Morgan Housel: Why More Money Won’t Make You Happy

Most of us think money is just about numbers, how much you earn, save or invest. But deep down, money is really about emotions. It's about envy, fear and happiness and figuring out what enough actually means. That's why I'm so excited for today's guest, Morgan Housel. He's the best selling author of the Psychology of Money and the Art of Spending Money. And his writing has changed the way that millions of people think about wealth and life. In this conversation, Morgan shows us that money isn't just a financial tool and it's a mirror that reflects who we are, what we value, and the choices that shape our future. And by the end of this episode, you'll see money differently and maybe you'll see yourself differently too. So let's get started. Tell me about this, the interview spree, because I know you're, you're probably on an interview spree. Like how has this one differed from any other ones? Anything interesting about it?

Well, I feel like I've been on an interview spree for five years. I don't think I've, I've really stopped that much. And I enjoy doing it. You know, I'm not an introvert, but I'm very comfortable being alone at home. I work at home by myself half, for pretty much my entire career. And I spend my day thinking about my work and writing and the things that I'm, I'm working on. And so I'm, I'm, I'm alone most of the day. I have a wife and kids here and whatnot. That's all great, but for work, I'm alone 99.9% of the time. And because of that, I'm very comfortable with that. But I also enjoy doing things like this and getting to chat because the vast majority, majority of the day, I'm inside my own head all day. So I, I actually love doing, doing things like this and that's why I probably haven't stopped in the last five years.

Amazing. And I feel like this is something when I, when I just in this brief moment talking to you, but also reading your books. This, it sounds like this is really deeply meaningful for you. And it's you, when I look at you, I, I see you as somebody who has found his calling and I just as absolutely. Max.

What? Thanks. That's, that's great to hear because I think what has always been true about this is that I'm not writing as an expert lecturing you. This is basically self reflection in my own life. And so when I write about envy, it's not because I'm an expert in envy and I want to teach you it. It's because I, I've experienced that myself. And I reflected like, why am I envious of that person? What's going on there? When I write about social comparison, comparing yourself to other, that's me that like I'm, I'm doing that. And so I feel like it's meaningful to me because this has just been a 20 year therapy session for me, trying to figure out my own life. And then if I can, like you, take the leap of faith that if I have an issue with this item that other people probably do as well. And then, so if I can try to figure out what's going on there a, I can help myself. And then if I can tell a good story about it, I might be able to help somebody else. And I, I've, I've written about this before, but I never think about you, the reader. When I'm writing, I think about myself. I'm writing this for an audience of one, which is me. And if I like this topic, if I think this is helpful, if I can write it in a story voice that I think is interesting, then again there's a leap of faith that maybe somebody else will as well. But I never, I'm only thinking about myself when I write this. I want to think of myself as like a selfless person in most aspects of life. But when I'm writing purely selfish, just me, just stories that I like in a style that I like and like, boom, just me. So if it feels deeply personal, that's because, like, I feel like I'm writing a diary when I write this stuff.

This is, this makes so much sense because I was wondering what it was like, what is it that makes me resonate with your work so much? And I think it's that authenticity. You're being 100% real and you're in keeping it real. There's a deeply human element to what it is that you're talking about. And it's not just the human element of what it is that we want to achieve, but also tying into those elements of ourselves. Like you said, envy, potentially greed, struggles with decision making. And it felt like a personal therapy session for me a lot of times where I was like, oh, I get why that was a challenge for me. So the authenticity, I think that really resonates.

I think the vast majority of nonfiction books, the author is trying to know his or her audience. But what that it's a noble pursuit. Know your audience right for them. But it very quickly transfers into pander to your audience in an innocent way. Most of the, most of the authors who do this are very well meaning and well intentioned. But you can smell like a dog smells fear. A reader can smell pandering. When the author is just like trying to tell you what he or she thinks you want to hear. It's very obvious when it happens. And so much of trying to get around that, you know, I, I've been a blogger for 20 years, I've written over 4, 000 blog posts. And when you write that much online, what, what's good, what's hard and good about writing online is that people will tell you in no uncertain terms instantly whether they think what you wrote is shit or amazing. And they'll tell you they'll, in no uncertain terms, no nuance to it. And so when you write that much learned very quickly what works and what doesn't and what does not work is pandering. It just does not work. Now it might work to get you page views, it might work to get you retweets, but if you actually want to gain trust and you actually want people to enjoy what you're, what you're saying and to come back and to build a long term audience, you cannot do it. You have to be authentic in what you're doing. Otherwise they will smell it like a shark smells blood in the water.

Yes. And so this is almost like the, the thought leaders version of a comedian building his is 60min, like on stage set. Right. Because you have so many reps doing it in front of as live as we can get with a blog. You get that immediate feedback and then you can make those adjustments while still being authentic.

Yes, I think that, I think, I think that's, that's exactly it. One of the big problems with like modern media is that I think a lot of content creators, authors, whatever you want to call them, have this view that there's, there is an association between social media engagement and insight. And they'll be like, look, I posted this thread and it went viral. It got 20,000 retweets, a million people liked it, whatever the stat. And they're like, so therefore it must be great. And sometimes that's true, but a lot of times it's like, no, you just tickled the algorithm in the right way. You just made the algorithm happy. And so it got force fed into a lot of people's feeds. But people, I've seen several people do this where it's like they were viral sensations on social media. And then they write a book. Now in a book, you're asking somebody to pay $25 for your insights. And this is not tickling the algorithm anymore. This is really like, is it good or is it bad? And books live and die by recommendations. The only thing that sells books is when somebody buys a book, reads it and says, this is great, I have to go text my friend and tell them to buy this as well. And if your book's not good, they're not going to recommend it. And so you see the difference between what works on social media and what people actually like, and the vast gulf that can exist between those things.

