Morgan Housel – The Art of Spending Money (EP.466)

22:22And then I think a lot of people go through this as I'm like, oh, now I want to gain my admiration from my family and my ability as an author. So, my desire to show off my car drops because I want people to admire me for other things than that. I think that can be really true. So, part of the equation as you're thinking about incremental wealth is, again, whose love, respect, and admiration do you want? Who do you want it from? If you want it from strangers, then you can try to get it through your material wealth. And that's not even a criticism. I think it's a natural thing in the world. Status is not always a bad thing.

22:53You're trying to fit into other groups and cooperate with other groups. Status is not always a terrible thing. But if you want to use that money in what I think is a more durable manner, then you have to answer the question, who are the five or so people whose love and attention I really admire? And how can I use this money to leverage that. I use the example in the book of will a big house make you happy? It might if having that big house makes it easier to host your friends. But the realization is the friends are making you happy. The house doesn't make any difference. But if it's a conduit to having more meaningful relationships, awesome, fantastic.

23:26Enormous house, super expensive house. I mean, everyone wants to come over and hang out with you. Awesome. Your social life is great now. But it's not the house. It's the lubricant into better relationships. It's answering that very simple question. Whose attention and admiration and company do I want? And how can I use my money to get me there? What are some of the things you found that people misunderstand about the right way to go about spending money and how they actually do it? Let me give you an example of a guy who I profiled a little bit in the book, Chuck Feeney, who's a multi-billionaire, started duty-free stores where you can buy a gallon of vodka in every international airport, made a fortune, made$10 billion from the business.

24:04The very well-known part of Chuck Feeney's story is that he lived like a miser. The statistic was literally he took out$2 million with an M from his$10 billion fortune to live on. He lived in a tiny little apartment, flew coach. That's the well-known part of his story. Gave everything away. The less well-known part of his story is that when he became wealthy in the 1980s, when he first became a billionaire, he lived like a billionaire. He had multiple mansions. He had a private jet. He had a yacht. He lived like quintessential billionaire. And he didn't like it. It just wasn't for him. Here's a quote that I love.

24:34He said, I realized one day that I was happy when I was giving money away and I was not happy when I wasn't giving money away. And so he chose to live like a completely normal, ordinary middle-class person and gave everything away. What I love about that is not that he lived so frugally. That was his choice. Great. What I love about it is that he chose it. He did not say, because I'm a billionaire, I have to live this lifestyle. He was like, I don't care what anyone tells me what I should. That's not what I want to do. I want to live like this. It's my choice. So I love that he just made the decision for himself.

25:01He was not influenced by anyone else's expectations, any societal influences. A lot of people thought he was completely crazy, that this guy's worth$10 billion flying coach in a one-bedroom apartment. But it was his decision. It's very rare in life that you see true independence. Someone whose aspirations do not leave the roof of their house. And they're not influenced by anyone else's desires. It's very rare that you come across it. He was one of them. And it's a beautiful thing. Those folks who do that, are they just wired differently? Of course, they're wired differently. And the wiring that is different for most people is completely and utterly, they are an internal benchmark thinker.

25:39And the external benchmark of comparing themselves to others doesn't measure whatsoever. I think it's more often that you see the opposite of somebody who is entirely external benchmark focused and probably doesn't have a lot of very stable internal scorecard of how they're doing. Their measure of success is net worth, social media followers, attention, and going to bed at night, asking the question, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the moral thing? Am I doing something that makes me happy? Would never cross their mind. I think that's actually way more common. How does somebody calibrate that external piece?

26:10Because it's true in almost everybody. There's some external validation of why are you doing what you're doing and calibrating it? Is it because that's what your friends are doing? Is it because you think you're supposed to keep up? One of the things that got me going on this topic of the psychology of spending was, I used to live in Washington, DC, and I used to go down to the Library of Congress where they have this really cool section where they have every newspaper going back to sometimes the late 1700s. You can go read the Washington Post from 1871. And I used to love just going through and reading these things.

26:42And one day I was reading the Washington Post from 1929, obviously the peak of the Roaring Twenties before the Great Depression. And I stumbled across this headline that I thought was so profound. The headline was, the more you're snubbed while poor, the more you will enjoy displaying being rich. Yes, so many people, they have a very high propensity to show off their wealth. A lot of times it's because they are trying to fill an emotional wound that they had from earlier in their life of some time in their life when they were snubbed in some way. And either for other people or even internally for themselves, they want to show people or show themselves that they overcame that scar.

