Latest / Freedom Flip / The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel (EP034)
Transcript
- 0:00The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.
- 0:02So this book just hit me differently to realize how dumb I am thinking about money.
- 0:09Most of us think money is a spreadsheet of calculate the numbers and pump out an answer.
- 0:14And this book basically makes you realize it's all psychology.
- 0:18It's all our own experience.
- 0:20So it started because he was a failed investment banker, and he put out this random document that was 20 biases about money.
- 0:27It was just a PDF, and a million people downloaded it.
- 0:31So he's like, ah.
- 0:32I guess if I'm failing as a best-making, I'll just write this book.
- 0:35So he wrote The Psychology of Money.
- 0:38And ironically, I joined a business group that mostly talked just about money.
- 0:42And the guy who organized it gave me this book the first day and was like, hey, it's a really good book.
- 0:47I found it super ironic, right?
- 0:48Because then eventually that group for me just talked too much about the things this book warned you on.
- 0:54Okay, I'm very excited to dive into this book that, of course, I didn't read.
- 0:58The start that you just gave is phenomenal.
- 1:01Oh, it's a banger.
- 1:03I've read all three of his books.
- 1:05And I just want to mention one thing for somebody who's thinking about reading.
- 1:08He writes his chapters like six to ten pages.
- 1:11And I love it because you're like, oh, I'm just going to read one chapter.
- 1:14And then it's kind of like episodes in a show you like.
- 1:17You just boom, you bang out three or four.
- 1:18Yeah.
- 1:19So page five had a quick one that as I was reviewing just shortly, I really like this.
- 1:24It says at the top, finance is overwhelmingly taught as a math-based field where you put data into a formula and the formula tells you what to do.
- 1:32And it assumed that you'll just go do it.
- 1:36I love that because it's wrong, right?
- 1:39And it's wrong in every conversation I have, even with people who study finance or who are in finance.
- 1:45And in the middle of that page, he says, two topics that impact everyone, whether you are interested in them or not, health and money.
- 1:52And I wrote the note next to that ham, H-A-M,
- 1:55It's like everyone's thinking about ham, right?
- 1:59The Jews and Muslims won't eat it.
- 2:01Christians will eat it all the time.
- 2:02It's pig, but it's health and money.
- 2:04Like health and money is just, it's everywhere.
- 2:06It's everything, whether or not you even think about it.
- 2:09Interesting.
- 2:09Let's keep going.
- 2:10So the book goes into...
- 2:13A really interesting one where he talks about the experiences.
- 2:16So he says on page 13, as an investor, Michael Badnick says, quote, some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood.
- 2:24And he says, we're all victims in different ways to that truth.
- 2:27Right.
- 2:28So it talks about like somebody who experienced Great Depression or their parents did.
- 2:31They see the world through this completely different lens than someone who hasn't.
- 2:35And it goes in to show when you were born.
- 2:37Like if you're born in 1950, then the stock market like goes straight up.
- 2:41If you're born in 1970, it's flat for like 15 years.
- 2:45And what an impact that plays on your psychology of how you think the world works.
- 2:50And he really he makes this math where he really says even your willingness to take on risk is really tied off in cases to when and when and where you were born.
- 3:01So he has this Financial Times economist says our findings suggest that individual investors willingness to bear risk depends on personal history, not intelligence or education or sophistication, just the dumb luck of when and where you were born.
- 3:14Yeah, that is very true.
- 3:17I just wonder if he talks later about how to rewire your brain.
- 3:22I think the stories rewire your brain because they show you people who screwed up their lives because they didn't rewire their brain.
- 3:30So it makes you say, like, I don't want to be like that guy.
- 3:33Like, that guy went off a cliff.
- 3:35So I think that's the power that he really pushed.
- 3:37So here's a good story on page 17.
- 3:39So it talks about a New York Times article.
- 3:41And, you know, this New York Times article is destroying Foxconn that produces iPhones.
- 3:47And this guy who's in America that's Chinese, you know, is talking about this story.
- 3:51And he's like, what do you mean these jobs are terrible where you're working nine to nine, six days a week?
- 3:57My aunt works there.
- 3:58And the person was like, these are sweatshops and this is terrible.