This is incredibly helpful. It's funny because when I think about my challenges with social media, I think it's been the distinction between me wanting to give deep, meaningful insight and then what the algorithm wants, which is just engagement, regardless of quality. It's a tough game to play. And I feel as though the blogging and for me, podcasting too, it allows us to get deeper into the content and also get closer to our audience in a more meaningful way.

Yeah. You know, so much of what I, what I write about, what my career background is, is in investing. And kind of the core of investing is if you give up short term gains in favor of long term endurance, you're probably going to do better. So if you stop chasing whatever crypto coin is hot right now, whatever penny stock is hot right now, don't chase that. And even if those people outperform you this year, even if they outperform you by a lot this year, if you favor, like, no, I, I just want good returns for a very long period of time, those are the people who do best. If you could be average for an above average period of time, that's who does best. And I think that analogy transfers very well to content as well. There are so many people in podcasts and social media, whatever it might be, who are going to be more viral than you are today because they are pandering to the algorithm, because they're saying things that are crazy, because they're scaring people, whatever it might be. And if you as a content creator can say, no, I'm not going to do that, and therefore I'm not going to be as viral as this other person. But over the next 10 years, that other person is going to get washed out, people are going to tire of them, the algorithm is going to change, whatever it might be. I'm going to have my audience going for 10 years. And just like in investing, the people who can Just keep it going for the longest period of time are the ones who do it the best. And so I think that that analogy between investing in content, like, fits very well. And you could draw that analogy to so many other things in life, health and whatnot. I think the person who eats a good diet and exercises moderately and does that for 30 years is going to way outperform in health. The person who, like, tracks every macro down to the millionth of a molecule every year, but, like, can't keep that going for more than a year because they tire and burn out of it. If you can just be good for a long period of time, you're going to end up doing great.

This, this is remarkable in, because it's. I, I think about this saying, the, the sign of a brilliant insight is that it seems obvious in hindsight. And I think a lot of times people are going to, they're going to listen to this and they're going to say, of course, yes. But then what is it that makes it so hard for people to actually adopt this mentality in their lives?

I think it's. I mean, there are so many instances in life where what's going to get you ahead is endurance and longevity, patience, those kind of things. But if life is a competition, and I think it is in so many aspects, a competition for friends, for spouses, for attention, for money, a competition for these things, then there's always going to be someone out there who is getting it faster than you are. And this is just like the classic fomo. Just like, you wake up every morning and you know it's a competition. You know, you're competing with these other people and they're getting it faster than you are. And some people are better at others at saying, that's okay, that's okay. I, I understand the game that I'm playing, and they're playing a different game and, like, it's all good, but a lot of people just can't. Can't stand that. They cannot stand watching other people get richer faster than they are. And I think that that's always been true. That's been true for tens of thousands of years. Social media makes it a hundred times more powerful than it used to be. Because now you are really seeing, not just you're, you're not just seeing how rich and happy and successful other people are, you're seeing the fake faux version of it. And, and when you open up on, on Instagram, like, everybody is richer, happier, prettier than you are. But if, you know those people in real life, you probably were like, no, they're not. That person who looks so happy on Instagram, has a terrible marriage and they cry themselves to sleep at night and their kids don't talk to them anymore. Like, we all know people like that. And so. But if you're seeing that, particularly as a young person who hasn't like wrapped their head around the game that's playing, being played on social media, just dumps gasoline on this FOMO fire where it's like every time you open up your phone, which is 700,000 times per day, you have this jolt of FOMO of like, everyone is doing better than I am and I have to go get it right now right at this instance. And so that's always been the case. But the inability to think about the next 10 years because the next 10 seconds is right in front of you is stronger than it's ever been. I was, my, my wife and I were talking to a family friend last night and we're talking about how, you know, look, I and my wife and most people, you know, I'm a, I'm a senior millennial, grew up in front of the TV. The TV was on 12 hours a day, never turned off. And now, and that's that, that's how we grew up in the 90s. And now kids today are in front of the, you know, phones or iPads all day and there's a lot of angst and anxiety behind that. And I always say, like, look, I was in front of a screen all day too. It was a giant TV in my living room, but I watched a screen. The difference now is that a lot of what they watch on YouTube or social media is literally just scrolling, flipping through three second attention span. And I've noticed for my kids that if we sit down to watch a movie, like a two hour movie after, after seven minutes, they're like, wait, this thing's still on. It's still going. I've been watching for seven minutes, it's still playing. Like, why is it still going? The idea of a long term attention span is so foreign relative to what it was even one generation ago.

It's remarkable. And because I have two little ones too, I have a nine year old and a four year old too. And I'm trying to get the four year old to be more patient. And maybe this is a Herculean task or Sisyphean in some kind of way, but it's like, well, just wait one, just hold on just for one minute. And two seconds later, he's like, it's taking too long. And one of the things that's been important for me when it comes to parenting is giving my kids a dose of boredom. Just giving them the ability to be bored and let their minds wander and be able to just wait. The delayed gratification and I think about just decision making. This is something that you covered a lot in your books, too. The ability to delay gratification to a certain extent when you think about your life, when you think about yourself as a father, how do you try to impart that wisdom in a meaningful way?

I think you can lead by example, by doing it, but also recognize as a parent that, you know, this is. This is well outside my field of. Of of expertise. But my understanding about it is that there are so many personality traits in your child that are basically forged at conception, and there's not much that you can do about it as a parent to guide them once they're out of the womb. And that's. That's very hard to hear as a parent, because we want to think like, I'm your shepherd. I'm going to, like, mold you into being a good person. And like, yeah, you're probably not. The kid is who they are, and that's. That's the end of it. So I think you can lead by example as a parent and show them patience by example, show them budgeting by example, show them kindness and respect by example, but also understand that they're who they are and they're going to do it their own way, either that's who they're going to be forever, or like myself and probably you and everybody, you'll learn about the hard way when you're. When you're a young adult. And, you know, the biggest life lessons that I ever had were from age, you know, 18 to 22. When I was an adult, I was on my own, but I was still a child in my head and making mistakes left and right and saying the wrong things and disrespecting people and being impatient and learning the hard way when all those backfired on me and saying, okay, now I get it. And 99% of those things were things that my parents told me about when I was a kid. But of course, you don't listen to it. You have to. You have to burn your fingers on the stove before you understand that you shouldn't do it. And so I think that's a lot of parenting, too, is understanding. Like, I can tell you this, but you're not going to get it until you actually feel it. Feel the Downside for yourself.

Yes, that's. That's the hardest part, man, because you want to protect them from that, but then you become that. That helicopter parent that protects them from the lessons. They need to become who they are going to be.

I. I still have. You know, I'm. I'm in my early 40s, but still to this day, I have these remembrances of, like, I remember when I was 19 and I said that thing and I was. And everyone laughed at me because it was so stupid. Like, oh, it hurts so bad. But it. It. The fact that it hurts so bad is. Is. And I still remember it 20 years later is why I've never done it ever again. You have to experience that.

I think it's going to be very refreshing for our audience to hear you say that, too, because, man, I think about some of those things where I. With some people, I just want to go back and apologize for the hundredth time for how ridiculous I was back then. But you're right. It's. It's a necessary part of. And if you don't make those mistakes, then the lesson isn't as sticky, especially.

Because I'm glad I learned that lesson at 19 versus. Versus 41. Because people will. Because people will give you grace and forgiveness. At 19, he's a kid. He said something stupid. At 41, they probably won't. There's a lot of things where it's like, learn these lessons as soon as possible because they only get harder as you age.

You're.

You're so right.

So right. And this kind of. You kind of almost preemptively sniped one of the questions I was really excited to ask. But let's go ahead and throw it out anyway, because I. I wanted to know how you would think your life would have changed if you could miraculously have downloaded the information that's in all of your books at age 18 or 19,000.

It's so. It's so easy for me to answer that question because everything that's in there, I learned firsthand. And back to. You have to burn your fingers on the stove to understand it. I learned all that firsthand. And so, you know, I graduated college in 2008. And so that was the. That was the financial crisis. The world was falling to pieces, and nobody was hiring, and the stock market fell 50%. And that sucked at the time. It was awful to experience that. But the vast majority of what I believe today came from that experience. And it was. It was the experience, not the. Not the reading. It was. It Was it was waking up at 2am being like, I might not have a job next week. And I just signed this lease on this apartment. Like, how's that going to play out? You have to experience that to understand it. And what's interesting is that a lot of what I write about, think about, read about is what America and the rest of the world was from about 1930 to 1945, the Great Depression, in World War II. And so much happened in there. Technological innovation, economic catastrophe. Like, there's so much to study, but I didn't experience it. And so I always have to remind myself all these things that I'm learning about these, this period, I probably understand 1% of it versus the people who actually woke up and didn't know what the world was, what was going to happen in the world next was so uncertain. So you always have to understand that like you're, you're not going to get any of this until you experience it firsthand. And you know, in, in investing some when, when the world is going well, the stock market's going up, everybody thinks they have a high risk tolerance. Everyone's like, oh, I'm, I'm a risk taker. I'm going to swing for the fences. It's, it's, it's not until you lose half your net worth that you real, that you understand whether that's true or not. You learn whether that's true or not. You have to experience it back to World War II, which is the thing I love studying. There's all, there's there, there's this thing written several years ago about all the soldiers who would come out of boot camp full of bravado and they would have so much energy and they'd be like, I can't wait to get to the front line. I'm going to get those nasty Nazi bastards. And they've had so much ambition. And then they get to the front line and a bullet whizzes past their head and they're scared out of their minds. They duck, they duck under the COVID and they cry for their mom. Not a criticism, because I would do the same, of course, but the gap between how you think you're going to respond and how you actually respond when you felt it firsthand is off the charts. There was a study a couple of years ago too, and this is disputed. And so this is not a black and white fact, but it was like the number of frontline soldiers, not, not back medics, but frontline soldiers who actually fired their guns in World War II is very small. The implication being most of the soldiers on the front line were cowering in fear. Again, not a criticism. But you don't know how you're going to respond to risk until you've actually been there dealing with it. And that is true for the whole spectrum of investing careers, war, and everything in between.

