 3: that one in history could ever imagine, and they had

695
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 3: no intellectual independence, They had no lifestyle independence had They

696
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 3: were completely dictated.

697
00:33:07,240 --> 00:33:07,720
Speaker 4: By the money.

698
00:33:08,160 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 3: And it wasn't until the money was more or less

699
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 3: exhausted that the first Vanderbilt heirs who didn't get anything

700
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:15,720
Speaker 3: could build a life of their own.

701
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 4: And this is now very well known.

702
00:33:17,600 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 3: The first Vanderbilt air who virtually didn't get anything is

703
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 3: Anderson Cooper. His mom was Gloria Vanderbilt.

704
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,800
Speaker 2: A designer who famously built her own fashion shot.

705
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 4: And that was effectively where the big trust funds ended.

706
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 3: And Cooper has talked about this that you know, he

707
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:33,360
Speaker 3: was one of the first people in his family in

708
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty years who could was like blessed

709
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 3: with the ability to build his own life where the

710
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 3: money didn't control it and dictated. And it's an amazing

711
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 3: thing to watch.

712
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 2: Are you the master of your wealth or are you

713
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,160
Speaker 2: a slave to money? That's it really is the key question.

714
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 2: You know, you talked about the Rockefellers and versus the Vanderbilts.

715
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 2: I had the CIO of General atlantic On and General Atlannik.

716
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 2: Is the money that comes from the Duty Free shops,

717
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:06,520
Speaker 2: which has blown up to be a spectacular fortune. The

718
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,359
Speaker 2: founder you discuss in the book spent most of his

719
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:13,920
Speaker 2: life giving away all his money and he couldn't be happier.

720
00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 2: Tell us about him.

721
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:16,799
Speaker 3: So the founder's a guy named Chuck Feeney, passed away

722
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,760
Speaker 3: couple of years ago. Unbelievable story that he has started

723
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,399
Speaker 3: Duty Free store made for him personal fortune about ten

724
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 3: billion dollars thirty years ago.

725
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:26,240
Speaker 4: Yes, a lot of money.

726
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 3: The well known part of Chuck Feeney's story that's been

727
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 3: well documented is that he gave ninety nine point nine

728
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:32,879
Speaker 3: to nine percent of it away.

729
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 2: I think during his life, during his life and his will,

730
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 2: I think he ended it out regularly.

731
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:38,800
Speaker 3: I think the statistic was he took out two million

732
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,360
Speaker 3: dollars with an m to live off of lived in

733
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 3: a small apartment flu coach, lived like a complete and

734
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 3: utter ordinary person, and gave ten billion dollars away.

735
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:48,880
Speaker 4: That's the well known part of it.

736
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 3: The less well known part of his story that I

737
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 3: think is actually more important is that if you go

738
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:55,880
Speaker 3: back to the eighties when he first made his fortune,

739
00:34:55,920 --> 00:34:59,280
Speaker 3: he lived like a billionaire. He had mansions and yachts

740
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 3: in a private in private jet, lived like the quintessential

741
00:35:02,080 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 3: billionaire would, and hated it ostensibly was not for him.

742
00:35:06,760 --> 00:35:08,520
Speaker 3: He has a quote that I love. He said, I

743
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:10,640
Speaker 3: realized that I was happy when I was giving money away,

744
00:35:10,719 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 3: and I was not happy when I was not giving

745
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:15,920
Speaker 3: money away. And so he chose, he rejected that and

746
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 3: chose to live this very frugal life that he had.

747
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 3: And what I love about that is not that he

748
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 3: lived frugally like you know there, you know he was.

749
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 2: He was.

750
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 3: He was kind of obsessive about it in a way

751
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 3: that I would not do it. I don't think he.

752
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:27,800
Speaker 2: Will, like in front of the bus, you don't have

753
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:30,439
Speaker 2: to sit in the back exactly giving away ten billion dollars. Sure,

754
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 2: But what I love about it is that he chose it.

755
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 3: He did not. He did not give any any care

756
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:38,920
Speaker 3: in the world how society told him to live. The

757
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,960
Speaker 3: money did not dictate his personality. He did it for himself.

758
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 3: He was He was a truly independent thinker. Could not

759
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 3: be more polar opposite than the Vanderbilts, who were absolutely

760
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 3: beholdened to what money in society told them that they

761
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:51,919
Speaker 3: should be unbelievable.

762
00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:55,440
Speaker 2: Another one of my favorite quotes of yours. A big

763
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 2: takeaway from economic history is that the past wasn't as

764
00:35:58,920 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 2: good as you remember, the present isn't as bad as

765
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 2: you think, and the future will be better than you anticipate.

766
00:36:06,239 --> 00:36:10,640
Speaker 2: That's a fantastic quote because it's so true. We're stuck

767
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 2: here in the moment. History is roasty nostalgia, the future

768
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 2: is wishful thinking. Tell us how you put this quote together.

769
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:19,319
Speaker 2: How'd you come together with this?

770
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 3: I think a lot about nostalgia. I'm a very nostalgic person,

771
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 3: so I think about it a lot in my own life.

772
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 3: And it tends to be true that we massively overestimate

773
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 3: how good the past was because we know how the

774
00:36:29,400 --> 00:36:31,840
Speaker 3: story ends. Yes, and so when we look back at

775
00:36:31,840 --> 00:36:34,480
Speaker 3: the nineteen nineties, we say, what an amazing period of

776
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 3: time because we know how everything played out. It all

777
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:39,239
Speaker 3: worked out, but in the nineteen nineties we didn't know that.

778
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 3: We can wax about how great the nineteen fifties were.

779
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,880
Speaker 3: Middle class America, prosperity mom and pop, white picket fences

780
00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 3: got kind of thing.

781
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:48,839
Speaker 4: They didn't know it back then.

782
00:36:48,960 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 3: What a lot of them were thinking about back then

783
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 3: was nuclear holocaust and the recession that see was seemingly

784
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 3: right around the corner. And so when you know how

785
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 3: the story ends, it makes it almost impossible to put

786
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:01,400
Speaker 3: yourself in the shoes the past, including your own shoes

787
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:03,839
Speaker 3: of the past, very difficult to do. So I think

788
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 3: we just habitually overestimate how good the past was. We

789
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 3: overestimate how bad the present is because we are just

790
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 3: completely bombarded with negative headlines about what's going on today.

791
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:15,840
Speaker 3: If it bleeds, it leads right, and then extension of

792
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 3: that is you extrapolate today into the indefinite future, and

793
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:21,440
Speaker 3: so we underestimate how good the future can be.

794
00:37:22,400 --> 00:37:31,359
Speaker 2: Really fascinating quote. Last writing process question, you discuss the

795
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:36,760
Speaker 2: reverse obituary exercise and how can help people clarify their priorities.

796
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 2: Explain what a reverse obituary is.

797
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:41,760
Speaker 3: It's this idea that it's kind of a grim exercise,

798
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:44,360
Speaker 3: but I think it's very useful. Write down what you

799
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,680
Speaker 3: want your obituary to say, what would be your dream

800
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 3: obituary to say? And everyone would be different, but for

801
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:54,720
Speaker 3: me in that exercise, I would immediately go towards Morgan

802
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,080
Speaker 3: was a good father, he was a good husband, he

803
00:37:57,160 --> 00:37:59,439
Speaker 3: was a good citizen. He helped his town, he helped

804
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 3: his friends. That's what I would want it to say,

805
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 3: and I think most people would be like close to that.

806
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 2: Not Morgan's bought a really cool red Ferrari.

807
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 3: You automatically know what is not in there, which is

808
00:38:09,640 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 3: your salary, the square footage of your house, the horsepower

809
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 3: of your car. It would be be completely absurd to

810
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 3: put that, and you would automatically say, what an absolutely

811
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 3: hollow life it is.

812
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:19,560
Speaker 2: If that's what I.

813
00:38:19,560 --> 00:38:21,759
Speaker 3: Could put in my obituary was how much money I made,

814
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:24,520
Speaker 3: how much money I saved? What a completely useless life?

815
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 3: And so I think automatically it pushes people to realizing

816
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:29,560
Speaker 3: what they actually want out of life, what they actually

817
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 3: aspire to. And I think the gap between what you

818
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:38,360
Speaker 3: are aspiring to today versus what you know intuitively you

819
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 3: want your obituary to say, which you want to accomplish

820
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,760
Speaker 3: over the long term, can be huge. Maybe not for everybody,

821
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 3: maybybe there's some people that truly are living the life

822
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,799
Speaker 3: of their reverse obituary. But I think it's a good

823
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,840
Speaker 3: exercise to really clarify what you want out of life.

824
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 2: I lie, that wasn't the last question. I have so

825
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,799
Speaker 2: many You're leading me down so many paths, starting with

826
00:38:59,160 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 2: nothing's worse than getting what you want but not what

827
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:02,600
Speaker 2: you need.

828
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of that, because if you are

829
00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 3: fortunate enough to have a lot of money, earn a

830
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 3: lot of money, save a lot of money, sometimes that's

831
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:11,919
Speaker 3: what that's what you want, that's that's exactly what you wanted,

832
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 3: that's what you set out to achieve, and you got it, congratulations.

833
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 3: But very often it's not what you need. What you

834
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 3: needed were relationships, health, mental, clarity, clear conscious that's what

835
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:24,440
Speaker 3: you needed, and that's what would.

836
00:39:24,200 --> 00:39:26,960
Speaker 4: Actually feed your soul. And so I use the example

837
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 4: in the book.

838
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 3: You cited this earlier when we were hanging out among

839
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 3: the top ten richest men in the world. There are

840
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 3: accumulative fifteen divorces, and so they have everything that they

841
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 3: wanted in terms of money and lifestyle and possessions, and

842
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:43,279
Speaker 3: a lot of them, without passing too much judgment, at

843
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 3: least at various times, did not have what they what

844
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:48,240
Speaker 3: they needed, but they absolutely needed. And you can imagine

845
00:39:48,239 --> 00:39:50,759
Speaker 3: too that the ninety five year old millionaire who's in

846
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 3: very poor health. Everything he wants, not what he needs

847
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:54,920
Speaker 3: kind of thing. But I think that that afflicts a

848
00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 3: lot of people.