- 4:02And at the end of the explanation, it was so powerful because he goes, my aunt worked several years in what Americans call sweatshops.
- 4:10It was hard work, long hours, small wage, poor working conditions.
- 4:14Do you know what my aunt did before she worked in one of these factories?
- 4:17She was a prostitute.
- 4:19And this is kind of the key theme.
- 4:21He explains it's so much more psychology than it is money.
- 4:24Like she's honored to have that job.
- 4:26She's just happy that she's not doing prostitution.
- 4:30And like, who are we to believe I know that's a bad job for her?
- 4:33And so they really talk about these unique mental models.
- 4:36So I really love page 18.
- 4:38Okay.
- 4:39So page 18, like, blew my mind.
- 4:41At the top, it says, every decision people make with money is justified by taking the information they have at the moment and plugging it into their unique mental model of how the world works.
- 4:51So the problem is we don't realize we're wearing these sunglasses of how our mental model.
- 4:55So now, how does he explain this one?
- 4:57Take the simple example of lottery tickets.
- 4:59So this is mind-blowing.
- 5:01Americans spend more on lottery tickets than movies, video games, music, sporting events, and books combined.
- 5:08Wow.
- 5:10What?
- 5:11And guess who buys most of them?
- 5:12The poorest.
- 5:13The poor people.
- 5:14You nailed it.
- 5:14Of course.
- 5:15The lowest income households in the U.S. on average spend 412 a year on lotto tickets.
- 5:21Four times the amount of those in the highest income groups.
- 5:25Yet, 40% of Americans cannot come up with $400 in an emergency.
- 5:29Isn't that wild?
- 5:31Yeah, this book was written early 2020 also.
- 5:34I find regarding lottery tickets, this is something that I noticed in Argentina.
- 5:39And my interpretation to lottery tickets is people just want to get out of their current reality.
- 5:47They don't see a path whatsoever.
- 5:49There's no escape.
- 5:51But maybe...
- 5:52maybe I am the lucky one this Sunday and I get the lottery ticket and now life can be finally different.
- 6:01Yeah.
- 6:01Which is interesting because everything gets tied into money and we're not going to be here sitting and pretending that
- 6:09money cannot help.
- 6:10Of course, money can help.
- 6:12But I think there's enough statistics that shows that even the people that win the lottery ticket, they lose everything after XYZ amount of years and that it doesn't really increase the level of happiness in a sustained way.
- 6:24It flips, it actually decreases.
- 6:25And he goes into that a little bit, but you nailed it.
- 6:28On the next page, he sums up what you just said.
- 6:30He says, we are paying for a dream.
- 6:32And you may not understand that because you are already living a dream, that's why we buy more lotto tickets than you do.
- 6:39And that's, you know, someone that's poor that's explaining it.
- 6:42And I love that when he says, what you're doing seems crazy, but I kind of understand why you're doing it.
- 6:48That uncovers the root of many of our financial decisions.
- 6:51I think this is something I was thinking about last night is when I think someone's wrong, I need to stop wanting to change their mind.
- 6:57And I need to think, I want to understand how they see the world.
- 7:01Like what led them to this formula of decision making that got them there?
- 7:06Because that allows me to be curious rather than me being like, I know this answer.
- 7:10I'm going to teach you.
- 7:12Then I can be like, how did you come up with that decision?
- 7:14Like, why are you buying lotto tickets?
- 7:16Rather than, did you know that it's an additional tax on humans and you shouldn't be buying them?
- 7:23Me as the educator is much worse than me as the curious person wondering, why are you spending $400 a year on the lotto tickets?
- 7:29100%.
- 7:30Have you ever bought lottery tickets?
- 7:33I'm sure like a couple of times kind of is a fun thing or maybe I was young and I didn't have any money and I was looking for a dream.
- 7:39I don't.
- 7:40What about you?
- 7:41Yeah, of course.
- 7:42Yeah.
- 7:43Well, two things.
- 7:43One is I didn't like my life.
- 7:45I was working in an office and I went escape.
- 7:47And the other one is the girl that was selling it was very hot.
- 7:51So I was pretty motivated.
- 7:55I love that.
- 7:56So page 20 has a banger.
- 7:59So this chart, it's labor force participation rate for age 65 and under.