Yes. Okay, Morgan, tell me how this lands, because it sounds like we're talking about the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Because we can do a lot of research, read these studies, and learn as much as we can, and we could accumulate knowledge, but that knowledge really doesn't turn into wisdom unless it's meaningfully applied and you can actually experience how you would respond. And it seems like. And if you think this is bs, just call me out on this. It seems like a lot of times people are more comfortable sitting with knowledge and not turning it into wisdom by actually taking action and living life and putting and applying some of these things that they've learned.

I think. I think that's right. And there's two sides of this, I would say. One, it's, it's definitely true. I don't disagree with that. And I, I think part of the. But I think. I do think there is a lot of value in just accumulating knowledge, because what a lot of people are trying to do is just make sense of the messy, confusing world that they live in. And if they can read something that helps them contextualize what they've experienced a little bit better, then there's value in that. Now, it's not a substitute for wisdom and life experience and actually having dealt with it. But there's a lot of times where everyone's life is just this big cauldron of confusion and uncertainty and trying to figure out these emotions and why did this happen? Why did that happen? And if you could read something and say, oh, that kind of helps me make sense of what I just experienced, I think that's great. And that's, that's, that's fantastic. And so just because you haven't experienced it doesn't mean it's worthless. The lived experience is going to be more. More believable and move the needle more in your head. But there's definitely value for knowledge in and of itself.

I agree. Yeah, you're 100% right. And because what I'm thinking about is when I've read your work, I've. I've thought about it in terms of knowledge acquired, for sure, sure. But then I want to turn that knowledge into decision making and action. And when you think about Your work, How much of it is making sure that the people have the knowledge? Well, I know that you write it for yourself, but the knowledge acquisition versus what it takes to actually put that knowledge into action by making a decision and then taking action. I feel like for a lot of people, the nexus between knowledge, decisions and action, though, there's, there's a disconnect sometimes.

Yeah, I, I, I think I always punt on, on saying, here's how you can implement this in your own life. Because I don't know you, I don't know any of the readers. And the idea that there is a one size fits all solution for everyone doesn't exist in almost any endeavor in life. Many years ago, I was a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and one of the editors were, would, would often say of the pieces that I, that I wrote, he'd say, hey, you know, like your last piece, but you need to finish with, and therefore you should go buy this mutual fund. There always has to be an action at the end. And I remember thinking, like, says who? That could be terrible advice. Just giving someone information to help them contextualize their own life and then leaving the responsibility to them to figure out how it fits in their puzzle piece of life, I think is the responsible thing to do. And so that can be not what a lot of readers want. A lot of readers want, like, give me a formula that I can go put in place today and maybe in some aspects of your life that can exist, but by and large it doesn't. And so if I can help you contextualize with a story or whatnot, but then you have to figure it out for yourself. The reason that's the case is because your goals are different than mine. Your experience is different than mine, your family's different than mine. We shouldn't pretend that. I can just tell you go do this and that and you'll achieve everything that I did or that you want, whatever it might be. And so I've always punted on that, sometimes to the disdain of readers and editors. But I think it's, I think it's the responsible thing to do, to not pretend that I can give you advice when I don't even know you.

This is so helpful.

I mean, I mean, here's the equivalent. Imagine if you watched, if you watched a pharmaceutical ad and the ad said, you know, at the end, all that, all the ads say, talk to your doctor if this medication is right for you. Imagine if they didn't say that and they said you should go to the store and start Swallowing this pill today, you'd be like, whoa. Like, is that good for me? Like, I don't know. But I think financial advice does that. On tv, they say, you should buy this stock, you should buy this fund without even knowing the person, whether it's right for them or not. So I think all financial advice should end with the equivalent of talk to your doctor to see if this is right for you.

You're so right. And I think especially for me, as, as somebody who's I a thought leader in negotiation and communication, I always felt like I needed to be somewhat prescriptive. And I think this is a bit of the. The zeitgeist between behind thought leadership, but also a little bit of my bias as a lawyer. I feel like my job is to tell people what they should do.

Right.

But I'm. I'm realizing that now. You're absolutely right. If we can give them the knowledge to contextualize it, then we're giving them what they need in order to make the best decision for themselves.

I think that's especially true if you're talking to a broad audience. Now, if you are a lawyer sitting face to face with your client and you know all the details, if you're a doctor sitting face to face with your patient, you know all the details, then it's different. Then your job might be to say, this is what you're doing, this is what you need to do, and you need to do it. Now, that could be a good thing. We're doing a home remodel right now, which is absolute hell, if you can imagine, if you've been through something like that. But one of the things I love that our contractor does is. And he does it only once in a while, but I love when he does it. If my wife and I say, hey, we have an idea. We want to build this this way. Sometimes our contractor will say, no, I'm not doing that. Not like, oh, like maybe. Here's another thing you could think. He just says, no, no, that's not what we're doing. And I love that he takes the initiative to be like, I'm the expert. I can see the situation. The idea you have sucks, and we're not going to do it. Rather than saying, this is your house. You can do anything you want. He takes the initiative. Just like when he knows all the details to do it. But that's like a very individual case because he knows all the details. The broader you get, the more you have to say, I don't know, you figure it out for yourself.

You're so right. You're so. And, and honestly, kind of a little aside to that point, sometimes it is very refreshing when somebody who has the context and the authority just tells you what to do. You know, I. I remember sometimes when I was working with business coaches or when I was in therapy, I would say, hey, okay, listen, Kwame's in video game mode. You have the controller. Now, what would you play? What's the next move? I need something a bit more specific in some of these circumstances. So, yes, 100%, leaning into that authority sometimes is. Is the right decision and the right approach.

I. I think a lot of people experience that with doctors, particularly if you have, like, a very serious medical condition, cancer, whatever it might be, and the doctors will say, here are your seven options that you can do for treatment plans. And a lot of people in that situation, people would be like, no, I. I want you to tell me which one I should do. Like, aren't you the expert? Like, you're leaving it to me to decide, like, tell me. And so a lot of people ask the question, like, if. If I was your son, Mr. Doctor, what would you do? Like, like, just tell me which one you would do. That's what I want to do. And so there are situations where, like, the person on the other side desperately needs you to tell them what the right decision is. If they know all the details, yes.

Yeah. Let's stick on decision making, too, Morgan, because when. When I read your books, this was something that really helped me when it came to decision making. Like, thinking differently about money, but understanding how money operates with me, how I think about it, because you helped me to realize that different people perceive and experience and think about money in different types of ways. And one of my core values personally is freedom, being able to live life on your terms. And freedom is going to be defined differently by different people. But I'm recognizing a big part of how we conceptualize freedom is going to be affected by what we think about money and what our position is financially, too. So when you think about the psychology of money and everything that you've. You've written on with investment and everything and how to spend money, what is the nexus between that and then each individual's personal perspective on freedom?

Well, I think. I think with freedom, I heard someone says the other day that, like, the formula for how to get rich is actually very simple. You can either sacrifice more or want less. And, like, those are your two options. And so the idea, like, the connection between money and freedom, I think a lot of it has to do with the second part of that equation, that if you are a billionaire but you want to be a multibillionaire, you can feel as broke as someone who is like trying to get $10,000. Like it's all just the kind of the connection between how much you want. And I use the example in the book the Art of Spending Money about my grandmother in law, my wife's late grandmother, who she lived like 30 years on nothing but $1800 a month in Social Security. She had no savings, no pension. She got 1800 bucks a month in Social Security. That's all she had. And she was like the happiest person you'd ever meet. She was so much happier than any of the big shot hedge fund managers who make $100 million a year but want more than that. She made $1800 a month and she didn't want a single dollar more than that. And because she did, she had this amazing level of psychological wealth. Like she didn't have a lot of financial wealth, but she had psychological wealth because she was content with what she had. And the flip side of that is that you can have a ton of financial wealth, you can have tens of millions of dollars in financial wealth, but if you want more than your psychological wealth, you have like this level of psychological debt overhanging that. I think that's what it is, is that your expectations are debt. Whether you know it or not, the more you want, it's like a level of debt you have overhanging your wealth. And so the idea that you can, the only way to feel wealthy is when you start wanting a little bit less and become content with what you have. I think that's true at every single level of wealth. And for sure, if you look at the list of the, of the wealthiest people, look at the top chunk, the people who are worth literally $100 billion or more. Guarantee you there are people on that list, on that list who want more. So you could have $100 billion, but if you want 101, you feel like you're falling behind. And that's, I think that's, that's so hard to wrap your head around because like, how could that possibly, how could you have that much money and not feel rich? Like. Oh, you absolutely can. It's because everything that you want is the gap between what you have and what you want, that you're the feeling of wealth that you have. And look, the average middle class American, the median American family today is living a level of wealth and abundance that would have been inconceivable to somebody 100 years ago, inconceivable that you would be living in a, in a 1500 square foot house and you have access to Advil and Tylenol and Sudafed and all these things that would have seemed like magic a hundred years ago. But people don't feel that way because they're comparing themselves to people who also have those things. And so the idea that the feeling of wealth is purely a comparison, it's purely a level of want and desire. It's not what you have, it's what you desire. I think that's the most important piece of the puzzle.

Oh, so this happens quite frequently on the show. I know. You are objectively correct. Right, I know that. And then in my stomach, that did not sit well with me, Morgan, because there is the. That competitive in me who always wants more, who wants to compete directly head to head with other people. And then it's their, the, the internal monologue or the internal dialogue that I had within myself is that is objectively what would lead to more happiness. Not comparing as much. But then the competitive in jerk inside of me says, well, but you could do better. Couldn't you do better than them? Are you accepting defeat? Is this a loss? And so can you, can you be my money therapist here and help to reconcile these voices in my head?