27:20I think everyone has some version of that, that my view of the world, my spending desires and yours and everyone are a product of the experiences that we've had in life. Some of which were good, some of which were bad. Some of which left some emotional scars on all of us. I have a family member who grew up extremely poor. He was homeless for much of his childhood in and out of the foster system, then became a very successful businessman later in his life. And when his daughter was going to college, he told her, please pick the most expensive school that you get into. And it was almost like the higher the tuition, the better.

27:49Reason was the idea that he was sending his daughter to an expensive school meant so much to him within the context of what he overcame. That's an extreme example, but I think so many of us have some kind of emotional wound like that. And wound might be the wrong word because one of those are positive experiences. You grew up a super popular kid, loved by your family. You might not have very much desire to go out and prove yourself. You have an amount of self-confidence from that experience. To answer your question, The idea that we are products of our own experiences, most of which are out of our control, is a good realization because it means my desires, your desires, our own view of the entire world, how we view the economy and politics are completely different from person to person.

28:30What you've experienced, Ted, is different from what I've experienced. And people in different generations, different countries, everyone's a little bit different. So part of that for me was, A, giving myself a little bit of grace of saying, look, if I do have quirky money habits, and of course I do, it's not because I'm not thinking this through necessarily, even though sometimes that might be the case. Something happened in my past that makes me believe this. And that's true for not just money. That can be true for political beliefs, all kinds of social beliefs. Rather than looking at other people and saying, why do you believe that?

28:58Why are you doing that? A way better question is, what have you experienced in life that makes you believe that? An even better question is, if I experience that same thing, would I believe what you do? And a lot of times the answer is yes. And so to the calibration question, I think it's less about, oh, do I have flawed thinking and I need to push myself in this direction versus embracing who you are and embracing that there is no right answer to this question. There's no right way to spend money. There's no right way to save and invest money. I dollar cost average into index funds. I know a lot of people watching this show don't do that or might even look down upon it.

29:30That's okay. The point is there is no right way to do it. I think it bothers people in finance because finance, particularly in the last century, has been proposed as a math-based field, like it's a cousin of physics. Two plus two equals four for everybody. For you and I, there is one right answer. And we want to assume it's like that for money, that for how we save, invest, and spend, there should be a right way to do it. The reason that finance can be such a tense topic and subject of so much debate in a way that meteorology is not, in finance, there's an infinite number of right answers for different people.

30:04And I think that bothers a lot of people. The idea of embracing who you are and also being less judgmental of others. Because I don't think it's ever appropriate to say, I value spending my money on this and therefore other people should as well. Or I don't value this and therefore nobody else should as well. It's just not how the world works. We're going to take a quick break in the action to tell you about SRS Aquium. Want to make sure your M &A processes aren't stuck in the past? Partner with a company that's been defining the future of dealmaking for nearly two decades instead. When it comes to M &A innovation, SRS Aquium has reshaped the way that deals get done, streamlining processes for maximum efficiency and minimum headaches.

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31:41Unbelievable. Dramatically more successful than I am as a nonfiction writer, and we're about the same age, somewhat similar topics. I do not have one single molecule of envy in my body for James because he is so likable. He is the nicest guy you'll ever come across. You will never meet someone as successful and humble as he is. You will never meet someone who wants to help other people more than he. He's just an awesome guy. So, it's impossible for me to envy him. He inspires me. I want to do more like he does, but I don't envy him. And I think it hit me that if occasionally, this is a character flaw of mine.

32:14If there are other authors who I envy, it's because I don't like them personally. They have a quirk of their personality that rubs me the wrong way. There's a difference between being inspired by someone's success and being envied of what they have. And usually if you are struck with a bout of envy, as all of us will be from time to time, it's usually because you say that person has something that I don't and they didn't deserve it. That's usually where it comes from. And I bring that up because it's so common now in the age of social media. If you see someone with a nicer house, nicer car, nicer plane, clothes, whatever it might be, you can either be inspired by their success if you admire them, or if you think they didn't deserve it.