- 8:02In 1880, 78% of men who were 65 and older worked.
- 8:11In 1880, 78%.
- 8:13So basically, all men over 65 just worked.
- 8:17And guess what?
- 8:17It probably kept you alive because you're moving your body.
- 8:20So you can see in the chart, it just starts going down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
- 8:24And that 2000, that was the all-time low in 1990.
- 8:27It was 18% of men 65 and over worked.
- 8:28Wow.
- 8:32So you basically see this, and he dives in this, this whole idea of social security and retirement, that didn't exist.
- 8:39That was never a thing until basically somewhere in the 1900s, it became this like expectation.
- 8:45And then everyone demanded more money for it and to secure it.
- 8:49But prior to that, like 1880, all men just worked.
- 8:53You're over 65.
- 8:54And guess what?
- 8:54Life expectancy like was 65.
- 8:55Yeah.
- 8:57So you were literally working until you went in the grave.
- 9:01And I think that's just a misunderstanding that people have of comparing ourselves to like, oh, people always had retirement.
- 9:08No, they didn't.
- 9:09They retired when they were dead.
- 9:10That was retirement.
- 9:11You go into the grave.
- 9:12And we're just misunderstanding that.
- 9:14I remember in Argentina growing up when I started working at the age of, I think I was 19, the whole social security basically collapsed.
- 9:24Wow.
- 9:25They stole everything as always.
- 9:27So I grew up knowing there is no way.
- 9:31That's going to be there.
- 9:31There's no way that I will have any money.
- 9:34But I think that just living your life thinking that that's the case, that the government will take care of you, is such a risky move.
- 9:42I think it's way better to learn how to invest, be able to spend less than what you make, and be able to invest the rest.
- 9:51Yeah.
- 9:52We shouldn't be investing.
- 9:54That's also another important thing.
- 9:55But we have to because governments bring more money and therefore our money gets screwed up.
- 10:02We cannot be holding cash over very long periods of time.
- 10:05So on page 26 and 27, I'd say it's kind of a banger story.
- 10:11Did you know Bill Gates had a third business partner, Paul Allen and this guy, Kit Evans?
- 10:17Here's the crazy thing.
- 10:17Kit Evans died in high school.
- 10:20He was one...
- 10:22In a million.
- 10:23And basically, he died at Spreeland King.
- 10:26And Bill Gates said this would have been the third co-founder.
- 10:29And he was amazing.
- 10:31And Bill Gates was also one in a million in that his high school had a computer when he went to grade school and high school.
- 10:38And the chapter they call, you know, luck and risk are siblings, where it's like crazy example.
- 10:44And the same thing happened with Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett.
- 10:47They had a third partner who got two into leverage, and then they bought him out at the bottom.
- 10:51And they were like, he was just as smart, just as capable, but he wanted to get there faster.
- 10:56And I think that's kind of fascinating as another example.
- 10:58On page 30, the author says, after spending years around investors and business leaders, I've come to realize that someone else's failure is usually attributed to bad decisions, while your own failures are usually chalked up to the dark side of risk.
- 11:13I thought about that one of basically, you know, the fundamental attribution error.
- 11:17It's so true.
- 11:17And it's funny with this guy meeting really, you know, famous people.
- 11:20He says it's even more true.
- 11:22And he gave examples of that on page 31.
- 11:25Because, quote, my job, my God, John, said Vanderbilt, you don't suppose you can run a railroad in accordance with the statutes of the state of New York, do you?
- 11:34And the author said, first thought was, this is why that dude was so successful.
- 11:39And I was talking about Vanderbilt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, richest person in the world at the time, just like ignoring the laws as he built the railroads, which kind of reminds me of Uber.
- 11:47Right.
- 11:48It's like, look, you guys can't have these dumb laws that are preventing me from having a better option because you're in cahoots with the cab companies.
- 11:55And then John D. Rockefeller is similar.
- 11:57His frequent circumventing of the law, a judge once called his company, quote, no better than a common thief, end quote.
- 12:05And then the final one on 31 is, quote, what do I care about the law?
- 12:10End quote.
- 12:10Vanderbilt once said, quote, ain't I got the power?
- 12:14End quote.
- 12:15It's like these guys are like ruthless.
- 12:18You know, like the government's going to try and screw me and rob from me if I don't rob from it, like take advantage of the law first.
- 12:24Yeah.
- 12:24Now, they were producing products, right?
- 12:26So it wasn't like they were actually just stealing from people.
- 12:29They were creating railroads and steel and everything else and oil.
- 12:33I really liked that one.
- 12:34Is there a point that he's trying to make with those stories?
- 12:37Yeah, I think, you know, he comes back to them later on and kind of talks about how these guys were willing to take on a ton of risk.
- 12:45And that's just the way they saw the world.
- 12:47That was the lens of the world.
- 12:48Later on, he gets to the point where the next chapter he calls never enough.
- 12:53And he has quotes from them.
- 12:54So he has a quote where it says, somebody asked Rockefeller if he's made enough money.
- 12:58And his response was, I just need a little bit more.
- 13:01And so he's kind of saying, look, these guys take a lot of risk.
- 13:04They see the world as a different world, but they're also trapped in this game.
- 13:08And it comes back to a quote this book uses and many others where it says, some people can never figure out how to make money and the other group can never figure out how to stop.
- 13:18And most people can't figure out how to make enough money.
- 13:20That's almost everyone.
- 13:21And we don't realize the other side of the coin that these guys never really stop.
- 13:25And that's what it's driving with the stories.
- 13:27I think there's a little difference between a person that makes some money or let's call it a lot of money for some standards, makes $5 million, $10 million.
- 13:39There is a big difference than when you are naming Rockefeller or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett.
- 13:46Because these people are, even though there is a misconception that these guys have $200 billion, they don't have that in cash.
- 13:55Most of that is tied into their own businesses, which means they cannot sell that.
- 14:01Yeah.
- 14:01They cannot sell everything.
- 14:03They may sell a little bit, but not everything.
- 14:05Yeah.
- 14:05If they start selling a lot, the price crashes.
- 14:08Of course, it's going to collapse.
- 14:09So I think that there is, we are not discounting.
- 14:12I think we should discount that quote unquote net worth by 50% or maybe 70% to get a real value.
- 14:19I think that when they are talking about, I need just a little bit more of money.
- 14:22I think for those kind of people, it's not about money anymore.
- 14:27It's about something else.
- 14:28It could be about the game.
- 14:29It could be about power.
- 14:31It could be about competition.
- 14:34But I don't think that it's about money.
- 14:35Yeah, it's interesting.
- 14:36You asked that question, what's it about?
- 14:38In his own words, he says, the line between inspiringly bold and foolishly reckless can be a millimeter thick and only visible with hindsight.
- 14:48Risk and luck are doppelgangers.
- 14:50So I think a little bit what he's saying too is like luck does play some role into the success.
- 14:54And these guys are going full steam as hard as they can.
- 14:58And things could really blow up in retrospect.
- 15:01Yeah.
- 15:02But they love the game.
- 15:03And Jeff Bezos, or sorry, Bill Gates has a quote on 34.
- 15:07Bill Gates once said, success is a lousy teacher.
- 15:09It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
- 15:13And I think he's kind of setting up this idea that, you know, again, a fallacy is that we have one win and we're going to keep winning.
- 15:19And that's something just to be aware of.
- 15:20Yeah.
- 15:21So a banger on 42.
- 15:23This is a good one.
- 15:24He's really pushing this social comparison is the problem here.
- 15:28So he gives the examples and he goes through his highest paid person in the world and they just keep comparing.
- 15:34Warren Buffett compares to Jeff Bezos, compares to the other one.
- 15:38Or in baseball, you're looking at professional players and you just keep going on the list, which you can never win this battle.
- 15:44It can never be won is what he says.
- 15:46And the example he gives at the end, he goes, in Las Vegas, the dealer, stone cold, replied to my question, quote, the only way to win in a Las Vegas casino is to exit as soon as you enter, end quote.
- 16:00That's awesome.
- 16:01And the author says that's exactly how the game of trying to keep up with other people's wealth works too.
- 16:07So the final point he punches pretty deep with this one, I think about this one a lot, is on page 42.
- 16:13He says, in most things you can figure out what you've had too much.
- 16:16So enough is realizing that the opposite, for example, an insatiable appetite for more will push you to the point of regret.