849
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:57,799
Speaker 2: You know, I'm trying to remember who it was. Might

850
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:00,720
Speaker 2: have been Noah Smith. We were involved in a group

851
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 2: discussion on wealth and happiness, and I think it was

852
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 2: Noah who said, you have to break the world into

853
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,880
Speaker 2: two groups. And the group that's been divorced or is

854
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:14,360
Speaker 2: in the middle of going through a divorce, the curve

855
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:18,680
Speaker 2: of their happiness relative to their money looks totally different.

856
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 2: That it's such a miserable experience. Almost no amount of

857
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 2: money is going to change their headspace. And you wrote

858
00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 2: something related to that, which is unhappy people, regardless of

859
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:34,600
Speaker 2: how much wealth they have, are always going to be unhappy.

860
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 2: That has to be and happy people the more money

861
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 2: they get up into a certain point continues to bring

862
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 2: at least some degree of happiness and perhaps some contentment.

863
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:49,359
Speaker 2: How true is that? Are some people just unhappy and

864
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:51,040
Speaker 2: nothing is ever going to change that? Yeah?

865
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 4: I think that's true.

866
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:53,520
Speaker 3: I mean, that's one of the most important little quirks

867
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 3: of the broader topic of the relationship between money and happiness.

868
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 3: Does earning more money make you happy. The asterisk there

869
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:04,440
Speaker 3: is that if you start out as an unhappy, anxious,

870
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:07,239
Speaker 3: depressed person, it's unlikely that earning money is going to

871
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 3: make you happier. It's not going to fill the hole

872
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 3: that you needed to fill. But if you start out

873
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 3: as a pretty happy, joyful, healthy, content person, earning more

874
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 3: money is leverage on who you already are. So like

875
00:41:17,560 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 3: in either direction, it's just leveraging who you already were.

876
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:20,719
Speaker 4: To begin with.

877
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 3: And so yes, you can find lots of examples of

878
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 3: people who earned a lot of money and had an

879
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:27,480
Speaker 3: amazing life. The money made them very happy. Most of

880
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,359
Speaker 3: those people still would have been happy anyways if they

881
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 3: earned less. And we can find plenty of examples of

882
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:35,400
Speaker 3: the cranky, old, crotchety billionaire, and they probably would have

883
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 3: been cranky and croachy. There's no amount of money or

884
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:39,319
Speaker 3: success that would have changed that.

885
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 4: At its core.

886
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 2: That's really amazing, really the last question. So right now,

887
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,359
Speaker 2: the Psychology of Money is on pace to hit ten

888
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 2: million copies, since this segment is on your writing process

889
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,640
Speaker 2: as you were putting this together, and I remember speaking

890
00:41:55,680 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 2: with you as you were writing this and stitching together

891
00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:02,040
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of work. Did you have any idea, Hey,

892
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 2: I'm onto something, or did it just feel like I

893
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:06,399
Speaker 2: got a deadline and I'm not going to make.

894
00:42:07,200 --> 00:42:10,160
Speaker 3: One hundred percent the ladder one hundred percent the ladder.

895
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 3: I think it's true that in many aspects of life

896
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 3: that ninety percent of virality is luck, or it's to

897
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:17,360
Speaker 3: you what we're talk talking about.

898
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 2: Derek Tom repeated and hit makers and how random hit

899
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 2: records are, and the impressionists, and that book just goes

900
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:32,640
Speaker 2: through a run of Hey but for this, this, and this,

901
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 2: none of these things would be well known and beloved.

902
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:38,400
Speaker 2: Is it really ninety percent?

903
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:40,719
Speaker 3: That's a wild number, and sometimes I'm making that up,

904
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:41,839
Speaker 3: but that's what it feels like. I mean, the first

905
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 3: print run of Psychology Money was five thousand copies because

906
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 3: all the data that we had at the time was

907
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 3: that would be a big success. And if you know

908
00:42:48,640 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 3: anything about publishing, selling five thousand books is no small

909
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 3: feet right to get five thousand people to pull out

910
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:56,960
Speaker 3: their credit cards and pay for your words. That's that's

911
00:42:57,000 --> 00:42:59,600
Speaker 3: that's a that's that's a success. Can I tell you

912
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 3: it's so funny you say that.

913
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 2: So I read the initial manuscript over the summer, and

914
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:10,120
Speaker 2: then the hard copy shows up a couple of weeks ago,

915
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 2: and I went through it a second time. And as

916
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 2: I'm reading it, I'm sitting on a big, comfortable chair

917
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:21,240
Speaker 2: in a well lit room with a lovely view out back,

918
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, you know, I don't really need a

919
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:27,440
Speaker 2: lot of money to be happiness. I just need twenty

920
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:30,400
Speaker 2: seven bucks to buy a book to read each week.

921
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:33,840
Speaker 2: And what is more delightful than either lying in a

922
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 2: hammock or sitting in a comfy chair and taking two

923
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 2: thousand hours of somebody's intellectual output for twenty seven bucks.

924
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:46,240
Speaker 2: Is there a bigger bargain in all of the world

925
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:49,719
Speaker 2: than purchasing a well written book and a.

926
00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:52,879
Speaker 3: Thirty dollars hammock and a nice view and a warm

927
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 3: cup of coffee doesn't take that much.

928
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:58,359
Speaker 2: A cup of tea when I'm reading absolutely coming up,

929
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:02,440
Speaker 2: we continue our conversation with Morgan Housel, author of the

930
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:07,360
Speaker 2: best selling book Psychology of Money, discussing how he writes books,

931
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:11,920
Speaker 2: essays and columns. I'm Barry Results. You're listening to Master's

932
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 2: Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Redults. You're listening to

933
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:34,560
Speaker 2: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest

934
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 2: is Morgan Housel. He is the best selling author of

935
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 2: Psychology of Money as well as Same as Ever his

936
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 2: latest book, The Art of Spending Money, Simple Choices for

937
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:49,440
Speaker 2: a Richer Life. So the book shifts from your previous

938
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,360
Speaker 2: writing how we think about money, how we make money,

939
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:58,279
Speaker 2: to how we actually use it. What inspired that pivot, I.

940
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:00,360
Speaker 3: Think a lot of it was if you asked me

941
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 3: five years ago what my investing philosophy is. I could

942
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 3: sit here for hours and tell you my philosophy is

943
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:09,160
Speaker 3: of investing and why I do what I do, and

944
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:10,880
Speaker 3: what the logic is behind it and how it fits

945
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:12,400
Speaker 3: my person. I could talk to you all day about that,

946
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:14,040
Speaker 3: and you and I have over the years talk about

947
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 3: that topic. But if you ask me five years ago,

948
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:18,239
Speaker 3: what is my spending philosophy? How do my wife and

949
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 3: I think about how we spend our money? And I

950
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:22,960
Speaker 3: couldn't really tell you anything. I hadn't really thought about it.

951
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:25,799
Speaker 3: And as I look to there are literally tens of

952
00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 3: thousands of books written about how to grow wealth. Tens

953
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 3: of thousands of books written about how to grow wealth,

954
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:32,279
Speaker 3: virtually none written about what to.

955
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:33,759
Speaker 2: Do with it.

956
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:35,719
Speaker 3: It's one of the few areas in finance that has

957
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 3: not been trampled over yet. And I think part of

958
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:40,760
Speaker 3: the reason why is because we intuitively assume that nothing

959
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,319
Speaker 3: needs to be said about it, that yes, we know

960
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 3: how complex markets are, and so we can talk all

961
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:48,160
Speaker 3: day about the intricacies of it. But when you talk

962
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 3: about like spending money, I think most people's intuition at

963
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:54,000
Speaker 3: least is like, you just spend it, you just buy things,

964
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:56,759
Speaker 3: and then it's better, So it's all good. And I think,

965
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:00,360
Speaker 3: but if you observe people, rich people, poor people, everybody

966
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:02,719
Speaker 3: in between, you realize it's not that simple. That there

967
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 3: are some people who have gotten a lot out of

968
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 3: spending money, have done it very well, have used it

969
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:09,319
Speaker 3: as a tool to live a better life, and there's

970
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:11,279
Speaker 3: probably an equal number of people who've done a very

971
00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 3: poor job about it, for whom it controlled their personality

972
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:17,799
Speaker 3: equal a lot more, maybe more, they were chasing a

973
00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 3: phantom life that they could never keep up with. They

974
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 3: were constantly torture mentally tortured by keeping up with the Jones.

975
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:26,439
Speaker 3: Is that kind of thing that's actually that's like, there's

976
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:29,160
Speaker 3: such a deep psychology of it in there, and so

977
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:31,839
Speaker 3: what the book does is I don't tell you how

978
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 3: to spend because I don't know you.

979
00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:36,560
Speaker 2: I don't say very subjective and very subjective. It's called

980
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 2: the art of spending money, not the science of spending money.

981
00:46:39,560 --> 00:46:42,280
Speaker 3: Right, and which also mirrors how I think about investing.

982
00:46:42,280 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 3: I don't think there's one right way to invest. People

983
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 3: have very different personalities, different risk tolerances and whatnot, and

984
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 3: it's the same for spending. But I think the psychology

985
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 3: of how people think about envy and contentment and happiness

986
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:55,840
Speaker 3: and social aspiration that tends to be universal.

987
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 4: So that's what the book digs into.

988
00:46:57,520 --> 00:47:00,120
Speaker 2: I love the quote, and I don't remember who I'm

989
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:04,279
Speaker 2: stealing this from. Nothing is more infuriating than seeing your

990
00:47:04,320 --> 00:47:06,080
Speaker 2: idiot brother in law get rich.

