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The Intrinsic Value Podcast - Episode MI333: Millennial Investing Book Club: The Psychology Of Money w/ David Fagan
Podcast Overview Host: Kyle Grieve Guest: David Fagan Episode Duration: Approximately 49 minutes Release Date: [Insert Date] Episode Description: This episode dives into the themes from Morgan Housel's "The Psychology of Money," exploring various concepts related to personal finance, wealth, and investing.
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Key Takeaways
Introduction
- Discussion revolves around "The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Housel, highlighting how personal experiences shape our financial beliefs and decisions.
Major Themes and Concepts
- Perspectives on Money
- Diversity of Opinions: Everyone has unique experiences with money, leading to differing opinions on financial decisions (Timestamp: 00:00 - 04:29).
- Compounding Knowledge: The importance of continuously learning about finance and investing to achieve long-term success (Timestamp: 12:07).
- Luck and Risk
- Luck's Influence: Both success and failure can be influenced by luck; understanding this can help in assessing outcomes (Timestamp: 14:04).
- Financial Unbreakability: Accepting that luck plays a role can help in developing a mindset that is resilient against market fluctuations (Timestamp: 14:52).
- Savings and Happiness
- Savings vs Income: Building wealth is more about the savings rate than income levels; saving enhances happiness by providing control over one’s life (Timestamp: 16:53).
- Compounding Effects
- Misunderstanding Compounding: Many struggle to grasp the long-term effects of compounding due to its non-linear nature (Timestamp: 23:41).
- The Stock Market
- Asymmetric Upside: Investing in stocks often provides disproportionate rewards compared to risks taken (Timestamp: 25:13).
- Historical Guidance
- Use of History: While historical data can guide decisions, it's important to recognize its limitations, especially in rapidly changing industries (Timestamp: 30:22).
- Hidden Costs of Success
- Invisible Fees: Success often comes with hidden costs, and understanding these is crucial for long-term wealth (Timestamp: 41:07).
- Financial Flexibility
- Preparation for Volatility: Building a flexible financial strategy is essential for navigating market changes (Timestamp: 44:41).
- Personal Insights on Saving
- Both Kyle and David share their personal savings strategies, emphasizing consistent saving habits and resisting lifestyle inflation (Timestamp: 49:22).
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Notable Quotes and Insights
- "Good investing isn't necessarily about earning the highest returns... it's about earning a pretty good return that you can stick with." - Morgan Housel
- "You can be wrong 50% of the time and still generate life-changing wealth." - Discussion on the nature of investing.
- "The only factor that you can control generates one of the only things that matters." - On the importance of saving.
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Conclusion
- The episode emphasizes a comprehensive understanding of money that includes psychological aspects, personal experiences, and strategic planning. It encourages listeners to reflect on their own financial beliefs and practices, promoting a growth mindset in personal finance.
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Recommended Actions
- Engage with the TIP Mastermind Community for deeper discussions on investment strategies.
- Read "The Psychology of Money" for a better understanding of the behavioral aspects of finance.
- Reflect on personal savings habits and consider strategies to enhance financial flexibility.
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Additional Resources
- Books Mentioned:
- "The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Housel
- "100 Baggers" by Chris Mayer
- "The Joys of Compounding" by Gautam Baid
- For more financial insights, follow The Investors Podcast Network on social media platforms and subscribe for updates.
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Disclaimer: The timestamps mentioned may vary based on the podcast platform.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00You're listening to TIP. We treat wealth like a game, not from ego. I think that's really important to have some humility and kindness in what you do. My wife and I don't have elaborate needs or wants. And in fact, the older we get, it's actually the less we want, not the more we want, which is kind of interesting. And, you know, one of our ethos is to be humble, kind and compassionate.
0:33In today's book club episode edition of Millennial Investing, I'll be discussing one of the most impactful books I've ever read, The Psychology of Money with my friend and TIP Mastermind Community Member, David Fagan. I got a chance to meet with David at our meetup for the TIP Mastermind Community Members in New York back in 2023, and we instantly hit it off. One of our first deep conversations was when we were standing in J.P. Morgan's incredible library inside the J.P. Morgan Library and Museum. We were both in awe of his book collection and dedication to collecting great books and artifacts.
1:06But we also appreciated all the deep learning and thinking he must have done there to help him attain the success he did. While in that room, we discussed a few different books that we had been reading. I realized since we shared reading so many investing and non-investing related books that David might be the right person to start this book club with. You're going to hear us chat about the universal truths of money, hidden areas of life where compounding happens, why we should welcome doses of luck to help us succeed, how to be financially unbreakable, why asymmetric investments are so powerful, why we all must pay a fee to earn our wealth and why it's worth it, the power of narratives and building wealth, and a whole lot more.