32:51It's very common to fall into the trap of envy. I think we're always making judgments about not only what people have, but whether they deserve that success to begin with. So back to the James Clear example, I am inspired by what he wants to do, by what he has accomplished. I want to be a better writer because of him and it makes me feel good about it. When you are caught in envy, then it's trying to chase what they have just because you feel like you're falling behind them and they didn't deserve it. You might be chasing something material that is not necessarily going to make you happy. Your neighbor who you don't like very much has a bigger house.

33:20So you have to have a bigger house, not because it's going to make you happy, but just because you feel like they are in an unjustified manner above you on the social pecking order. And that doesn't make you feel good. When does that translate from an emotion to spending? It's all over the place. Some people are obviously much better at this than others. This is not a black and white thing. But how much of the modern consumption economy is based off of some form on the spectrum of envy? Tremendous, huge, particularly for young people, particularly for young men, I would say, who are desperately trying to put themselves on the social pecking order.

33:54If they're early in their career, trying to figure out where they sit in the order, trying to fork it to show people and to broadcast their talents, It's tremendously common in that aspect. So some people are much more influenced by it than others. There's two ways to use money. One is as a tool to give yourself a better life. The other is as a yardstick of status to insert yourself on the social pecking order. I think it's extremely common. That's always been the case. That was true 100 years ago. It has gone supernova in the last 15 years with social media. Because no matter how well you're doing, no matter how much you make, no matter where you live or how successful you feel, there is somebody on Instagram who looks prettier, happier, smarter, more successful than you are.

34:34No matter what you're doing, the comparison group that everyone compares themselves to has grown from what used to be probably 10 or 15 people in your personal life to 7 billion people on social media. And I think it's impacted everyone, particularly younger people for whom that's all they've ever known is a social comparison group of social media. And everyone knows what the mental health of Gen Z is. It's atrocious relative to previous generations. How have you thought about how people approach and think about spending money? The way that I wanted to think about it in my own life, but I think it's a pretty good exercise for others, was asking the question, if nobody could see how I lived, if nobody except my immediate family could see my house, my cars, my vacation pictures, nobody else was watching, how would I choose to live?

35:19And you immediately understand the difference between utility and status. If you completely remove status from this mental exercise because nobody's watching, how would you want to live? And you immediately be like, well, I would want things that actually make me happier. I would want a house with a nice view. That makes me happy. I wouldn't necessarily want a house in the most exclusive zip code. That does nothing for me. I probably wouldn't want a Ferrari. I'd probably want a pickup truck that has utility. I would want comfortable clothes that have utility. I wouldn't care at all about what brand they were.

35:44And so you immediately flow to this area. And why it's important in exercise is because the truth is very few people are watching. There's a great quote from the comic Jimmy Carr. He said, in their 20s, most people are worried about what other people think of them. In your 30s, you say, I don't care what anybody thinks of me. And in your 40s, you finally realize the truth, which was nobody was thinking about you to begin with. That is so true. And it is so common with spending that nobody is thinking about you as much as you are. Nobody cares about your house or your car or your clothes as much as you do.

36:15They're busy thinking about themselves. Once you come to grips with that, then your desire for impressing strangers plunges. And then your desire for using money to help you and your immediate family, the people whose love and attention and admiration you actually want can increase. Alongside of understanding the why, what did you see in terms of calibrating expectations? How spending flows through to what you think you want in your life? One thing is that it is extremely common and very easy that if you wake up every morning feeling a little bit unfulfilled in life, there's a hole in your soul and you're just a little bit anxious, a little bit depressed, extremely easy to assume that the solution to that problem is more money.

36:58It's almost like a knee-jerk reaction for everyone that, well, I have these problems, I don't feel fulfilled. If only I earn more money and could live a little bit different, then I'd feel great. Sometimes that can be true. Everyone can spend money in a way that's going to give them a better life. This is not an anti-spending creed at all. but I think it is too easy to make that assumption. Part of the reason that it is so easy is because money is one of the only things in life that is so immediately tangible and quantifiable. I'll use the example, if I woke up and said, I wanna be a 10 % better father.