991
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 4: That was JP Morgan.

992
00:47:07,280 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 2: Unbelievable, right, absolutely true. There's a quote of yours that

993
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 2: I'm not going to steal. I'll give you credit. And

994
00:47:14,640 --> 00:47:19,359
Speaker 2: this speaks right to how subjective our experiences are. Your

995
00:47:19,400 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 2: personal experiences make up maybe point zero zero zero zero

996
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,520
Speaker 2: zero zero zero one percent of what's happened in the world,

997
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:31,920
Speaker 2: but perhaps eighty percent of how you think the world works.

998
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:33,640
Speaker 2: I love that quote.

999
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 3: Explain it, you see it a lot in a lot

1000
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:38,920
Speaker 3: of fields, particularly politics. Of the life that you have lived,

1001
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:41,319
Speaker 3: the experiences you've had, the town that you live in,

1002
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:44,839
Speaker 3: the employment situation that you face during your life, makes

1003
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 3: up your view of the world, your model of how

1004
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 3: the world works, and therefore it influences what you think

1005
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 3: should happen next. And virtually everybody does this, that what

1006
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:56,400
Speaker 3: you have nothing is more persuasive than what you've experienced firsthand.

1007
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 3: And you can go out of your way to try

1008
00:47:58,200 --> 00:48:00,680
Speaker 3: to understand other people and be empathy of what they've

1009
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 3: been through, but nothing makes more sense to you than

1010
00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 3: what happened to you personally. And since we've all had

1011
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,439
Speaker 3: very vastly different lives, different generations, different countries, different parts

1012
00:48:10,440 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 3: of the world, we all have different models of how

1013
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:17,279
Speaker 3: we think the world works. And it's you know, a

1014
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 3: criticism of my first book, The Psychology Money, were people

1015
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,120
Speaker 3: who would write and say what you wrote might be

1016
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 3: true for a college educated white American male, but it

1017
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:29,520
Speaker 3: is what you are, which is what I am guilty

1018
00:48:29,520 --> 00:48:31,080
Speaker 3: of stories. But they would say in a way that

1019
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 3: they were absolutely right to say, it's different for me

1020
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:36,839
Speaker 3: in this country, in this generation, whatever it may have been,

1021
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:38,520
Speaker 3: And I would say, yes, I totally get that. I

1022
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 3: try to make the point in the book, but I'm

1023
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 3: still beholden to the lens that I have lived, as

1024
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 3: everybody is.

1025
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 2: You know, the greatest thing you could do to get

1026
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 2: out of your own little bubble is just travel across

1027
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 2: the country by car, and suddenly you realize, oh, now

1028
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,760
Speaker 2: I understand. This is why farmers say what they say.

1029
00:48:56,800 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 2: This is why people out in the Midwest vote the

1030
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 2: way they do the country or the world. And it's

1031
00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 2: really a shame that less than fifty percent. I don't

1032
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 2: know if the statistic is still true, less than fifty

1033
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 2: percent of Americans have a passport used to be a

1034
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:15,200
Speaker 2: data point. I don't know if that's still correct. But

1035
00:49:15,320 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 2: you get out in the rest of the world and

1036
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 2: suddenly you say, oh, we're not the only ones who

1037
00:49:19,080 --> 00:49:23,160
Speaker 2: know how to do this. Other countries do this specific

1038
00:49:23,280 --> 00:49:26,280
Speaker 2: thing better than us. We need to be more open

1039
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,040
Speaker 2: minded about our narrow little experience.

1040
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:30,240
Speaker 4: And the better question.

1041
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:33,120
Speaker 3: If you see someone who thinks or acts very differently

1042
00:49:33,120 --> 00:49:35,560
Speaker 3: than you, the question you want to ask is not

1043
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:36,880
Speaker 3: why do you believe that?

1044
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:39,000
Speaker 2: It's would I believe.

1045
00:49:38,719 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 3: The same thing if I were living in your life

1046
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 3: and almost all the time. The answer is yes, that

1047
00:49:43,160 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 3: if you were the farmer, you would also vote the

1048
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:47,879
Speaker 3: same way that if you lived in Russia or China

1049
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:49,759
Speaker 3: or Venezuela, you would also think the same way as

1050
00:49:49,760 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 3: they do. And so it's very easy to criticize them,

1051
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:55,839
Speaker 3: like you know, to criticize other people. Look at how

1052
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 3: dumb they are making these decisions when you would do

1053
00:49:58,360 --> 00:50:00,480
Speaker 3: the exact same thing if you were in there sit So.

1054
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:03,279
Speaker 2: Let's get focused on the book, because there are some

1055
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 2: wonderful quotes and wonderful chapters in it. One of the

1056
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 2: themes throughout is the trade off between wealth as a

1057
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:16,320
Speaker 2: source of freedom versus riches as a status symbol. Explain

1058
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:16,880
Speaker 2: the difference.

1059
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:19,520
Speaker 3: I make up these definitions, so this is just my

1060
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:22,680
Speaker 3: view of it, but I would define rich as you

1061
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:25,520
Speaker 3: have the income to buy the things you want. You

1062
00:50:25,560 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 3: can make your mortgage payment, you can make your car

1063
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:30,720
Speaker 3: lease payment, whatever, you can purchase the lifestyle you want. Wealth,

1064
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 3: I would say, is having some level of independence over

1065
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 3: both financial independence in order the ability to work where

1066
00:50:37,600 --> 00:50:40,279
Speaker 3: you want as often as you want, is take time

1067
00:50:40,320 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 3: off when you need to, retire when you want to.

1068
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:45,800
Speaker 3: But also like intellectual independence, you don't have to pander

1069
00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:47,400
Speaker 3: to other people. You don't have to pander to a

1070
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:50,000
Speaker 3: boss or to clients or two regulators. You have the

1071
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:53,160
Speaker 3: independence to be who you are and wake up every

1072
00:50:53,200 --> 00:50:55,240
Speaker 3: morning and say I can do whatever I want today.

1073
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:56,320
Speaker 2: That's wealth.

1074
00:50:56,840 --> 00:50:58,879
Speaker 3: And the interesting thing is there are people who make

1075
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,400
Speaker 3: millions of dollars a year who are rich and have

1076
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 3: no wealth whatsoever. And there are people who make fifty

1077
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:06,440
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a year who are not rich and are

1078
00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,840
Speaker 3: extremely wealthy and their ability. For example, I use the

1079
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 3: example of my late grandmother in law on the book.

1080
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 3: For thirty years she lived off of nothing but seventeen

1081
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 3: or eighteen hundred dollars a month in social security. She

1082
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 3: had no pension, no assets, no n she was broke,

1083
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:23,600
Speaker 3: seventeen hundred bucks a month soci security. Happiest woman you

1084
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:26,279
Speaker 3: ever mean in your life, happiest woman you will ever meet.

1085
00:51:26,440 --> 00:51:26,640
Speaker 2: Ever.

1086
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:29,759
Speaker 3: She was perfectly content. She had no money, but she

1087
00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:32,759
Speaker 3: didn't want any of it. She was totally happy and

1088
00:51:32,800 --> 00:51:35,680
Speaker 3: content working in her garden and going for walks and

1089
00:51:35,719 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 3: like bird watching with her friends. It's all she wanted

1090
00:51:37,800 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 3: to do. And so she had no financial wealth and

1091
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 3: she was like off the charts. Psychological wealth. She had

1092
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 3: total control over her expectations. Part of it was she

1093
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 3: was a child of the Great Depression, and like that.

1094
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 3: I'm sure that had an impact on it. Back to

1095
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 3: you know, we're just mirrors of our past experiences. But

1096
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 3: you and I know people who are extremely wealthy on

1097
00:51:56,680 --> 00:51:59,520
Speaker 3: paper who are the opposite. They might be billionaires, they

1098
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,279
Speaker 3: have financial wealth, and they have no psychological wealth. And

1099
00:52:02,400 --> 00:52:04,920
Speaker 3: unlike my late grandmother in law, she they wake up

1100
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 3: every morning being like it's not enough.

1101
00:52:06,520 --> 00:52:08,359
Speaker 4: I need more, I need more, I need more.

1102
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 3: So the difference between financial wealth and psychological wealth is

1103
00:52:11,239 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 3: a big part of it.

1104
00:52:12,680 --> 00:52:17,400
Speaker 2: The most valuable financial asset is not needing to impress anyone.

1105
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:21,520
Speaker 2: The ability to not need to prove yourself to strangers

1106
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:26,040
Speaker 2: is priceless. I heard this how much of our bad

1107
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:33,319
Speaker 2: spending behavior is just simple, simple primate status seeking within

1108
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 2: the tribe.

1109
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:36,720
Speaker 4: I think a tremendous amount of it. Man, you don't need.

1110
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 3: To be to look very far to see that. I

1111
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 3: heard this great quote from the comedian Jimmy Carr recently.

1112
00:52:42,120 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 3: He said, in your twenties, most people worry about what

1113
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:47,239
Speaker 3: other people think of them. In your thirties, you say,

1114
00:52:47,239 --> 00:52:49,319
Speaker 3: I don't care what anybody thinks of me, And in

1115
00:52:49,360 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 3: your forties you finally realize the truth, which is that

1116
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:53,160
Speaker 3: nobody was thinking about you all a lot.

1117
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 4: And it's such a.

1118
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:58,320
Speaker 3: Wonderful It's such a wonderful quote the idea that nobody

1119
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 3: is thinking about you as much as you are, and

1120
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:03,600
Speaker 3: nobody cares about your house, your clothes, your jewelry, nobody

1121
00:53:03,640 --> 00:53:04,920
Speaker 3: cares about it as much as you do.

1122
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 2: They're busy worrying about themselves.