First, I don't think that is the inner jerk. I think we should recognize that the, that the reason that most. Or the idea that most people wake up every morning and say this isn't enough, I need more is what drives the world forward. That's why we have innovation and progress, is because people wake up in the morning and say we could do better. I could do better. That's why my kids and my grandkids and your kids and grandkids will live in a better world than we do is because everyone wakes up feeling like it's not enough. So it's not a bad thing, it's not a terrible thing. The individual level, it gets back to what I said. Like it's a competition. Life is a competition. And if you stop playing, that means someone else might get the spouse, the house, the job, the whatever it might be. And if they get it, you don't. And so that can, that can be very tough if there is a solution for this. It's. It's two things. One is a lot of the reason that you are going out and trying to get ahead is because you think if you do and not, not you individually, but everybody, I, I do this Everybody does it is that you think that if you get ahead, you will send a signal to others and those others will appreciate and admire you more than they do. If I make more money, I can buy a nice car. If I buy a nice car, people will respect me more. That's like, that's the simple logic in everyone's head. The counter to that is nobody's looking at your car, nobody gives a, about your house, nobody's looking at your clothes. They're busy worrying about themselves, they're not thinking about you. I heard the, the comedian Jimmy Carr say this a couple weeks ago. He said in, in your 20s, everybody's is worried about what others think of them. In your 30s you say I don't care what others think of me. And in your 40s you finally realized the truth, which was nobody was thinking about you to begin with. They were busy worrying about themselves. And so once you realize that like everybody overestimates how much other people are thinking about them and judging them, then it's easier to stop playing that game. It's easier to get inside of your own head and say, how can I use money as a tool to make myself and my family happier? Not how do I use money as a tool to try to gain one ladder rung up on the social ladder? You know. And so I think that's, that's much easier said than done because I think we are all ingrained with millions of years of evolution to want to compete against one another because life is a competition for resources. So it's very hard to take yourself out of that game. But the people who can do it, I think are, are among the people in society who are actually the happiest. Not the richest, not the prettiest, not the, not the fastest cars, but actually the happiest are the ones like my grandmother in law who was broke by any metric. And she just didn't care. She didn't care. She, she didn't care that other people had more money than her. She liked going for walks, she liked playing in her garden, she liked watching the sunset, she liked drinking tea. She, she loved it. And she went, she went to bed happier than almost any of us because she wasn't competing against other people.

This is brilliant. I think a lot of times what I'm realizing is, and this might be a bit of ego too, is that we use money and all of these external metrics as proxies for our self worth. And that's when it becomes incredibly personal. And one of the things I started to ask Myself is at the end of my life, would I rather be incredibly rich and not happy, or incredibly happy or not rich? Not that those are the only options, but it made it really clear to myself, is like, if I am not happy, then that is the goal. And a lot of times we, we, we, we lose sight of that and kind of going back to what we were talking about at the beginning when you talked about the fact that most of your time is spent alone. And it's the difference between, like, loneliness and solitude. I think there's a lot of value in solitude. And I think we have to get to that point where we're willing to quiet the noise and really commune with ourselves and understand who we are and what we want and allow ourselves to live life on our terms and achieve happiness in the way that works for us and acknowledge and accept that happiness might look different for us than it will for other people. But then we start to be able to, as you said, use money as a tool to get us happiness. I think that fundamentally changes our relationship with money.

Right. And what's interesting is that every child learns about somebody who has all the money in the world but is not happy and everyone hates him. His name is Ebenezer Scrooge. We don't think very highly of him. And, but, but still. But the path, like, even though you learn about him as a kid and everyone understands it, the path is basically to try to. For, for so many people, the path of least resistance, the most appealing path in life is to basically follow Ebenezer Scrooge. Like, money, money, money, nothing else matters. And, and it's, I think a lot of it is because money is so tangible and you can count it so precisely that it becomes a target for your desire. Because all the other things in life are hard to measure. So I always use this example. Like if I said I want to become a 10% better dad, what does that mean? It's a very noble goal. I would love to be a 10% better dad. What does that mean? How do I track that? How do I measure progress? How do I know if I've done it? You can't. So even though it's a very noble goal, I'm just kind of like, I don't, I don't know what that means. But if I said I want to increase my net worth by 10%, I can tell you down to the penny what that means. Down to the penny, Exactly. So because it's so easy to measure, people are going to spend a lot of their time chasing that because it's so Precise. Even if 10% happier, 10% calmer, 10% better health, 10% better friend, spouse, parent is a way better goal. It's so nebulous that it just kind of, it's out of sight, out of mind.

You're right. This is really powerful. Do you have a practice of trying to quantify those happiness metrics for yourself?

You can't, you can't. Like, how do you quantify being a. Like, if I said, on a scale of 1 to 100, where do I or you sit as a father? No, you can't. You can't. And even if someone came up with a formula and said you're an 83, it'd be like you just made that up. And it changes by the day. It changes. You know, yesterday I was, I was an okay dad. Today I'll be a better dad. Like, it changes by the day. But net worth, I can compare mine to yours down to the penny, and it's apples to apples. Yeah. And so people spend so much focus on net worth, income, salary, just because it's so tangible, it's a score. And because of that, there is this connection between net worth and self worth among ourselves and others. Even if that's crazy and we shouldn't do that because it's the ultimate scorecard of being able to measure it. We do it. And if you ask someone, like, what would you rather be? Would you rather have a 10% higher net worth than me or be a 10% better dad than me? Like, I think of course you would. Of course. If you're trying to compare yourself against, like, which, like between you and I, who's a better person? This is a dumb game. We're not playing this.

Right.

But, but which would you rather be? A better spouse and dad or higher net worth? It's so obvious which one you would pick. You're sorry, but what do people actually chase? And what do people actually value? The money.

Brilliant. This. And there's a reason I asked you that, because I remember in a few months ago, I had this realization that I constantly, even if I can't compete with somebody, I'm competing with my. I compete with myself. Which sounds noble, but it can become very problematic in those intangible areas of life too. And so I told Whitney, I was, I was saying, Whitney's my wife. I was saying, I'm struggling because I keep on. I've been asking you and, and this is. I, I have many flaws. I want to be clear about that. When, when there's a problem when you would tell me. But there's some times where I'm like, okay, things have been going well. You haven't complained about anything in a while. So I'm saying, what can I do to be a better husband? What could I do to be a better father? And she would say, I, at this moment, I can't think of anything. And my brain malfunctioned. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, there, there has to be something. I, I cannot just be acceptable. There has to be something more, you know, so that, that's something that I'm struggling with too. When it comes to those areas of life that are tr. Relationships, getting to a place where you can accept enough, that's always been a challenge.

And to that point, because I, I've asked my wife and my kids that same question. How can I be a better husband, better dad? And they say some version of what Whitney told you. And I think the truth for a lot of this is, if my wife asked me that or if my kids asked me that, how can I be a better wife? Or how can I be a better son or daughter? I think my response would be, I, I accept you for your flaws. So I can name 10 flaws that you have. I can name 10 things that drive me crazy, but I accept, and I love you for that. And therefore, like, would it be better as a wife and as a son and a daughter if you did this list of things differently? Yeah, yeah, that would be better. But I accept you for those flaws, and I hope you accept me for my flaws. Now, people can use that as an excuse for some very poor behavior, so you can't take that too far. But I think that's a lot of it. But that gets the sense of enough. And so would I. Would, would my son be better if he had these, this list of characteristics that he was better at? Like, maybe. But what he has is, is, is enough. I love him for who he is. And I, I, I, I think so much judging in society, a lot of divorces, a lot of breakups, a lot of bad relationships, a lot of bad careers, or people just have way too high expectations for other people and they can't accept others for the, the, the downsides that they have. One of the, the first sentence in Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which is like the, one of the best psychology books ever written, is the premise of this book is, it is easier to spot other people's flaws than your own. It's easier to watch other people and say, I Can see you being impatient, being judgmental, whatever it might be, without realizing that you do the exact same yourself. You're just blind to it. And so like, giving, giving people grace in those situations and hoping that they extend the favor to you, I think is super important for getting to a level of enough and being content with what you have.

I love that.

That's.

That's really helpful, especially from that interpersonal perspective too. And when, now the hard part is when it comes to. And we've touched on this, but we've never tied. We haven't tied it specifically to enough. When it comes to money itself, how. What is enough? How do we find what is enough for us?

I remember having this realization a couple years ago where I took my. My wife and kids and I went to Maui for a summer vacation. Maui is a very special place to me. I went there as a kid, like, I love it whatnot. And if making sandcastles on the beach with my kids is a 10 out of 10, the realization I had is like, yeah, but being at home playing Legos on the living room floor is like a nine and a half. And like, what I like is spending. What I like is not going to Maui. What I like is uninterrupted time with my kids. And Maui can foster that. Because when you're in Maui, it's like, you're not working. You don't have all the other burdens of home you can use. You can just enjoy it. But what I actually like is spending uninterrupted time with my family. And you could do that at home. Maybe it's more difficult, but that's what I like. It's not Maui that I like. It's the time with my family that I like. And even if you don't have kids, it's probably not Maui that you like. It's sleeping in and not checking your email and not going to work that you like. That's the best part of vacation, not the vacation itself. And so like using money as a tool to leverage the things that actually make you happier. And so if spending time with my kids is actually making me happier, well, if I save more, I can be more independent, I can be more choosy with my work. I can maybe work a little bit less and spend more time with my family. So there. That's how you can use money as a tool to do what actually makes you happy. And so I. The other example that I use in the book is, will buying a big house make you happy? The answer is no. But it can make it easier to host your friends and family, you know, for a barbecue on Friday night. And that might make you happy, but the insight there is that the house isn't making you happier. The friends and family are. Now, the house can be like a conduit to that. It can help with that, but it's not actually making you happier. And, and so I think there's a lot of examples of that where you, you can use money to be happier and have a better life, but it's an, it's an indirect path. It's, it's, it's like a lubricant to get you to the area that's going to make you happy, but it's not making you happy in and of itself.

You know what I realized too, because I, based on what you said, I do, I have. I feel so free when I'm on vacation, especially vacation with my family. I can spend so much time with, with the boys and everything like that. And what's funny is that when you said, yeah, you could do the same thing in your house, I realized that there are a lot of habits. Like when you just think about the anatomy of a habit. You have the, you know, the, the cue, the response, the reward. There are a lot of these cues that take you into those patterns of, of thought, of stressful thought and action and behavior that makes it really tough for you to, at least for me, to get into that vacation mode and be as present. And it makes me realize that with me, and I think a lot of people, especially high achievers, it is easier for them to try to achieve more and get more money and status and things like that than it is for them to slow down and do the internal work necessary to realize what really makes them happy and then actually give themselves permission to do those things when they have the opportunity to do those things.

Right. And I agree with that. And I think one of the things that's true that we have to acknowledge here is that for a lot of people, myself, I'm sure you, a lot of particularly men and fathers, is that what makes me happy and gives me purpose is working hard to support my family. And so we shouldn't be like, oh, you should, you should work less and whatnot. Like, what's going to make me happy is being productive and providing. That's what. And of course, a lot of moms feel that way as well. But we like. It's, it's, it's too far. If we say you should, you should work less, be less ambitious, spend more time with your family. There might be some truth to that. But, you know, about 10 or 15 years ago, the fire movement exploded. Financial independence, retire early. And all these people who are trying to retire at age 28, and what a lot of them realized was that if they did retire in their 20s or 30s, after. After a month, they were bored. And because, like, what actually made them happy was being a productive member of society, going to work, using your brain, building something, making the world better, providing for your family, not sitting on the couch or playing golf. And so a lot of what is going to give you purpose and meaning and pleasure and happiness is being productive. It's going to work. Now, of course, a lot of people take that way too far. And then they're in jobs that they hate or a job that they love, but they do it too much or it's come at the expense of other. Their health and their marriage and their relationships. You can obviously take it too far. But the message here is not work less and spend more time at home, because for a lot of people, particularly of our age, that's actually going to be the path towards unhappiness.