1:43We made an effort to connect many of the concepts from this book into what we have learned experientially, as well as to connect the ideas to other insights we've collected from other great minds. If you enjoy learning about money, what it means to you, and how we can leverage ourselves to create wealth, you'll want to listen to this episode. Now, without further delay, let's jump right into this week's episode with David Fagan.
2:23millennial generation. Now for your host, Kyle Grieve.
2:35Welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Grieve. And today, I'm very, very happy to bring on a friend that I've made from the TIP investment community, David Fagan, onto the show. David, welcome on. Yeah, thank you so much, Kyle. Thanks for having me. So a major part of learning for many of the listeners of the Millennial Investing Podcast is to read. And some of the books are worth really diving into and sinking your teeth in. A book that has impacted my thinking and David on money and investing in a major way was Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money. So since David is an avid reader like myself, I brought him onto the show to discuss some of our favorite chapters and takeaways from that book.
3:12But before we get into that, I'd like to ask David to give an introduction of himself to the audience. Yeah, thank you, Kyle. So after being a husband, a father, and maybe the worst paid athlete in history, I'm the managing partner of MBF Chartered Professional Accountants. We operate in a rural market in Nova Scotia, Canada, and we focus on owner-managed clients, entrepreneurs, professionals who run their own corporations. And really, at the end of the day, my business partner, James Allen, and I were deeply passionate about leading our clients on their path to prosperity. Now that we got that short introduction out of the way, let's just dive right into the book.
3:52So basically what we're going to do is we're just going to go back and forth talking about some of the different chapters that we really got a ton of key lessons from. We're not going to be covering every single chapter in the book. Otherwise, this would take up multiple hours. So I'll get started. The first chapter I want to cover was the first chapter of the book, which is No One's Crazy. The summary of this chapter for me was that essentially we all do crazy things with our money. Because as Morgan highlighted, money is a relatively new concept. And so it's hard to understand what's exactly right, what's exactly wrong.
4:22And because we all have money in some sort of way, we come at it with all sorts of different perspectives. And just because I do something with money, and it might be completely different than what David does because I have a different perspective from David. So a couple of the quotes that really stuck out to me here was, so quote, so equally smart people can disagree about how and why recessions happen, how you should invest your money, what you should prioritize, how much risk you should take, and so on. So this was a really good quote, just because especially in markets, right? It's so easy for one person and another person to have completely different opinions on, let's say, a stock idea.
5:00I really liked that. And it's important to really key in on that and understand that because if you talk about a stock, you're probably going to find that very few people actually agree with exactly what you're saying. I mean, at the end of the day, what really matters is yourself and having that self-reliance to know what you're looking for and what you want. So there's another quote here that was not intelligence or education or sophistication, just the dumb luck of when and where you were born. So I'll be talking a little bit about luck after in my next chapter. But I really like this because...
5:31And I remember Buffett talking about how he won the ovarian lottery being born in America when he did. And we can bring that into different people from different countries, obviously, are going to think about money differently. I mean, David and I are both Canadian. We probably think about money maybe a little bit differently than Americans. We have free healthcare, so that changes things. But even in Canada, even in your own little... Even in your own city, there's probably going to be many people with drastically different opinions on money. My key takeaway from this chapter was basically that it's very hard to judge other people's financial decisions because all we really have is our own opinions.
6:08And we always want to think that our opinions are correct, but in reality, they're not. And you really just have to worry about yourself. That's it. You worry about yourself, worry about the people that matter to you and accept that what other people are doing is irrelevant. It reminds me of this one quote, I believe Monish Pabrai talked about saying, and this was, I think, back in 2020 or 2021 when Tesla was really expensive. And he was saying, Tesla's fun to watch, but I have no skin in the game. So I can basically just sit back, eat popcorn and watch the show. Imagine Tesla is there for entertainment.
6:40We don't have to necessarily have an opinion on it. We don't have to act on it. And more importantly. So yeah, so those were kind of my main points from that chapter. So I wanted to pose a question to you, David. Do you think there are universal truths to money that would be deemed crazy in any geography or demographic? I mean, this could definitely be a complicated question. So I think I'm going to apply Occam's razor to this and try to simplify it a little bit. And when I was thinking about this, I mean, I came up with three that I think are really applicable. And especially if you're starting out early in life to really get the grasp of.
7:15One is invest in yourself early and often in life. One of your biggest returns is going to be kind of investing in your own education. And that will lead into many different aspects of your life. and of course, money being one of those. Also, no matter where you are, you really need a system for money management, whether that's budgeting, saving, and investing, if you do have more wealth than you need to spend. So it's critical that you develop good financial habits early. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're going to spend 110 % of your income that you make every year, you're going to have issues later on.