1123
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:09,799
Speaker 3: I think that realization, at least for me, was so

1124
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:12,840
Speaker 3: liberating to be like, look, why am I trying to

1125
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 3: peacock for strangers if they're not even paying attention. What

1126
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:17,800
Speaker 3: I want to do is use money as a tool

1127
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:20,640
Speaker 3: to help the things and lever the things that actually

1128
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:24,879
Speaker 3: make me happy, which is time with my kids, health, independence,

1129
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:27,759
Speaker 3: Like those things are great. But to the extent that

1130
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:30,720
Speaker 3: I'm just using it to try to gain the attention

1131
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:33,560
Speaker 3: of strangers who are too wrapped up in their own

1132
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 3: heads to even pay attention to me, then that was

1133
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 3: That was a very freeing and liberating moment.

1134
00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:42,480
Speaker 2: The spotlight bias is fascinating because we're all the lead

1135
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:46,480
Speaker 2: characters in our own story, but in everybody else's story. We're,

1136
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 2: you know, walking on actors extras just in the background.

1137
00:53:50,640 --> 00:53:52,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I remember seeing this study of they

1138
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 3: would take somebody and put them in like an ugly sweater,

1139
00:53:56,800 --> 00:53:58,800
Speaker 3: and then they would send them into a party and

1140
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:00,959
Speaker 3: then they would you know, the person would mingle around

1141
00:54:01,000 --> 00:54:03,640
Speaker 3: the party in this hideous sweater, and then they would

1142
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:06,239
Speaker 3: ask everybody else at the party, did you notice the

1143
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:07,280
Speaker 3: woman in the ugly sweater?

1144
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:09,680
Speaker 4: And everyone's like, no, no, no, didn't pay anytime.

1145
00:54:09,760 --> 00:54:11,399
Speaker 2: I have a pimple over here that I've been thinking

1146
00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:12,200
Speaker 2: about the whole time.

1147
00:54:12,239 --> 00:54:14,120
Speaker 3: But if you asked the woman who was wearing the

1148
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 3: ugly sweater the test subject, how many people notice? She

1149
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:20,839
Speaker 3: basically says everybody. We always overestimate the extent that other

1150
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:21,719
Speaker 3: people are thinking of us.

1151
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:27,080
Speaker 2: Huh, that's amazing. Let's talk about time. Money's greatest intrinsic value,

1152
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 2: and this can't be overstated. You wrote is its ability

1153
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,799
Speaker 2: to give you control over your time. So we know

1154
00:54:33,920 --> 00:54:36,560
Speaker 2: that's very true when it comes to earning money and

1155
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,080
Speaker 2: investing money. Is it true when it comes to spending.

1156
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 4: I've been a big saver for my whole career. I

1157
00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:43,759
Speaker 4: know you have as well.

1158
00:54:44,200 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 3: You know I live blow, I mean save and invest

1159
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:49,080
Speaker 3: the majority of what I make, and I've never viewed

1160
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 3: it as saving money or delayed gratification. I think I

1161
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:55,560
Speaker 3: always viewed it as purchasing independence and I get a

1162
00:54:55,600 --> 00:54:59,279
Speaker 3: benefit out of that right now today. And I think that,

1163
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:02,080
Speaker 3: like very simple reframing of it is important. If you

1164
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:05,880
Speaker 3: view it as saving money, idle money, delayed gratification, it

1165
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 3: feels like a burden.

1166
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 2: It feels like work, and.

1167
00:55:07,760 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 3: It feels like, yes, I have this wealth, but I

1168
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:12,359
Speaker 3: need to go deploy it like quickly. I think if

1169
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:14,799
Speaker 3: you view it as every dollar that I save is

1170
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:17,360
Speaker 3: a piece of my future that I own, and I

1171
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:20,360
Speaker 3: get benefit out of that right now. I get benefit

1172
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:22,960
Speaker 3: out of knowing that I'm independent today, it's not delayed.

1173
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 3: That's been an important shift in thinking for me that

1174
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:29,760
Speaker 3: all I want out of money is to be independent.

1175
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:31,080
Speaker 3: I just want to be able to wake up every

1176
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 3: day and say I can do whatever I want today,

1177
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:35,320
Speaker 3: even if most days I wake up and say I

1178
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:36,320
Speaker 3: want to work today.

1179
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:37,200
Speaker 4: I want to be productive.

1180
00:55:37,960 --> 00:55:39,960
Speaker 3: It's my choice, and I can do it on my

1181
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 3: terms with the people who I like, and quit when

1182
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 3: I want to do what I want to. That is

1183
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 3: more valuable than any material possession you can have.

1184
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 2: I really didn't start spending money until my fifties. Like,

1185
00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,160
Speaker 2: I was a worker saver for most of my life,

1186
00:55:55,200 --> 00:55:58,200
Speaker 2: and it was only you know once. I never had

1187
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:02,000
Speaker 2: a midlife crisis. But you start to realize, and certainly

1188
00:56:02,040 --> 00:56:06,759
Speaker 2: the pandemic, I think very much made everybody realize, Hey,

1189
00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:08,960
Speaker 2: life is short and you never know when your number

1190
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:12,160
Speaker 2: comes up? So what am I waiting for? I think

1191
00:56:12,200 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 2: there was a lot of that going on. Have you

1192
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:18,239
Speaker 2: made that pivot? Have you? Like? Because I know I

1193
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 2: recall when you were in DC and you were looking

1194
00:56:20,360 --> 00:56:24,319
Speaker 2: for houses back on the West Coast. I remember you

1195
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:27,319
Speaker 2: wrestling with do I really want to buy a big house?

1196
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:31,040
Speaker 2: How many kids we can have? How has that spending

1197
00:56:31,080 --> 00:56:34,600
Speaker 2: decision felt? How has yours personal spending change?

1198
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:36,840
Speaker 3: My wife and I have loosened up over the years.

1199
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:39,440
Speaker 3: Very You and I have known each other for fifteen years,

1200
00:56:39,480 --> 00:56:42,000
Speaker 3: and we've been We've spent a lot of time personally

1201
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:43,720
Speaker 3: together talking about our own lives and whatnot.

1202
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:44,520
Speaker 4: And you've known and.

1203
00:56:44,520 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 3: I think you've probably given me playful grief about how

1204
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:49,640
Speaker 3: cheap I used to be. It's always been a thing

1205
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:52,239
Speaker 3: I've always been, or I was for a long time,

1206
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:54,360
Speaker 3: very cheap, but my wife and I were totally content,

1207
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 3: and it always kind of not bothered me. But I've

1208
00:56:57,080 --> 00:56:59,600
Speaker 3: always found it interesting that people would give me so

1209
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 3: much reef about how little I spent when the truth was,

1210
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:04,600
Speaker 3: like we were, we were living a great life. We're

1211
00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:07,880
Speaker 3: at we're thrilled with what we did, and we've loosened up.

1212
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 3: We spend considerably more money now than we did five

1213
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:13,000
Speaker 3: or ten years ago, but it's always just been on

1214
00:57:13,040 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 3: the framework of independence, because the truth was, ten years ago,

1215
00:57:16,240 --> 00:57:17,480
Speaker 3: I bought anything I wanted.

1216
00:57:17,560 --> 00:57:20,000
Speaker 4: It just wasn't that much, just didn't want that much.

1217
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:22,880
Speaker 3: And today we buy anything we want, and it's just

1218
00:57:23,080 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 3: marginally a little bit more because we have kids and

1219
00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 3: we've we've found new things that bring us joy and whatnot.

1220
00:57:28,160 --> 00:57:30,280
Speaker 3: And so it's always been I always feel like we've

1221
00:57:30,280 --> 00:57:32,640
Speaker 3: been in control over it, even when we are very frugal,

1222
00:57:32,760 --> 00:57:34,400
Speaker 3: or today when we've loosened up a little bit, it's

1223
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:39,240
Speaker 3: always been our choice, not pushed or forced about by

1224
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 3: social forces and society and marketing.

1225
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:45,880
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny, my wife is the conservative spender.

1226
00:57:46,720 --> 00:57:50,600
Speaker 2: I'm I'm the value conscious spendthrift now, so I will

1227
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 2: buy stuff, but I have to feel like I'm getting

1228
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:59,320
Speaker 2: value for money. All the junk I've bought over the years, watches, cars, houses, whatever,

1229
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:01,840
Speaker 2: every thing I own, I could sell for more than

1230
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 2: I paid, because I feel like like I can't imagine

1231
00:58:06,480 --> 00:58:11,160
Speaker 2: walking into a dealership and saying to the manager of

1232
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:16,240
Speaker 2: the Ferrari Ferrari of Long Island, I'll take that five

1233
00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:18,960
Speaker 2: hundred dollars. It's unconscionable to me.

1234
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:20,920
Speaker 3: It's never too late for a midlife crisis, though you

1235
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 3: can still figure it out.

1236
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:26,120
Speaker 2: You know, it's not so much a midlife crisis as

1237
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:29,120
Speaker 2: it's been a post pandemic. Life is short. What are

1238
00:58:29,160 --> 00:58:32,920
Speaker 2: you waiting for? And in the office, we are constantly

1239
00:58:33,040 --> 00:58:36,880
Speaker 2: telling clients true story. I get a call from a

1240
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,280
Speaker 2: client wants to buy a Ferrari, wants to buy a

1241
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 2: sail boat, and someone says, oh, Barry's boater and he's

1242
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:45,120
Speaker 2: a car guy. I talked to him and the answer

1243
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 2: I told him is, you've never been a sailer. Why

1244
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 2: are you going to spend two million dollars on a

1245
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 2: fifty foot sailboat that a needs a crew and b

1246
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 2: you'll use twice and sell for a half a million

1247
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:59,840
Speaker 2: dollar depreciation. But by the way, this guy can buy

1248
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 2: a month for the rest of his life and still

1249
00:59:01,920 --> 00:59:05,080
Speaker 2: leave a nice estate to his kids. Go buy the Ferrari,

1250
00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:07,920
Speaker 2: and not only by the Ferrari. Take the kids to

1251
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:13,160
Speaker 2: the Ferrari High Performance Driving class, which the dirty secret

1252
00:59:13,200 --> 00:59:18,840
Speaker 2: about all these racing schools are effectively defensive driving courses.

1253
00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:22,240
Speaker 2: In drag, it's all about staying within your skill set,

1254
00:59:22,520 --> 00:59:25,320
Speaker 2: staying within the parameters what the car can do. You

1255
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:28,800
Speaker 2: become a better safer driver, even though it's about epets,

1256
00:59:28,880 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 2: turns and high high speed driving. And he did He

1257
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 2: did that. He bought the Ferrari, loves it, took the

1258
00:59:35,920 --> 00:59:39,560
Speaker 2: fam to the course, everybody had a great time with

1259
00:59:39,800 --> 00:59:42,320
Speaker 2: the boat, sold it a year later, took a big hit.

1260
00:59:42,600 --> 00:59:46,200
Speaker 2: I'm not allowed to mention the boat anymore so, but.

1261
00:59:46,160 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 3: I think I think you could easily imagine a client

1262
00:59:48,360 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 3: that was the opposite that they're like. Sailing has always

1263
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:55,280
Speaker 3: been my dream, change my life, absolutely, and and they

1264
00:59:55,320 --> 00:59:56,920
Speaker 3: loved it. And they also bought a Ferrari, and a

1265
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:58,160
Speaker 3: week later said why did I do this?

1266
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:01,040
Speaker 2: It really depends on who you are. The joke about

1267
01:00:01,400 --> 01:00:05,160
Speaker 2: boaters is every boater's favorite boat is their second to last,

1268
01:00:05,400 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 2: because they only always go one step too far. Now, no, no,

1269
01:00:08,800 --> 01:00:12,160
Speaker 2: the forty foot was plenty. I don't need a giant whatever.

1270
01:00:12,360 --> 01:00:16,440
Speaker 2: But that's very much a case. So let's bring this

1271
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:21,240
Speaker 2: back to the book and spending. Talk about the connection

1272
01:00:21,400 --> 01:00:27,160
Speaker 2: between money and happiness and what is spending for contentment mean?

1273
01:00:27,680 --> 01:00:29,480
Speaker 2: How does happiness and contentment differ.

1274
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:32,320
Speaker 3: I think one of the issues with money and happiness

1275
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:34,800
Speaker 3: is that we chase the wrong emotion. We chase happiness,

1276
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 3: and it seems very well intentioned. Of course, I want

1277
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:38,680
Speaker 3: to be happier. You want to be happier, that's great.

1278
01:00:39,240 --> 01:00:41,440
Speaker 3: The problem is that happiness is always a fleeting emotion.

1279
01:00:42,360 --> 01:00:44,800
Speaker 3: People are rarely happy for more than a couple minutes

1280
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:46,880
Speaker 3: at a time. I think it's very similar to humor,

1281
01:00:47,200 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 3: where if I told you the funniest joke you've ever heard,

1282
01:00:49,800 --> 01:00:51,280
Speaker 3: you laugh for a couple of minutes.

1283
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:53,840
Speaker 2: A couple seconds, you don't last at the next you don't.

1284
01:00:53,680 --> 01:00:55,800
Speaker 3: Last for ten years, laugh for ten years, and just

1285
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:56,480
Speaker 3: doesn't work that way.

1286
01:00:56,520 --> 01:00:57,280
Speaker 2: It's always fleeting.

1287
01:00:57,640 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 3: So I think when you daydream about the new house,

1288
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:03,240
Speaker 3: the new car, the boat, when you daydream about how

1289
01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:06,280
Speaker 3: great that will feel, buy and large, what you are

1290
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:09,880
Speaker 3: imagining is being content with those things. You imagine yourself

1291
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:12,160
Speaker 3: in the future house, sitting in the living room, and

1292
01:01:12,160 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 3: what you actually imagine is yourself being saying I'm good,

1293
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 3: I'm totally I don't need anything bigger. This is what

1294
01:01:17,880 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 3: That's what feels good, the like picturing and imagining contentment

1295
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 3: feels amazing. And I think that's what people should aspire to,

1296
01:01:24,680 --> 01:01:28,720
Speaker 3: not necessarily happiness by contentment. And I think that's always

1297
01:01:28,720 --> 01:01:31,120
Speaker 3: a goal, because you're not truly independent if you're not

1298
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:32,200
Speaker 3: fully content.

1299
01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:35,240
Speaker 2: You know. That's to me, that's the value of buying

1300
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:38,440
Speaker 2: a lottery ticket for two bucks. Isn't the one in

1301
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:40,240
Speaker 2: a billion chance that you're going to win one hundred

1302
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:43,200
Speaker 2: million dollars. It's the twenty minutes you get to sit

1303
01:01:43,280 --> 01:01:45,600
Speaker 2: around joking about what you would do with one hundred

1304
01:01:45,640 --> 01:01:47,360
Speaker 2: million dollars. That's fun.

1305
01:01:47,440 --> 01:01:47,960
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course.

1306
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:52,000
Speaker 2: I remember having an argument with my sister we were kids.

1307
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:54,200
Speaker 2: What do you mean you wouldn't buy me a car?

1308
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:57,200
Speaker 2: All right, maybe I'd buy everybody a car? What about this?

1309
01:01:57,280 --> 01:01:59,720
Speaker 2: What about buying a half? And it was we were

1310
01:01:59,720 --> 01:02:03,480
Speaker 2: having this hilarious debate. No one want anything was the

1311
01:02:03,600 --> 01:02:08,480
Speaker 2: dollar lottery ticket? So that's always fascinating. I love the

1312
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,240
Speaker 2: story that Cal Richards tells. For people who don't know

1313
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:14,240
Speaker 2: who call Richard is. He's the sketch guy does these

1314
01:02:14,280 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 2: wonderful little diagrams. Had a New York Times calm for

1315
01:02:17,360 --> 01:02:20,520
Speaker 2: a long time, and he tells a story of being

1316
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:24,480
Speaker 2: big biker, loves cross country biking. There was a bike

1317
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:28,200
Speaker 2: he was jonesing for six thousand dollars for this really

1318
01:02:28,760 --> 01:02:33,360
Speaker 2: high end, ultra lightweight titanium bank bike, and he couldn't

1319
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:36,080
Speaker 2: bring himself to pull the trigger. And his wife says,

1320
01:02:36,280 --> 01:02:39,280
Speaker 2: you bike four times a week, go buy it. And

1321
01:02:39,360 --> 01:02:41,720
Speaker 2: he said a year later, it's the best purchase he

1322
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:43,960
Speaker 2: ever made. He goes out with friends, he has these

1323
01:02:44,000 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 2: memories from it. It's just been wonderful. How do you

1324
01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:52,720
Speaker 2: distinguish between the purchases that are going to bring you

1325
01:02:52,840 --> 01:02:57,520
Speaker 2: joy and the purchases that are just empty, unsatisfying babbles.

1326
01:02:57,600 --> 01:02:59,040
Speaker 3: I think you kind of hit the nail on the

1327
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:01,520
Speaker 3: head there when you said Carl buying the bike, it

1328
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:03,560
Speaker 3: was great because of the experience, because he goes out

1329
01:03:03,600 --> 01:03:05,720
Speaker 3: with his friends and he creates all these memories with

1330
01:03:05,800 --> 01:03:08,120
Speaker 3: and like that's what made him happy, not necessarily the bike.

1331
01:03:08,160 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 3: It was what the bike allowed him to do. I

1332
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:12,400
Speaker 3: think it's similar for homes, where, well, buying a big

1333
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:15,880
Speaker 3: mansion make you happier, The answer might be yes, if

1334
01:03:15,880 --> 01:03:17,920
Speaker 3: it makes it easier to have your friends over and

1335
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 3: have your If.

1336
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 2: You tell in the book about people who have houses

1337
01:03:22,680 --> 01:03:26,320
Speaker 2: that feel like hotels are so large needs a staff

1338
01:03:26,360 --> 01:03:29,560
Speaker 2: of four hundred to run, nobody's happy in those houses.

1339
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:30,880
Speaker 3: Right, And you can compare that to someone who lives

1340
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:33,080
Speaker 3: in a fifteen hundred square for the house but has

1341
01:03:33,120 --> 01:03:35,080
Speaker 3: their friends over every Friday for a barbecue and they

1342
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:36,919
Speaker 3: stay up till one in the morning, laughing with each other.

1343
01:03:37,120 --> 01:03:38,720
Speaker 2: That's a better life. That's a way better.

1344
01:03:38,960 --> 01:03:41,720
Speaker 3: So it's not what the possessions can do, it's how

1345
01:03:41,760 --> 01:03:44,960
Speaker 3: can they or what the possessions are. It's how they

1346
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:46,640
Speaker 3: can serve as a conduit into things that make you

1347
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 3: actually happier. And for everyone those things exist. It's like

1348
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:52,000
Speaker 3: maybe buying a bigger house will make you happier, and

1349
01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:53,640
Speaker 3: buying a cool car. If you're spending time with your

1350
01:03:53,640 --> 01:03:56,640
Speaker 3: friends and you're going you're taking your kids to track

1351
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:58,880
Speaker 3: races and one doilege you're talking about, maybe that doesn't

1352
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 3: make you happierually not a direct thing, because you can

1353
01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:04,600
Speaker 3: easily imagine buying the mansion but having no friends, having

1354
01:04:04,600 --> 01:04:07,320
Speaker 3: no family, and you're sitting there alone, and then you're

1355
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:10,880
Speaker 3: wondering why you feel unfulfilled, why you dreamed for years

1356
01:04:10,880 --> 01:04:12,440
Speaker 3: of having this house, and now you're sitting in it

1357
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 3: and you're like, I don't feel anything. It's because the

1358
01:04:15,200 --> 01:04:18,160
Speaker 3: only situation which it would actually make you happier and

1359
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:21,160
Speaker 3: more content is what it would serve as a lubricant

1360
01:04:21,240 --> 01:04:23,560
Speaker 3: for for bringing other people over that actually make you happy.