37:26Great goal, I would love to do that. What does that mean? How do you measure that? There's just no way I can measure that. I don't know if I'm a better dad than you are. There's no way to quantify it. But if I wake up and say, I wanna increase my net worth by 10%, measurable down to the penny. I can compare mine to yours and everybody else's. So because it is such an easy yardstick of measurement, it becomes for many people the ultimate target of not only how well they're doing, but the quality of their own life. It's too easy of a target. And so it becomes the knee-jerk reaction of the solution to all your problems.

37:55There's a lot of people, particularly in the finance world, where that measurement is some verdict of success in their eyes. and you see people who it's unclear if it's just the game or more is the goal and there's no end to more. What did you see of folks that achieved any ostensible measure of success and yet that wasn't enough? The biggest that I've come across because there's such a famous example is the Vanderbilt family. Of all the robber barons, the Rockefellers and the Carnegies did pretty well at managing expectations, keeping wealth across multiple generations, they did a pretty good job.

38:35The Vanderbilts did by far the worst. It's a tragic story. Not a lot of sympathy for someone who was worth almost half a trillion dollars adjusted for inflation when he died. But effectively, when Cornelius Vanderbilt died in the late 1800s, adjusted for inflation, roughly half a trillion dollars. Within three or four generations, there was virtually nothing left. And in between there were three or four generations of Vanderbilts who lives, if you dig into their lives and their biographies, almost every one of them to a T was miserable. And part of the reason why, how could you be miserable if you had more money?

39:03You could do anything in life. In theory, that's true. But the truth was they had virtually no independence at all. And the money told them who they could be, who they could socialize with, where they could live, who they could marry, what values they could have. The money controlled every aspect of their personality. It was like they were imprisoned by it. How can that be true? Most people's dream is to have that much money. I came up with this concept in the book called social debt, which is you have financial assets and sometimes you have financial liabilities, but there's a social debt as well.

39:31And social debt is a hidden liability. You don't actually see it, but it's very real. It's when society and your own expectations tell you how to live and who to be and control your personality, control your desires in ways that might be opposite of your actual personality. And the Vanderbilts are a very interesting example because the first Vanderbilt heir who did not get a trust fund when virtually all the money was exhausted is Anderson Cooper of CNN. net. Not only is he the most successful Vanderbilt heir in probably 150 years, he's probably the happiest. Part of the reason was he was basically the first person in his family in a century and a half for whom money did not control his personality.

40:07He was like, I need to go make a name for myself and do what I want to do. I'm not going to be a socialite and just go to parties and host whiskey tastings with my friends. I'm going to go do this thing that I love, which is journalism and TV. It was almost like he was a first person who was mercilessly let go of money controlling their personality. Now that's an extreme example. There are plenty of other very wealthy families who do a great job. The Rockefellers did a very good job of it. So it's not cut and dry, but the Vanderbilts had half a trillion dollars of wealth and probably a trillion dollars of social debt hanging over them that they didn't even know.

40:37They couldn't count it, but it was a very real thing. How about people currently making that money? It could be first generation wealth. Obviously, a lot of people in the money management industry that just generate a lot of wealth and then seem to have the motivation to keep going. And others generate the wealth and then they're done. The only formula that I tried to put in the book is a simple formula for a pretty nice life, which is independence plus purpose. It's a very basic formula, but it's hard to imagine anybody having a really nice life without those two things, independence and purpose.

41:06There's financial independence, of course, but there's also independence of thought, independence of philosophy. And purpose is another enormous thing. My guess, and this is probably not black and white, the vast majority of people who made some money and then quit and then walked away, What they were doing was not their purpose. They made a ton of money in a company, but was running that company, owning that company, actually what fed their soul? Probably not. And the people who do run the business until the day they die, they love it. That is their purpose. That is their soul. That's what they love to do.

41:36By and large, it's not about the money. Anything over, I would say, in the tens of millions of dollars, it's not going to change your lifestyle that much. It's really not going to change that much. Maybe let's say 100 million, anything over 100 million. And by and large, you're living in the same houses, driving the same cars. So if you have financial ambitions more than that, I think it's either an addiction to money, which is a very common thing, or it's because what you're doing is actually your purpose and filling your soul. And it's what you love to do. Take Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, those guys.

42:04If you told them they had to quit their business tomorrow, they would rather not live. They have to do it. It's just an extension of who they are. It's their purpose. What are some of your favorite stories and lessons from the book? This is one that has nothing to do with money. But when I heard it, I'm like, that's one of the best stories I've ever heard. Kevin Costner, great actor. This was back in the late 1980s, probably. He had a friend who was homeless at the time. And because he was homeless, Kevin Costner, who was still kind of a budding actor at the time, he and his wife invited them into his house.

42:32You're homeless. You can sleep in the basement. Come on in. And his friend is a writer. So when he was living with Kevin Costner, he was constantly writing manuscripts all day long. And he would tell Kevin, please read this. Please read this. This is the best thing I've ever written. Kevin's, no, I don't want to read your manuscript. Go away. You're just a smelly guy in my basement. Finally, he lived there so long that his wife said, he's got to go. He's got to get out. And the guy left and continued to be homeless. He was back on the streets. As he's out on the streets, he's calling Kevin, please read my manuscript.

42:56It's so good. You're going to love it. Out of desperation, Kevin was like, fine, I'll read the damn thing. Send it. He sends it over and the manuscript is titled Dances with Wolves. And completely changed Kevin Costner's life. Of course, one of the greatest novels that turned into the movie. And so, Kevin Costner used it as this example. You never know where talent's going to come from. you never know where it's going to be. One of the takeaways that I had from that is the luckier you are, the nicer you should be in life. If you are in a position to help other people and give them a chance, and you never know where talent's going to come from like that, particularly for an artistic talent like writing, you should give people chances when they have it.

43:33The general philosophy of the luckier you are, the nicer you should be. As a base of the pyramid philosophy in life, I think it was really important. I'd love to dive into your path and your thoughts about spending where you just started. because post-psychology of money, there's just a shift. Again, we see this a lot in the investment world when someone has success. All of a sudden, they're in a different economic stratosphere than they thought they would be, or maybe they aspire to be there. Walk me through your thinking with you and Gretchen and your family, going from that scarcity mindset to what's changed over the last five or six years.

44:13I think people who have made an amount of money that they never anticipated can probably relate to this to some degree. There is a list of things in which my life got better because we have more money. I could name a dozen things where like, oh, life's better now than it was five years ago. There's also a list of things that did not change whatsoever. And there's a list of things that probably got a little bit worse because of it. That would be something that I would not have foreseen. There's no use being negative about it. We could talk about the list of things that got better. But a list of things that got a little bit worse in terms of my expectations, my family, kids' expectations, family expectations, the publisher's expectations, all shifted in a way that created a social debt, a social liability.

44:53And I think my wife and I have done a very good job at keeping those expectations in check. Even though we've loosened up, the only thing that's going to make us happy is our relationships with each other and our health. So, if you asked a very fundamental question, my kids are young. They're six and nine. And if I said, does my six-year-old daughter love me more today versus a couple of years ago? Of course not. Does my son like playing football in the driveway with me more now that I make more money than he did three years ago? Of course not. So, the things that actually move the needle don't change whatsoever.

45:22I would also say that relative to where I was five years ago, I don't have more better days, but I think I have fewer bad days, which is a lifestyle improvement. That is a better life. That is an upgrade. But let's not pretend that when people make some amount of money, they're just going to wake up grinning ear to ear. It's not like that. That's not how it works. I probably wake up frowning less often. So great. That's cool. But it's not necessarily the happiness that a lot of people envisioned. I intuitively knew that five years ago before this, but it's one of those things you have to experience to actually believe it.

45:54What are some of the things that you would say were smart spending for you and your family, things that you do spend on now that you didn't before? One is our house, which is a big purchase. I work from home. My wife is home. This is where we're at 99 % of the time. Might as well go big on a house that is great for us and gives our kids a good life in a neighborhood that we enjoy. That was huge. And that, I would say, is all internal benchmark. We don't have a lot of people over. We're not showing this to anybody. This is all just for us. We drive normal cars. We wear modest clothes. The stuff that is more external benchmark, we really couldn't care less about.

46:31The internal stuff is good. The other, and I think a lot of people with money can relate to this, the joy and legitimate pleasure that you can get from helping others is hard to describe. It's very hard to describe. And it sounds self-congratulatory if you haven't been there yet, but it is so true that if you help somebody who is in deep need, who you're actually going to make a big difference in their life, it's enormous. Spending five grand on yourself will probably do nothing. Spending five grand for someone who's in need can utterly change their life. And you get an enormous boost from that.