Thank you. That's good. Because I. I tell. I told Whitney, like, one of the biggest challenges is my ambition, you know, learning how to turn that off. And before we had the boys, it was easy, you know, because Whitney's a doctor, too, so she's. She's very busy. So it's easy for me to just, like, work, work, work, work, work. I. I enjoyed it, but now it's. It's hard to. To take that balance because I do enjoy spending time with my boys. But then there's that voice in my head. It's like being productive, which, again, puts me in that position where I need to have that quiet time with myself to figure out what the appropriate balance is and recognize that there is no clear right answer. It's like, I wish it was like school taking a test, like, oh, got the grade, I'm good. I could be done and never think about this again. It's like a constant balancing act.

Constant. And I think a lot of this, you only know if you've done a good job in hindsight. And I think it's very common for people to look back and say, no, actually, I did work a little bit too hard. I should have spent more time with my family. There's a thing I think about a lot, which is there's a book written by a gerontologist named Carl Pillimer, and he studied a thousand elderly Americans, a Lot of whom were 90, 100 years old. And he's just asking them for life advice. And there's a spot in his book where he says of the thousand people that he interviewed, the thousand elderly Americans, not a single one of them looked back at their life and said, I wish I made more money. But virtually every single one of them looked back and said, I wish I spent more time with my family. I wish I was nicer to my friends. I wish I was more understanding of other people. And so what are you and I going to regret when we're 95 years old? Like, statistically, we will not regret not making enough money. Even if we were poor for our life, we're probably not going to regret that. We will regret not spending more time with our kids. That's statistically almost certain. And so even if that's not a counter to what I just said of like, I want to be productive, I want to work, I want to provide, but we have to understand, like, if the definition of risk is what you're going to regret on your deathbed, and I think that's a pretty good definition of risk, then you know what, like what the odds are of what you're going to regret. It's not working. It's spending more time with your kids while they're available to you.

Unbelievable, this. Morgan, I could talk to you forever about this. I appreciate this. I want to make sure that I give Simone an opportunity to pop in and not like steal all his shine. So, Simone, come in and ask your questions and we'll, we'll chit chat. And I remember you have a hard stop at the top of the hour too. I come from South America. I lived in Venezuela and Argentina. So you know that the economy is very weird there. So we have, for instance, exchange controls and hyperinflation. So we use the money in a short term way. So if I am outside of the North American context, is the book useful for maybe a South American person that lives in South America?

You bring up such a good point. And I try to make this the first chapter of my first book, the Psychology Money, and this book, the Art of Spending Money. The first chapter of both books have a very similar message, which is everybody's different. Everyone is a product of their past and their own experiences and their own country, their own generation. And therefore there is no universal advice. And what I tried to do in both books as well, we talked about this earlier was I'm not giving you advice and saying, here's, here's what you should do. With your money. I'm trying to help you understand the psychology of it. So the psychology of somebody in Venezuela experiencing hyperinflation versus somebody in California who's maybe prosperous. The psychology of risk and uncertainty and regret and fear and doubt is very similar between those two people. Those are human emotions that have been ingrained over, you know, millennia of, Of. Of. Of learning how the world works. And even if the situation is different, even if the cast of characters is different, it's the same movie, it's the same plot. And so, yes, there are. At the. At the individual levels, there can be very different levels of good advice for how you invest your money, how you're protecting your money, maybe even how you're spending your money. That's different for everybody. It's different for people within the United States, and it's very different for people within different countries. But the psychology of risk and regret and uncertainty I think is the exact same among us. And so I see this a lot in investing, where the United States is a very established investing culture. More than half of Americans own stocks. If you go to Germany or South Africa or the UK Or, Or. Or South Korea, they don't. It's. It's just not part of the culture like it is in the United States. So the situation is very different. But how people think about the psychology of money and greed and uncertainty is. Is the same. We're all.

We're all.

We're all the same people, even if we've had different cultures and different upbringings. So I think there is a lot in the book, even if it's written through the lens of a white American male, which is. Which is me. I. I think there's a lot of universal advice in there, regardless of who you are, where you're from, and what you're experiencing.

Thank you. Amazing. Amazing, Morgan. This has been fantastic. And before you go, I want to give you an opportunity to let listeners know about your books, plural, and how they can get in touch or any exciting new projects you're working on.

Yeah. So my book comes out October 7th. It's called the Art of Spending Money. It's very much a follow up to my first book, which is the Psychology of Money. Both of them are just an understanding of not what you should do with your money, but what happens in your head when you're making decisions with money. And what I think is interesting about the artist spending money is that there are tens of thousands of books written about how to get rich, how to make money. There was virtually none written about what to do with it, once you have it, how to spend it. I think the reason is because everybody intuitively assumes that the art of spending money is just spend more, and that's better. And after 20 years of watching people, rich, poor, everybody in between spending money, I realize it's not that simple, that we're actually not very good at using money, once we have it, as a tool to live a better life. And there's this this inherent assumption of just, I'm going to spend more, bigger, flashier, more expensive, and that's better. Sometimes that's true. It's very often not. And so the psychology of what you want, what you have, what you aspire to, who you envy, is what I dig into in this book.

So good. Morgan, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.

It's been fun.