- 16:23The only way to know how much food you can eat is to eat until you're sick.
- 16:27Few try this because vomiting hurts more than any good meal.
- 16:31For some reason, the same logic doesn't translate to business and investing.
- 16:35Okay.
- 16:36That one's not powerful for you.
- 16:37That like hits me deep.
- 16:38Okay.
- 16:39Tell me.
- 16:39Tell me how do you read that?
- 16:41So like tires, when they're testing tires, they just run the tire till it explodes.
- 16:45And I think with homes, like I have friends who have multiple homes and they basically, usually by the time they have two or three, they're like, dude, these homes own me.
- 16:54So you get some natural pain.
- 16:56But I think with actual money or investing, people don't see there's a cost to accruing this wealth.
- 17:03There's a cost in obtaining it.
- 17:04I agree with you.
- 17:05I agree with you.
- 17:06And I think very few people actually really recognize that.
- 17:10And for some reason, the visual of too much food is when you barf.
- 17:14There's not a too much money that's going to make you barf.
- 17:17And that's dangerous because you don't realize you're on this treadmill or this competition of social comparing to the neighbor or the person in town with a better life.
- 17:27And we don't, it's invisible what the cost is to achieve that, right?
- 17:31Or what their actual home life is like or other things.
- 17:34Yeah, I totally agree on that with that 100%.
- 17:37And I think a lot of these things you may have thought of.
- 17:39For me, when I read this book, it was really one of the first times I dug into these topics.
- 17:44And he did it so well to explain.
- 17:45So on page 66, he explains, you know, first there was this banger.
- 17:50Roughly 99.9% of all companies that were created went out of business.
- 17:55And he went over kind of the last like 100 years.
- 17:59Four U.S. presidents were assassinated.
- 18:02675,000 Americans died in a single year from a flu pandemic.
- 18:0530 separate natural disasters killed these 400 Americans.
- 18:0833 recessions lasted 48 years.
- 18:10He goes through terrible stuff.
- 18:12Annual inflation exceeded 7% in almost 20 separate years.
- 18:16The words economic pessimism appeared in a newspaper at least 29,000 times.
- 18:20Wow.
- 18:22So he says all this terrible stuff that looks horrible over this 170 years.
- 18:28But then he goes, quote, our standard of living increased 20 fold in those 170 years, but barely a day went by that lacked tangible reasons for pessimism.
- 18:37He just really bangs this point that we all think the world's ending every day.
- 18:41Meanwhile, it's just going up and to the right.
- 18:44Like better, richer, fewer problems, fewer risks.
- 18:48I think that that's going to depend on what are you consuming.
- 18:51Yeah.
- 18:51And yes, if you are consuming certain media, yeah, of course, it's going to look like the world is ending.
- 18:58But if you just shut it down and just go outside, you most likely will not experience that.
- 19:05Yeah, it's spot on.
- 19:07So page 78 talks about Peter Lynch is one of the best investors of our time.
- 19:12It says, quote, if you're terrific in this business, you're right six times out of 10, he once said.
- 19:17Now, the author talks about there are fields where you must be perfect every time, like flying a plane or, you know, doing surgeries.
- 19:24Investing, business, and finance are just not like those fields.
- 19:27And then he uses a quote from Jeff Bezos at the bottom of page 78.
- 19:30If you think that's a big failure, he's talking about Fire Phone.
- 19:34If you think that's a big failure, we're working on much bigger failures right now.
- 19:38I am not kidding.
- 19:39Some of them are going to make a Fire Phone look like a tiny little blip.
- 19:43I love that.
- 19:44The Fire Phone was Amazon's competitor to the iPhone, right?
- 19:48And that just didn't work out.
- 19:51Yes.
- 19:52Just didn't work out.
- 19:52But I think that that is the mindset, the mindset of a leader.
- 19:56That is like, we're just going to keep going.
- 19:57We're going to keep innovating.
- 19:59And eventually things are going to work out.
- 20:01Yeah.
- 20:02Yeah.
- 20:03Page 80, he doubled down on that.
- 20:05We talked about Berkshire Hathaway in 2013.
- 20:07Warren Buffett said he owned 400 to 500 stocks in his life and made most of his money on only 10 of them.
- 20:13Charlie Munger followed up, quote, if you remove just a few of Berkshire's top investments, its long-term track record is pretty average.
- 20:21Very good.
- 20:22I knew you'd like the Charlie one.
- 20:26Skipping to page 89, this is kind of cool.
- 20:29In this book, 30 Lessons for Living, gerontologist Carl Filmer interviewed a thousand elderly Americans looking for the most important lessons they learned from decades of life experience.
- 20:40He wrote,
- 20:41No one, not a single person out of the thousand said that to be happy, you should try and work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want.
- 20:49What they did say was they valued quality friendships, being part of something bigger, spending quality time and structured time with your children.
- 20:58Quote, your kids don't want your money anywhere near as much as they want you.
- 21:02Specifically, they want you with them, the author writes.
- 21:06I love it.
- 21:07And I think that's very true.
- 21:08I don't think that you can have more than one number one priority at the time.
- 21:14I think that you can have a number two priority, totally fine.
- 21:17But yeah, if the priority number one is making money, then other things are going to have to give up.
- 21:26Yeah, everything comes down to where are you spending your time?
- 21:29Are you spending your time doing something that you are really passionate about, that you really like, that you really enjoy, that you are contributing?
- 21:37Are you spending time with people that you want to be spending time with?
- 21:40or you are just chasing this God called money.
- 21:44And it's fascinating to see this, especially with people that have a lot of money.
- 21:48And we were in groups where we can see that every single day.
- 21:52And it's mind-blowing.
- 21:53Yeah, I have so much to say on this point.
- 21:55And he nails, I mean, you're doing a great job leaning into what he says.
- 21:58So one of his final lines on that page 89, he says, controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.
- 22:05And that's it.
- 22:06It all comes down to controlling your time.
- 22:07Ideally to do something with purpose, right?
- 22:09With your top mission, whether it's family, a business, a nonprofit, whatever it is that you're trying to change the world.
- 22:14It could be a sport or hobby.
- 22:15But it's like you have the focus to go change the world in that way.
- 22:19And I wrote in my notes under this ER, which is like, you know, emergency room, but it was eulogy traits are greater than resume traits.
- 22:29And it's just this reminder that like eulogy traits are the ones that people will talk about when you're dead.
- 22:33Right, man, he was a great dad, or man, he was a good friend, or man, he was trustworthy and reliable, and I really just love time with him.
- 22:41Resume traits are the money, the car, the house, the job, the title.
- 22:45It's like nobody really uses that in a eulogy.
- 22:49It's just not interesting.
- 22:50It's not meaningful or purposeful.
- 22:53And he actually leads into it.
- 22:55He says, now a short chapter on one of the lowest dividend money pays.
- 22:59And the next chapter is called Man in the Car Paradox.
- 23:02And I really like this story because I've never been much of a, quote, car person.
- 23:07But he basically explains that when you see someone in an awesome car, in their mind, you're looking at him in the car and like, oh, that dude's awesome.
- 23:16But everyone, it's a paradox.
- 23:18It's a flip, a freedom flip.
- 23:20But they go, wow, I would look cool in that car.
- 23:23So then you just imagine yourself in the car and you basically ignore the dude.
- 23:28Like it's not even, there's no credit.
- 23:31That is interesting.
- 23:32I think that when I didn't have anything, I was more curious about like the life of that person.
- 23:38To be like, how is the life of this person to be able to afford this Bentley, this Ferrari, this Lamborghini?
- 23:45Yeah.
- 23:46And what he says is, look, I'm casting judgment.
- 23:50But if this kid grew up like we have a friend who grew up in Argentina that, you know, always looked at cars and became obsessed.
- 23:57So to him, getting his first car was this sign of success.
- 24:00And it's like, I don't really now do you need a bunch?
- 24:04Different question.
- 24:05But it's through his lens of how he sees the world, the psychology that matters.
- 24:09It's not a financial metric because it's a depreciating asset.
- 24:12So I need to forget about that and realize what he sees.
- 24:16And that next chapter, he really hits that wealth is not what you see.
- 24:20Wealth you can't see.
- 24:22You can see goods.
- 24:23You can see income being spent on goods.
- 24:26But those aren't wealth.
- 24:27Yeah.
- 24:27He says, wealth is hidden.
- 24:29It's income not spent.
- 24:31Wealth is an option not yet taken to buy something later.
- 24:34It's value lies in offering you options, flexibility, and growth to one day purchase more stuff than you could right now.
- 24:40Yeah, so I think those are most of my bangers from the book.
- 24:44I will say it's probably had more of an impact than me on any book around money.
- 24:49And I really like how he flows through these little five, six-page chapters where he basically just breaks the brain on—it's 20 different topics that he explains in his PDF—
- 25:01which you could also look at, I haven't read yet, as just seeing what are the biggest mistakes everyone makes with money.
- 25:08And to end it, you know, I think this is a powerful one, this end of history illusion, what psychologists call the tendency for people to be keenly aware of how much they've changed in the past, but to underestimate how much their personalized desires and goals are likely to change in the future.
- 25:23And I think this is something important for us to remember.
- 25:25We all think today is the final version of us, but it's actually hopefully the shittiest version of us.
- 25:31Because tomorrow, next week, and next year is much better.
- 25:34And I heard this Freedom Flip quote a week or two ago from my buddy Hunter, and I love it.
- 25:39The quote from Hunter is...
- 25:41The curse of consistency is that every day feels the same.
- 25:46The curse of inconsistency is that every year feels the same.
- 25:50I love that.
- 25:51And it's a huge, I don't remember if I used the word curse, but I put that into my iteration of the quote.
- 25:57Because when you're doing the workout or the hard work or the early wake up or the whatever each day for the first couple months, it's miserable.
- 26:05Right.
- 26:06And each day just feels the same and boring, eating the same food or doing the same hard work or whatever it is.
- 26:11But man, by the time you reach each year, you're like, I'm a different human.
- 26:15But when you're not committed to prioritizing anything or actually being consistent with anything each year, you're like, oh, man, nothing has changed.
- 26:24And you're cursed either way.
- 26:26That's the unique thing.
- 26:27I love that.
- 26:28There is a part of the book that I want to maybe mention, which is freedom is the ultimate dividend.
- 26:34The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, I can do whatever I want today.
- 26:40Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.
- 26:44A high salary or high income means nothing if you have zero control over your schedule and life.
- 26:52I think this is something that we are both of us very passionate about.
- 26:56Being able to do what you want.
- 26:57And I was able to do this without money and with money, which is fascinating because some people may say, well, I need to have XYZ amount of money or XYZ amount of income to then do whatever I want.
- 27:11And I just go back to the word alignment.
- 27:14You can do now something in order to bring yourself to alignment so you can start doing things on a day-to-day that are aligned with yourself.
- 27:23Putting alignment first instead of money first.
- 27:26I love that.
- 27:27And a quote from your boy on page 214, Charlie Munger once said, I did not intend to get rich.
- 27:33I just wanted to get independent.
- 27:35Very true.
- 27:36Yeah.
- 27:36Me growing up, I thought that I wanted to be rich.
- 27:39But then what I realized that what I wanted was freedom.
- 27:41Yeah, I think it's interesting.
- 27:42So on page, just kind of the final bangers on page 207, chapter all together now, he sums up what he views as the most important points from the book.
- 27:53And a few that I really liked were less ego, more wealth.
- 27:59Saving money is the gap between your ego and your income, and wealth is what you don't see.
- 28:04So wealth is created by suppressing what you could do today in order to have more stuff or options in the future.
- 28:11Pretty good reminder that it's like, do you want to improve or prove that you're really special?
- 28:17You can improve or prove you have that choice.
- 28:19The second one I really liked was use money to gain control of your time because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness.
- 28:28The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want for as long as you want pays the highest dividend that exists in finance.
- 28:35Be nicer and less flashy.
- 28:37Define the cost of success and be ready to pay it.
- 28:40Beautiful.
- 28:41Beautiful.
- 28:41All right.
- 28:41Reminder, The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel.
- 28:44I think he has three books out now.
- 28:46And by the time you're watching this, maybe you'll have a fourth.
- 28:48Highly recommend all of them.
- 28:50Quick reads, powerful punches in the gut, especially for those crazy people like me that needed to understand finance in a different way than what they learned in their finance degree.
- 28:59That's flip.