7:54I think that can be a universal truth in terms of understanding good money management and having good practices that way. And then the third one, really, as the book suggests, money does have a really strong psychological aspect to it. It can influence one's health or lack of health, security in the world, perceived successes, behaviors, and choices. So, I mean, we're probably going to get into all of these concepts throughout the review of this. And that's going to happen no matter where you live in the world. So, David, why don't you take the reins on the next chapter? So, I thought we'd maybe skip to chapter four and talk about the confounding compounding conundrum and just how we really have to get our heads around understanding the power of compounding.
8:46And Morgan talks at the beginning of the chapter, he has a stat actually about how hard it is to think about compounding. And he states that$81.5 billion of Warren Buffett's $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday. Now, this book was written in 2020. So these numbers will have to be adjusted from there. But it's astounding to think about longevity and staying in the game. And that's when the real multiplier effect happens with compounding. I mean, when you do the stat on that, it's 96 % of his wealth has come after his 65th birthday. And that only goes up from there. That number is still going to increase.
9:33I mean, if he has good health and fortune, that could be 99 % of his wealth someday, all after his 65th birthday. So it's just crazy to think about the power of compounding. And there's a really good quote on page 53 I like. It says, good investing isn't necessarily about earning the highest returns because the highest returns tend to be one-off hits that can't be repeated. It's about earning a pretty good return that you can stick with and which can be repeated for the longest period of time. That's when compounding runs wild. And I think it just brings home a lot of the stuff that you read in this chapter.
10:11I mean, some of the connections to this, we've been reading a lot in our TIP Mastermind community. And you just did a book review, I think, on you released an episode on We Study Billionaires about what I learned from investing from Darwin and talks about the compounding powers in evolution. And in fact, in Morgan's new book, Same as Ever, he's got a chapter dedicated and states that evolution is the ultimate compounder. And so it's just neat to kind of see... A lot of people learn the concept of compounding within investments, but then you start looking for it in other areas in your life. And it's just really fascinating to connect the dots.
10:55And before I kind of pose a question for you about this, I'll share a couple personal experiences with compounding that I've had outside the investment world. I'm in my early 40s. And I can tell you that the skill of my trade has compounded over the last two decades. I mean, I'm a much better practitioner today than I was, you know, as a kid starting out. There's compounding effects to sports and fitness, albeit mother time is undefeated, as Shaquille O 'Neal talks about. I mean, you do get to the end game when it comes to peak physical ability. but you know i can remember being in my 30s my mid 30s and just having you know almost two decades of sports under my belt at that point and and just the game came so much easier the sports that i was playing and of course relationships of you know i'm at the age now where i've had some amazing relationships 25 year 30 year relationships and that's stuff that i feel compounds right it's just some of the stuff you can't replace.
11:57I mean, I guess I'll throw it over to you, Kyle. I'm wondering where you've seen some avenues of compounding that may be outside the investment world. I mean, this kind of got me thinking mainly about basically knowledge and the compounding of knowledge. And I know Charlie has said this, basically, try to go to bed a little smarter each and every single day. And that's really, really stuck with me. And that's part of the reason why I love reading so much and reading almost every single day and reading for hopefully multiple hours a day is I want to go to sleep just a little bit smarter each and every day, because if you do that over decades and decades, and you're able to really grasp the concepts that you're learning and connect them with other concepts, you're going to be smarter.
12:39You're going to make hopefully better decisions. And we all start at square one, right? You start as a baby, then I have a baby now. And I mean, I think about him compounding and it's just like, it is compounding, right? Because he learned something that he had no idea how to do yesterday. And it's just like, man, he is learning and not only learning mentally, but physically how to use his body at such a fast pace. And obviously, it does slow down. And I was recently interviewed and I talked a little bit about how a lot of people, they get into their 20s and then essentially everything they learn just stops.
13:14They go to school, learn whatever they need in school, and then work their job for the rest of their life. And, you know, there's people that never pick up a book after university. And that just, it goes in reverse too, right? I mean, if you're not trying to learn, not trying to build, you're not going to be compounding. So you don't get those positive effects. So that was kind of my main kind of thing outside of finance, that compounding. I'm really glad you used that one. That reminds me of William's podcast that he did on the tribute to Charlie Munger and how Charlie had the ability to get to the answer in 30 seconds or less.
13:51That was a quote I think that maybe Bill Gates said about Charlie. He was the fastest thinker he ever knew. And I can only imagine that's from his deep, deep development of his mental models and thinking in his education. Exactly. And so speaking of Bill Gates, I'll go on to the next chapter. This is chapter two, luck and risk. