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People talk a lot about passive income.

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This is not a thing.

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Look, there's two ways to get wealthier.

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And passive income is not part of that equation.

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But what's really important for people is how we should spend money.

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Because I've written about money and finance and investing for 20 years, and I can tell you.

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The correlation between how much you spend and how happy you are.

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It can exist, but it is not as simple as you think.

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Morgan Housel is the legendary financial guru.

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Revealing that everything we've been told about saving and spending money

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could be our biggest downfall.

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And here's why.

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If you're unhappy with your life, it is a very easy assumption to make

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that if you had more money, a bigger house, a better car,

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whatever it might be, things should be better.

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And it's a lie, we tell ourselves, of course.

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Because here's the truth.

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So much of spending is a psychological age that you're trying to scratch.

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And that manifests in so many different ways.

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For example, life is a competition.

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It doesn't matter how well I'm doing, it matters how well I'm doing relative to you.

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And the most tangible way to do that is the material stuff.

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I was reading some funny stats.

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They say that if you win the lottery,

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the probability of your neighbor going bankrupt increases.

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It's an amazing statistic.

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So be careful who you socialize with.

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Because you're going to anchor to them as a baseline level of success and happiness.

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So is it wrong to buy a Rolex?

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Absolutely not.

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But when it's controlling your personality,

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it's no different than any other addiction,

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where it's forcing you to do things you otherwise don't want to do.

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What about people who don't seem to spend anything?

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It's just as dangerous.

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Like there's something called post-traumatic broke syndrome.

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And I'll talk about that.

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But I guarantee you that everyone can spend money in a way it's going to make them happier.

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So if I wanted to make a framework to know how to spend my money,

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where do I start?

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But also, based on everything you know about money,

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if I want to get complete financial freedom,

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what's the five things that I should be thinking about?

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The first thing that I think it's most important is...

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Morgan.

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Everybody loves to talk about investing.

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They love to talk about saving money.

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But I've never heard anybody emphasize the importance of spending money.

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You've written this book, The Art of Spending.

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So it begs the question,

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why would someone like you,

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who sells tens of millions of copies of their books when they write about something,

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and really, really cares about the art of writing,

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commit themselves to writing a book about the art of spending,

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when you could have written anything that you wanted to,

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and it would have been a success?

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So I've written about money and finance and investing for 20 years,

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and almost never had I myself said,

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what is my spending philosophy?

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I could tell you how I invest.

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I could tell you how I'd save.

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I could tell you why I do those things.

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If five years ago, if you said,

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Morgan, tell me your philosophy about spending in your own life.

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I'd be like, I don't really know.

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And as I looked into it,

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there are literally tens of thousands of books on how to invest,

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how to grow your money, how to get rich,

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how to help your career.

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That topic is endless.

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There is virtually no book out there written about spending money.

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And I think the reason why is because we don't,

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I think we intuitively think nothing needs to be said,

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because the answer should be obvious.

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More is better,

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fancier is better, that's the end of the topic.

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But if you know particularly wealthier people,

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I mean, it affects everybody,

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but particularly wealthier people,

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you know it's not that simple.

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The correlation between how much you spend and how happy you are,

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it can exist.

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Everyone can spend money in a way it's going to make them happier,

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but it is not as simple as you think.

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And as I started digging into it in my own life,

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of when have I been envious of other people,

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of their material possessions?

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Why was I envious?

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Why when have I been jealous?

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Why was I jealous?

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What kind of spending made me happy?

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What left me completely flat?

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It's a much more complicated topic than it seems at the surface.

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You know, another title for the book could have been

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the psychology of spending money,

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because that's what this is.

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So it's a look at the psychology of greed and envy and social aspiration

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and like climbing the social ladder,

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who you're trying to impress,

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whether those people are paying any attention to you,

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that's what this book is.

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So for someone like me who wants to improve my relationship with spending,

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I guess the question,

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I guess the first question is,

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understanding the art of spending money,

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simple choices for a rich,

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what is it going to do for me?

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How is it going to make my life better to understand this?

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Why does it matter to the person that's listing right now?

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I think it is a very easy assumption to make

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if you're unhappy with your life,

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that if you had more money,

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those problems would go away.

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Yes.

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Sometimes it can be true.

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It's not automatically false.

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It's just easier to assume that that's true than it actually is.

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And so I guarantee you that every single person listening to this right now

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has some degree of that.

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If I had a little bit more money,

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my problems would go away.

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Even if they don't necessarily know it or not,

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so much of spending is a psychological exercise.

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There's an itch that you're trying to scratch

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and that manifests in so many different ways.

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And so I've often thought of money.

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Look, is money the root of society, the core of society?

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No, there's obviously a million things more important than money.

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But I do think it's the clearest window

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that we can look through to try to figure out what's going on

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in our own lives and other people's lives in society.

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It shows very starkly what people value,

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what they're scared of,

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what they're aspiring to become.

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There are many more elements to the puzzle,

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your health, your friends, your family.

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We can go on that forever.

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But money is a very clear window

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that if you see how somebody engages with money,

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you're like, oh, I understand your insecurities.

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I understand your aspirations.

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I understand your self-confidence.

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I understand what you think of other people.

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You can learn a lot about that.

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It's kind of like a reflection of your trauma.

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Yes.

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And it manifests in very different ways.

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There's a great financial writer named Tiffany Allige.

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She grew up very, very poor.

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And now she's extremely successful.

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And she calls it post-traumatic broke syndrome.

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Or even though she has a lot of money right now,

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she, I don't want to put words into mouth,

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my understanding is like she's afraid to spend it

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because the feeling in her head is,

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I will never go back to that.

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I can't ever go back to that poor person.

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Post-traumatic broke.

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And so it can manifest in very different,

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sometimes opposite ways.

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And so the point is not like if you grew up poor,

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you're going to want to display it.

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But the point is that it's a psychological itch.

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It's not just, I want the nice car because nice cars are better.

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There's a social signaling.

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You're signaling to others.

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You're sending to yourself the trophy for yourself

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of what you've overcome.

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The more I dug into it, the more it was so clear of like,

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spending is not just on material stuff.

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It's not just I want to buy this car or this house

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or these clothes or these jewelry because it's nice.

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It's I'm trying to send a signal to others

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or to myself of what I've overcome.

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One of the ways I thought about this in my own life

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is if I was on a deserted island

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when maybe just me and my family,

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nobody could see how we were living.

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Nobody can see your house, nobody can see your car,

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nobody see your clothes, nobody can see your jewelry.

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How would I live?

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For me, and I think most people in that exercise,

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you immediately gravitate away from status and towards utility.

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Like I would not want a Lamborghini.

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I probably want like a pickup truck.

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Sometimes like more to you too.

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If nobody could see it, I would just want utility.

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I would not want an enormous house.

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I would want a house with a nice view.

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Because I'm not trying to show off to other people.

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I just want something that is calming and serene to myself.

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And so once you start seeing the stark difference

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between utility and status,

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once you force yourself to see it,

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you're like, oh, it's everywhere.

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Is something inherently wrong with status?

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No.

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Is it wrong to buy a Rolex?

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Absolutely not.

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Particularly at certain points of your life.

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Okay, so when is it good?

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When is it bad?

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When is it indifferent like indifferent?

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I don't know.

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It's hard to say what's good and bad

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in terms of a formula because everybody's different.

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But I would say this, my own personal desire

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to show off materially happened when I was

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in my late teens, early 20s.

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And looking back, I didn't know this then.

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But the reason why is because I had nothing else to offer the world.

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I had no intelligence.

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I had no wisdom.

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I didn't know how to love anyone.

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I had nothing else to offer.

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Friends, family, spouses, whatever it would be.

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And so the last remaining lever,

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if you're trying to get attention and respect is,

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well, look, I have no intelligence to offer.

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I have no wisdom to offer.

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Maybe people will admire me for my car.

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Okay, that was why I wanted it.

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And now that I hope in a,

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I hope to, today, 20 years later,

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I have a little bit more to offer to my wife,

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to my friends, to my family, to employers

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and customers would not not.

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Then my desire for those things has gone down.

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Not to zero, but it's gone down.

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There's a great Warren Buffett quote where he says,

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success in life is when the people who you want to love,

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you do love you.

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And key to that is, you have to ask the question,

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like, who do you want to love you?

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And for a lot of people,

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the quick knee jerk reaction is everybody.

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And so you want to have a nice car,

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nice clothes, nice jewelry,

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because you think everyone's going to stop and stare.

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When I drive the sound of the road,

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people are going to be stop and say,

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look at that guy.

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Look at her.

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That's a made like, they're so successful.

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I admire them.

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I respect them.

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And by and large, that is almost never true.

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Because no one's thinking about you as much as you are.

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They're not paying attention to your car or your clothes

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or your house.

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They're busy worrying about themselves.

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Jimmy Carr, whether you've had on the show before, is that right?

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Love Jimmy Carr.

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He said this a couple weeks ago.

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I heard it and it was one of those.

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I had to stop and write it down because it was so profound.

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He said, in your 20s,

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people worry about what other people think of them.

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In your 30s, you say, I don't care what anybody thinks of me.

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And in your 40s, you finally realize the truth,

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which was nobody was thinking about you the whole time.

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They're busy worrying about themselves.

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And look, that's not black and white.

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Of course, people think about you and look at you and sometimes judge you,

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but not nearly to the extent that we think.

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And that was why I get back to the exercise.

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If nobody was watching, how would I live?

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The truth is because virtually nobody is watching,

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except the people who I really love and admire.

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And they're going to admire me for things that have nothing to do with

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the kind of car that I drive or the clothes that I wear.

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What's the evolutionary basis for all of this stuff?

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Life's a competition.

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It doesn't matter how well I'm doing.

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It matters how well I'm doing relative to you.

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It doesn't matter how big my house is.

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If I'm trying to signal, all that matters is my house is bigger than yours.

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That's true for all wealth.

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There's no such thing as,

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you are wealthy once you have X number of dollars that does not exist.

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Everything is relative to other people.

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And the truth is that we live in a world of such material abundance

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where the majority of people listening this will have

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some sort of shelter and a car and can buy clothes and whatnot.

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And because relative to a lot of history,

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we live in material abundance.

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The competition, the arms race for bigger and nicer things is extraordinary.

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And it's way more powerful and potent today than it's ever been for two reasons.

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One is social media.

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So I am now aware of the homes that other people live in,

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the cars that they drive, the vacations that they take.

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I'm now aware of it in a way that we were not 15 years ago.

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The other thing is because the internet has democratized

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access to audience intention, the ability to become extremely rich

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is much more powerful than it's ever been.

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It's still rare, of course, but it's easier today than it's ever been

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to become very, very wealthy, even if only a small number of people are doing it.

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Because your potential customer base is now the entire world.

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You know, a hundred years ago, if I was a businessman,

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my customer base was whoever lived in my town.

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Now, if you're a businessman, your customer base can be the entire world.

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And so it's easier to make a huge fortune and because of social media,

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once you make that fortune, people are probably going to know about it.

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Because a lot of those people who become very rich are going to say,

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look at how I'm living.

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And so you have this trickle down aspiration of everyone else being like,

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my definition of wealthy, if you're a young person today,

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a young person's definition of wealthy might be a multi-billionaire

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with a private jet and a private island.

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Where I think 80 years ago, people's definition of wealthy was

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a three-bedroom house and one car and a happy family.

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And so we live in a world where aspirations have inflated by such a dramatic degree

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that the arms race of spending just gets that much higher.

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I think there's something in this idea that you always have to develop the skill of disconnecting

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your admiration from your aspirations if you want to live a good life.

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Because so many kids will look up to you and say,

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I want to be like Morgan, when I'm older, because they admire what you've done.

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But the reality is they're just seeing the sort of shot window of your life.

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And so people do this with Elon all the time.

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Right. And Elon, as he even said, he's like, you might think you want to be a knee,

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but you don't.

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And the clip where he did that, he points to his head and he's like, it's a tornado up here.

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And I think that's true that for most people who are extremely successful,

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who are the ones that people tend to us to look up to, like the extreme outlier successes,

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a lot of the reason they're so successful financially and in their career is because they've

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devoted every second of their life to that career, which most of the time comes at the expense

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of everything else. So they are very successful, made a lot of money, and that came at the expense

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of their health, their relationships, their relationships with their spouses, their children.

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So I make the point in the book that of the top 10 richest men in the world,

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there are cumulative 13 divorces among the top 10 richest people.

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And it's a small sample size, like you can't really say that much with that,

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but this is a group that is almost universally admired, particularly among young men.

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You know Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, how amazing would it be to have that much money?

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But if you dig into their actual, their whole life, not just their net worth,

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not just the house and the jet that they have, but if you look at holistically their entire life,

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you're like, I don't know, it's not that great. It's one thing to admire someone if you can

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pick bits and pieces. I want his house and her car and his career and his physique, but you can't

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pick bits and pieces. You have to take the whole thing. And once you take the whole thing,

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you realize that like a lot of the people who you may have been looking up to either did not have

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a better life than you did, or it was just marginally better in a way that was easy to overlook.

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I had this conversation with a girl in New York last week. I was at a shoot, a client,

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like a brand shoot. And she sat me down to interview me for TikTok and she said,

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she said, what age did you become a millionaire? And I said, it's about 24, 25. And she went,

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I'm 24, 25 now. And I'm not a millionaire. And I remember saying to her, I was like, yeah,

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but would you take my trade? And I explained to her, I was like, so I was lonely between the age

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of 18 and roughly 20. I was working in call centers. My parents wouldn't speak to me. So I had no

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contact with my family really through that period. And then I started shoplifting at about 18, 19

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to feed myself. And my brother had given me this big sort of industrial packet of oats. And

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what I had to do is it's like powder. I mixed the powder with water. And there's this photo online,

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I think, from my previous TED talk, my first one, where I was just drinking this powdered

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water. So I said to her, I said, and I was a millionaire at 24 lonely, not speaking to my family,

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drinking powdered oats, shoplifting, working night shifts in multiple call centers.

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Would you take the trade? And she went, no, absolutely not. She wouldn't take the trade message.

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You can't pick it apart because if you want my outcome, you have to take the path that I took.

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If you want my specific outcome. And if people don't think about that, like one of the things

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this podcast has actually taught me is to think through the framework of trade-offs. So think

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about everything as a trade-off. Think of a Zampek as a trade-off. There's a trade you're making

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somewhere. And even when you aspire, what you admire people, if you admire what we've done here,

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for example, think about the trade-off. Like even with this team, the team have been working here

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every single day, including the weekends, from morning till night for the last 14 days here in

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New York every single day. Do you want to, do you want to podcast? Do you want the trade?

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And if you do find, but just been formed about, as you say, both sides of the trade.

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Another Jimmy Carr quote that I love, he's a profound individual. Not only is he hilarious,

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he's very smart. The quote is, everyone is jealous of what you've got. Nobody's jealous of how

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you got it. And I think it's just so easy to overlook. One of the things I write in the book is

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what's called the reverse obituary, which is it's a very good, helpful exercise to write down.

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It's kind of morbid, but what do you want your obituary to say? Kind of a weird thing, but

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for me, everyone's different, but for me, I would want it to say Morgan was a good father,

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a good husband, a good friend, helped his community, was a good worker. That's what I wanted to say.

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Never in a million years in that obituary what I wanted to say what my income was, how big my house

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was, how many times I went on vacation, how many horsepower my car had. Like it's ridiculous to

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think that that's what it would be. I would want it. You instantly drift towards the things that

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you know you're actually you actually want in life. And of course, it's going to be different for

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everyone, but I found it a helpful thing because you realize that it would be completely absurd

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to put the things that I might be chasing in my life in my obituary. And so if in any given day,

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in any given year, you're like, I got to earn a higher income and I want to buy a bigger house and

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I got to need a new car or knowledge. You see they came out this watch. But at the end of your life,

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you know that's not going to matter. What's going to matter is, were you a good spouse, a good

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parent, a good worker? Were you honest? Were you a good friend? Were you funny? That's it. You know

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that's what's going to matter because that's what you want in your obituary. I think part of the

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reason people spend in the way that they do as well is linked to that, which is sometimes that

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behavior, which is also linked to the point about trimmer at the start might result in a savings

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addiction. I often wonder this because when I was younger, I had this crazy spending problem.

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And I've also seen people who don't seem to spend anything and they're just like hoarding

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capital. You talk about this a bit in the book like, what is that equally bad behavior?

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00:17:37.280 --> 00:17:40.080
Yeah, I think it's equally bad because both of them are the exact same thing, which is money's

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controlling you. Money should be a tool that you use to become a better version of yourself,

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to become a happier, more content version of yourself. But when it's controlling your personality,

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it's no different than like any other addiction where you don't, it's forcing you to do things

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that you otherwise don't want to do. And that can manifest on either end of the side, either people

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00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:06.880
can't stop spending or they cannot spend enough. A lot of financial advisors will tell you one of

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the biggest problems that they have. Are clients who have saved enough money for retirement?

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Good job. You saved for 40 years. You maxed out your 401k, you did everything you're supposed to,

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and now you're 70 years old and you have enough money to travel and play golf and you won't.

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You won't do it. And I think it's because they become so accustomed to the identity of

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I'm a saver. Every month I save and every month my net worth goes up and they cannot bring themselves

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into switching gears and going in the other direction. And for a lot of those people,

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the money is in full control over their identity. It's telling them how to live, what to like,

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what to aspire to, what to enjoy. The money is totally in control of their personality.

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And it's just as dangerous and just as detrimental as you when you were a teenager of I can't stop

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00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:58.960
spending. Both of those are in, the money is like playing the marry in that doll of your life.

402
00:18:58.960 --> 00:19:01.360
It's telling you exactly what to do and want to do it.

403
00:19:01.360 --> 00:19:05.360
If I wanted to make a framework to know how to spend my money, where do I start?

404
00:19:05.360 --> 00:19:09.200
Do I have to get clear on something? Do I, and I guess the other question which is somewhat linked

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00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:13.760
to this is this overarching debate around can money make you happy? But I'm trying to figure out

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00:19:13.840 --> 00:19:17.200
where do I start? Because I want to, one of the things I want to get out of today is I want to

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have a clearer framework there, how to spend my money. Well, those two points that you just

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brought up, I think, are very related. The first on the point of can money make you happier?

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The answer is yes, but there's a, there's a, there's an asterisk next to it that we need to get to.

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For years, there was a big academic debate of just more money make you happy.

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A lot of some of the studies showed yes, clearly it does. Are those studies showed? No,

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it really doesn't. And the academics, the economists were like battling for decades.

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It's kind of been cleared up in the last, just the last couple of years, this last couple of decades

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with some nuance, which is this. If you are already an unhappy person, if you're already anxious,

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if you're already depressed, by and large, having more money will not help you, at least that much.

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00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.000
It might help you a little bit around the margins. If you're, if you start as an unhappy, depressed,

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anxious person, if you are already a happy, content, joyful, laughing person, having more money

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will give you a better life. So in either direction, it's just leveraging who you already were.

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It's not going to change you that much. It's just going to leverage who you already were.

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Very similar to like, they say, this is about power. Like, once you gain power in politics or

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something, it just leverages the personality that you already had. Money is very much like that.

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And so it's not a panacea in the sense of like, oh, like, if you're miserable, like, if you had

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more money, it's going to clear up your problems. It can make some of your problems a little bit

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easier to deal with. But think about it in these stark terms. Let's say you are overweight and

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unhappy. You hate your job and you're recently divorced and your kids won't talk to you,

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but you live in a mansion that has a Ferrari in the driveway. And you got all kinds of fancy

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stuff. Is that a good life? If everything else in your life sucked and you woke up every morning

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going, I got to go to work today. I hate my job. I can't stand my job. I'm lonely. I'm miserable.

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I'm overweight. I can't sleep. I'm addicted to alcohol, whatever it might be. Of course,

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it's a terrible life. The house in the car doesn't matter at all. But you can flip that around and

431
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say, like, let's say you live in a very modest middle class house and you drive a 10 year old Honda

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Civic. But you love your job. You love your coworkers. You have a great relationship with their spouse.

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Your kids admire you. You have your friends over for a barbecue every Friday night.

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Materially, it's very modest. You have what you need. You're not impoverished. You're not homeless.

435
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You have the food that you want, the shelter that you want. But you would be an absolute maniac

436
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to choose the miserable person in the mansion versus the content happy person in the middle class

437
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house. If your goal is to live a good life, it's psychotic to pick one over the other.

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I felt this quite starkly recently because I flew to Cape Town on my own.

439
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I've only ever been there with my girlfriend and with other friends in the first time. I've

440
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only been there a few times. I've got a house that is a very big house. The first time I came with

441
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with my family, the second time it's with my girlfriend and my friends, this time I came on my own.

442
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I felt this deep existential feeling waking up, walking through that house alone,

443
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thinking, fuck me, lie. It was so clear to me that the point of such a thing is to fill it with

444
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people and you say, that's what I mean. I make this point in the book of the very simple question,

445
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will a big house make you happier? I think it will make you depressed if it's empty.

446
00:22:33.760 --> 00:22:40.160
Yes, because that's how I felt. I'd rather be in a studio apartment alone than a big house on

447
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:46.000
my own. I had a similar realization to you a couple years ago when I took my family and I went

448
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to Maui for vacation. I love mouse, my favorite place in the world. Now I have kids. I'm building

449
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sandcastles with my kids on the beach in Maui. I remember thinking, this is a 10 out of 10. This

450
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is peak life for me. Building sandcastles with my kids, everyone's happy and the sun. Then I had

451
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this realization of if that's a 10, playing with Legos at home on the living room floor with my kids

452
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is a 9. It's really close. Realization was what I enjoy is quality time with my kids. I think a

453
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lot of the reason that people like travel is not because they like getting on an airplane and

454
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flying around the world and being jet lagged and cramped into a small hotel. What they like

455
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is uninterrupted time away from work, away from all the other stresses of everyday life. That's

456
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what they actually enjoy. That's what they like travel. It's not necessarily the location. It's like

457
00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:38.160
what the location is doing for you. The question of will a big house make you happier?

458
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It will, to the extent that it makes it easier to have your friends and family over. Because your

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friends and family are the ones who are actually making you happy. The answer can be, will a nice house

460
00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:53.040
make you happy? The answer can be yes if you're using it for the right reasons. There was this

461
00:23:53.040 --> 00:23:58.960
article in the New York Times, this is probably 10 or 15 years ago. The article said two things

462
00:23:58.960 --> 00:24:04.640
happened to Julia Roberts this week. One, she won the Academy Award and two, she found out her

463
00:24:04.640 --> 00:24:09.360
husband was cheating on her. The column said, pop quiz, did Julia Roberts have a good week?

464
00:24:10.320 --> 00:24:14.240
It's like you'd be a fool to say yes. It was probably the worst week of her life. I imagine.

465
00:24:15.360 --> 00:24:17.200
But what we see from the outside was

466
00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:22.640
dolled up in a beautiful dress, accepting the highest honor for career and saying,

467
00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:26.000
that must be an amazing. But it gets back to you. Once you see the full picture,

468
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:30.320
you're like, it's not as easy as it seems. You say on page 23 of your book, quite

469
00:24:30.320 --> 00:24:35.440
that I loved, show off the inside of your house, not the outside. Because the inside of your house,

470
00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:42.640
or what your friends and your family are seeing. Is there a hack here? You have all these internet

471
00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:48.400
communities that come up with these hacks, these other ways to live. They step outside of the matrix

472
00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:53.840
and they form their own little cult that are doing it differently and not abiding by the rules

473
00:24:53.840 --> 00:24:58.160
of the quote unquote matrix. I very much feel like most of us are trapped in the matrix. We're trapped

474
00:24:58.160 --> 00:25:03.920
in this status game competing against each other, not searching for happiness. What is the hack here?

475
00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:07.680
How do I get out of the matrix and what does that look like? I think if there is a formula

476
00:25:08.320 --> 00:25:12.320
that I lay out in the book, and I make the point that there's no formula for how to spend money.

477
00:25:12.320 --> 00:25:16.560
But if I did try to make a formula for a pretty good life, and this extends way outside of money,

478
00:25:16.560 --> 00:25:22.000
the formula for a pretty good life is independence plus purpose. If you want to say like, how can I be

479
00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:26.880
a happy person? You need to be independent. You need to be able to do what you want to do when you

480
00:25:26.880 --> 00:25:31.440
want to do it with whom you want to do it with. And you need some kind of purpose that is higher

481
00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:34.720
than yourself and that could be a million different things. It could be friends, it could be family,

482
00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:39.040
it could be career, it could be religion, whatever it might be. I think it is very difficult to imagine

483
00:25:39.040 --> 00:25:44.800
anyone having a good life without those two things. If your entire life and your schedule is dictated

484
00:25:44.800 --> 00:25:50.400
by somebody else of you have to go to this job that you don't like. You have to have a long commute

485
00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:55.040
that you don't like. You have to do this when you don't want to do it. It's hard to be happy.

486
00:25:55.040 --> 00:25:59.120
And if you don't have any kind of purpose that you're doing it for, it's difficult to be happy.

487
00:25:59.840 --> 00:26:06.400
And so the idea that to me, the best thing to spend money on is independence. And I view it as

488
00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:10.800
purchasing. I don't view it as saving money. I view it as purchasing independence. That's how I

489
00:26:10.800 --> 00:26:16.960
view it. I view like I'm buying independence when I save. And so to me, the biggest thing that I

490
00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:22.320
spend my money on, and this sounds weird, but is saving. And I view that as buying independence.

491
00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:26.720
I view that as every dollar that I save is a little bit more independent than I was before.

492
00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:31.840
It's a little bit of my future that I now own and control. And if you're listening to this and

493
00:26:31.840 --> 00:26:37.040
you're like, look, I'm not financially independent. I have no possibility of being financially independent.

494
00:26:37.600 --> 00:26:42.480
Independence exists on a spectrum. And literally every dollar that you save is a little bit more

495
00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:47.200
independent that you were before. If you have a hundred dollars in the bank in savings, that can

496
00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:51.680
make it so that if you were to lose your job, you have a little bit more flexibility for rent or

497
00:26:51.680 --> 00:26:56.320
groceries or whatever it might be that you didn't before. The thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars,

498
00:26:56.320 --> 00:27:00.960
any amount that you have is a little bit more independent than you were before. And so when you

499
00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:07.040
view one of the cores of living a good life as independence and any amount of saving money will

500
00:27:07.040 --> 00:27:12.000
buy you independence. I think that's a powerful observation for people. And then the purpose part

501
00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:16.960
is going to be different for everyone. For me right now in my life, it's being a good father.

502
00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:22.160
That's what I want my identity to be. That's my overarching goal in life is to be a good dad.

503
00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:26.560
I think the vast majority of parents will tell you that there was no greater joy,

504
00:27:27.200 --> 00:27:32.400
purpose than watching their kids thrive. It can also bring a lot of sorrow and a lot of sleepless

505
00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:36.720
nights and a lot of anxiety and a lot of worry that comes along with it. But nothing that I've

506
00:27:36.720 --> 00:27:41.840
experienced right now, the other parents that I know would say that anything in their life has

507
00:27:41.840 --> 00:27:46.160
come before that that has been a great thing. So we got on this point because the formula is

508
00:27:46.160 --> 00:27:50.320
independence plus purpose. For me, the purpose is being a parent. That's not going to be true for

509
00:27:50.320 --> 00:27:56.480
everyone. But you're trading independence for that. I'm trading its internal independence that I'm

510
00:27:56.480 --> 00:28:01.920
giving up. I want a sacrifice for my kids. I want it like loyalty to people who deserve your

511
00:28:01.920 --> 00:28:08.720
loyalty is a wonderful thing. Loyalty to people who don't deserve your loyalty sucks. And so if you

512
00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:12.080
are working, if you're giving your loyalty to a company that doesn't respect you, that sucks.

513
00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:17.280
That's terrible. Loyalty to people who deserve it is a very fulfilling thing. So my kids deserve

514
00:28:17.280 --> 00:28:21.680
my loyalty. How did they end that loyalty just by being my kids? And there's some days where I

515
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:26.800
feel like they they don't appreciate it. Of course, but I think that tends to be true. People get

516
00:28:26.800 --> 00:28:31.760
into problems when they are loyal to people or organizations or political affiliations who don't

517
00:28:31.760 --> 00:28:37.120
deserve loyalty. That's when it gets dangerous. Do you think the promise of independence and freedom

518
00:28:38.080 --> 00:28:42.000
has a secret hidden dark trade off that people don't talk about? Because there's this culture

519
00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:46.960
right now of like, you know, be your own boss and stand on your own two feet. And when you think

520
00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:50.880
about what makes humans happy, it seems to be collective things. It seems to be actually in your

521
00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:55.760
case, as you're saying, dependence. Your kids depend on you. In some ways, you depend on them.

522
00:28:55.760 --> 00:28:59.120
All the things that seem to be like having my friends at my house made me happier than being in

523
00:28:59.120 --> 00:29:04.640
a house alone. But the public narrative is all about like optimizing for freedom, whatever that

524
00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:10.800
means. And really more so optimizing for independence, not depending on someone else. But when you look

525
00:29:10.800 --> 00:29:19.680
at the people that seem to be the most unhappy, they seem to be the most independent. Right. Because

526
00:29:19.680 --> 00:29:23.840
there, if you picture someone like living and actually don't buy themself in the middle of Montana

527
00:29:23.840 --> 00:29:28.800
with no one around them or whatever. No family, no pets, freelance work on a laptop on the

528
00:29:28.800 --> 00:29:36.720
own in a glass box in Dubai. No big obligations, not in a church. But back to the formula,

529
00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:41.680
independence was purpose. Those people have no purpose. Oh, yes. And so I think it's, I think yes,

530
00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:48.160
everyone is going to be, I'm dependent on my wife, my kids, but you know, there is dependency there.

531
00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:54.080
But I'm choosing, I chose her as a spouse. I chose to have kids. And so I still did it on my terms.

532
00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:59.520
And so you're never going to be, or I think you don't want to be a 100% independent in the sense

533
00:29:59.520 --> 00:30:03.760
that you don't rely on anyone and no one relies on you because then you have no purpose. It's

534
00:30:03.760 --> 00:30:09.120
choosing who you want. I think it's, I think you're not independent if you have to be loyal to a

535
00:30:09.120 --> 00:30:13.600
job that you hate, but you have to have it because the only job you got and you have to do it and

536
00:30:13.600 --> 00:30:18.640
you're, you, you have to pay this exorbitant rent on a apartment that you don't even enjoy that much.

537
00:30:19.200 --> 00:30:24.080
Like those are dependent on things that you don't want, but like, I want to be dependent on my

538
00:30:24.080 --> 00:30:27.760
family because that gives me purpose. It's like the independence to make the choice, I guess. To make

539
00:30:27.760 --> 00:30:32.480
the choice of who you're going to be dependent on, right? Good. And on this earlier point,

540
00:30:32.480 --> 00:30:38.080
you're talking about saving and that you, your favorite form of spending is saving. Yeah.

541
00:30:38.880 --> 00:30:44.560
Someone's listening now. How much money do you think they should at a minimum have saved?

542
00:30:45.040 --> 00:30:49.040
If you tried to get technical about it, I would say what are the odds that at some point in your

543
00:30:49.040 --> 00:30:53.280
life, you're going to lose your job and not be able to find another job for six months.

544
00:30:54.160 --> 00:30:58.960
The odds are not bad that that will happen to at some point, not very comfortable to think about.

545
00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:03.040
Maybe it's already happened to you already, but the odds at some point that will happen are pretty

546
00:31:03.040 --> 00:31:10.240
good. And therefore, if you were to say, like, look, a good measure of some level of higher end

547
00:31:10.240 --> 00:31:16.160
independence, not a low level of independence, but like a medium level of independence is six is,

548
00:31:16.160 --> 00:31:19.920
is I can keep myself going for six months. Now, for a lot of people, that's a daunting task,

549
00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:23.760
and I, it's okay, you're probably not going to achieve that when you're 18. It's going to take

550
00:31:23.760 --> 00:31:29.200
some savings to get there, but that is a level at which you can exhale to a degree that most people

551
00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:33.760
have never been able to do before of like, there's going to be some bad stuff happening in your life.

552
00:31:33.760 --> 00:31:38.080
It's going to be uncomfortable, but it's going to be okay. And for for most people, for most of

553
00:31:38.080 --> 00:31:41.520
history, it was, there's bad things going to happen to you, and you're not going to be okay. It's

554
00:31:41.520 --> 00:31:46.480
going to be very traumatic. And, and one of the important things there is when you lose that job,

555
00:31:47.280 --> 00:31:52.240
the ability to go find a good job, even a better job, where you want, doing what you want,

556
00:31:52.240 --> 00:31:56.480
what the people who you like working with is very important. If you don't have any savings,

557
00:31:56.480 --> 00:32:01.360
you're going to have to, by default, pick the very first job that you can come across, even if it's

558
00:32:01.360 --> 00:32:05.280
a terrible job in a location that you hate, doing something you hate, working with people you don't

559
00:32:06.080 --> 00:32:10.960
like. And so the flexibility to give yourself time to find a job that is a little bit easier and

560
00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:17.680
better for you, that is the purpose of savings. And that goes back to a point about independence,

561
00:32:17.680 --> 00:32:22.560
which is you want to build up those savings, building up the independence or the freedom to make

562
00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:26.960
a choice about who you work with. Right. If the worst were to happen, you don't have to necessarily

563
00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:31.360
go get a job at, you know, some awful places. Some some terrible place. You talk about jealousy in

564
00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:36.240
the book as well. And I was reading some stats that they were quite funny stats, but they say that

565
00:32:37.120 --> 00:32:42.880
essentially that if you're if you win the lottery, the probability of your neighbor going bankrupt

566
00:32:42.880 --> 00:32:50.720
increases. It's an amazing statistic, right? So what's happening? Well, you're looking at your

567
00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:56.320
neighbor who won the lottery and your neighbor is probably bought a vacation house, bought a new car,

568
00:32:56.320 --> 00:33:00.880
sending their kids to private school, whatever it might be. And you watching that are like,

569
00:33:01.520 --> 00:33:07.280
I need that for myself. It's unfair that they have it and I don't. And I'm going to go do any

570
00:33:07.280 --> 00:33:12.320
reckless financial decision to get that. So much of what we think is is normal. Our definition of

571
00:33:12.320 --> 00:33:18.880
success is what other people around us have. And so if you are watching your neighbor live a better

572
00:33:18.880 --> 00:33:23.440
life than you, then also your definition of a good life is what they're doing. And you will do

573
00:33:23.440 --> 00:33:28.080
some reckless things to get it. I think that's that's what happens. And so one of the takeaways there

574
00:33:28.080 --> 00:33:33.760
is like, be careful who you socialize with because you're going to anchor to them as a baseline

575
00:33:33.760 --> 00:33:38.320
level of success and happiness. Be very careful with what you do and who you look up to and who you

576
00:33:38.320 --> 00:33:44.000
aspire to. I grew up in Lake Tahoe, California. And this was before tech money when it was not a

577
00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:48.960
wealthy area. It is now because all the tech money from San Francisco came up. But Tahoe in the

578
00:33:48.960 --> 00:33:55.520
90s and early 2000s was just out in the woods. And you know, you could buy a house for nothing.

579
00:33:55.520 --> 00:34:00.480
And most people in town didn't have any money. And then I went to college in Los Angeles where

580
00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:04.800
there is a lot of wealth. There are high expectations. And there are Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces and

581
00:34:04.800 --> 00:34:11.120
whatnot. And one of my observations was people were happier in Tahoe. And I think the reason why

582
00:34:11.120 --> 00:34:16.880
is because the definition of success in Tahoe back then was a two bedroom house and a pickup truck

583
00:34:16.960 --> 00:34:22.640
that was success. In Los Angeles, the definition of success was a mansion and a Bentley.

584
00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:28.240
And so it was it was easier for people to in Tahoe to be like, I'm good, I check the boxes like,

585
00:34:28.240 --> 00:34:31.840
look, I'm successful. Look at my tiny little house and my beat up pickup truck that's success,

586
00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:35.840
right? And so that was like, be careful who you socialize with because you're going to anchor to

587
00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:41.680
their level of success. I have some graphs in front of you there. I think one of them is

588
00:34:42.640 --> 00:34:48.000
the spectrum of financial independence. Yeah. Could you explain to me what that is and how

589
00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:51.920
that's useful to understand and why that's useful to understand? I think it's I had this friend

590
00:34:53.200 --> 00:34:57.360
10 or 20 years ago and he said, I don't save any money because I don't see the purpose.

591
00:34:57.360 --> 00:35:02.480
All I'd be able to save is a hundred bucks a month and what's that going to do for me? And since

592
00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:05.920
I don't think it's going to do anything for me, I might as well just go spend it. I don't think

593
00:35:06.240 --> 00:35:12.480
no, that's like $100 in savings or if you do it for a year, $1200 in savings is $1200 more

594
00:35:12.480 --> 00:35:17.520
independence than you had before. And again, not if but when you lose your job or your car breaks down,

595
00:35:17.520 --> 00:35:22.320
you're going to realize how unbelievably valuable that money is and it's not savings,

596
00:35:22.320 --> 00:35:26.400
it's independence that it's giving you. So the idea that independence is on a spectrum,

597
00:35:26.400 --> 00:35:31.200
it is not you either don't have to work or you have to work. It's not that stark but most people

598
00:35:31.200 --> 00:35:36.000
think of it in those terms. Why would I try to become independent if I have no chance of

599
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:40.960
not working? And the simple way to view it is every dollar that you save is a piece of your

600
00:35:40.960 --> 00:35:45.920
future that you own that you control that is yours. The flip side of that is like every dollar

601
00:35:45.920 --> 00:35:50.960
of debt that you have is a piece of your future that somebody else controls. It's a it's a moment

602
00:35:50.960 --> 00:35:56.160
in time in the future that is not yours. It belongs to somebody else. And so I've always viewed

603
00:35:57.120 --> 00:36:02.480
on a spectrum. When I was younger and much poorer, I was a big saver, even though like was I

604
00:36:02.480 --> 00:36:05.760
independent? No, of course I had to work. I had to work to pay my rent and pay my groceries,

605
00:36:05.760 --> 00:36:11.360
of course. But I viewed it as like every $20 that I saved, every $50 that I saved put me in a

606
00:36:11.360 --> 00:36:15.840
better position than I was before. And looking back on it, I don't think I could have articulated

607
00:36:15.840 --> 00:36:20.720
that 20 years ago, but it's what I felt. A lot of that for me back then was coming from a place of

608
00:36:20.720 --> 00:36:26.000
fear. I didn't have a lot of self confidence in myself in my career. So I was like I need to save

609
00:36:26.560 --> 00:36:30.640
prepare for when this all comes crashing down. And even though it didn't come crashing down,

610
00:36:30.640 --> 00:36:35.600
I'm so glad that I did it because I've had a sense of financial security and I've had a sense

611
00:36:35.600 --> 00:36:42.240
of independence financially since I was in my early 20s. Not because I had saved a ton, I hadn't,

612
00:36:43.040 --> 00:36:49.120
but any amount that I saved I viewed as like the cushion that that gave me a much higher sense

613
00:36:49.120 --> 00:36:54.160
of confidence that if or when things go wrong, I'm not going to be flailing. I'm going to have

614
00:36:54.160 --> 00:36:59.600
some cushion to fall back on. And what is this this spectrum? What are the stages of this

615
00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:03.760
spectrum? So let's start at the very bottom. You're homeless, you're panhandling, reliant on the

616
00:37:03.760 --> 00:37:09.120
kindness of strangers. As you go up from there, you can be completely reliant on your boss

617
00:37:09.760 --> 00:37:14.720
in a job that you don't like. Now that's another low level. As you go up from there, you have,

618
00:37:14.720 --> 00:37:19.520
look, I'm reliant on my job and reliant on my paycheck. But I probably have some opportunities.

619
00:37:19.520 --> 00:37:23.120
I could go work at another job. I could choose to work here. I could choose to work there.

620
00:37:23.120 --> 00:37:28.240
And then you go up from there. I think my job and I have some savings. So if I lost this job,

621
00:37:28.240 --> 00:37:33.280
I can fall back on to it from there. You can go up from there to have you can live where you want.

622
00:37:33.280 --> 00:37:37.520
You can work where you want. You can change fields. You can go and you can do a completely different

623
00:37:37.520 --> 00:37:42.640
job. You can take two months off and travel if you wanted to. You're working your way up all the

624
00:37:42.640 --> 00:37:47.440
way to the highest level of financial independence, which is I don't need to work anymore. I've saved

625
00:37:47.440 --> 00:37:52.800
enough and I can wake up every morning and do whatever I would like to do. That's obviously an

626
00:37:52.800 --> 00:37:58.160
aspiration that for most people will never be reached until there may be in their 70s and

627
00:37:58.160 --> 00:38:02.560
their retiring and they have Social Security and some other savings from there. But for most people,

628
00:38:02.560 --> 00:38:09.120
like a good level of independence as a good goal is enough savings so that if you lost your job,

629
00:38:09.120 --> 00:38:13.920
if your car broke down, if you needed to replace the roof on your house, you would be able to do it

630
00:38:13.920 --> 00:38:18.480
without losing that much sleep. That is a realistic level that I think almost anyone can achieve.

631
00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:23.120
Based on everything you know about money, if I want to get to that highest level of complete

632
00:38:23.120 --> 00:38:29.120
financial freedom, what's like the five things that I should be thinking about at just a

633
00:38:29.120 --> 00:38:33.760
very simple level? Because so many people listening right now think, my goal in life isn't to become

634
00:38:33.760 --> 00:38:38.480
a billionaire or a tens of millionaire. My goal in life is just to get to that point of freedom

635
00:38:38.480 --> 00:38:42.480
as soon as I can where I can start calling the shots. There was someone who I was speaking to

636
00:38:42.640 --> 00:38:48.080
the other day and said that there's this internet movement of kids who are trying to get what do

637
00:38:48.080 --> 00:38:53.120
they call us? It's like they're trying to get to the point where they can retire early. Fire something.

638
00:38:53.120 --> 00:38:59.920
Financial independence retire early. How do I get the the first thing that I think that's

639
00:38:59.920 --> 00:39:04.000
most important? This is the first and the last thing. This is the most important part is that

640
00:39:04.960 --> 00:39:10.080
all wealth you're feeling of wealth is what you have minus what you want and is so easy to ignore

641
00:39:10.560 --> 00:39:13.840
the latter. I talk about in the book my my late grandmother and law, my wife's grandmother's

642
00:39:13.840 --> 00:39:20.960
passed away a couple years ago. For 30 years, she lived off of nothing, but $17 or $1800 a month

643
00:39:20.960 --> 00:39:26.080
in social security, not a lot of money, by most accounts, very little money. But she didn't want

644
00:39:26.080 --> 00:39:32.560
anything more. If she made $1700 a month, she did not want $1700 in one dollar and in one dollar.

645
00:39:33.120 --> 00:39:37.680
She was perfectly happy. She found all of her happiness working in her garden,

646
00:39:37.680 --> 00:39:41.280
going for walks, watching the birds, watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, talking to her

647
00:39:41.280 --> 00:39:46.000
friends, hanging out with her family. But if you asked her, she said, you only make $1700 a month.

648
00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:50.640
You're broke. Doesn't that make you unhappy? She'd be like, what? Do you think having more money makes

649
00:39:50.640 --> 00:39:55.120
the sunset more beautiful? Do you think having more money makes going for a walk more pleasant?

650
00:39:55.120 --> 00:39:58.960
And I'm not saying you should live like you should be content with that amount of money. But the

651
00:39:58.960 --> 00:40:03.760
point is she was content. She was totally content and it was her choice. And I think she was happier

652
00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:09.840
financially than some billionaires. Because there's a lot of billionaires who have a billion dollars,

653
00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:14.320
but they want to. They have two billion, but they want four. One of the things is that happiness

654
00:40:14.320 --> 00:40:19.520
might be the wrong word here. The word that people want is content. When you sit here in day

655
00:40:19.520 --> 00:40:24.880
dream about having the bigger mansion, what you're actually doing is you are imagining yourself

656
00:40:24.880 --> 00:40:28.880
in the mansion being content with it. You imagine yourself sitting in that house and saying,

657
00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:34.080
I don't want anything more than this. The feeling that we are aspiring to is just being content.

658
00:40:34.640 --> 00:40:38.960
Happiness is always like a 30-second emotion. It's like laughter. If I tell you a funny joke,

659
00:40:38.960 --> 00:40:44.480
you'll laugh for 30 seconds and then it's over. Very few times in life, are you happy for more

660
00:40:44.480 --> 00:40:49.840
than a couple minutes at a time? But what you want that is in a durable emotion is being content.

661
00:40:49.840 --> 00:40:53.120
Just saying, I'm good. I'm good with this. I don't want anything more.

662
00:40:53.200 --> 00:41:00.320
I interviewed Dr. Anna Lemke, and she's the scientist who's most renowned for talking about

663
00:41:00.320 --> 00:41:05.600
and writing about dopamine. I was wondering how much the molecule dopamine dovetails into this,

664
00:41:05.600 --> 00:41:09.600
because I think one of the things she said to me was that dopamine is the chemical for wanting.

665
00:41:09.600 --> 00:41:13.680
And people have, I think, mistaken it for being the pleasure happiness.

666
00:41:13.680 --> 00:41:19.280
Yeah, it's more and more and more. You want more. She told me this crazy study about this

667
00:41:19.280 --> 00:41:23.680
rap where they remove the dopamine receptor from its brain so it couldn't produce dopamine.

668
00:41:23.680 --> 00:41:27.760
And then they put food two inches from its mouth and the rap stopped to death.

669
00:41:30.560 --> 00:41:34.320
I've always thought about that. It's like, okay, so that's what dopamine is. It's the motivation

670
00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:38.560
to go get to want to pursue. What role is dopamine playing here?

671
00:41:38.560 --> 00:41:44.320
It's huge. It's actually a good realization to be like, a lot of this is not something you can

672
00:41:44.320 --> 00:41:48.560
solve on a spreadsheet. It's not something you can solve with a formula. It's chemicals in your brain.

673
00:41:48.560 --> 00:41:51.840
And obviously some people are going to be more susceptible to that than others. I think my

674
00:41:51.840 --> 00:41:56.800
grandmother in law just had for whatever it was, was wired differently than most people.

675
00:41:56.800 --> 00:41:59.600
Part of that was like, she was a product of the Great Depression. She grew up during the Great

676
00:41:59.600 --> 00:42:03.680
Depression, which probably lowered her expectations. She never had social media and whatnot.

677
00:42:03.680 --> 00:42:08.080
But of course, I think some people are wired differently than others for a level of contentment.

678
00:42:08.080 --> 00:42:13.440
But I think just there's a big thing in psychiatry where diagnosing a mental illness

679
00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:17.200
is sometimes more important than the treatment. If you just get a diagnosis of like,

680
00:42:17.360 --> 00:42:22.640
your ADHD, whatever it is, just knowing. The fact that you can stop questioning why I'm

681
00:42:22.640 --> 00:42:25.920
having these thoughts, you can understand why you have those thoughts is more important than

682
00:42:25.920 --> 00:42:31.280
the treatment sometimes. I think that's true here. If you, it's easier said than done to complete

683
00:42:31.280 --> 00:42:36.880
control your desires. But just knowing why you're doing it and realizing that it's probably not

684
00:42:36.880 --> 00:42:40.560
going to give you the happiness that you want, that it's just like any addiction, that the more you

685
00:42:40.560 --> 00:42:46.480
chase it, the further away it's going to get can go a big ways. And so for me myself, there's

686
00:42:47.440 --> 00:42:52.400
all the time there are moments where I'm like, oh, I should get that car. Maybe we should get a

687
00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:57.760
bigger house. I have those feelings daily. So the feelings don't go away. But I think I'm better now

688
00:42:57.760 --> 00:43:02.240
than I've been in the past. I'm reminding myself of like, it's not going to make you happier.

689
00:43:02.240 --> 00:43:06.080
You know that. You've tried this before. You've tried it before and it didn't make you happy.

690
00:43:06.080 --> 00:43:09.360
What is going to make you happy is spending time with your kids, having a good relationship with

691
00:43:09.360 --> 00:43:13.520
your wife and your own physical health and laughing with your friends and having good times with

692
00:43:13.520 --> 00:43:17.840
people who you enjoy. You know that's going to make you happy and you know that's not. And I have

693
00:43:17.840 --> 00:43:22.080
to remind myself because it's not intuitive. And I have dopamine. That tells me you should want

694
00:43:22.080 --> 00:43:26.880
more, more, more, more, more. So you never get over it. But I think once you've diagnosed the problem,

695
00:43:26.880 --> 00:43:31.840
it becomes easier at just like spotting that emotion and realizing that it's telling you a story

696
00:43:31.840 --> 00:43:36.400
that's probably not true. I wonder if you, I could trade the addiction because you refer to it

697
00:43:36.400 --> 00:43:41.280
there as being an addiction. If it's for dopamine equation, could I not shift my addiction to

698
00:43:41.280 --> 00:43:45.520
something more productive? And would that mean that my spending would get better? So actually,

699
00:43:45.520 --> 00:43:49.840
when I think about me as 18 years old and having that horrific spending problem, maybe I just

700
00:43:49.840 --> 00:43:57.760
shifted the thing that gave me dopamine to like building businesses or to podcasting or to writing

701
00:43:57.760 --> 00:44:02.480
books or to being a great dad. I don't know. I think it's probably true that everybody without

702
00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:07.760
exception is addicted to something. And it's just harnessing that, that process for whatever it

703
00:44:07.760 --> 00:44:11.520
might be. So some people are addicted to my wife's addicted to gardening. That's it. She, she

704
00:44:11.520 --> 00:44:16.160
couldn't care less about, about investing or spending money on it. And I said she could not

705
00:44:16.160 --> 00:44:21.120
care less about her car or my car or your car. But if you have a good gardener, if you have,

706
00:44:21.120 --> 00:44:24.400
you have a pretty garden, she's, she's all over. So everybody's got their thing. And it's just like,

707
00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:29.520
can you harness that for productivity? I think a lot of like extremely successful people are people

708
00:44:29.520 --> 00:44:36.880
who took their natural addiction and harnessed it for productivity into their business. And that's

709
00:44:36.880 --> 00:44:42.000
why they're so successful. There's became obsessed with one thing. And it's a good question of whether

710
00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:46.960
we can actually guide that addiction or if it's just kind of pre-wired in itself. I think it's

711
00:44:46.960 --> 00:44:51.200
true for myself. Someone who's written books about money for 20 years, thought about money for 20

712
00:44:51.200 --> 00:44:57.600
years. My mom tells a story that when I was three, I would sit there and count pennies. I don't

713
00:44:57.600 --> 00:45:01.680
want to count seashells. I don't want to count cards. I don't want to count rocks. I want to count

714
00:45:01.680 --> 00:45:08.080
money. And so I think I've always had this disposition towards being fascinated with money. Why?

715
00:45:08.080 --> 00:45:11.680
I don't know because I did one house three. I did it before. I could even think through it.

716
00:45:12.400 --> 00:45:16.480
But I think everyone has their little thing. It's always been fascinating to me. I don't think I'm

717
00:45:16.480 --> 00:45:21.920
obsessed with money. I don't think it controls my life. But if I had to go out of my way to have a

718
00:45:21.920 --> 00:45:25.680
healthier relationship with it. But I think it's definitely been true that the reason that I've

719
00:45:25.680 --> 00:45:30.320
found myself in this career is that it's always been my thing. And I think everybody has that

720
00:45:30.320 --> 00:45:34.960
thing in their life. People talk about addictive personalities and I was reflecting one of my best

721
00:45:34.960 --> 00:45:40.080
friends who was an alcoholic, had a problem with gambling, then had a problem with eating,

722
00:45:40.080 --> 00:45:44.720
then got obsessed with marathons. And he traded each one of those things for the next thing.

723
00:45:44.720 --> 00:45:49.360
So now he's obsessed with health and fitness. And so I was thinking about people that are struggling

724
00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:54.320
with money problems and even my own historical struggle with money. I think I probably just traded

725
00:45:54.320 --> 00:45:58.320
it for something. And actually, I'm kind of happy about that because I traded it for a better

726
00:45:58.320 --> 00:46:06.000
addiction, which is one that was productive career. My career and I guess doing this, I'm pretty

727
00:46:06.000 --> 00:46:10.400
addicted to doing this. Right. And but I think you can enjoy it. It's healthier than the plasma screen.

728
00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:15.600
It's exactly. Yeah. I think what's true about a money addiction is that it tends to be the

729
00:46:15.600 --> 00:46:20.800
classic addiction of like you tell yourself, if only I get one more hit so to speak, then I'll be

730
00:46:20.880 --> 00:46:24.960
satiated. Then, then, then that'll be enough. And the answer is like, no, absolutely. Well,

731
00:46:24.960 --> 00:46:29.040
not. I'll tell you like a personal thing. I don't think this is true, but it made me laugh.

732
00:46:29.040 --> 00:46:32.640
My wife and I bought a new house about a year ago. It's an awesome house. We love it. It's great.

733
00:46:33.360 --> 00:46:37.040
And my brother-in-law came over the other day and he goes, you know, you're only going to leave

734
00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:41.120
here for two years before you want to buy a bigger house. And I had to laugh because I'm like,

735
00:46:42.880 --> 00:46:46.560
I don't think that's true. I think we're going to live here for a while. But I know what you're

736
00:46:46.560 --> 00:46:51.680
saying is right. That's the natural guide towards it. That when we bought the house, it was like,

737
00:46:51.680 --> 00:46:55.200
oh, this is going to be so great. You imagine we're going to get to do this and get to do that.

738
00:46:55.200 --> 00:47:00.800
And we have these neighbors and you become accustomed to that very quickly. And then your gaze shifts

739
00:47:00.800 --> 00:47:04.000
a little bit higher. And you're like, yeah, but look at that house over there. That one's nice,

740
00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:09.760
isn't it? That's always the natural thing. And that's dopamine at work. That is dopamine purely

741
00:47:09.760 --> 00:47:14.000
at work. Because the truth is our previous house was great. And our previous house used to be our

742
00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:20.960
dream. And dopamine exists when there's a gap between where you are and where you want to be

743
00:47:20.960 --> 00:47:24.880
with something. And when that gap closes, they often refer to that as the arrival fallacy.

744
00:47:24.880 --> 00:47:27.280
Yeah. Right. Which is really kind of what you're describing.

745
00:47:27.280 --> 00:47:32.960
You tell yourself, once I get there, then I'll be good. Then that's enough. And it's a fallacy

746
00:47:32.960 --> 00:47:36.240
because you know, that's not true. As soon as you get to that, whatever that mountain top is,

747
00:47:36.240 --> 00:47:41.520
there's another mountain above it. It pushes you in a way that is not easy. Nobody should pretend

748
00:47:41.520 --> 00:47:47.120
that you can just go do this today. But it pushes you into appreciating what you have now and

749
00:47:47.120 --> 00:47:53.040
finding your joy, finding your happiness through other things that don't have the arrival fallacy.

750
00:47:53.040 --> 00:47:59.760
Never have as I as a parent have I said, oh, if only I had one more kid, then that would be great.

751
00:47:59.760 --> 00:48:05.120
There's really no arrival fallacy for kids. You just kind of be like, I just appreciate being

752
00:48:05.120 --> 00:48:09.520
around you. I just appreciate all the, and if anything, it's the opposite. It's you look back

753
00:48:09.520 --> 00:48:16.560
and you're like, oh, I miss when you were younger. It's sad how fast you're growing up.

754
00:48:16.560 --> 00:48:20.240
If anything, rather than looking ahead and being like, oh, it's going to be better then,

755
00:48:20.240 --> 00:48:25.120
you're looking back and like, oh, I wish I had appreciated that phase a little bit more.

756
00:48:25.120 --> 00:48:30.400
When you talked about one of the ways to get to early retirement and to live a better life is to

757
00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:36.240
want what you have and basically want less things, I go back and forward a lot with this idea

758
00:48:36.320 --> 00:48:41.920
because there's like the monks who say that happiness is not wanting something.

759
00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:47.360
And then there's like the reality of life where striving for things seems to make me happy

760
00:48:47.360 --> 00:48:51.600
and everybody describes the journey as being the most enjoyable part. That's your purpose.

761
00:48:52.240 --> 00:48:57.760
Yes. So how do I make sense of this? The monks are telling me that not to want anything,

762
00:48:57.760 --> 00:49:02.560
because that's going to make me frustrated and unsatisfied. And then my lived experiences

763
00:49:02.560 --> 00:49:06.240
striving for things with a group of people makes me seems to make me happy.

764
00:49:06.800 --> 00:49:11.120
I think there's a difference. It's a subtle difference, but between pursuing something that you

765
00:49:11.120 --> 00:49:16.400
genuinely enjoy doing, which for you is this and your business and whatnot, versus being addicted

766
00:49:16.400 --> 00:49:21.440
to something that chasing something that you don't have yet. And so I imagine you can correct me

767
00:49:21.440 --> 00:49:25.840
if I'm wrong, but I imagine when you're doing this, you don't tell yourself, I need to work harder

768
00:49:25.840 --> 00:49:30.720
so that one day the podcast can be up here. I imagine, tell me if I'm wrong, but I imagine you

769
00:49:30.720 --> 00:49:34.640
come to work every day and you're like, I like doing this today. I like today. I like yesterday.

770
00:49:34.640 --> 00:49:38.960
I'm going to like tomorrow. And so you're not chasing a false goal. You just can actually enjoy

771
00:49:38.960 --> 00:49:44.400
doing it. Do you know what? It's a weird thing because it's I'm going to be honest because it's

772
00:49:44.400 --> 00:49:51.280
a only useful position to take. It's a weird combination of both. So I say it's important for us

773
00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:58.320
to have some like goal, but also living in the in the total understanding that the goal doesn't

774
00:49:58.320 --> 00:50:02.800
actually matter. Right. And it's this weird dichotomy I live in was like, if we become the biggest

775
00:50:02.800 --> 00:50:10.400
podcast in the world, like set that as a goal, because it gives us something to I get that

776
00:50:10.400 --> 00:50:16.640
KPI and put timeframes against and get excited about and focus on, but then also living in the total

777
00:50:16.640 --> 00:50:21.840
realization that it's not going to matter at all. Nothing is going to change in my life.

778
00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:26.880
Zilch. What am I going to get a better black shirt? It's like, that's black. But here's the truth.

779
00:50:26.880 --> 00:50:30.800
The reason that we live in a world with a ton of technology and a ton of great businesses and

780
00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:36.560
great medicine whatnot is because virtually everybody for all of human history is woken up every

781
00:50:36.560 --> 00:50:41.440
morning and said, it's not enough. I need more. That's the fuel of progress. And I don't want to

782
00:50:41.440 --> 00:50:46.080
live in a world where everyone wakes up and says, I have all I need because then progress would stop

783
00:50:46.080 --> 00:50:51.600
that day. We probably start declining that day. And so there is a paradox here of like as a whole

784
00:50:51.600 --> 00:50:57.760
society, I'm grateful and you should be grateful that people wake up unfulfilled because we live

785
00:50:57.760 --> 00:51:03.040
in a way better world today than existed 100 or 200 years ago because of that. And the richest

786
00:51:03.040 --> 00:51:08.400
people in the world who I think are by and large tortured psychologically have created amazing

787
00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:13.520
technology that you and I benefit from. And the reason we're doing this podcast is because people

788
00:51:13.520 --> 00:51:19.120
before us who are way wealthier than you and I woke up in the morning and said, this is not enough.

789
00:51:19.120 --> 00:51:23.520
Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, all those people Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, they woke up and said, I don't

790
00:51:23.520 --> 00:51:28.080
care if I have 100 billion dollars. It's not enough. I need I need to create better technology.

791
00:51:28.080 --> 00:51:32.240
And that's great. We benefit from that. And so there is a paradox here that what is all and that

792
00:51:32.240 --> 00:51:39.120
will never change that will never change. So there's a paradox that like the more the better society

793
00:51:39.120 --> 00:51:43.840
becomes, I think, like it's always going to be the case that as a whole society, we're going to

794
00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:49.920
have a level of angst and anxiety and not be satisfied and say it's not enough. At the individual

795
00:51:49.920 --> 00:51:55.680
level, though, I think you can recognize that game and contextualize it with your own life and say,

796
00:51:55.680 --> 00:52:02.800
like, look, I want more money. I want to sell more books and have a better career. I want to save more

797
00:52:02.800 --> 00:52:07.280
money. I also have to go so far out of my way to put into context and say, none of it's going to

798
00:52:07.280 --> 00:52:13.200
matter unless I have a higher purpose beyond that money. So I think you can aspire for more and

799
00:52:13.200 --> 00:52:18.960
still go out of your way to realize what the expectations game is. Even if you can't perfectly

800
00:52:18.960 --> 00:52:25.120
control it, it's similar to like, I want to eat a good diet. Of course, I want to eat healthy food.

801
00:52:25.120 --> 00:52:29.040
I'm not going to pretend for a second that I don't want Oreos and ice cream because they're great

802
00:52:29.040 --> 00:52:32.560
and they're always going to taste great. And so I'm never going to get to a point where I say,

803
00:52:33.520 --> 00:52:38.160
I don't want a nicer house. I'm a human. And so are you as those everyone else? You're always

804
00:52:38.160 --> 00:52:41.520
going to have those feelings, but you can recognize the game. You can recognize the voice that's

805
00:52:41.520 --> 00:52:46.880
talking to you and realize when that voice lies to you and when it's telling you a story that is

806
00:52:46.880 --> 00:52:52.480
either false or just a little bit incomplete. I think if you had to like say, who is the happiest

807
00:52:52.480 --> 00:52:58.080
person in the world on average, not like naming a person, but if you had to describe the life of

808
00:52:58.080 --> 00:53:03.520
like, who's the happiest person out there? My guess is it's probably something close to a middle class

809
00:53:03.520 --> 00:53:09.920
family that lives in a three-bedroom house and has a five-year-old car, but they have an amazing

810
00:53:09.920 --> 00:53:17.520
marriage, tons of friends. They're in good health, but they are by any other statistic ordinary.

811
00:53:17.520 --> 00:53:22.880
And at the end of their life, more than the people who are very, very successful, that ordinary

812
00:53:22.880 --> 00:53:26.640
family is going to look back when they're on their deathbed, when they're 95 years old and be like,

813
00:53:27.200 --> 00:53:32.160
that was good. That was a good time. Do you think this is a very strange question to ask,

814
00:53:32.160 --> 00:53:38.560
but do you think I could make myself like that? No. Here's the truth. I think on the nature,

815
00:53:38.560 --> 00:53:44.720
nurture spectrum, most of what we believe and the feelings that we have is forged a conception,

816
00:53:45.360 --> 00:53:49.120
and it's just we're just wired that way. And there's not much we can do about it. Some people

817
00:53:49.120 --> 00:53:53.200
have different aspers. Elon Musk was born wired very differently than you and I, and there's

818
00:53:53.200 --> 00:53:59.840
nothing we can do about that. So we are who we are, but I think we can put those feelings into a

819
00:53:59.840 --> 00:54:05.120
better context, even if we can't control having those feelings, we can choose, we can put,

820
00:54:05.120 --> 00:54:10.240
tell ourselves a more complete story about why we're having those feelings and what those

821
00:54:10.240 --> 00:54:14.720
aspirations will actually do to our happiness. So on this point of how to retire early,

822
00:54:14.720 --> 00:54:19.040
the first one was about managing what you want. Is there anything else there that if I'm

823
00:54:19.040 --> 00:54:23.680
trying to increase the probability that I get to retire early, I should know in terms of tactics

824
00:54:23.680 --> 00:54:27.280
and strategies? Well, one of the things, this is a little bit different than the question that

825
00:54:27.280 --> 00:54:31.760
you asked, but one of the things that's important is that a lot of the people who do retire early,

826
00:54:31.760 --> 00:54:35.600
who they tell themselves, I'm going to save so much money. I'm going to retire when I'm 32

827
00:54:35.600 --> 00:54:40.480
and then life's going to be great. What actually happens is they retire at 32 and six months later,

828
00:54:40.480 --> 00:54:44.480
they're bored out of their mind and they realize that like what actually makes you happy is purpose.

829
00:54:44.480 --> 00:54:50.320
And for a lot of people, their purpose can be their career or they realize they had this idea that

830
00:54:50.320 --> 00:54:54.160
when they retired, it was just going to be a great life, but the truth is all of their friends are

831
00:54:54.160 --> 00:54:59.200
working and don't have time to go play golf with them on Tuesday afternoon. And so a lot of people

832
00:54:59.200 --> 00:55:03.600
who retire early end up going back and they realize it was not what it was meant, what it was made

833
00:55:03.600 --> 00:55:08.080
out to be because they had it. If the formula is independence plus purpose, they gained independence,

834
00:55:08.080 --> 00:55:12.160
but they kind of lost their purpose. And then the four and so it was incomplete. They didn't get

835
00:55:12.160 --> 00:55:16.080
what they wanted. Well, what about passive income? People talk a lot about passive income. I had a

836
00:55:16.080 --> 00:55:20.000
friend DM me the other day and say Steve, I've got some debts, etc. But if I could just figure out

837
00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:25.760
a way to create some passive income, then that should solve the problem. And this term passive

838
00:55:25.760 --> 00:55:30.080
income has become like completely overused because for example, a lot of people, when they talk

839
00:55:30.080 --> 00:55:33.040
about passive income, they're like, Oh, I'm going to own real estate. I'm going to have some

840
00:55:33.040 --> 00:55:37.280
rentals and that's passive income. If you think owning a rental property is passive income,

841
00:55:37.280 --> 00:55:40.960
you've never owned a rental property because there's nothing passive about it. It is a constant

842
00:55:40.960 --> 00:55:46.080
chain of broken toilets and leaky roofs and tenants who don't pay you on time on and there's nothing

843
00:55:46.080 --> 00:55:51.600
passive. That's a full time job doing that. And so I heard someone say this recently that there's

844
00:55:51.680 --> 00:55:58.080
two ways to get wealthier. You can sacrifice more or you can want less. And that's it. And

845
00:55:59.040 --> 00:56:03.280
gain passive income is not part of that equation because it's the first one sacrifice more.

846
00:56:03.280 --> 00:56:09.120
What does that mean? Work harder, work, work in a job that has a lot of downsides that might

847
00:56:09.120 --> 00:56:13.760
stress you out and requires you to wake up early and go to work and do some things that you don't

848
00:56:13.760 --> 00:56:17.600
want to do and spend time away from your kids in a way that you don't want to do.

849
00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:24.880
Sacrifice more or want less. Those are your two choices. And I think that's important in the

850
00:56:24.880 --> 00:56:29.600
passive income debate because I don't think there's, but they're by and large is not a thing

851
00:56:29.600 --> 00:56:34.240
of passive income. Even if you're just like, you know, you put your money in a savings account

852
00:56:34.240 --> 00:56:39.680
that pays 3% interest, well, you had to sacrifice to earn that money and to save that money and

853
00:56:39.680 --> 00:56:45.040
to delay the gratification of that money. I really think it's an ironclad formula. Sacrifice more

854
00:56:45.040 --> 00:56:52.080
or want less. Those are your two options. It's not nice. That's true. People want, you know,

855
00:56:52.080 --> 00:56:57.200
tell me which crypto to invest in to get that. Everyone's always going to want the easy answer.

856
00:56:57.200 --> 00:57:02.400
Just like for health, the answer is eat a better diet and exercise. Nobody wants that. They just

857
00:57:02.400 --> 00:57:06.960
say, what's the secret potion? What's the secret formula? And maybe now we have those

858
00:57:06.960 --> 00:57:12.080
impacts. So maybe now we had it's closer to a secret formula. But the truth is, what's the secret

859
00:57:12.400 --> 00:57:18.160
to better health? Sacrifice more because working out and lifting weights and running is a sacrifice.

860
00:57:18.160 --> 00:57:23.760
It's not fun. It hurts. That's why it's good. Or want less. Be happier with your imperfect body.

861
00:57:23.760 --> 00:57:26.560
I think that's a great analogy between health and wealth.

862
00:57:27.680 --> 00:57:32.160
Often the difference between a company succeeding or failing isn't down to its product or strategy.

863
00:57:32.160 --> 00:57:37.360
It's down to the people on the inside. After all, the definition of the word company is group

864
00:57:37.360 --> 00:57:42.240
of people. And some of the best companies in the world have been largely built by A-Players

865
00:57:42.240 --> 00:57:47.600
because I'll let you in on a little secret. When you hire an A-Player, they go on to hire more A-Players

866
00:57:47.600 --> 00:57:52.880
and it perpetuates. The challenge is finding those first few A-Players. I found the majority

867
00:57:52.880 --> 00:57:57.360
of mine on LinkedIn who are a sponsor of this show. LinkedIn provides talent I could not

868
00:57:57.360 --> 00:58:02.400
to find anywhere else, talent within necessary skills and culture fit that I'm looking for.

869
00:58:02.400 --> 00:58:06.480
Whenever I've paid to promote a role on LinkedIn, I've been able to hire faster and of course

870
00:58:06.480 --> 00:58:11.920
better. The data supports this too. You'll actually get three times more qualified applicants

871
00:58:11.920 --> 00:58:15.840
than if you posted the same role for free. So if you're trying to build something truly great,

872
00:58:15.840 --> 00:58:23.120
you can get started by posting a job for free by visiting linkedin.com slash DOAC. That's linkedin.com

873
00:58:23.120 --> 00:58:27.520
slash DOAC and you can post your role for free there. Terms and conditions of course apply.

874
00:58:28.720 --> 00:58:33.440
How much do I need to understand what's going on in the wider world and the economy in order to

875
00:58:33.440 --> 00:58:38.320
understand my own spending behaviors, what I should spend on how to get wealthy, how to save?

876
00:58:38.320 --> 00:58:43.040
Is it important to have any understanding around the macro? Because most people that listen to

877
00:58:43.040 --> 00:58:48.240
this show will probably hear these terms being spouted out by political commentators like the

878
00:58:48.240 --> 00:58:56.880
federal reserve, interest rate, tariffs, etc. And should I understand any of this? Does any of it

879
00:58:56.880 --> 00:59:00.560
really impact me in a way that matters to me, my family? I don't think it's necessary,

880
00:59:00.560 --> 00:59:04.880
and you could point to people I've written about in my books who had no financial education,

881
00:59:04.880 --> 00:59:08.880
no training, did not read the Wall Street Journal, could not tell you how the federal reserve works,

882
00:59:09.440 --> 00:59:14.720
but they had control of their psychology, control of their emotions. They worked hard,

883
00:59:14.720 --> 00:59:19.440
they saved their money, they invested it, and that's all you need. So the answer is you don't

884
00:59:19.440 --> 00:59:24.640
need to know how this works. Just in the same way that in order to be healthy, you don't need a

885
00:59:24.640 --> 00:59:29.440
PhD in biology. You don't need to understand how cell division works in order to be in good shape.

886
00:59:29.440 --> 00:59:33.840
And I think it's the same for the economy. And it can actually backfire for a lot of people that

887
00:59:33.840 --> 00:59:38.880
once they start reading the Wall Street Journal and learning about finance, it increases their

888
00:59:38.880 --> 00:59:42.720
confidence more than their ability. So they're like, oh, like I read the Wall Street Journal,

889
00:59:42.720 --> 00:59:48.080
I should go day trade crypto now, because I read a thing that teaches me how the federal reserve

890
00:59:48.080 --> 00:59:54.960
works. So now I like, it increases your confidence more than your skill. So interesting. And so I think

891
00:59:54.960 --> 00:59:58.640
it's important to be an informed citizen, and the federal reserve impacts your life,

892
00:59:59.360 --> 01:00:04.400
and terrorists impact your life. So it's important to have some baseline understanding,

893
01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:08.960
but I think that's more about being an informed citizen and an informed voter than it is having

894
01:00:08.960 --> 01:00:15.040
financial skill. I've all of my best friends as like 5 or 6 of them. The one that's most cash rich

895
01:00:15.040 --> 01:00:20.240
is the one that knows the least about, I think he's the most rich period to be honest. He's the one

896
01:00:20.240 --> 01:00:24.640
that knows least about finance, and he knows the least about investing. He knows the least of our

897
01:00:24.640 --> 01:00:30.560
crypto. Well, what's the meme of like the tail spectrum of like the poor person drives a Toyota,

898
01:00:30.560 --> 01:00:34.640
the middle person has a Porsche BMW Mercedes, and the rich person goes back to Toyota.

899
01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:40.240
Of like, it's like, whether you are very uneducated or extremely wise, you tend to end up.

900
01:00:40.240 --> 01:00:45.920
Oh, that's it. Okay. And so I think it does tend to be the truth that the people who do the best

901
01:00:45.920 --> 01:00:51.120
financially either have like no financial education or extreme financial education,

902
01:00:51.120 --> 01:00:56.080
and it's a person in the middle that has their confidence is increased much faster than their

903
01:00:56.080 --> 01:01:01.280
ability. And they're like, oh, no, no, I read the thing on Reddit that taught me about day trading.

904
01:01:01.280 --> 01:01:05.920
So now I'm going to go bet my entire net worth on this company I've never heard of.

905
01:01:05.920 --> 01:01:11.840
So funny. But so what is it that the person on the left and right side of the spectrum are both

906
01:01:11.840 --> 01:01:16.720
doing that is the same here. So if anyone that can't see, I'll put it up on the screen, but it

907
01:01:16.720 --> 01:01:22.160
just shows the bottom axis says net worth, and it basically says that people with low net worth

908
01:01:22.160 --> 01:01:27.760
buy a Toyota, people with like in the middle, that sort of middle percentage by land bikinis and

909
01:01:28.320 --> 01:01:32.960
Porsche's and Jaguars, and then people with extremely high net worth by Toyota's. And obviously it's

910
01:01:32.960 --> 01:01:38.320
obviously it's not it's not it's not exactly perfectly true. But I think people like a lot of

911
01:01:38.320 --> 01:01:42.480
comedy, you see it like it's funny because people are like, yes, that's true. That's how it works.

912
01:01:42.480 --> 01:01:49.280
And I think a lot of it is like the richer you become, you realize that the big house and the

913
01:01:49.280 --> 01:01:53.920
fancy cart didn't do anything for you. It didn't give you what you thought it was going to give you.

914
01:01:54.560 --> 01:01:59.040
And then so you're like, look, I'm just going to go back to utility, like status didn't do it for me.

915
01:01:59.040 --> 01:02:02.880
So I'm going to go back to utility. It can also be the case that if you're successful and rich,

916
01:02:03.600 --> 01:02:10.000
you can gain your admiration and your attention through what the business that you built

917
01:02:10.000 --> 01:02:15.200
or the intelligence that you have or the friendship that you can offer others. And therefore

918
01:02:15.200 --> 01:02:19.680
you desire to be like, look at my car. Look at how cool my car is. It just goes down from there.

919
01:02:19.680 --> 01:02:25.120
The way I also interpret it is that when you're when you don't have much money, when you don't

920
01:02:25.120 --> 01:02:29.440
have a huge financial understanding like my friend, you end up playing the really boring money

921
01:02:29.520 --> 01:02:34.880
games. And when you have a huge financial understanding, you probably also spend a lot of time playing

922
01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:40.720
the boring money games and boring money games. I mean, index funds. And the SMP 500 versus like

923
01:02:40.720 --> 01:02:47.840
crypto. I think you'll see that in investing that like the absolute lay person will invest in

924
01:02:47.840 --> 01:02:55.440
index funds. And the extremely experienced Wall Street veteran will invest in index funds as well.

925
01:02:55.440 --> 01:02:58.480
And it's a person in the middle that just has like a little bit of intelligence, a little bit of

926
01:02:58.480 --> 01:03:02.800
experience, a little bit of information that's trying as hard as they can to outperform the market.

927
01:03:03.600 --> 01:03:08.400
I kind of learned that from reading your book, the psychology of money, because I think

928
01:03:08.400 --> 01:03:12.480
like many people thought there was some trick or hack that this book was going to teach me

929
01:03:13.120 --> 01:03:17.680
to figure out how to trade coins at the right time or to like do forex trading or whatever. But

930
01:03:17.680 --> 01:03:24.000
ultimately the book, if there was one overarching lesson it taught me, was that like patience and

931
01:03:24.400 --> 01:03:33.040
more boring investing is the way to get to build my wealth over the long time. And that like all

932
01:03:33.040 --> 01:03:39.200
other strategies have hidden trade offs which lead you to being broke. I think there's a truth too

933
01:03:39.200 --> 01:03:44.240
that like there's a there's an optimal level of intelligence that you want for investing,

934
01:03:44.240 --> 01:03:49.520
where you want to be smart enough to understand the basics, but not so smart that the basics bore you.

935
01:03:49.520 --> 01:03:54.080
A lot of people get so smart that they're like, look, index funds compound interest, like I'm

936
01:03:54.080 --> 01:03:59.760
just putting like it's too boring. Like I need something really complex to satisfy the intelligence

937
01:03:59.760 --> 01:04:04.480
that I have. And I think there's a sweet spot where you're like for me, I'm just like, oh,

938
01:04:04.480 --> 01:04:08.640
index funds and compound interest, like that's that's kind of as high as my intelligence goes here.

939
01:04:08.640 --> 01:04:13.360
But I think the truth is that that is the best position to be in. Smart enough to understand

940
01:04:13.360 --> 01:04:16.800
the basics, but not so smart that they become boring to you. Because once they're boring to you,

941
01:04:16.800 --> 01:04:20.240
you're just like, ah, sweep those away. Let's try to pull some more levers here.

942
01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:26.800
What is going on in the world at the moment, Morgan? There's, it feels like people are more

943
01:04:27.600 --> 01:04:31.200
divided than ever before. And I feel like a lot of these subjects we talk about are somewhat

944
01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:36.160
interconnected. It feels like there's a rise in inequality. You probably know the numbers better

945
01:04:36.160 --> 01:04:42.480
than I do. I mean, there's a graph in front of you there which shows, I think it's, is it wage growth?

946
01:04:42.480 --> 01:04:48.000
Yes. Monthly wage growth, about 25 years. It appears to be going down.

947
01:04:49.040 --> 01:04:54.560
Well, but this is growth. So in any given year, even if the growth is 2%, that's 2% higher than

948
01:04:54.560 --> 01:05:00.080
the previous year. So this is not wages over time. Now it is true that if you look over a 25-year

949
01:05:00.080 --> 01:05:05.440
period, and you took the average American family, not everybody, but the median, that their wages

950
01:05:05.440 --> 01:05:11.600
adjusted for inflation have gone up, not up as much as people would want over 25 years,

951
01:05:11.600 --> 01:05:16.800
but that they're a better off than they were 25 years ago. What is also true is that the average

952
01:05:16.800 --> 01:05:22.720
median family would probably disagree with that statement, even if it is true statistically

953
01:05:22.720 --> 01:05:27.840
for several reasons, one of which is their expectations have gone up over the last 25 years.

954
01:05:28.480 --> 01:05:35.040
The other is even if you're looking at average wages, average, and when we talk about these

955
01:05:35.040 --> 01:05:39.920
statistics does not refer to any specific family. This is just a statistical number. Everyone spends

956
01:05:39.920 --> 01:05:44.560
their money differently. So if I told you, hey, average family, you're richer than you were

957
01:05:44.560 --> 01:05:48.400
in the year 2000. They're like, yeah, but I'm trying to put my kids through college and you've

958
01:05:48.400 --> 01:05:53.040
seen the price of college. And yeah, that might be true because the price of TVs has gone down,

959
01:05:53.040 --> 01:05:57.680
but if you've seen the price of rent and housing, like at the individual level, these statistics

960
01:05:57.680 --> 01:06:02.480
don't really mean that much and never have. I think a lot of economists get into a problem with

961
01:06:02.480 --> 01:06:08.800
that when they're like, well, statistically, x, y, and z is happened. But ignoring the psychology

962
01:06:08.800 --> 01:06:13.280
and the individualality of what's happening actually on the ground in people's heads and how

963
01:06:13.280 --> 01:06:20.160
they spend their money, there's just endless amount of nuance in here. And so I think it's always

964
01:06:20.160 --> 01:06:25.440
been true that we live in a world where over long periods of time, there's good economic growth.

965
01:06:25.440 --> 01:06:30.480
We've become wealthier. We have bigger, better things. We have more income. We have better medicine.

966
01:06:31.120 --> 01:06:35.600
It's equally true too that there is always something legitimate to complain about. And it's

967
01:06:35.600 --> 01:06:39.920
a legitimate to complain about. It's not just like, oh, you should be more grateful. It's a real

968
01:06:39.920 --> 01:06:46.240
thing. And so when I look at a graph like this, actually what like if I was thinking just like with my

969
01:06:46.240 --> 01:06:51.120
math head, I'd be like, oh, there's been quite a bit of growth for the last 25 years. Like the growth

970
01:06:51.120 --> 01:06:56.640
has been gone up and down, but it's growth, you know, never in this chart is growth below zero.

971
01:06:56.640 --> 01:07:00.240
I guess the question there is, are rich people getting richer and are the poor getting poorer?

972
01:07:01.200 --> 01:07:06.480
Yeah. It depends. I mean, it's at the end of our rich, are the rich getting richer? Yes.

973
01:07:07.280 --> 01:07:12.640
Are the poor getting poorer? Statistically, no. Even adjusted for inflation.

974
01:07:14.160 --> 01:07:18.560
I mean, it depends what period we're talking about here. There was about a 20 or 30 year period

975
01:07:18.560 --> 01:07:23.520
where the answer was unequivocally yes. There was an interesting trend over the last 10 years where

976
01:07:24.160 --> 01:07:31.200
in percentage terms, the group of wage earners who had the highest percentage growth were

977
01:07:31.200 --> 01:07:36.480
actually the low wage. That was true for two or three years after COVID, where if you were a minimum

978
01:07:36.480 --> 01:07:41.840
wage worker, those were in percentage terms, great years for you for getting wages. It's tapered

979
01:07:41.840 --> 01:07:48.800
off. So the answer to your question is the rich are getting richer. The poor I think are treading

980
01:07:48.800 --> 01:07:54.080
water by and large. There's always people who are doing differently than that. But when one

981
01:07:54.080 --> 01:08:00.800
group of society is getting richer, treading water feels like you're falling. And the specifics of

982
01:08:00.800 --> 01:08:05.440
how people spend their money. So even if on average, adjusted for inflation, their wages are flat,

983
01:08:05.440 --> 01:08:10.000
but if you're rent skyrocketed or you're trying to send your kids through college or you have a

984
01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:13.920
long commute and you got to put gas in your tank, the individual level things can feel very,

985
01:08:13.920 --> 01:08:17.920
very different from what the statistic show. And what role do you think this sort of wealth and

986
01:08:17.920 --> 01:08:24.320
equality that is widening between the very, very top and everybody else is playing in everything

987
01:08:24.320 --> 01:08:27.200
that we're seeing play out at the moment. Because in the UK, it's almost like there's,

988
01:08:27.920 --> 01:08:33.600
we're unlike the verge of riots, it seems. And I think last, last month, there was millions of

989
01:08:33.600 --> 01:08:40.560
people in London protesting against immigrants coming over on boats and society becoming more

990
01:08:40.560 --> 01:08:45.360
cult multicultural. I'm so fascinated by the subject because early on, we said that unless you

991
01:08:45.360 --> 01:08:51.280
have immigration in the Western world, you have population decline. But population decline sucks.

992
01:08:51.280 --> 01:08:55.840
Because you have a huge problem right now throughout a lot of the world, at least one of the biggest

993
01:08:55.840 --> 01:08:59.680
perceived problems is immigration. And the same is playing out in the United States. If I go on

994
01:08:59.680 --> 01:09:05.760
X, although I know what X is, it's people, maybe it's just my algorithm, but it's people attacking

995
01:09:06.640 --> 01:09:10.320
immigrants and immigration and people that are brown and black and whatever else it might be.

996
01:09:10.320 --> 01:09:16.960
I'm wondering how all of this is intertwined and if it is connected at all in your view.

997
01:09:16.960 --> 01:09:24.000
I think as a amateur student of history, across cultures all over the place, all through history,

998
01:09:24.000 --> 01:09:30.080
what you want to avoid more than anything in society is when probably a third of the population

999
01:09:30.080 --> 01:09:34.800
wakes up every morning and says, this isn't working. That's the point at which it's going to collapse

1000
01:09:34.800 --> 01:09:38.320
from there is when enough people wake up in the morning and just have this feeling of like,

1001
01:09:38.400 --> 01:09:43.120
whatever this is, it's not working out for me. You want to avoid that part. And so like, look,

1002
01:09:43.120 --> 01:09:47.680
I'm an, I tend to be a free markets guy. I'm a capitalist. I think people should be able to

1003
01:09:47.680 --> 01:09:52.080
become very wealthy, et cetera, et cetera. You also don't want to get to a point where people

1004
01:09:52.080 --> 01:09:57.120
become so wealthy that a big chunk of society just wakes up every morning and says, fuck this.

1005
01:09:57.120 --> 01:10:01.200
This is not, this is not going to work out for me. And I think we've got, we've either there

1006
01:10:01.200 --> 01:10:05.920
or precariously close to there in a lot of areas in the world. Social media, that's always been the

1007
01:10:05.920 --> 01:10:11.520
case and social media makes it 100 times worse than it's ever been. For example, you and I are

1008
01:10:11.520 --> 01:10:20.240
recording this a day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday. And there were, who knows what

1009
01:10:20.240 --> 01:10:24.960
number percentage it was, but I think it was not hard on social media to find people who were

1010
01:10:24.960 --> 01:10:30.640
celebrating it yesterday. Now, when Martin Luther King was assassinated, did those people exist too

1011
01:10:30.640 --> 01:10:34.960
who celebrated assassination, of course, but because of social media, by and large,

1012
01:10:34.960 --> 01:10:40.160
you did not hear from them unless you were part of that group. Whereas today, virtually everybody

1013
01:10:40.160 --> 01:10:46.560
yesterday saw people celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination. And so even if those feelings existed

1014
01:10:46.560 --> 01:10:52.240
in the past, they're much more apparent today. You see them today in a way that you did not before.

1015
01:10:52.240 --> 01:10:56.800
So because of that, it's easy to say we're more divided today. We're more extreme today. We're

1016
01:10:56.800 --> 01:11:00.320
more pessimistic than they didn't know today. I think the nuances that's not actually true,

1017
01:11:00.320 --> 01:11:04.720
you're just more aware of it. But those feelings always existed. They existed in the 1990s,

1018
01:11:04.720 --> 01:11:09.680
they existed in the 1950s. It was just much easier to contain those. And for the average citizen

1019
01:11:09.680 --> 01:11:15.840
who got their information from one newspaper, one evening news program, to feel like things were

1020
01:11:15.840 --> 01:11:20.080
much more stable and in control and that people were much more uniform in their opinions than they

1021
01:11:20.080 --> 01:11:25.280
actually were. Before we start recording, we were talking about the Charlie Kirk shooting and how

1022
01:11:27.120 --> 01:11:34.960
social media's ability to dehumanize other people at a probably a faster rate than history

1023
01:11:34.960 --> 01:11:38.640
would have done it is pretty remarkable. And you see a lot of that. You see a lot of it taking

1024
01:11:38.640 --> 01:11:44.400
place on both sides. I think both sides describe each other as being like animals and in humane and

1025
01:11:44.400 --> 01:11:48.080
one side's calling the other side Nazis. And then the other side is calling the other side

1026
01:11:48.560 --> 01:11:54.080
referring to them in animal terms because of maybe the color of their skin or their behavior.

1027
01:11:54.080 --> 01:12:00.800
We saw a lot of that when the that heinous individual killed the young lady on the train

1028
01:12:00.800 --> 01:12:06.640
in America. And the way this person is the fucking worst thing on planet earth.

1029
01:12:08.560 --> 01:12:15.360
But the language was very, it was putting that person in a group of other people.

1030
01:12:15.360 --> 01:12:18.800
Yes. And then making the whole group a pack of animals.

1031
01:12:18.800 --> 01:12:22.080
Right. Because in that situation too, we talked about this earlier. I don't know that

1032
01:12:22.080 --> 01:12:26.720
individual's name doesn't matter. But no one refers to him by his name. It's them. It's they.

1033
01:12:27.360 --> 01:12:31.280
And that once you dehumanize any group of people like that. And this has been the case for all

1034
01:12:31.280 --> 01:12:38.560
of who in history that 99.9% of people cannot kill another human. But they're perfectly fine killing

1035
01:12:38.560 --> 01:12:44.000
them. They that group once you dehumanize you can do anything. And at the at a much lower level,

1036
01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:47.600
everyone realizes this is with road rage. I've had road rage. The person cut me off,

1037
01:12:47.600 --> 01:12:53.120
that son of a bitch, honk my horn flim. I don't get too extreme with it. But in things I would never

1038
01:12:53.120 --> 01:13:00.560
do eye to eye. But once I'm looking at a car, then it's there's no human there. And my ability

1039
01:13:00.560 --> 01:13:05.280
to have a level of anger is so much higher than it would be if we were just looking at eye.

1040
01:13:06.480 --> 01:13:10.720
I just experienced a couple of years ago where I was pulling into a gas station and I inadvertently

1041
01:13:10.720 --> 01:13:16.960
cut somebody off. It was an accident, but I totally cut them off. And he honked and threw up his

1042
01:13:16.960 --> 01:13:23.440
middle finger at me. And since we pulled into the same gas station, we were now like eye to eye.

1043
01:13:23.440 --> 01:13:28.400
And I walked over to him. And I think he thought I was like coming to like confront him. And I put

1044
01:13:28.400 --> 01:13:32.400
him my hands and said, I just want to apologize. I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm so sorry.

1045
01:13:32.400 --> 01:13:37.600
I did. It was not on purpose. And he I think he was so surprised. And he was like, wow, thank you.

1046
01:13:37.600 --> 01:13:41.520
Thanks for her likes. And we had this moment of like almost hugging of just like, I'm so like,

1047
01:13:42.000 --> 01:13:46.160
hope, hope you have a great day. It was one of those of like, once in the moment when it was

1048
01:13:46.880 --> 01:13:51.200
you stripped the humanity of it, when it was two cars, each other, both of us were like,

1049
01:13:51.200 --> 01:13:55.680
fuck you. Once we looked at eye to eye, I was like, oh, brother, like it's okay. It's okay.

1050
01:13:55.680 --> 01:13:59.680
And I think that was just like for me, that was an individual example of what happens at society.

1051
01:13:59.680 --> 01:14:03.120
When you strip the humanity off it, we're capable of so much anger and hate.

1052
01:14:03.120 --> 01:14:08.880
Eye to eye or like, oh, that's all good. And I think all of us know somebody who we disagree with

1053
01:14:08.880 --> 01:14:13.600
politically, regardless of what it might be. And it's easy to be like, oh, that person's an idiot.

1054
01:14:13.600 --> 01:14:17.360
They're stupid. They're ill informed. And actually, if you sit down and talk to them, you're like,

1055
01:14:17.360 --> 01:14:21.680
ah, look, we might have some disagreements here, but it's all good. Cheers. Let's have a good night.

1056
01:14:21.680 --> 01:14:27.280
Like eye to eye, the vast majority of people get along and get together. But social media has turned

1057
01:14:27.280 --> 01:14:31.040
all of life into road rage. Gosh, yeah. I mean, you know that more starkly than anyone is a

1058
01:14:31.040 --> 01:14:35.440
podcaster because I sit here with everybody of all political opinions, extreme left, you know,

1059
01:14:35.440 --> 01:14:41.680
pretty extreme right. And at this table, we get along. Right. We have an even off camera. We

1060
01:14:41.680 --> 01:14:45.360
get along. I think so many people said this in the last 24 hours about Charlie Kirk.

1061
01:14:46.400 --> 01:14:50.640
One of the most common phrases I've heard it was, I didn't agree with everything he said.

1062
01:14:51.440 --> 01:14:55.280
But at least he was brave enough to have a conversation with people who he disagreed with.

1063
01:14:55.280 --> 01:14:58.880
That was what he did by a large was going into schools and being like, I know you disagree with me.

1064
01:14:58.880 --> 01:15:04.720
Let's talk. And he turned it from road rage into a conversation between people. And even if you

1065
01:15:04.720 --> 01:15:09.680
disagreed with him, I think he did it very right in that sense. And I think that's what's

1066
01:15:09.680 --> 01:15:15.280
why people from all over the spectrum are devastated in the last 24 hours. It was like he was one of

1067
01:15:15.280 --> 01:15:19.120
the people who was doing it right. Even when you disagreed with them, he was having a conversation

1068
01:15:19.120 --> 01:15:22.960
face to face and bringing people together. I think that absolutely hits the nail on the head,

1069
01:15:22.960 --> 01:15:27.680
which is I think we, you know, there's things that I absolutely don't agree with him on. But I

1070
01:15:27.680 --> 01:15:31.200
actually think that's just completely beside the point because I want to live in a world where

1071
01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:34.240
there's people that I disagree with. I like, I actually wouldn't choose the world where

1072
01:15:34.240 --> 01:15:37.280
everyone encountered agreed with my opinions. There would be no intellectual growth. There'd

1073
01:15:37.280 --> 01:15:43.920
be no understanding. There'd be no real progress. But also, as you've highlighted, the way that Charlie

1074
01:15:43.920 --> 01:15:49.520
Kirk went about it was he went to Oxford University and went on the formalized debate panel.

1075
01:15:49.520 --> 01:15:54.400
He didn't hide in an office and a pine on social media. He went face to face and said, I know

1076
01:15:54.400 --> 01:15:58.800
you disagree with me. Let's talk. Yeah. And I'll listen to what he wasn't interrupting people all

1077
01:15:58.800 --> 01:16:03.120
the time. He's hearing out their points and he was very respectful about it. And what is missing

1078
01:16:03.120 --> 01:16:08.800
from all political discourse today? It's that. I know you disagree, but let's talk and let's try

1079
01:16:08.800 --> 01:16:16.160
to be respectful about it. And I can't think of anyone on either side who did that as consistently

1080
01:16:16.160 --> 01:16:23.840
as he did. Even if I disagree with him. The idea that we're only going to talk to people who we

1081
01:16:23.840 --> 01:16:27.840
agree with is what causes all the problems. I don't understand these fucking people. I don't

1082
01:16:27.840 --> 01:16:33.440
understand. It's much more comfortable to surround yourself with people who agree with you

1083
01:16:34.320 --> 01:16:40.240
than to accept the nuance of life. And this is the problem with a lot of political media is that

1084
01:16:41.120 --> 01:16:45.760
it creates much better content when people say this is right, this is wrong. He's right, he's wrong

1085
01:16:45.760 --> 01:16:50.800
to make it very explicit, binary, black and white. Then it is to accept the truth, which is like

1086
01:16:50.800 --> 01:16:55.360
it's complicated. I think I was like traumatized yesterday when I watched that when I saw the video

1087
01:16:55.360 --> 01:17:03.600
of him being shot. I think it was this weird, deep sense of like I've not been able to articulate

1088
01:17:03.600 --> 01:17:09.920
what it is, but I don't know Charlie Kirk. I've never met him. There was a time when we were

1089
01:17:09.920 --> 01:17:13.760
potentially going to have him on the show and we were trying to figure out who to have here with him

1090
01:17:13.760 --> 01:17:16.400
because he's such an unbelievable debater that he would run fucking rings around me.

1091
01:17:17.360 --> 01:17:21.360
I was like, who can you put it to show you? You'd be like, fine, I've been serving it.

1092
01:17:23.360 --> 01:17:28.480
But there was something really surprising in how I felt when I when I both heard the news and saw

1093
01:17:29.680 --> 01:17:35.280
him being shot. This young guy, family person who was out debating, who had ideas that many people

1094
01:17:35.280 --> 01:17:40.720
disagreed with, but was in a forum where he was having them challenged, could be executed in

1095
01:17:40.720 --> 01:17:45.440
public on live stream in a way that his children are going to watch that video and they grew up

1096
01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:51.280
probably multiple times. I was like, God, what does this say about the society we live in and

1097
01:17:51.280 --> 01:17:55.600
where we're heading? I know guns play a huge role in this. We have to acknowledge that because

1098
01:17:55.600 --> 01:17:59.120
it's very unlikely that could have happened in the UK because we don't have guns there.

1099
01:17:59.840 --> 01:18:02.480
So you could have thrown a rock or something, but you could have killed the guy.

1100
01:18:03.280 --> 01:18:09.440
But it's almost, it feels like a crescendo of the moment where division and algorithms

1101
01:18:09.440 --> 01:18:13.120
and now that X has gone a certain way and other platforms are going a certain ways.

1102
01:18:13.120 --> 01:18:16.880
And if you look at the stats, there's more social networks now that have more than 20 million

1103
01:18:16.880 --> 01:18:21.760
active users than at any time in human history. It's gone up by 50% in recent times, which means we're

1104
01:18:21.760 --> 01:18:25.760
becoming more splintered. And then if you understand the commercial models of these algorithms,

1105
01:18:26.880 --> 01:18:30.400
their commercial model is dependent on you spending more time there. So how do I get you to spend

1106
01:18:30.400 --> 01:18:34.320
more time there? Well, I give you more of the things that are going to trigger your amygdala,

1107
01:18:34.880 --> 01:18:41.440
which is your fear senses and the things that are going to drive you into rage and debate and

1108
01:18:41.440 --> 01:18:47.200
engagement and these and sharing things. And so I don't know, I wonder if there's a way back from here.

1109
01:18:48.000 --> 01:18:53.680
I have an optimistic view. And this is not a forecast because I don't have a 100% faith in this.

1110
01:18:54.560 --> 01:18:58.240
But there are so many endless examples in history when people

1111
01:18:59.280 --> 01:19:05.520
discount how powerful cycles cycles can be. And so my optimistic, my hope, it's not even a forecast,

1112
01:19:05.520 --> 01:19:13.440
it's a hope is that 15 or 20 years from now, we look back at this era as when things

1113
01:19:13.440 --> 01:19:17.920
bottomed politically from which we grew out of we improved. And we're going to look back and

1114
01:19:17.920 --> 01:19:23.920
be like, man, the 2020s were so bad and we are so divided. But that was also a bottom that we

1115
01:19:23.920 --> 01:19:28.880
came out of like a generational bottom. And that sounds crazy today, but that's always been the case.

1116
01:19:28.880 --> 01:19:33.200
If you and I were talking about the economy in the 1930s, it would have been preposterous,

1117
01:19:33.200 --> 01:19:39.920
completely insane to say the 1950s are going to be the greatest, most unbound prosperity,

1118
01:19:39.920 --> 01:19:44.800
middle cost prosperity we're ever going to have. It would have seen insane. If this was the 1970s and

1119
01:19:44.800 --> 01:19:50.400
we just had a raft of political assassinations in the 60s, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King,

1120
01:19:50.400 --> 01:19:56.480
Robert F. Kennedy. And then Richard Nixon is impeached and resigned for Watergate. It would have been

1121
01:19:56.480 --> 01:20:02.480
completely insane for you and I to say, hey, do you know what? The 80s and 90s are going to be an

1122
01:20:02.480 --> 01:20:07.280
era of political stability and political faith and trust in government in saying like,

1123
01:20:07.280 --> 01:20:11.920
it's always when things are the lowest that you feel like you're never going to recover.

1124
01:20:11.920 --> 01:20:15.920
But if you understand how cyclical things can be, it's usually the case that looking back,

1125
01:20:15.920 --> 01:20:20.960
you're like, man, it was bad. But looking back, that was the bottom. And I have no idea if the bottom

1126
01:20:20.960 --> 01:20:26.080
was yesterday or if it's going to come 10 years from now. But I would bet that the most likely

1127
01:20:26.080 --> 01:20:30.080
scenario whenever that bottom comes is that we will look 15 or 20 years back and be like, that

1128
01:20:30.080 --> 01:20:34.880
was terrible. And at that moment, everyone assumed it would go on forever. But looking back,

1129
01:20:34.880 --> 01:20:39.680
that was actually a bottom. When enough people came together and said, stop, stop. This is,

1130
01:20:39.680 --> 01:20:43.920
this is too much. The forces that we've gone too far in the other direction, we need to,

1131
01:20:43.920 --> 01:20:49.600
we need to come around from them. It is always impossible in real time to wrap your head around that

1132
01:20:49.600 --> 01:20:54.720
and to forecast it. It's only looking back that you're like, yes, that was the, that there was

1133
01:20:54.720 --> 01:21:00.080
the bottom. And you can see things getting so bad. Trust in government is so low. Polarization

1134
01:21:00.080 --> 01:21:03.760
is so high. There were not surprised me in the slightest if we look 20 years from now and be like,

1135
01:21:03.760 --> 01:21:08.160
oh, things got better. I understand that from an economic standpoint. I

1136
01:21:08.160 --> 01:21:12.240
struggle with it because of the presence of how we, like, because of the medium in which we

1137
01:21:12.240 --> 01:21:16.240
communicate now with social media. And I was looking at the, some of the stats here and it says,

1138
01:21:16.240 --> 01:21:24.080
in 1994, only 20% of Americans held a very unfavorable view of the other party.

1139
01:21:24.080 --> 01:21:32.480
By 2022, that number has jumped to 72% among Republicans and 63% among Democrats according to

1140
01:21:32.480 --> 01:21:39.440
Pew Research. And this is particularly pronounced in the United States and, and the UK and other

1141
01:21:39.440 --> 01:21:46.560
parts of Europe. In this report, it says that social media and also cable news is role has only

1142
01:21:46.560 --> 01:21:52.800
amplified echo chambers, making the divide sharper and more emotional. And I can't, especially

1143
01:21:52.960 --> 01:21:58.000
with AI in the way, well, AI is going to make those algorithms even smarter, understanding

1144
01:21:58.000 --> 01:22:02.160
exactly what to show me to increase my engagement, therefore, increase their advertising dollars.

1145
01:22:02.160 --> 01:22:08.720
So I'm like, what would be the mechanism in this context? I have no statistic or even strong

1146
01:22:08.720 --> 01:22:13.680
thing to back this up with. My gut tells me that the younger generation in particular

1147
01:22:14.560 --> 01:22:20.400
is going to be the one that looks at social media and looks at AI and recognizes the bullshit

1148
01:22:20.480 --> 01:22:24.720
that can come out of it. It's the older generation. It's the boomers today on social media who believe

1149
01:22:24.720 --> 01:22:28.480
everything that they see. And I think that tends to be where a lot of the polarization comes from,

1150
01:22:28.480 --> 01:22:32.400
not to blame everything on the older generation. But I think if you were to look at statistically

1151
01:22:32.400 --> 01:22:36.400
who is the most gullible on social media of believing every post in their feed, it's the older

1152
01:22:36.400 --> 01:22:41.040
generation. And it would not surprise me if the younger generation is much more attuned

1153
01:22:41.040 --> 01:22:46.240
to how quickly you can be led astray into some bullshit rabbit hole that is not reflective of how

1154
01:22:46.320 --> 01:22:50.800
the broader world works. I don't know if that's true or not. But if you were to ask me to articulate

1155
01:22:50.800 --> 01:22:56.240
why we're going to get around the social media bubbles, it would be that the generations who have

1156
01:22:56.240 --> 01:23:00.400
been doing this the longest are going to be the best at recognizing how dangerous it can be.

1157
01:23:00.400 --> 01:23:04.960
You're a very smart guy and you're someone that studies history and understands

1158
01:23:04.960 --> 01:23:11.040
and you wrote the book same as ever, which shows a guy to what doesn't change through history

1159
01:23:11.040 --> 01:23:15.520
and how things can often stay the same. So this is a bit of a peculiar question for you. But

1160
01:23:15.520 --> 01:23:22.320
in the wake of what happened to Charlie Cook yesterday, his public murder and all that's rising

1161
01:23:22.320 --> 01:23:29.120
from that, what should someone like me and you who have public platforms who reach people on a daily

1162
01:23:29.120 --> 01:23:35.760
basis due to help? I think we have to remind ourselves two things about social media. One is that

1163
01:23:35.760 --> 01:23:41.520
it's been designed by the smartest people of our generation to deliver you in your feed, not the best

1164
01:23:41.520 --> 01:23:45.280
information, not the right information, basically what's going to give you the most

1165
01:23:45.280 --> 01:23:49.680
phomo, the most anxiety, what's going to like pull out the starkest reaction in you.

1166
01:23:50.320 --> 01:23:55.600
And the smartest people of our generation have gone to work at Facebook and Google and whatever

1167
01:23:55.600 --> 01:23:59.840
I'm in TikTok to make an algorithm that's going to give you that. It's going to give you the

1168
01:23:59.840 --> 01:24:05.520
the thing in your feed that's going to make you go, wow, what? That's so out. And two is that

1169
01:24:05.600 --> 01:24:12.800
even when it's not that, even when it is just people's thoughts, people go on social media to perform.

1170
01:24:13.760 --> 01:24:18.000
They go on like they are trying to give you and I'm trying to do this on social media. So

1171
01:24:18.000 --> 01:24:22.320
I don't want to give you any random thought in my head. I'm going to specifically give you what I

1172
01:24:22.320 --> 01:24:27.520
think is going to be interesting and whatnot. So if we view social media as a proxy for the real world

1173
01:24:27.520 --> 01:24:31.200
and I think everyone it kind of intuitively does, even if they you say that loud, you're like, no,

1174
01:24:31.200 --> 01:24:35.600
of course it's not the real world, but it's easy to assume that when I open up Twitter or Facebook

1175
01:24:35.600 --> 01:24:40.160
or Instagram, I'm like, I'm just I'm just seeing a window into the world and you're like, no,

1176
01:24:40.160 --> 01:24:46.400
this is people performing for you and the smartest minds in the world ordering that performance

1177
01:24:46.400 --> 01:24:52.240
for what's going to give you the most anxiety. Are you optimistic about the the Western economy,

1178
01:24:52.240 --> 01:24:57.520
the US economy? I could be optimistic long term and realistic about what growth means.

1179
01:24:58.160 --> 01:25:03.840
The reason we tend to have growth in the economy and in the stock market is because it's

1180
01:25:03.840 --> 01:25:09.120
specifically because they're short term chaos. So am I optimistic about the next 30 years?

1181
01:25:09.120 --> 01:25:13.680
Absolutely. I know that my kids will be living a better material life than you and I are. They'll

1182
01:25:13.680 --> 01:25:17.200
have better medicine, they'll better technology, they'll have flying cars, whatever it is.

1183
01:25:18.560 --> 01:25:23.200
Does that, but I'm equally confident, if not more confident, that the path between now and then

1184
01:25:23.200 --> 01:25:30.080
is going to be chaos. That's not mutually exclusive. The fact that I know I'm extremely

1185
01:25:30.080 --> 01:25:35.360
confident that there's going to be a lot of growth and that it's going to be a constant chain

1186
01:25:35.360 --> 01:25:38.400
of setback and suffering and misery between now and then.

1187
01:25:38.400 --> 01:25:42.400
Is there anything that you see creating a setback? There's these new protagonists in the story,

1188
01:25:42.400 --> 01:25:47.200
there's AI, there's the declining birth rates, which is going to have an impact on the population.

1189
01:25:47.200 --> 01:25:50.720
Is there anything that you think is your most focused? There's tariffs as well.

1190
01:25:52.000 --> 01:25:56.240
There's Trump economics, which can cause some instability.

1191
01:25:56.240 --> 01:26:01.520
Historically, the biggest risk by far has always been the thing that nobody's talking about.

1192
01:26:01.520 --> 01:26:06.240
So when we serve you and I survey the world today, we talk about exactly what we just said,

1193
01:26:06.240 --> 01:26:09.920
tariffs, birth rates, people know about those things. There's never been a period when the

1194
01:26:09.920 --> 01:26:15.040
biggest risk was something that was notable. It's always something like COVID, which nobody saw

1195
01:26:15.120 --> 01:26:19.840
coming September 11th, which nobody saw coming, the Great Depression, like all these things,

1196
01:26:19.840 --> 01:26:24.320
Pearl Harbor, all these things that were not on people's radar that did the most damage.

1197
01:26:24.320 --> 01:26:28.880
And so it's not that I don't worry about tariffs or that I don't worry about birth rates,

1198
01:26:28.880 --> 01:26:34.080
I do, but I would guarantee you that the worst economic story of the next 10 years,

1199
01:26:34.080 --> 01:26:37.040
the biggest risk is something that you and I are not talking about whatsoever.

1200
01:26:37.040 --> 01:26:41.040
It's a risk that's going to come completely out of the blue. That is not in any newspaper,

1201
01:26:41.040 --> 01:26:43.920
it's not in any podcast. That's going to be the biggest risk.

1202
01:26:44.640 --> 01:26:48.720
Is there a particular chapter in the psychology of money, which was the book that solved,

1203
01:26:48.720 --> 01:26:54.720
I thought I hear almost 10 million copies and had a profound impact on my life and my family's life?

1204
01:26:54.720 --> 01:26:57.840
Is there a particular story or chapter in this book that is your favorite?

1205
01:26:59.920 --> 01:27:05.360
I think the chapter on reasonable versus rational, which to very quickly summarize it is,

1206
01:27:05.920 --> 01:27:11.040
don't pretend like you are purely rational and you're a spreadsheet and your financial decisions

1207
01:27:11.040 --> 01:27:16.640
have to like make perfect sense. Everyone is a little bit flawed, a little bit emotional,

1208
01:27:16.640 --> 01:27:20.720
different family situations, different goals, as long as your financial decisions are merely

1209
01:27:20.720 --> 01:27:25.520
reasonable, that's good. And I think a lot of people, for me and for a lot of people, they're like,

1210
01:27:25.520 --> 01:27:29.120
oh, thank you for giving me permission because I have this quirky thing that I do with my money

1211
01:27:29.120 --> 01:27:33.200
and it doesn't make any sense, but it's reasonable and it makes sense for my personality.

1212
01:27:33.200 --> 01:27:37.760
And as long as it's reasonable, don't be unreasonable, but don't think that every one of your

1213
01:27:37.760 --> 01:27:43.200
financial decisions has to add up perfectly in a spreadsheet. Money is a tool for a better life.

1214
01:27:44.000 --> 01:27:47.920
And there's many different ways to do that, a lot of which might make sense to me but not

1215
01:27:47.920 --> 01:27:54.080
make sense to you or vice versa. And so that's fine. And so I think that to me of just like,

1216
01:27:54.080 --> 01:27:58.800
hey, this is not an exercise in a spreadsheet where I'm just trying to make sure all the numbers

1217
01:27:58.800 --> 01:28:03.840
add up, I'm just trying to use money to be a little bit happier and to sleep better and to give

1218
01:28:03.840 --> 01:28:08.400
myself my family a little bit of a better life. Even if it doesn't always make sense, it's as a tool

1219
01:28:08.400 --> 01:28:12.720
to give me a better life. If money is a tool for happiness, I guess you have to get really clear

1220
01:28:13.440 --> 01:28:16.800
which you talk about in your new book, The Art of Spending Money, you have to get really clear

1221
01:28:16.800 --> 01:28:21.200
on what your goal is. And I think most of us have never actually done an exercise to get clear on that.

1222
01:28:21.200 --> 01:28:25.440
Yes. Which is quite shocking. Jeff Bezos talks about this in a way that I think was really

1223
01:28:25.440 --> 01:28:30.960
profound where he's like, he thought about building Amazon with what he called the Regretman

1224
01:28:30.960 --> 01:28:37.920
Amization Framework, which was he envisioned himself being 90 years old or whatever on his deathbed

1225
01:28:37.920 --> 01:28:43.760
and looking back. And he said, the goal for life was to be on your deathbed and have as few regrets

1226
01:28:43.760 --> 01:28:49.840
as possible. And he said, if he started Amazon and it failed, he would not have regretted that.

1227
01:28:49.840 --> 01:28:54.560
But if he never tried to start it, he would regret it. And so it was an easier, of course he has to

1228
01:28:54.560 --> 01:28:58.400
do it because he wants to have as few regrets as possible. But I just think that very simple

1229
01:28:58.400 --> 01:29:04.320
framework of the overarching goal in life. If you have like, what is the base of the pyramid for

1230
01:29:04.320 --> 01:29:09.200
how to live a good life? If you want to have as few regrets as possible, not take as few

1231
01:29:09.200 --> 01:29:14.640
risks as you can, just have as few regrets as possible. And I think what's hard is that people

1232
01:29:14.640 --> 01:29:20.960
by and large don't have a good concept of what they will regret. It's easy to do because a lot of

1233
01:29:21.040 --> 01:29:27.600
things kind of compound slowly. So if you eat a poor diet or if you're not treating your friends

1234
01:29:27.600 --> 01:29:31.120
as well as you should, that's like a slow thing. You might regret it eventually, but you're going

1235
01:29:31.120 --> 01:29:34.960
to look back. But in real time, you don't really understand what you're doing. So to have a good

1236
01:29:34.960 --> 01:29:39.920
sense of what you're going to regret is a difficult thing. But to me, that's the ultimate goal in

1237
01:29:39.920 --> 01:29:48.640
life. There is a, I heard the story one time of a guy who his last words on his deathbed were

1238
01:29:49.440 --> 01:29:54.480
so much wasted time. Those are his last words. And I remember thinking like, that's, that's

1239
01:29:54.480 --> 01:29:59.040
as worse. That's, that's as bad as it comes. To be on your deathbed and look back and being like,

1240
01:29:59.040 --> 01:30:04.560
and what a, what a regret. I've just filled with regrets of the things you didn't do of the way

1241
01:30:04.560 --> 01:30:08.960
that you treated people, of the risks that you didn't take. And so I think that if there's an

1242
01:30:08.960 --> 01:30:13.440
overarching philosophy, it's that. And I ask myself a lot like, do I have a good sense of what I'm

1243
01:30:13.600 --> 01:30:20.640
going to regret? And for every decision that I make, do I ask myself, will I regret doing or not

1244
01:30:20.640 --> 01:30:24.160
doing this thing easier than done, but some I think about a lot.

1245
01:30:26.880 --> 01:30:31.920
I think it's generally just hard for us to appreciate that there will be a future self. I was

1246
01:30:31.920 --> 01:30:35.760
reading a study where they put people in these MRI scanners and then asked them to think about

1247
01:30:35.760 --> 01:30:41.120
themselves and then a celebrity and then themselves in 10 years time. And then when they

1248
01:30:41.120 --> 01:30:44.800
thought about themselves as a certain part of the brain litter, when they thought about a celebrity,

1249
01:30:44.800 --> 01:30:49.200
all themselves in 10 years time, a different part of the brain litter, which kind of

1250
01:30:50.400 --> 01:30:55.920
makes you think that we don't really, our future self is a stranger. And so we act. And I think

1251
01:30:55.920 --> 01:30:59.040
this about the people that I sit here with, I think probably most of the people that I sit here

1252
01:30:59.040 --> 01:31:03.040
with learning from, if you could like distill it down to why they're here, it's because they were

1253
01:31:03.040 --> 01:31:07.760
able to think about themselves in 10 years time. They were able to, so they became an athlete and

1254
01:31:07.760 --> 01:31:11.600
trained or they became a CEO or they became an expert and something they were able to like think

1255
01:31:12.240 --> 01:31:16.320
and they got through the PhD and all that. I don't know. There's a great call from Jerry

1256
01:31:16.320 --> 01:31:23.040
Seinfeld. He says self control is empathy with your future self. It's you are making a decision

1257
01:31:23.040 --> 01:31:29.520
to either do or not do something today because you have respect for your future self and you care

1258
01:31:29.520 --> 01:31:33.680
about your future self. You know there's going to be a Steve in 10 years from now and you want to

1259
01:31:33.680 --> 01:31:38.960
do something today with compassion for that person 10 years from now. I'm guessing kids help in

1260
01:31:38.960 --> 01:31:43.600
some regard because they give you a future. I think about yeah right something that's going to

1261
01:31:43.600 --> 01:31:50.080
outlive you and you want to teach them something and and you know push them into becoming someone

1262
01:31:50.080 --> 01:31:53.920
that's going to outlive you. So you're having like by default you're thinking about something that's

1263
01:31:53.920 --> 01:31:58.720
going to outlive yourself. If you've ever worked in a startup you already know it's chaos. It's

1264
01:31:58.720 --> 01:32:03.600
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01:32:03.760 --> 01:32:08.400
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1266
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1267
01:32:13.760 --> 01:32:19.200
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1272
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01:32:43.360 --> 01:32:48.720
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1274
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dollars off that's vanta.com slash CEO for one thousand dollars off. AI agents aren't coming

1275
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they are already here and those of you who know how to leverage them will be the ones that change

1276
01:33:01.280 --> 01:33:07.520
the world. I spent my whole career as an entrepreneur regretting the fact that I never learned to code.

1277
01:33:07.520 --> 01:33:14.240
AI agents completely change this now if you have an idea and you have a tool like Repplet who

1278
01:33:14.240 --> 01:33:20.080
responds over this podcast there is nothing stopping you from telling that idea into reality

1279
01:33:20.080 --> 01:33:27.600
in a matter of minutes with Repplet you just type in what you want to create and it uses AI

1280
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agents to create it for you and now I'm an investor in the company as well as them being a brand

1281
01:33:32.880 --> 01:33:38.400
sponsor. You can integrate payment systems or databases or logins anything that you can type.

1282
01:33:38.400 --> 01:33:43.520
Whenever I have an idea for a new website or tool or technology or app I go on Repplet.com

1283
01:33:43.600 --> 01:33:50.560
and I type in what I want a new to-do list a survey form a new personal website anything I type I

1284
01:33:50.560 --> 01:33:56.240
can create so if you've never tried this before do it now go to Repplet.com and use my code

1285
01:33:56.240 --> 01:34:03.920
Stephen for 50% off a month of your Repplet call plan. You're talking the book about trying new

1286
01:34:03.920 --> 01:34:10.640
things and and why that is there's a chapter called try something new and I think a lot of us

1287
01:34:10.640 --> 01:34:15.040
actually get stuck in ruts in life and that ends up we get stuck in routine it's weird how

1288
01:34:15.040 --> 01:34:19.760
as we age we like to be routine more but intuitively everyone would say that routine makes them

1289
01:34:20.320 --> 01:34:26.000
boring boring right let's let's life less spontaneous less interesting less or less wonder.

1290
01:34:26.000 --> 01:34:30.960
I mean there's that thing people realize this that summer vacation when you're 10 years old

1291
01:34:30.960 --> 01:34:34.880
seems like it lasts forever yeah but when you're an adult summer goes by in three seconds you're

1292
01:34:34.880 --> 01:34:39.360
like what like why does why is time going faster at least one of the theories for why it seems

1293
01:34:39.360 --> 01:34:44.960
like time goes faster as you age is because when you're a child every day is something new you're

1294
01:34:44.960 --> 01:34:50.480
experiencing something for the first time it's a constant chain of novelty when you're an adult

1295
01:34:50.480 --> 01:34:55.040
it's probably the same commute going to the same job living in the same house and one day blends

1296
01:34:55.040 --> 01:35:00.160
into the next and before you know it 10 years has passed and so the idea of like trying something new

1297
01:35:00.160 --> 01:35:04.720
I think is is is important the point I made in in the book about trying something new is

1298
01:35:05.600 --> 01:35:10.480
you don't know what your thing that you really are going to enjoy in life is it might not be

1299
01:35:10.480 --> 01:35:15.760
intuitive some people value travel by and large I don't the people enjoy like spending a ton of

1300
01:35:15.760 --> 01:35:20.320
money on wine by and large I don't but I do spend my money on things that you might not appreciate

1301
01:35:20.320 --> 01:35:24.720
like everybody's different you can't there's no formula for how to do it you have to try a

1302
01:35:24.720 --> 01:35:28.800
million different kinds of spending before you're like oh I like this I don't like that I want

1303
01:35:28.800 --> 01:35:32.880
to focus more on this and it's not intuitive what that thing's going to be my wife and I also

1304
01:35:32.880 --> 01:35:37.520
have this realization in the last month so many people when they talk and think about money and

1305
01:35:37.520 --> 01:35:42.080
spending they're like I want to travel I want to I want to have more money so I can travel I think

1306
01:35:42.080 --> 01:35:46.480
by and large that's great travel is an amazing thing my friend I realized that like I think we've

1307
01:35:46.480 --> 01:35:50.240
done so much of it and because we have kids right now they were like I don't think we enjoyed that

1308
01:35:50.240 --> 01:35:55.440
much and it wasn't what we were looking at our summer schedule they were like okay we got two more

1309
01:35:55.440 --> 01:36:02.320
trips coming up that we were like really and we realized the best part of the last several trips

1310
01:36:02.320 --> 01:36:07.520
that we've taken is coming home that the most enjoyable part of the trip was coming home and we're

1311
01:36:07.520 --> 01:36:13.120
like can we just admit that maybe we shouldn't be doing this as much as we do even if society tells

1312
01:36:13.120 --> 01:36:17.040
us that we should do it and everyone else I travel a lot for work so like my idea of a vacation

1313
01:36:17.040 --> 01:36:22.800
is not not going on an airplane and but you have to realize like everyone's unique and different

1314
01:36:22.800 --> 01:36:28.560
like if travel is your thing or someone listening to this awesome please go do it we had to just

1315
01:36:28.560 --> 01:36:32.080
admit to ourselves that at least at this phase of our life we want to do a little bit less of it

1316
01:36:32.080 --> 01:36:35.840
so the idea that everyone's different is important I think I mean I think exactly that I think

1317
01:36:35.840 --> 01:36:42.000
what underpins much of your message here is this ability to cultivate self awareness yeah and I

1318
01:36:42.000 --> 01:36:48.960
think a lot of what throws people off with money is chasing a lifestyle that is right for somebody

1319
01:36:48.960 --> 01:36:54.640
else but not right for them and that it can be very a hard thing to do because you're like man

1320
01:36:54.640 --> 01:37:00.880
this person over here he's working this hard and and she has this house and they're live in this

1321
01:37:00.880 --> 01:37:04.080
lifestyle and looks like they're pretty happy and then you try to do it and you're like but I'm

1322
01:37:04.080 --> 01:37:09.360
not happy and the truth may have been that working that hard and spending money on that was right

1323
01:37:09.360 --> 01:37:14.800
for that person but it's not right for you that's what we do this time you and I had Jeff Bezos's

1324
01:37:15.760 --> 01:37:20.560
ambition Elon Musk's ambition I think we I'd I'd draw this we drivers is absolutely crazy it's

1325
01:37:20.560 --> 01:37:25.600
right for them it might not be right for us and so when we view it as it worked for them so I

1326
01:37:25.600 --> 01:37:29.440
should do it too no no no it doesn't work like that you have to figure it out for yourself

1327
01:37:29.440 --> 01:37:35.440
but also the inverse right it didn't work for them so it won't work for me it's also great right

1328
01:37:35.440 --> 01:37:41.920
I think it's immature for people to say I like this thing and therefore you should too or the reverse

1329
01:37:41.920 --> 01:37:46.240
this didn't work for me and therefore nobody should do it this is the whole work that's not how life

1330
01:37:46.240 --> 01:37:51.360
works right right and this is what you see raging on linkedin is one group of people saying