1361
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:27,960
Speaker 2: Quick car story that I think you'll appreciate. So one

1362
01:04:28,000 --> 01:04:32,880
Speaker 2: of my projects was taking a three hundred thousand kilometer

1363
01:04:33,640 --> 01:04:37,520
Speaker 2: eighty seven nineteen eighty seven nine to eleven coup that

1364
01:04:37,640 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 2: had been an accident single owner for like twenty five years.

1365
01:04:42,200 --> 01:04:44,440
Speaker 2: The body and the interior was in really good shape,

1366
01:04:44,480 --> 01:04:49,000
Speaker 2: but it needed a lot of mechanical work. And I

1367
01:04:49,040 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 2: took this long story short, converted it to an ev

1368
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:56,600
Speaker 2: It's long process, and I was kind of horrified at

1369
01:04:56,720 --> 01:05:01,120
Speaker 2: all the Porsche purists who would just torched me for

1370
01:05:01,280 --> 01:05:06,880
Speaker 2: doing such blasphemy. And a friend owns a detailing and

1371
01:05:06,920 --> 01:05:09,960
Speaker 2: wrap shop and he hosts a big cars and coffee

1372
01:05:09,960 --> 01:05:12,800
Speaker 2: every year, and he's like, hey, can you bring the EV?

1373
01:05:13,720 --> 01:05:15,720
Speaker 2: I don't really know if I want to do that.

1374
01:05:15,840 --> 01:05:18,760
Speaker 2: I'm going to get, you know, really beaten up over it.

1375
01:05:19,160 --> 01:05:21,640
Speaker 2: He's like, trust me, it's a great crowd, that all right.

1376
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,960
Speaker 2: So and this car ended up costing me everything said

1377
01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:28,520
Speaker 2: and done, about what it would have cost me to

1378
01:05:28,560 --> 01:05:31,080
Speaker 2: walk into a Porsche dealership and say give me that

1379
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:34,920
Speaker 2: nine to eleven brand new and not in Probably the

1380
01:05:34,920 --> 01:05:36,760
Speaker 2: same is true where you live where I live. Nine

1381
01:05:36,760 --> 01:05:41,640
Speaker 2: elevens or cameras, they're everywhere, right, they're they're valuable, but

1382
01:05:41,680 --> 01:05:44,760
Speaker 2: they're not rare, whereas Ferraris are rare and valuable. So

1383
01:05:44,840 --> 01:05:47,040
Speaker 2: I bring the all right, I'll bring the EV and

1384
01:05:47,080 --> 01:05:49,840
Speaker 2: I bring it to this event. It's about fifty sixty

1385
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 2: seventy cars, and I'm right across the way from a

1386
01:05:52,720 --> 01:05:57,240
Speaker 2: guy with the brand new half a million dollar Ferrari cylindery.

1387
01:05:57,280 --> 01:06:00,920
Speaker 2: It's its new front engine, twelve cylinder. And so I

1388
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 2: opened the front where there's a big battery pack, and

1389
01:06:03,160 --> 01:06:05,480
Speaker 2: I opened the back where the engine's supposed to be,

1390
01:06:05,520 --> 01:06:08,680
Speaker 2: and there's another battery pack with a Tesla motor on

1391
01:06:08,720 --> 01:06:13,440
Speaker 2: the bottom. And I just braced myself for people coming

1392
01:06:13,520 --> 01:06:16,720
Speaker 2: up and just like, oh, you destroyed this car, and

1393
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:20,360
Speaker 2: I was so wrong. People were fascinated, and by the

1394
01:06:20,480 --> 01:06:22,040
Speaker 2: end of the day I felt bad for the guy

1395
01:06:22,040 --> 01:06:24,840
Speaker 2: with the Ferrari. Yes he was there by himself, no

1396
01:06:24,840 --> 01:06:26,640
Speaker 2: one was talking to him. I had a steady stream

1397
01:06:26,680 --> 01:06:30,000
Speaker 2: of people saying, Wow, this is really cool, this is different,

1398
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:32,560
Speaker 2: this is a one off. It doesn't hurt that the

1399
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,200
Speaker 2: license played is EV nine to eleven. It's the first

1400
01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:39,400
Speaker 2: one in New York. That was genuinely surprising to me

1401
01:06:39,600 --> 01:06:43,560
Speaker 2: that it wasn't something that you could just buy. It

1402
01:06:43,600 --> 01:06:46,200
Speaker 2: was something that created a little required a little thought,

1403
01:06:46,200 --> 01:06:47,960
Speaker 2: a little creativity.

1404
01:06:47,440 --> 01:06:49,040
Speaker 4: And foster relationship.

1405
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:52,640
Speaker 2: And I, oh god, people giving me cards, Hey I

1406
01:06:52,680 --> 01:06:54,840
Speaker 2: want to I'm hosting this event. Can you bring this

1407
01:06:54,880 --> 01:06:57,440
Speaker 2: car like it was? And every time I bring that

1408
01:06:57,520 --> 01:06:59,520
Speaker 2: car anywhere, people lose their minds.

1409
01:06:59,600 --> 01:07:00,000
Speaker 4: That's great.

1410
01:07:00,200 --> 01:07:03,280
Speaker 2: So it's so fascinating. And it wasn't a function of

1411
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:06,640
Speaker 2: spending a boatload of money. It was a function of, Hey,

1412
01:07:06,720 --> 01:07:10,320
Speaker 2: this is kind of a kind of different you have

1413
01:07:10,520 --> 01:07:13,840
Speaker 2: every time I spend money. You're in the back of

1414
01:07:13,920 --> 01:07:18,560
Speaker 2: my head. I want to go through a couple more

1415
01:07:18,640 --> 01:07:24,880
Speaker 2: quotes before we get to our favorite questions. You cite

1416
01:07:25,040 --> 01:07:30,040
Speaker 2: the University of Pennsylvania professor Killingsworth. If you're already an

1417
01:07:30,080 --> 01:07:34,880
Speaker 2: unhappy person, it's unlikely that more money will ever fix

1418
01:07:34,920 --> 01:07:35,360
Speaker 2: your problem.

1419
01:07:35,440 --> 01:07:37,760
Speaker 4: Yes, it could leverage who you are in either direction.

1420
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:41,920
Speaker 2: Either direction. And then our friend Michael Batnik said something,

1421
01:07:42,800 --> 01:07:46,560
Speaker 2: I hope I'm not talking out a class. Wealth seems

1422
01:07:46,640 --> 01:07:49,360
Speaker 2: like a burden and an obligation. The people I know

1423
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 2: have become wealthy, other people treat them differently. They always

1424
01:07:52,760 --> 01:07:55,360
Speaker 2: have their hands out at a certain point, it doesn't

1425
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:56,360
Speaker 2: seem like it's worth it.

1426
01:07:57,360 --> 01:07:59,560
Speaker 3: I think everyone can make it worth it, but it's

1427
01:07:59,600 --> 01:08:01,560
Speaker 3: easy for it to spiral out of control and to

1428
01:08:01,720 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 3: let it change the what other people think of you,

1429
01:08:05,920 --> 01:08:08,360
Speaker 3: your family, your friends, the rest of society. And so

1430
01:08:08,400 --> 01:08:10,080
Speaker 3: it's very easy to think that when we are spending

1431
01:08:10,080 --> 01:08:12,600
Speaker 3: a lot of money, we are gaining people's admiration. But

1432
01:08:12,680 --> 01:08:14,160
Speaker 3: you have to be careful because often what you are,

1433
01:08:14,320 --> 01:08:16,800
Speaker 3: the emotion you are fostering, is envy. The other people

1434
01:08:16,880 --> 01:08:19,080
Speaker 3: envy you, and that's and that it's it's hard in

1435
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:19,719
Speaker 3: real time.

1436
01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:20,360
Speaker 4: To know which is which.

1437
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:22,240
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, they're looking at me, they're looking at me,

1438
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:23,920
Speaker 3: they're talking about and they're talking about me like they

1439
01:08:23,960 --> 01:08:24,720
Speaker 3: admire me, I don't know.

1440
01:08:24,760 --> 01:08:26,160
Speaker 4: They envy you, which means they hate you.

1441
01:08:27,040 --> 01:08:29,759
Speaker 2: So that's a good point to bring up. Fomo. Fomo

1442
01:08:29,920 --> 01:08:32,280
Speaker 2: is recklessness massed as ambition.

1443
01:08:32,640 --> 01:08:36,200
Speaker 3: Explain, it's outsourcing your critical thinking to other people. And

1444
01:08:36,240 --> 01:08:38,560
Speaker 3: those other people got rich quickly, which of course is

1445
01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:40,920
Speaker 3: going to is going to inhibit their own ability to

1446
01:08:41,080 --> 01:08:44,320
Speaker 3: think rationally and cleanly about it. It's a very dangerous thing.

1447
01:08:44,920 --> 01:08:48,439
Speaker 2: Let's let's talk about wealth as everything you don't see,

1448
01:08:48,520 --> 01:08:52,759
Speaker 2: which is effectively double entry accounting. You see the asset,

1449
01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:53,919
Speaker 2: you don't see the liability.

1450
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:55,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can see your house. I can see your car,

1451
01:08:55,880 --> 01:08:58,160
Speaker 3: you're not your your your ev nine to eleven car.

1452
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:00,400
Speaker 3: I can't see your bank account. I can't see your

1453
01:09:00,400 --> 01:09:02,920
Speaker 3: brokerage statement. I can't see how much you save for retirement.

1454
01:09:03,080 --> 01:09:05,439
Speaker 3: Like all wealth is actually hidden because wealth is the

1455
01:09:05,439 --> 01:09:06,479
Speaker 3: money that you didn't spend.