47:03We've had several experiences with that too. As you've internalized all these lessons through writing the book, how have you thought about imparting lessons about spending to your kids? One of the biggest things is I don't think about doing that because I don't think you need to. The analogy I always use is there's so much evidence in politics that what you believe is extremely correlated to what your father believed, your father in particular. Not just different for everybody, but very high correlation between those two beliefs. And what's also true is that most fathers do not sit their children down and say, this is why I vote the way I do.

47:38The kids hear every little comment. They watch what you're watching on TV. They understand what you're reading in the paper and they form mental model over time. Even without any explicit instruction, they have an extremely strong mental model by the time they're young adults of what politics should be from their parents. And I think money is a same. You don't need to sit down your kids and tell them about money. But every time you say, we can't afford this, every time you make a snide comment about your neighbor's yard, every time you choose the hotel to go on, they're always paying attention.

48:07And by the time you're young adults, they have a very crystal clear mental model of how money works. Usually people will go in one or two directions, either mimicking what their parents did or realizing that the parents made catastrophic errors and running away as fast as they can in the opposite direction. You're very influenced one way or another. You don't need to impart lessons on your children. You just need to lead by example. You just need to be very cognizant of the lifestyle that you live, how you talk about yourself, how you talk about other people at the dinner table. I talked to this guy a couple of years ago.

48:38He's about my age and his father is a very well-known billionaire investor. This friend of mine grew up as a child of a billionaire, living like a billionaire. And he is the most rational, down-to-earth, humble, empathetic person you can meet. I asked him one day, how did you grow up like this, but become so down to earth? He was like, I always knew we had a lot more money than other people and we lived a bigger life than other people. But my parents made so clear that that's not what you judge other people by. At the dinner table, we did not sit around and talk about how filthy rich we were. We talked about values and helping other people and being good corporate citizens.

49:12And that's what rubbed off on the kids. And I think there is a truth that whenever you have spoiled children, it's usually not because the children had a big material life. It's because the parents, maybe without even knowing it, taught their kids that you should judge other people by how much money they have, not how much wisdom they have or how helpful they can be or their morals or whatever. We have more money and therefore we're up here and there, down there. That's where the spoiled kids come from. So you got to be very careful about the lifestyle that you choose to live as well. One of the things I love about getting the chance to do this with you right before the book comes out is there's a level of expectation you may have that books have, especially yours, a very, very wide degree of potential outcome.

49:53How are you thinking right now about this book compared to your other books, compared to your own expectations of what happened? Now, we've made bets in the past. I've always won taking me over on your books. I owe you dinner. It's true. Yeah. So we're recording this before the book comes out. So I have no idea what it's going to do. I also have a theory that all books are basically a seed stage startup in the sense of even if you do everything right and it's run by talented people and well-funded, it's probably going to fail. That's most of the case. Books are a tail-driven business. The first print run of Psychology Money was 5 ,000 copies because all the evidence showed us that would be a great outcome.

50:26And we're at nearly 10 million now. Nobody could have foreseen that. There's also plenty of books that are very well backed by big name authors at Flop. That happens all the time. I've always had this idea of what I call selfish writing. I write for an audience of one, which is me. I write things that I think are interesting. I tell stories that I think are fun. I write it in a voice that I think is fun to read and easy to read. If other people like that, great. If they don't, there's nothing I can do about it. So particularly if you're in a position to sell lots of books, if you sell a million copies of your book and 1 % of people hate it, that's 10 ,000 people who hate it.

50:599 ,000 of whom will email you and tell you about it. You always have to be with a mentality of, I did the best and I'm proud of it, but I can't please everybody. And that's just how it works. It's a tail-driven business. 90 % of virality of anything in life is luck. It hits the right people at the right time, particularly with social media. It just takes off and has its own life after that. Before I wrote Psychology of Mind, Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal told me something that always stuck with me. He said, Morgan, if the book is good, you don't need to market it. And if the book is bad, no amount of marketing will help.

51:30You do the best you can, and then it's out in the world and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm going to ask you a couple of closing questions relating to spending. Before that, though, what's your over under on the number of sales this book's going to jump? I've been a very poor judge of that, as you know. I don't try to think about it that much. Back to it's a seed stage startup. If you were a founder of a seed stage company that incorporated yesterday and you said, how much is your company going to be worth in 10 years? You're a fool to answer that question because the answer is probably zero.