1331
01:37:51.360 --> 01:37:57.600
that amount of work and sacrifices toxic you should do it or or the or you're lazy you have to

1332
01:37:57.600 --> 01:38:02.320
hustle you're lazy if you don't live the life that I do and both sides are wrong yes it comes from

1333
01:38:02.320 --> 01:38:08.240
a sense of immaturity that everyone else should enjoy life in the exact same way that I do I think

1334
01:38:08.240 --> 01:38:14.480
there's a few psychological psychological forces at play here one is if you're looking at a bunch

1335
01:38:14.480 --> 01:38:18.880
people working really hard and you're not it's in a weird way holding a mirror up to you and

1336
01:38:18.880 --> 01:38:26.160
implicitly sort of like indirectly saying that you're not enough yeah and then maybe on the

1337
01:38:26.160 --> 01:38:30.160
other side there's some other force going the other way but I think both sides are kind of like

1338
01:38:30.160 --> 01:38:38.880
misunderstanding that everybody is not them yes I can take apart elements of your life I say wow

1339
01:38:38.880 --> 01:38:44.000
Stephen his podcast is this and he's got homes here and he's doing this but there's a million

1340
01:38:44.000 --> 01:38:48.960
different components of your life and my life and everybody's life that are invisible and most

1341
01:38:48.960 --> 01:38:55.680
people it because of self-preservation or because they're trying to get ahead in life will not disclose

1342
01:38:55.680 --> 01:39:00.800
what the bad parts of their life are of course everybody does is I I do this you probably do everyone

1343
01:39:00.800 --> 01:39:06.080
does that because either they don't want to admit them to themselves or they don't want to talk

1344
01:39:06.080 --> 01:39:09.600
about it because they think other people are going to judge them for the bad parts of their life

1345
01:39:09.600 --> 01:39:14.400
so it's very easy to look at other people's lives and have a sense of like oh well there's

1346
01:39:14.400 --> 01:39:20.640
this better than mine because all you can see is what they are advertising and and and because of

1347
01:39:20.640 --> 01:39:25.600
that it's very easy to be jealous or envious of people and say if only I had their life things

1348
01:39:25.600 --> 01:39:30.400
would be better and part of it is good it's a part of it's good for me to look at be like man

1349
01:39:30.400 --> 01:39:35.040
Stephen's been so successful doing this kind of content maybe I should do that's motivation but once

1350
01:39:35.040 --> 01:39:41.440
I say their life looks better than mine and if only I had what they had I would be happier

1351
01:39:41.440 --> 01:39:47.360
is he is a very treacherous path treacherous path to go down jack is the producer on the show he's

1352
01:39:47.360 --> 01:39:52.080
done the show with me since the the very beginning of us launching on youtube and so he understands

1353
01:39:52.080 --> 01:39:56.720
the intricacies of my life very well he understands my business he understands you know that this

1354
01:39:56.800 --> 01:40:03.920
what it takes and the trade-offs so jack would you want my life absolutely not

1355
01:40:07.520 --> 01:40:12.480
no hesitation there there's no world where like I could even imagine being in your world

1356
01:40:13.040 --> 01:40:20.080
the amount of people that are bidding for your attention on a daily basis is mind-blowing to me

1357
01:40:20.080 --> 01:40:25.040
the podcast is like such a huge part of your life but the fact that I barely hear from you on

1358
01:40:25.040 --> 01:40:31.360
like a weekly basis can probably put into a little bit of perspective how much you have on your

1359
01:40:31.360 --> 01:40:38.960
plate I just like couldn't imagine having the magnifying glass on me that much that the whole world

1360
01:40:38.960 --> 01:40:45.520
is kind of looking at me and thinking like has an opinion on you and you run a lot of businesses

1361
01:40:45.520 --> 01:40:50.720
so you almost have to perform a little bit and I think I see the worst of you and I actually take

1362
01:40:50.720 --> 01:40:55.920
that huge compliment because you can be yourself around me I remember the time when you had to schedule

1363
01:40:55.920 --> 01:41:02.240
your lunch oh I still schedule my lunch it doesn't happen but I schedule it because you like don't

1364
01:41:02.240 --> 01:41:07.360
get time for your lunch like you went out of here you went to the toilet and people are asking you

1365
01:41:07.360 --> 01:41:11.920
questions in between going from here to the toilet it's stuff that needs to be asked but it's

1366
01:41:11.920 --> 01:41:19.120
that is your life that's the kind of thing that you've gone into and I don't know that kind of

1367
01:41:19.120 --> 01:41:23.040
answer your question I could probably go on for a long long time but you should do a whole

1368
01:41:23.040 --> 01:41:28.800
episode yeah I've got last question then so I've got two more questions but the next question is

1369
01:41:28.800 --> 01:41:36.960
do you think that I do you think I'm happy in my life yes I don't think you're content

1370
01:41:37.920 --> 01:41:41.520
I think you're happy but I don't think you're content yeah so what do you mean by content like

1371
01:41:41.520 --> 01:41:50.000
what do you mean by content you're always trying to chase the next thing and I'm not sure why like

1372
01:41:50.000 --> 01:41:55.840
you could so easily just do this podcast and it would do so well for you like it does do so well for

1373
01:41:55.840 --> 01:42:00.560
you you could spend all your time doing this and I think you're super happy when you do do this

1374
01:42:01.120 --> 01:42:05.760
then there's also other stuff that clearly makes you happy that you want to do but then you'll

1375
01:42:05.760 --> 01:42:11.040
come to me and you're like we should start this new YouTube channel and I'm kind of like yeah

1376
01:42:11.280 --> 01:42:16.480
great idea but I don't know why you want that extra effort to your core your business man

1377
01:42:16.480 --> 01:42:22.320
so you're constantly trying to build and scale but unlike a personal reflection of how much extra

1378
01:42:22.320 --> 01:42:26.480
toll that takes on you and also for Mal I know the relationship with Mal you don't see how that much

1379
01:42:28.080 --> 01:42:33.280
so I think that's quite an interesting one but yes I do think you're happy but I don't think

1380
01:42:33.280 --> 01:42:38.720
you're content and last question what would you like from my life what do I like from your life

1381
01:42:38.720 --> 01:42:42.880
yeah so you said you wouldn't want my you want my life because and you talk about the

1382
01:42:42.880 --> 01:42:45.760
elements you want elements of yeah of my life would you like

1383
01:42:48.080 --> 01:42:51.280
I was actually quite interesting because I was I think I was talking to Jem and Cosy about

1384
01:42:51.280 --> 01:42:57.840
this last night your life is so engineered to be super efficient yeah so you have someone book

1385
01:42:57.840 --> 01:43:02.640
your cars for you someone book your flights for you you basically as far as I'm aware I don't

1386
01:43:02.640 --> 01:43:08.240
think you're doing much kind of normal admin that I would do I don't even pick why yeah yeah

1387
01:43:08.240 --> 01:43:11.040
I like I get the surprise I look out here and it's there and I go okay well I'm having

1388
01:43:11.040 --> 01:43:18.240
luckily today and I think so much of like the joys of what comes from life is the little messiness

1389
01:43:18.240 --> 01:43:23.200
of life yeah and I just think Morgan kind of touched on this at the start that's simple kind of

1390
01:43:23.200 --> 01:43:28.080
family that just they're not like super ambitious but they're super happy and that messiness of

1391
01:43:28.080 --> 01:43:32.640
life is kind of there's so much like beauty in that and then you ask me what you would want from

1392
01:43:32.640 --> 01:43:37.440
your life but I think on the surface I probably would like that stuff but I understand and appreciate

1393
01:43:37.440 --> 01:43:44.320
the beauty of doing those I ask the question around um do you think I'm happy because

1394
01:43:46.080 --> 01:43:50.320
even though you heard all of that stuff and you go fuck me in this guy like he he doesn't have

1395
01:43:50.320 --> 01:43:54.480
much time and he's he's always working and like we took a toilet break which the audience probably

1396
01:43:54.480 --> 01:43:58.160
won't know but yeah as I walked out of there two different team members came up to two

1397
01:43:58.160 --> 01:44:02.480
dishes they said someone wants to come on the podcast tonight I've got this huge meeting in New

1398
01:44:02.480 --> 01:44:06.800
York City tonight with this major investor for four hours that they asked me in the hallway they

1399
01:44:06.800 --> 01:44:10.560
said do you want this major guest to come on the show tonight or to cancel this huge meeting with

1400
01:44:10.560 --> 01:44:14.000
this and you have to make the decision in four seconds four seconds right so you you saw me sit down

1401
01:44:14.000 --> 01:44:18.960
and go tell the team yes which was me making that executive decision and I was on my phone for two

1402
01:44:18.960 --> 01:44:23.440
and a half seconds trying to make the decision but it also means that date night is if impacted with

1403
01:44:23.440 --> 01:44:27.200
my girlfriend he's so like no that that was a little representation of my life and I

1404
01:44:28.240 --> 01:44:32.720
um I asked Jack if he thinks I'm happy because my opinion

1405
01:44:34.240 --> 01:44:40.800
I could be living in a delusion is that I am happy and the way that I would

1406
01:44:41.280 --> 01:44:49.360
hazard a guest that I'm happy is I'm not unhappy and I don't have unhappiness my guess too is that you

1407
01:44:49.440 --> 01:44:55.920
if you said I'm gonna quit the podcast quit all this close the business down you would

1408
01:44:55.920 --> 01:45:02.080
be beside yourself with anxiety and depression and so it's less about like is doing this does

1409
01:45:02.080 --> 01:45:06.400
doing this make you happy I think the better answer is not doing this would make you miserable

1410
01:45:06.400 --> 01:45:11.680
yeah but that's who you are and that's how and I again I'm so grateful that people like you exist

1411
01:45:11.680 --> 01:45:16.320
because I get to benefit from the sacrifices that you made it's really difficult to me

1412
01:45:17.040 --> 01:45:23.440
okay yes I get that but what from my perspective would be a sacrifice I get to benefit from

1413
01:45:23.440 --> 01:45:27.840
because you make great content that I listen to and whatnot and so I like living in a world where

1414
01:45:27.840 --> 01:45:32.880
most people wake up in the morning and say this isn't enough and I I think I do that too

1415
01:45:32.880 --> 01:45:39.440
I want to write more books better books and but if you don't have some capacity to say look I

1416
01:45:39.440 --> 01:45:42.800
have ambitions I have goals that I want to achieve I want to work hard to achieve this I want to

1417
01:45:42.800 --> 01:45:47.280
sacrifice to achieve those but I'm never gonna have a good life unless I can take a step back and

1418
01:45:47.280 --> 01:45:52.320
be like man like look what I have right now even if it's not that much there's a very good book

1419
01:45:52.320 --> 01:45:57.040
written by a gerontologist named Carl Pilomer you wrote a book called 30 lessons for living where

1420
01:45:57.040 --> 01:46:02.080
he interviewed a bunch of elderly Americans there were like 90 to 100 years old and you just said

1421
01:46:02.880 --> 01:46:06.080
tell me the secret to a good life you've experienced a lot of life time what you know

1422
01:46:06.960 --> 01:46:12.560
and he has a section where he says of the thousand people who we interviewed not a single person

1423
01:46:12.960 --> 01:46:17.600
looking back at their life said I wish I made more money not a single person said

1424
01:46:17.600 --> 01:46:23.040
I wish I would pick to career that paid more money not one but almost every single one of them

1425
01:46:23.040 --> 01:46:27.440
looking back at their life said I wish I was nicer to people I wish I was more helpful to my friends

1426
01:46:27.440 --> 01:46:31.760
I wish I spent more time with my family that was universal so if you want to talk about like regrets

1427
01:46:31.760 --> 01:46:36.080
what are we most likely what are you and I most likely to regret when we're 90 it's not making more

1428
01:46:36.080 --> 01:46:40.720
money it's spending time with the people around us that we love and appreciate

1429
01:46:40.720 --> 01:46:45.360
I find myself switching between states and sometimes it's because of a thought but I find myself

1430
01:46:45.360 --> 01:46:50.720
switching between these states of being like in a moment in in a mode of gratitude so last night

1431
01:46:50.720 --> 01:46:54.640
I did the Jimmy Fallon show here in New York my team were there it was this really wonderful

1432
01:46:54.640 --> 01:46:58.240
moment I'm I you know I woke up this morning feeling incredibly grateful last night I was like

1433
01:46:58.240 --> 01:47:02.240
listening to my favorite music I felt incredibly grateful and really happy and then I know

1434
01:47:03.200 --> 01:47:08.000
that I'm gonna switch into the lack of contentment that Jack's referring to happiness is always a

1435
01:47:08.000 --> 01:47:11.920
five minute emotion yeah and and like today I'm getting I'm back to business and it's like bill

1436
01:47:11.920 --> 01:47:16.480
bill bill bill build and then I have this moment last night where I was I was making the Instagram

1437
01:47:16.480 --> 01:47:21.360
posters to announce that I've been on Jimmy Fallon and I noticed my girlfriend next to me in bed

1438
01:47:21.360 --> 01:47:24.640
had fallen asleep and this thought comes through my head all the time that probably from doing this

1439
01:47:24.640 --> 01:47:30.640
podcast which is exactly what you said which is I am gonna regret not spooning her and cuddling

1440
01:47:30.640 --> 01:47:34.240
how while I have the chance especially I think as Charlie Kirk had just been shot and I'd seen

1441
01:47:34.560 --> 01:47:39.680
his family yeah maybe that's why it was front of mind for me and I remember putting the phone down

1442
01:47:39.680 --> 01:47:45.280
and thinking the thing I'm gonna regret is not cuddling her and so I put the phone down and cuddled

1443
01:47:45.280 --> 01:47:53.200
her and I say yeah I'm I'm I'm strange I think because I I I flock between these states and sometimes

1444
01:47:53.200 --> 01:47:57.760
on an hourly basis sometimes on a daily basis sometimes on like a minute by minute basis the fact

1445
01:47:57.760 --> 01:48:03.280
that you're just merely aware of those states and the the false story that those states can tell you

1446
01:48:03.280 --> 01:48:08.640
puts you way ahead of most people I think that I think to some extent that there's a there's

1447
01:48:08.640 --> 01:48:13.680
there's an interesting book called 10% happier it's about meditation and the point the title came

1448
01:48:13.680 --> 01:48:18.560
from everyone's like oh can meditation change your life and his point was like it can make you 10

1449
01:48:18.560 --> 01:48:22.800
percent happier but like that's pretty cool and I think that's true for money as well of like

1450
01:48:22.800 --> 01:48:28.480
can it completely change your life and turn you into a much better person and way happier like

1451
01:48:28.480 --> 01:48:33.440
I kind of feel like no but like it can make you 10 maybe 20% happier in life I think that's

1452
01:48:33.440 --> 01:48:38.240
that's probably right but just being aware of its limitations like is a huge relief I think I

1453
01:48:38.240 --> 01:48:42.160
think I think be like no if you want to have your life you're gonna have to find it through your

1454
01:48:42.160 --> 01:48:46.880
purpose and your friends and your family and your health and your other philosophies of life that

1455
01:48:46.880 --> 01:48:52.800
have nothing to do with money it can help it can make you 10 20 maybe 30% happier but understand

1456
01:48:52.800 --> 01:48:57.600
its limitations and what it's not gonna do for you it's pretty important that lack of

1457
01:48:57.600 --> 01:49:01.600
contentment I think I sometimes feel guilty about because they sit with so many people especially

1458
01:49:01.600 --> 01:49:06.720
like people that are monks and such and they tell you that one thing will make you despair and

1459
01:49:06.720 --> 01:49:11.520
make you unsatisfied but I find myself is being one of those people that you describe that constantly

1460
01:49:11.520 --> 01:49:16.240
wants to chase and pursue and pursue and I think that I do have like am I supposed to feel guilty

1461
01:49:16.240 --> 01:49:20.480
about that is that something like wrong with me no I mean I think that's how humans have evolved is

1462
01:49:21.440 --> 01:49:26.640
because at the core of it is competition like where you have that I think dry everyone has

1463
01:49:26.640 --> 01:49:33.200
that drive is not necessarily because you want to build another business or build a grow your

1464
01:49:33.200 --> 01:49:38.000
podcast it's competition with others who might be doing that better than you or who might take

1465
01:49:38.000 --> 01:49:41.680
your place if you were to step back that gives you the anxiety I think that's what everything as

1466
01:49:41.680 --> 01:49:46.240
as it's core and that's why I like asking the question if nobody was watching what would you

1467
01:49:46.320 --> 01:49:55.600
want to do if nobody was watching your podcast would you still want to do these interviews if nobody

1468
01:49:55.600 --> 01:49:59.920
could see your house would you still would you buy a house that was as big as the one you did

1469
01:50:01.120 --> 01:50:04.560
sometimes the answer is yes the answer might be yes to both of those questions but it's an

1470
01:50:04.560 --> 01:50:08.800
important question to ask of are you doing this because it actually fulfills you or because you

1471
01:50:08.800 --> 01:50:13.360
are competing with other people and you think you're gaining their attention by doing these things

1472
01:50:13.360 --> 01:50:17.680
I think everyone who is answering honestly would say for most of the decisions in their life

1473
01:50:17.680 --> 01:50:24.080
especially the big ones the answer is both yes so like choosing Harvard versus the other

1474
01:50:24.080 --> 01:50:28.800
university which might have been better but it's Harvard or buying the house where you bought it or

1475
01:50:28.800 --> 01:50:32.960
that watch that you bought or the Apple watch instead of the whatever and signaling is important

1476
01:50:32.960 --> 01:50:38.640
you can't just discount it because if you want you know to track the right the right friends the

1477
01:50:38.640 --> 01:50:42.880
right spouse the right employers there's a signaling aspect a college degree is signaling it's not

1478
01:50:42.880 --> 01:50:47.600
the education you obtained it's you're showing in point you're giving a signal to an employer

1479
01:50:47.600 --> 01:50:52.000
that for four years I showed up and did the material and got the right answers it's a it's a

1480
01:50:52.000 --> 01:50:57.600
it's like signaling can be very very important it's not to discount it but there's a right and a

1481
01:50:57.600 --> 01:51:02.080
wrong kind of signaling there's a right kind of like I'm doing this I'm dressing in a way and

1482
01:51:02.080 --> 01:51:05.440
displaying myself and cutting my hair in a way that's going to attract the right friends and the

1483
01:51:05.440 --> 01:51:09.600
right mates the right boyfriend girlfriend whatever it might be there's also signaling of like

1484
01:51:10.320 --> 01:51:15.440
I'm going to aspire to buy this car that's a huge pain in the ass and actually hate driving

1485
01:51:15.440 --> 01:51:19.200
but I think strangers are going to look at me and pay more attention to me that's the wrong

1486
01:51:19.200 --> 01:51:23.120
kind of signaling I think this is the thing that both sides misunderstand in the debate is that

1487
01:51:23.120 --> 01:51:28.800
someone who is a workaholic believe it or not can be happy yeah absolutely and someone who

1488
01:51:28.800 --> 01:51:34.960
does no work or works one day a week can be happy yeah and this is like a really difficult concept

1489
01:51:34.960 --> 01:51:38.720
for either side to understand about the other side and that's why as well as the question about

1490
01:51:38.800 --> 01:51:42.400
Jack like do you think I'm happy because Jack would know that if I'm like if I walk out of here

1491
01:51:42.400 --> 01:51:47.200
and he sees me as this depressed person who never smiles never laughs and has no joy in my life

1492
01:51:47.200 --> 01:51:51.840
doesn't have motley you know then I would very much fit the stereotype of like the tortured

1493
01:51:51.840 --> 01:51:57.920
work or whatever but it's uh yeah it's surprising it's surprising I think we all just want

1494
01:51:57.920 --> 01:52:01.840
contentment so like we I think we get into a lot of trouble when we chase happiness when

1495
01:52:01.840 --> 01:52:05.040
what we're actually going for is contentment we actually just want to get to an area where we're

1496
01:52:05.120 --> 01:52:11.120
like I'm good I'm all set what's the most important thing or the most interesting thing in your book

1497
01:52:11.120 --> 01:52:16.480
that you can remember that we didn't talk about that maybe we should have talked about I think the

1498
01:52:16.480 --> 01:52:21.520
relationship between money and kids is is an is an interesting one where every parent wants to use

1499
01:52:21.520 --> 01:52:26.400
their hard work what money they might have it doesn't have to be a ton you don't have to be rich

1500
01:52:26.400 --> 01:52:30.720
but they want to use their hard work in order to give their kids a better life when a lot of times

1501
01:52:30.720 --> 01:52:35.440
what the kid needs to do is learn on their own and they're going to learn vicariously the values

1502
01:52:35.440 --> 01:52:40.160
that you have about money they're going to learn just by watching you don't need to sit your kids

1503
01:52:40.160 --> 01:52:44.080
down and say let me teach you how to budget let me teach you how to save let me teach you how to

1504
01:52:44.080 --> 01:52:47.840
invest they're going to figure they're going to watch you and figure it out and so you have to

1505
01:52:47.840 --> 01:52:53.440
just lead by example with those kids you cannot lecture values into them they're just going to watch

1506
01:52:53.440 --> 01:52:58.400
how you spend what you value how you save how you judge other people and talk about other people

1507
01:52:58.400 --> 01:53:03.920
and they're going to form a philosophy of money based off of that I often think about money

1508
01:53:03.920 --> 01:53:08.640
in terms of like attachment styles you know like dating psychology in romance they talk about

1509
01:53:08.640 --> 01:53:15.600
anxious avoidant and then the what's the middle person called to their like a basically neutral

1510
01:53:15.600 --> 01:53:24.160
but I think I had an avoidant money attachment style I think money was the like the third parent

1511
01:53:24.240 --> 01:53:31.600
in my household and I learned that money causes problems that it doesn't come around as much

1512
01:53:31.600 --> 01:53:37.760
as we would like that it's really why we argue in the household that it's the reason why I am

1513
01:53:37.760 --> 01:53:42.080
embarrassed when we pull up in that terrible car and I try and get my I hope the traffic lights

1514
01:53:42.080 --> 01:53:45.920
change in a certain way so that I can be dropped off further away from the school signal and

1515
01:53:45.920 --> 01:53:50.320
sees me like my relationship with money was established at such a young age and it was it's almost

1516
01:53:50.320 --> 01:53:55.680
like I had like a unhealthy like they say relationship yeah like an attachment style to it

1517
01:53:57.360 --> 01:54:04.000
I just wonder like is that a useful frame to think through that you have this yeah like this

1518
01:54:04.880 --> 01:54:10.800
romantic-esque relationship with this thing and in order to change that you need to

1519
01:54:13.120 --> 01:54:18.400
unlearn the lessons I think a lot of like the lessons that we learn about money when we're younger

1520
01:54:19.120 --> 01:54:22.560
are because like I said earlier it's because you when you're young particularly you're a teenager

1521
01:54:22.560 --> 01:54:28.720
you're in your early 20s most people in that situation have very little other skills to offer

1522
01:54:28.720 --> 01:54:33.200
the world yeah humor intelligence some some people more than others but in that situation you're

1523
01:54:33.200 --> 01:54:37.520
always going to gravitate towards if only I had a nicer car when I was being dropped off at school

1524
01:54:37.520 --> 01:54:41.520
then they would pay attention to me but the truth is if you were the funniest kid in class

1525
01:54:41.520 --> 01:54:45.120
it doesn't matter if you're dropped off in a dull junky car people still respect you because

1526
01:54:45.120 --> 01:54:48.960
they're like man he's a star of the football team like it's hilarious doesn't matter what kind

1527
01:54:48.960 --> 01:54:52.560
of car he's driving you gain your attention in your respect from something else but if you

1528
01:54:52.560 --> 01:54:57.120
not the star football player if you're not funny if you have nothing else to offer then you seek

1529
01:54:57.120 --> 01:55:02.000
your admiration through oh he's dropped off in an escalate he's cool that's where you want your

1530
01:55:02.000 --> 01:55:04.800
attention to come from is there anything else we should have talked about that we haven't talked

1531
01:55:04.800 --> 01:55:11.120
out more than for people that are trying to get a grip of their life be happy make better money

1532
01:55:11.120 --> 01:55:15.840
choices to me like the common denominator between all three of those books that you're holding

1533
01:55:16.800 --> 01:55:21.520
is the idea that we talked about quite a bit on all the shows we've done together which is that

1534
01:55:21.520 --> 01:55:26.400
there is no formula for it and that's very disheartening for a lot of people to hear there's no formula

1535
01:55:26.400 --> 01:55:31.520
for here's what I want you to go out and do which is a lot of what people want out of content

1536
01:55:31.520 --> 01:55:36.160
whether it's a book or podcast like just tell me what to do and the answer is like I can't because

1537
01:55:36.160 --> 01:55:39.920
I don't know you and you don't know me we're all different but I think that's actually the biggest

1538
01:55:39.920 --> 01:55:44.880
like relief that's actually the best news that you don't have to follow somebody else's playbook

1539
01:55:44.880 --> 01:55:49.280
you can do it your own way and it's easier to do it your own way when you come to terms with the

1540
01:55:49.280 --> 01:55:54.400
fact that nobody is paying as much attention to you as they think they are you can do it your own

1541
01:55:54.400 --> 01:56:01.040
way free of judgment and other people you know making fun of you or judging how you're living life

1542
01:56:01.040 --> 01:56:05.120
because they're too busy worrying about themselves you have to figure out what works for you

1543
01:56:05.680 --> 01:56:09.600
and do it and that's as close as we can get as a formula for living a better life

1544
01:56:09.600 --> 01:56:13.280
it's funny because the book is called The Art of Spending Money but much of the

1545
01:56:13.280 --> 01:56:17.360
through line throughout the book is really about happiness and I guess that's really what money is

1546
01:56:17.360 --> 01:56:22.960
for many people a tool a tool a tool to become happy yeah I remember on a interviewed mogul that

1547
01:56:22.960 --> 01:56:27.600
he wrote a book about happiness he said to me a line that's always dated with me he said happiness

1548
01:56:27.600 --> 01:56:32.800
is when your expectations of how your life is supposed to be going are met and so with through

1549
01:56:32.800 --> 01:56:36.640
that lens I look at everything I look at like the food that you're given in a restaurant and if

1550
01:56:36.640 --> 01:56:40.800
you expected it to be this and it doesn't come like that there's unhappiness even if it's like a

1551
01:56:40.800 --> 01:56:46.160
five star a a five wagyu steak or whatever yeah and then your relationships all of my arguments I've

1552
01:56:46.160 --> 01:56:50.800
ever had with my girlfriend or stem back to unexpected expectations I was saying if you ride the

1553
01:56:50.800 --> 01:56:55.120
Amtrak train from like New York to Washington DC on every train they have what's called the quiet

1554
01:56:55.120 --> 01:56:59.840
car and in the quiet car you're not supposed to talk at anything above a whisper no phone calls no

1555
01:56:59.840 --> 01:57:04.720
talk with your friends it's the quiet car and people go there for peace and quiet and serenity

1556
01:57:04.800 --> 01:57:10.480
and the irony is that people are so uptight in there because if if they hear one peep out of

1557
01:57:10.480 --> 01:57:13.920
everyone they're like would you shut up we're in the quiet quiet they're so frustrated about it

1558
01:57:13.920 --> 01:57:19.120
because your expectation is I'm gonna get quiet and if it's anything other than quiet you lose

1559
01:57:19.120 --> 01:57:23.200
your mind and it's like at that point that's when your high expectations are actually working

1560
01:57:23.200 --> 01:57:27.840
against you people are actually calmer in the normal car where there's chaos all around them

1561
01:57:27.840 --> 01:57:32.240
because that's what they expect it's not the unhappiness call right you're like your expectations are

1562
01:57:32.240 --> 01:57:38.800
a debt that has to be repaid that gives us a controllable element while happiness doesn't it

1563
01:57:38.800 --> 01:57:44.160
with your expectations because your expectations are more in your control than things like what the

1564
01:57:44.160 --> 01:57:48.640
economy of the stock market is going to do next like I have no nobody has any control of what stock

1565
01:57:48.640 --> 01:57:54.800
market's going to do next but you have you do have more control over your expectations of how

1566
01:57:54.800 --> 01:57:57.760
much money do expect to make next week what do you expect out of the stock market what do you

1567
01:57:57.760 --> 01:58:01.760
expect out of your career what do you expect out of your spouse like that is more in your control

1568
01:58:01.760 --> 01:58:06.160
than influencing other people's behavior and this is probably why all these Eastern traditions

1569
01:58:06.160 --> 01:58:10.240
talk about gratitude because gratitude is the very realization that expectations I once had

1570
01:58:10.240 --> 01:58:15.280
are currently being met and it just even when you start to think about dreams you once had

1571
01:58:15.280 --> 01:58:19.360
that you are now living out for me it makes me feel yeah that feeling of contentment it makes

1572
01:58:19.360 --> 01:58:22.960
me feel really really good inside so like even yesterday where I took a moment and I was on the

1573
01:58:22.960 --> 01:58:25.840
Jimmy Fallon show and it's like this crazy thing to me that I could never have imagined someone

1574
01:58:25.920 --> 01:58:32.880
like me doing and it took a minute to just like think about how far beyond my expectations this

1575
01:58:32.880 --> 01:58:38.320
stuff was yeah it if you thought overwhelmingly good about it you but the truth was relative

1576
01:58:38.960 --> 01:58:43.920
if you just thought about yesterday yeah you expected to go on the Jimmy Fallon show you that

1577
01:58:43.920 --> 01:58:47.280
that that may your expectations for the day if you looked at your calendar for the day it was

1578
01:58:47.280 --> 01:58:50.480
I need to go to Jimmy Fallon I need to perform I need to say the right things yeah but over the

1579
01:58:50.480 --> 01:58:55.280
longer scope that's off the charts of your expectations and that's the zooming out is where we see

1580
01:58:55.280 --> 01:59:00.880
right the gratitude you know fills us right and it's it's very difficult to say this without

1581
01:59:00.880 --> 01:59:04.640
sounding ridiculous but you can even zoom out and be like God so grateful to live in a world with

1582
01:59:04.640 --> 01:59:10.240
antibiotics you can handle like it sounds crazy because we expect them whenever we take penicillin

1583
01:59:10.240 --> 01:59:14.480
we're like yeah like it's just a thing that exists but can you imagine living in a world without that

1584
01:59:14.480 --> 01:59:20.160
as 99% of humanity did before us like it's it's impossible to think of like the most basic things

1585
01:59:20.160 --> 01:59:24.640
that we take advantage of but that's where gratitude like you have to zoom out to become more grateful

1586
01:59:24.640 --> 01:59:28.480
these things and you're not going to be content so you can exercise that level of gratitude

1587
01:59:28.480 --> 01:59:33.360
you said something earlier which dub tells into this where you said that a different levels people

1588
01:59:33.360 --> 01:59:36.720
will aspire you know the billionaire wants two billion and I was reading a study many years ago

1589
01:59:36.720 --> 01:59:40.640
that said roughly all the way up the income wealth spectrum people want like three times more than

1590
01:59:40.640 --> 01:59:44.640
they have two three times is what seems like the amount that's going to keep you happy so if you have

1591
01:59:44.640 --> 01:59:50.320
$10,000 people are like once I have 20 then I'll be good if you have 20 million dollars people are

1592
01:59:51.040 --> 01:59:55.120
40 seems like the right amount it's always two or three times what you have and that's just

1593
01:59:55.120 --> 02:00:00.320
the intentional creation of an expectation gap it's like creating misery for yourself

1594
02:00:00.320 --> 02:00:05.600
yes it's this idea that like if only I had a little bit more money then these problems that I have

1595
02:00:05.600 --> 02:00:11.040
this anxiety this unfilled hole that I have will finally be filled and it's a lie we tell ourselves

1596
02:00:11.040 --> 02:00:15.360
of course and everyone listening right now has that everyone has a number in your head

1597
02:00:15.440 --> 02:00:20.000
where you think if I got that then it'd be good I have that you have that we all do

1598
02:00:20.560 --> 02:00:25.440
and if you and I have met that number previous versions of that number it's the same thing we're like

1599
02:00:25.440 --> 02:00:30.000
okay but double would be great double double would be awesome I met someone the other day

1600
02:00:30.640 --> 02:00:34.800
whose income annual income is almost exactly 2x mine we're being very open with you

1601
02:00:34.800 --> 02:00:39.120
as a good friend of mine and the instant feeling I had I didn't say this but the instant feeling I had

1602
02:00:39.120 --> 02:00:44.960
is like okay if I had that everything would be and it's absurd we do that all day and I'm sure

1603
02:00:44.960 --> 02:00:51.280
of my friend met someone whose income was 2x of his he would be like oh that's the level that's

1604
02:00:51.280 --> 02:00:56.480
the one because you're your overheads go up but then your competition comparison group also

1605
02:00:56.480 --> 02:01:03.680
increases right so you're now poorer in a different class of comparison like yeah you're like

1606
02:01:03.680 --> 02:01:07.280
when you bought that new house you just bought yeah that must have moved you to a new neighborhood

1607
02:01:08.000 --> 02:01:11.920
and there's houses in the neighborhood nicer than ours yeah if I talk about them

1608
02:01:12.640 --> 02:01:17.360
it's absurd it's absurd now I think I'm I think because I write about this stuff I think I'm a

1609
02:01:17.360 --> 02:01:21.120
little bit better at catching myself in those moments but I won't pretend that I don't have those

1610
02:01:21.120 --> 02:01:24.880
moments they're almost unavoidable what does work for you is there anything what that has actually

1611
02:01:24.880 --> 02:01:30.720
worked for you in terms of detaching you from comparison and what people think is there is

1612
02:01:30.720 --> 02:01:34.960
anything at all that's worked I like this term humble bubble I want to live in a humble bubble

1613
02:01:34.960 --> 02:01:38.640
it has to be humble because I don't want to live in a bubble where I don't have empathy for other

1614
02:01:38.640 --> 02:01:43.440
people I want to take in the experience of others so I can try to understand the world that I live

1615
02:01:43.440 --> 02:01:49.840
in but I want to live in a bubble in the sense of like I want my expectations not to leave my own

1616
02:01:49.840 --> 02:01:56.160
house easier said than done but when my expectations don't leave my own house I'm like I want good

1617
02:01:56.160 --> 02:02:01.840
health for myself I want happy kids I want a good marriage and those things don't leave my roof

1618
02:02:01.840 --> 02:02:07.520
once my expectations leave my bubble my once once once they expand outside of my house I'm like oh

1619
02:02:07.520 --> 02:02:12.880
look at his house it's like I just wanted I always think about that humble bubble of like

1620
02:02:13.840 --> 02:02:18.800
the only thing that's gonna make me happy exists underneath my roof and I know that and as soon

1621
02:02:18.800 --> 02:02:25.200
as my aspirations are for are leave that I know it's just gonna spin out of control I try to think

1622
02:02:25.200 --> 02:02:29.920
about that a lot and as I mentioned before the idea of if nobody was watching what would I care

1623
02:02:29.920 --> 02:02:35.600
about that's that's the most powerful exercise to me if nobody could see anything that I was doing

1624
02:02:36.240 --> 02:02:42.240
what how would I choose to live I've always wanted to counter this point with some thinking which

1625
02:02:42.240 --> 02:02:48.560
is but if I put myself in a higher status position I'm gonna get more opportunities which means more

1626
02:02:48.560 --> 02:02:54.080
money which is then gonna better allow me to focus on utility not that that's how it ever plays

1627
02:02:54.080 --> 02:02:59.120
out for anybody yeah but the thinking is well actually status does equal revenue yeah in a lot

1628
02:02:59.120 --> 02:03:04.720
of the world and revenue can give you independence yeah the the I think that's right I think to many

1629
02:03:04.720 --> 02:03:09.840
extent that's been my goal how can I be successful in my career so that I can make enough money

1630
02:03:10.400 --> 02:03:14.160
to not have to work in the career anymore like it's not that stark but it's kind of like that

1631
02:03:14.160 --> 02:03:21.040
the flaw in it is that I like writing you like podcasting and so if we get more successful like I'm

1632
02:03:21.040 --> 02:03:24.800
not I'm not chasing success so that I can stop doing what I'm doing I just want to do things that I

1633
02:03:24.800 --> 02:03:30.800
enjoy we have a closing tradition with Alaska sleeves question for the next is you know um do you

1634
02:03:30.800 --> 02:03:40.480
have major regrets in life then it says they prove no real purpose do you still have regrets nothing

1635
02:03:40.480 --> 02:03:46.800
huge there are some regrets I was thinking about this the other day my wife and I we have two kids

1636
02:03:46.800 --> 02:03:51.680
and we're done having kids and there's part of me that's like what would have life been like if

1637
02:03:51.680 --> 02:03:59.040
I had four kids three kids if we if we've done that like each both my kids have given me so much

1638
02:03:59.840 --> 02:04:04.240
meaning and purpose and I wonder what a life would have been like if I just had fed more

1639
02:04:05.120 --> 02:04:09.040
and I can't imagine having just one kid I can't imagine just having zero kids

1640
02:04:09.600 --> 02:04:13.680
but there's an alternative life in which I had four or five kids and you know life gets crazy at that

1641
02:04:13.680 --> 02:04:19.680
point and that's not a regret but you realize like once you've kind of closed that door on your life

1642
02:04:19.680 --> 02:04:23.760
you're like now what would have life been if I had done it if I had done it differently because

1643
02:04:23.760 --> 02:04:28.640
it's given me more purpose than anything that I ever could have imagined and I could have had more

1644
02:04:29.520 --> 02:04:33.600
and maybe it would have been worse but I I wonder what that would have been I think it's not

1645
02:04:33.600 --> 02:04:38.640
until you we've chosen to close that door that chapter of our life that were like man what if we

1646
02:04:38.640 --> 02:04:44.080
what if I had done it a little bit differently do you wish you had frozen embryos no because that

1647
02:04:44.080 --> 02:04:47.840
would have kept the door open theoretically not really because I think there is a point of like

1648
02:04:48.400 --> 02:04:53.440
you want you need youthful energy to be apparent I couldn't imagine having a newborn

1649
02:04:54.320 --> 02:05:00.240
at 50 or 60 I just I think you need the energy of a 30 year old or 25 or 30 year old to do that

1650
02:05:00.800 --> 02:05:05.040
and it's not a regret because I'm very satisfied with the family that I have now but

1651
02:05:05.680 --> 02:05:10.640
it's one of those things of like you realize you're you're there's an infinite number of past

1652
02:05:10.640 --> 02:05:15.920
your life can go down and we could have had no kids we could have had four kids we chose this path

1653
02:05:15.920 --> 02:05:19.520
but it's one of just one it's one of multiple paths that it could have gone down

1654
02:05:20.480 --> 02:05:26.080
Morgan thank you and thank you for doing what you do you're my favorite author of all time

1655
02:05:26.880 --> 02:05:30.400
and I think I've told you this before but it's the way that you write I find it certainly

1656
02:05:30.400 --> 02:05:34.240
really engaging you the message within your book is a profound one all of your books are a

1657
02:05:34.240 --> 02:05:37.840
profound ones but it's actually the way that you tell the stories and if anybody's listened to

1658
02:05:37.840 --> 02:05:43.520
speak today they'll understand exactly what I mean your books are a mirror of that the psychology

1659
02:05:43.520 --> 02:05:47.520
of money as I told you before is the book that changed my financial life the one book my brother

1660
02:05:47.520 --> 02:05:51.600
who's a very smart person told me to read and there's no wonder that it's one of the best

1661
02:05:51.600 --> 02:05:54.800
selling books of all time I think it might be the best selling book of all time in its category

1662
02:05:56.000 --> 02:06:00.800
and your new book the art of spending continues on the same trend incredibly accessible

1663
02:06:00.800 --> 02:06:04.880
incredibly engaging incredibly human but within there there's a profound lesson that stands

1664
02:06:04.880 --> 02:06:09.040
the chance of changing our lives for the better so I highly recommend everybody goes and gets

1665
02:06:09.040 --> 02:06:15.760
this book the art of spending money which comes out tomorrow October 7th October 7th so I'm going

1666
02:06:15.760 --> 02:06:19.120
to link it below for anybody that wants to grab a copy of this book and if you're someone that

1667
02:06:19.120 --> 02:06:23.600
does want to happy your life it is a book about spending but it's also more broadly a book about

1668
02:06:23.600 --> 02:06:28.400
happiness and regret and it tells stories that allow you to make better decisions in your life

1669
02:06:28.400 --> 02:06:34.000
and it's through stories not through frameworks alone or data that I think we're most influenced

1670
02:06:34.000 --> 02:06:36.880
and you can probably relate to this if you're listening to this you probably have heard stats

1671
02:06:36.880 --> 02:06:41.760
before you probably know you should save but it's sometimes hearing real stories from real people

1672
02:06:42.720 --> 02:06:47.360
that stick into a migdala and create that behavioral change and that's exactly how Morgan writes he

1673
02:06:47.360 --> 02:06:51.600
writes through the context of great stories that stand the chance of changing your life so it's a

1674
02:06:51.600 --> 02:06:55.040
wonderful wonderful book to read and I highly recommend you do thanks a lot for having me thank you

1675
02:06:55.040 --> 02:06:57.040
so much Morgan I hope to see you again sometime soon