1456
01:09:06,920 --> 01:09:08,280
Speaker 4: It's the cars you didn't buy.

1457
01:09:08,080 --> 01:09:10,200
Speaker 3: The vacations you didn't take, it's money that you've saved

1458
01:09:10,200 --> 01:09:13,879
Speaker 3: for independence, and it's completely invisible. And it's pretty pernicious

1459
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:17,000
Speaker 3: because if you think, like for physical health, you can

1460
01:09:17,000 --> 01:09:19,720
Speaker 3: see physical health. This person's overweight, this person's ripped there

1461
01:09:20,000 --> 01:09:22,200
Speaker 3: you can see it, and so it's easy to find

1462
01:09:22,200 --> 01:09:24,360
Speaker 3: a role model. I want to look more like that person,

1463
01:09:24,439 --> 01:09:27,080
Speaker 3: less like this person. For money, it's very difficult to

1464
01:09:27,080 --> 01:09:28,320
Speaker 3: do because you can't see wealth.

1465
01:09:28,400 --> 01:09:30,600
Speaker 2: You don't see the hit debt, you don't see the leverage.

1466
01:09:30,280 --> 01:09:31,720
Speaker 4: You don't see the leverage, you don't see what went

1467
01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:32,000
Speaker 4: into it.

1468
01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:33,400
Speaker 3: And of course there are a lot of people who

1469
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:36,720
Speaker 3: appear to be wealthy who are absolutely broke, and the

1470
01:09:36,760 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 3: reverse is true. So it's very difficult to know who

1471
01:09:39,080 --> 01:09:41,320
Speaker 3: to follow, who to take your cues from.

1472
01:09:41,479 --> 01:09:45,360
Speaker 2: I love this quote, and this is your words. If

1473
01:09:45,400 --> 01:09:48,200
Speaker 2: you're a good dad, a good husband, an honest person,

1474
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:52,799
Speaker 2: a hard worker, a helpful friend, and a funny joke teller,

1475
01:09:53,200 --> 01:09:56,240
Speaker 2: you've probably earned ninety eight percent of the respect and

1476
01:09:56,240 --> 01:09:59,759
Speaker 2: admiration that I'm capable of giving you. If you happen

1477
01:09:59,760 --> 01:10:01,960
Speaker 2: to be rich and successful, I might bump that up

1478
01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:03,280
Speaker 2: to ninety nine percent, but.

1479
01:10:03,320 --> 01:10:04,719
Speaker 4: Let's not pretend it makes much difference.

1480
01:10:04,960 --> 01:10:06,280
Speaker 3: I told that to a good friend of mine, who

1481
01:10:06,360 --> 01:10:08,120
Speaker 3: is one of my favorite people in the entire world.

1482
01:10:08,600 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 3: Earns a modest but not substantial income, and it bothers him,

1483
01:10:12,439 --> 01:10:14,200
Speaker 3: and I told him that one day I was like, look,

1484
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:15,880
Speaker 3: if you have these, like if you're a good husband,

1485
01:10:15,880 --> 01:10:17,880
Speaker 3: a good father, if you're fun to hang out with

1486
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:21,120
Speaker 3: and you're funny, that's about all the respect and admiration

1487
01:10:21,200 --> 01:10:22,920
Speaker 3: I can give you. And if you happen to make

1488
01:10:22,960 --> 01:10:25,200
Speaker 3: more money, like okay, kind of cool. Maybe that brings

1489
01:10:25,240 --> 01:10:27,120
Speaker 3: some more stories and whatnot, but it doesn't make much difference.

1490
01:10:27,160 --> 01:10:29,479
Speaker 3: I like you for this stuff, not the stuff that

1491
01:10:29,479 --> 01:10:30,320
Speaker 3: you're actually chasing.

1492
01:10:30,840 --> 01:10:33,640
Speaker 2: Last question before we get to our favorites. What do

1493
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:36,879
Speaker 2: you think people don't know about the art of spending

1494
01:10:36,920 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 2: money but should what's the most important aspect of this

1495
01:10:40,920 --> 01:10:43,439
Speaker 2: that just seems to slip by unnotice, Probably that.

1496
01:10:43,400 --> 01:10:45,320
Speaker 3: There's no formula for it, that what works for you

1497
01:10:45,400 --> 01:10:47,400
Speaker 3: might not work for me, and vice versa. And a

1498
01:10:47,400 --> 01:10:50,760
Speaker 3: lot of people get into trouble with finance, whether it's investing, earning,

1499
01:10:50,840 --> 01:10:53,479
Speaker 3: or saving or spending, when they follow the advice that

1500
01:10:53,600 --> 01:10:55,640
Speaker 3: is good for one person but not for them. And

1501
01:10:55,680 --> 01:10:58,479
Speaker 3: it's a very vicious trap to get into because because

1502
01:10:58,520 --> 01:11:00,760
Speaker 3: it worked for somebody else, you're like, oh, I just

1503
01:11:00,920 --> 01:11:03,000
Speaker 3: that's what I should do. It worked for them, it

1504
01:11:03,240 --> 01:11:05,479
Speaker 3: surely should work for me. You have to spend more

1505
01:11:05,479 --> 01:11:07,120
Speaker 3: time kind of looking in the mirror, so to speak,

1506
01:11:07,160 --> 01:11:09,080
Speaker 3: and figuring out who you are, what you want.

1507
01:11:09,640 --> 01:11:12,439
Speaker 2: Really really great insight. All right, let's jump to our

1508
01:11:12,439 --> 01:11:16,320
Speaker 2: favorite questions, starting with who were your early mentors who

1509
01:11:16,400 --> 01:11:17,639
Speaker 2: helped shape your career.

1510
01:11:19,360 --> 01:11:21,320
Speaker 3: I would be lying, and I'm not blowing smoke if

1511
01:11:21,320 --> 01:11:25,120
Speaker 3: I said you and josh I think an equal amounts.

1512
01:11:25,160 --> 01:11:27,880
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to explain that You and josh this.

1513
01:11:27,840 --> 01:11:31,160
Speaker 3: Would have been twenty thirteen, were some of the first

1514
01:11:31,200 --> 01:11:34,360
Speaker 3: people who recognized me outside of the Motley Fool who

1515
01:11:34,400 --> 01:11:37,240
Speaker 3: broke me out of that now I was, I felt

1516
01:11:37,280 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 3: good and was comfortable within the zone of the Motley

1517
01:11:39,360 --> 01:11:40,599
Speaker 3: Fool for their members or whatnot.

1518
01:11:40,600 --> 01:11:42,320
Speaker 4: I had a pretty big audience. There's pretty good.

1519
01:11:42,520 --> 01:11:44,280
Speaker 3: You and Joshu were the first ones outside of the

1520
01:11:44,280 --> 01:11:46,040
Speaker 3: Moley Fool who recognized me.

1521
01:11:46,120 --> 01:11:48,040
Speaker 4: And I feel like that was unbelievable.

1522
01:11:48,080 --> 01:11:49,680
Speaker 3: And I think about this a lot of like, when

1523
01:11:49,720 --> 01:11:53,879
Speaker 3: you see somebody like that, particularly if they're young, anything

1524
01:11:53,920 --> 01:11:57,000
Speaker 3: you can say or do to help them is enormous.

1525
01:11:57,160 --> 01:11:59,280
Speaker 3: It might be the smallest thing in the world to

1526
01:11:59,400 --> 01:12:02,040
Speaker 3: DM them or reach out and say, hey, you're doing

1527
01:12:02,040 --> 01:12:02,439
Speaker 3: some good work.

1528
01:12:02,479 --> 01:12:03,880
Speaker 4: I'm really proud of me. I like your stuff.

1529
01:12:04,040 --> 01:12:06,519
Speaker 3: It takes you nothing and it can completely change their life.

1530
01:12:07,040 --> 01:12:10,240
Speaker 2: Nothing brings me more joy than hearing people say things like.

1531
01:12:10,200 --> 01:12:12,200
Speaker 4: That, because well, that's the only nice thing I'll say

1532
01:12:12,240 --> 01:12:12,800
Speaker 4: about you today.

1533
01:12:13,560 --> 01:12:17,160
Speaker 2: Because the thing that's so amazing is these are throwaway

1534
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:20,479
Speaker 2: lines that you say, Hey, really like that column, really

1535
01:12:20,520 --> 01:12:23,080
Speaker 2: like that piece. I thought it was that to you.

1536
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:26,840
Speaker 2: It's three seconds and of little bit of honesty and

1537
01:12:26,920 --> 01:12:31,200
Speaker 2: someone says this was really meaningful that I kind of

1538
01:12:31,200 --> 01:12:33,160
Speaker 2: felt like I was lost or I kind of felt

1539
01:12:33,200 --> 01:12:36,280
Speaker 2: like no one was appreciating me, and just hearing that

1540
01:12:36,479 --> 01:12:40,559
Speaker 2: somebody recognized that I had some skill and talent was huge.

1541
01:12:41,120 --> 01:12:42,840
Speaker 2: You forget what it was like when you were in

1542
01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:47,920
Speaker 2: your twenties and thirties, grinding away unnoticed for decade or so. Right,

1543
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:49,479
Speaker 2: how long were you with the Motley Fool Book was?

1544
01:12:49,479 --> 01:12:50,880
Speaker 3: I was there for ten years before I left, But

1545
01:12:50,920 --> 01:12:52,760
Speaker 3: I remember when you and Josh did that for me.

1546
01:12:52,760 --> 01:12:55,000
Speaker 3: It was twenty thirteen. That's how you know. Vividly I

1547
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:57,759
Speaker 3: remember it, and I remember how much the confidence boost

1548
01:12:57,840 --> 01:13:00,000
Speaker 3: that it gave me to keep going was enormous.

1549
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:01,920
Speaker 2: Well, that's a lovely view to say, I really really

1550
01:13:01,960 --> 01:13:05,040
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Both of us have an eye for talent.

1551
01:13:05,160 --> 01:13:08,360
Speaker 2: I could, I could, I could say that, and you

1552
01:13:08,560 --> 01:13:15,639
Speaker 2: have fulfilled all of our highest aspirations for you. Let's

1553
01:13:15,640 --> 01:13:17,920
Speaker 2: talk about books. What are you reading right now? What

1554
01:13:18,000 --> 01:13:21,559
Speaker 2: are some of your favorites? And I know when you

1555
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:25,400
Speaker 2: finished writing a book, like the whole process, you're not

1556
01:13:25,479 --> 01:13:29,960
Speaker 2: reading anything other than research. Yeah, so talk about your favorites.

1557
01:13:30,040 --> 01:13:34,240
Speaker 3: I'm reading a book right now by by by Stefan Zwig,

1558
01:13:34,400 --> 01:13:37,120
Speaker 3: who was a journalist in the in the twentieth century,

1559
01:13:37,200 --> 01:13:39,840
Speaker 3: and he wrote his memoirs, which is basically about how

1560
01:13:39,920 --> 01:13:42,680
Speaker 3: the world went from he was living in Austria and

1561
01:13:42,680 --> 01:13:45,360
Speaker 3: in Vienna, and how the world went from before World

1562
01:13:45,439 --> 01:13:49,559
Speaker 3: War One, Europe was so civilized and so great, and

1563
01:13:49,600 --> 01:13:53,640
Speaker 3: everyone viewed that that would discontinue indefinitely, that it was

1564
01:13:53,680 --> 01:13:56,559
Speaker 3: so organized and so polite and so which, of course

1565
01:13:56,600 --> 01:13:58,400
Speaker 3: is somewhat of an exaggeration, but that was the view

1566
01:13:58,439 --> 01:14:01,040
Speaker 3: that he had. And then he's about how the world changed,

1567
01:14:01,080 --> 01:14:02,960
Speaker 3: both with World War One and then especially with World

1568
01:14:02,960 --> 01:14:07,320
Speaker 3: War Two, and how everything happened that nobody thought would

1569
01:14:07,360 --> 01:14:10,280
Speaker 3: have been possible before it happened, and how culturally and

1570
01:14:10,320 --> 01:14:11,559
Speaker 3: socially that world changed.

1571
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:12,800
Speaker 4: That's that's some reading right now.

1572
01:14:12,680 --> 01:14:14,760
Speaker 2: That, thank goodness, something like that would never happen here

1573
01:14:14,840 --> 01:14:18,360
Speaker 2: exactly right. Let's talk about streaming. What are you listening

1574
01:14:18,600 --> 01:14:21,640
Speaker 2: or watching these days? Be it? I don't want you.

1575
01:14:21,880 --> 01:14:24,840
Speaker 2: This is in another solicitation for a compliment. But what

1576
01:14:24,840 --> 01:14:26,040
Speaker 2: are you watching? What are you listening?

1577
01:14:26,080 --> 01:14:29,160
Speaker 3: I finished Succession not too long ago, one of the

1578
01:14:29,840 --> 01:14:31,880
Speaker 3: one of the best I've ever seen. One no, no, no,

1579
01:14:31,920 --> 01:14:33,280
Speaker 3: And I didn't take that at all, one of the

1580
01:14:33,320 --> 01:14:34,000
Speaker 3: best I've ever seen.

1581
01:14:34,080 --> 01:14:37,240
Speaker 2: I love every second episode. I don't like any of

1582
01:14:37,280 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 2: these people.

1583
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:39,080
Speaker 4: Oh but that's the point.

1584
01:14:39,160 --> 01:14:41,360
Speaker 3: I loved every second of success Now and then I

1585
01:14:41,479 --> 01:14:43,240
Speaker 3: just finished Your Friends and Neighbors.

1586
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:44,320
Speaker 4: That really good.

1587
01:14:44,360 --> 01:14:46,600
Speaker 2: I believably good. I can't wait for you. Ham just

1588
01:14:46,640 --> 01:14:50,080
Speaker 2: gets better and better, so good. And if when that

1589
01:14:50,120 --> 01:14:52,720
Speaker 2: first came out, he hosted Center Live, and I want

1590
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:55,280
Speaker 2: to say, the best episode all season, so good.

1591
01:14:55,320 --> 01:14:57,160
Speaker 4: I can't, I can't. I can't wait for the second

1592
01:14:57,160 --> 01:14:57,600
Speaker 4: season of that.

1593
01:14:57,840 --> 01:15:03,200
Speaker 2: There's a lot of stat spending earning. I mean, it

1594
01:15:03,280 --> 01:15:05,439
Speaker 2: fits right into the sweet spot of what you write, and.

1595
01:15:05,479 --> 01:15:07,360
Speaker 4: Just such good writing character development.

1596
01:15:07,360 --> 01:15:10,639
Speaker 2: There our final two questions, what sort of advice would

1597
01:15:10,680 --> 01:15:13,600
Speaker 2: you give an recent college grad who was interested in

1598
01:15:13,600 --> 01:15:17,840
Speaker 2: the career and either investing or writing about finance, Read as.

1599
01:15:17,760 --> 01:15:19,920
Speaker 3: Much as you possibly can. It's very boring advice, but

1600
01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:23,920
Speaker 3: that's everyone. No one has more confidence in their ability

1601
01:15:24,240 --> 01:15:26,360
Speaker 3: or where they think the world is going than a

1602
01:15:26,400 --> 01:15:28,360
Speaker 3: twenty one year old man who's never read a book

1603
01:15:28,560 --> 01:15:31,080
Speaker 3: about history of investing. Nobody thinks they've figured it out

1604
01:15:31,080 --> 01:15:34,000
Speaker 3: more than that. And spend as much time as you

1605
01:15:34,080 --> 01:15:36,559
Speaker 3: possibly can, reading as much as you can from the

1606
01:15:36,600 --> 01:15:39,400
Speaker 3: diverse field of topics that you can.

1607
01:15:40,000 --> 01:15:42,280
Speaker 2: And our final question, what do you know about the

1608
01:15:42,280 --> 01:15:49,040
Speaker 2: world of investing, writing, earning, and spending today that would

1609
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:52,080
Speaker 2: have been useful back in the financial crisis when you

1610
01:15:52,120 --> 01:15:53,439
Speaker 2: were first launching your career.

1611
01:15:53,600 --> 01:15:55,880
Speaker 3: We mentioned diverse things there, like writing and spending, and

1612
01:15:55,880 --> 01:15:58,120
Speaker 3: I actually think I have very similar philosophies on both,

1613
01:15:58,120 --> 01:16:00,120
Speaker 3: which is when I write, I want to write for

1614
01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:02,280
Speaker 3: an audience of one, which is me. I just want

1615
01:16:02,320 --> 01:16:05,080
Speaker 3: to write things that I think are interesting, telling stories

1616
01:16:05,080 --> 01:16:07,920
Speaker 3: that I think are funny and unique, and if other

1617
01:16:07,920 --> 01:16:10,680
Speaker 3: people like them too, that's wonderful. But I know that

1618
01:16:10,720 --> 01:16:13,280
Speaker 3: I can't please everybody, and that's just an inevil part

1619
01:16:13,280 --> 01:16:16,000
Speaker 3: of it. So if I'm gonna pander to one person,

1620
01:16:16,040 --> 01:16:18,000
Speaker 3: it might as well be myself. And I think that's

1621
01:16:18,000 --> 01:16:21,559
Speaker 3: how I spend money too. I spend to please myself

1622
01:16:21,600 --> 01:16:23,559
Speaker 3: and my family, and I don't care if other people

1623
01:16:23,560 --> 01:16:25,280
Speaker 3: do it differently. I don't care if other people think

1624
01:16:25,280 --> 01:16:27,479
Speaker 3: it's the wrong way to do it. It's what works for me.

1625
01:16:27,680 --> 01:16:30,000
Speaker 3: And again, if I'm going to pander to anyone in

1626
01:16:30,080 --> 01:16:31,679
Speaker 3: how I spend it might as well be myself.

1627
01:16:32,360 --> 01:16:35,439
Speaker 2: Well, thank you Morgan for coming in. This is everything

1628
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:39,400
Speaker 2: I was expecting it to be. We have been speaking

1629
01:16:39,439 --> 01:16:43,080
Speaker 2: to Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, same

1630
01:16:43,080 --> 01:16:46,640
Speaker 2: Innette as Ever and the new book The Art of Spending,

1631
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:51,080
Speaker 2: Simple Choices for a Richer Life. If you enjoy this conversation,

1632
01:16:51,320 --> 01:16:53,479
Speaker 2: check out any of the five hundred and eighty one

1633
01:16:53,960 --> 01:16:57,280
Speaker 2: podcasts we've done over the past eleven years. You can

1634
01:16:57,280 --> 01:17:01,439
Speaker 2: find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Bloomberg, wherever you find

1635
01:17:01,720 --> 01:17:05,320
Speaker 2: your podcasts, And check out my new book How Not

1636
01:17:05,439 --> 01:17:09,439
Speaker 2: to Invest The ideas, numbers and behavior that destroy wealth

1637
01:17:09,560 --> 01:17:13,120
Speaker 2: and How to avoid them at your favorite bookstore. I

1638
01:17:13,160 --> 01:17:14,960
Speaker 2: would be remiss if I did not thank the Cracked

1639
01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:18,960
Speaker 2: team that helps put these conversations together each week. Alexis

1640
01:17:19,040 --> 01:17:23,600
Speaker 2: Noriega is my video producer. Anna Luke is my podcast producer.

1641
01:17:23,960 --> 01:17:26,480
Speaker 2: Sage Bauman is the head of podcasts here at Bloomberg.

1642
01:17:26,520 --> 01:17:31,400
Speaker 2: Sean Russo is my researcher. I'm Barry Ritolts. You've been

1643
01:17:31,439 --> 01:17:34,880
Speaker 2: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.