52:02But if it hits, it could easily be a hundred billion. And so somewhere between one and 10 million copies. I think this is an important topic. People don't like the word luck because it makes it feel like you're bitter of their success. So rather than luck, the phrase you should use is what is repeatable? And the truth is if you sell 10 million copies of a book, it's probably not repeatable unless you're like J.K. Rowling. It's just not repeatable. What's next after this one? I don't know. I remember Michael Lewis saying this in an interview many years ago. He's like, so often for an author that when they finish one book, they're like, great, what's next?

52:35I got to start the next one tomorrow. And some people would do a very good job at that. But he was like, that's the worst mentality. You have to wait for the idea to hit you. And like I said, at the start of this, it's going to hit you in the shower. It's going to hit you when you're walking your dog. You can't just sit down and be like, what's the next idea? Psychology money hit me on a walk. This hit me on the treadmill. I don't know. I just have to wait. And that might happen tomorrow. It might happen 10 years from now. All right, Morgan, a couple of questions to ask you. What is the best money you've ever spent?

53:03Oh, I don't think I've ever told this story. My wife and I met when we were young and she was 19. I was 21, met in college. We started dating in May, which was important because we started dating and she was like, hey, I'm moving to England this summer. We've been dating for two weeks. I get back in September. Let's just see how it goes then. I was so in love with her already that I didn't like that answer. And I was like, I'll see you in London in two weeks. I didn't have a lot of money back then, but I was like, I'm getting on a plane. And London is where we actually started dating. I almost guarantee if I didn't do that, if I said, I'll see you in September, we would have gone our separate ways.

53:34And that was more than 20 years ago. We're still going strong. That's awesome. What have you splurged on that you love and don't regret? The cheap cheating answer would be independence, but I know that's not what you're actually getting on. I grew up as a ski racer in Lake Tahoe, and I always felt that my friends on the team had better gear than me. Their skiers were nicer, their jackets were nicer, and it drove me crazy. It was like a hole in my soul when I was 12 years old. I hated it. So now that my son, he's nine, he's a big skier with me now, to make up for that wound that I had when I was a kid, I'm like, I'm going to buy him the best.

54:07You know, new skis, new jacket, the best that exists, it's all his. The irony is he could care less. He does not care at all. He could be skiing on a cardboard box, wearing a burlap sack, wouldn't bother him in the slightest. It's been interesting for me of like, hey, I got you a new jacket. And he's like, wow, I don't care. And to me, that's the ultimate psychology of spending money. I had this hole that he doesn't. And therefore, we view it very differently. All right, one more. What's the worst financial advice that you see people keep repeating? One that seems very harmless and innocent is the spend money on experiences.

54:39I think it's bad for two reasons. One, a lot of times the experience that you want is what will make a good Instagram picture. That's especially true for young people. And you're not doing it for the experience. You're doing it for the material good of social status. That is just as much of a trap as buying expensive clothes to get people's attention. That's one. My wife and I also came to this conclusion a month ago. This is a recent thing. We were like, can we acknowledge to ourselves that the last five vacations we've taken the best part of the trip was coming home. The most enjoyable part of the trip was coming home back to the comfort of home.

55:11And we're like, maybe we should do this less. Society tells us travel, travel, travel, travel. But at this phase of our life with young kids who aren't the best travelers, maybe we shouldn't. Maybe two months ago, we canceled a vacation and we were like, oh, I'm so glad we could just stay home and sit on the couch. So that advice of spend money on experiences, maybe part of it is the experience that I want right now is playing Legos with my kids on the living room floor. That's an experience. I don't need to fly across the world to do it. Morgan, wish you best of luck with the book. Thanks again for doing this with me.

55:39Thanks, Ted. Thanks for listening to the show. To learn more, hop on our website at capitalallocators.com, where you can join our mailing list, access past shows, learn about our gatherings, and sign up for premium content, including podcast transcripts, my investment portfolio, and a lot more. Have a good one and see you next time. All opinions expressed by TED and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of capital allocators or their firms. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of capital allocators or podcast guests may maintain positions in securities discussed on this podcast.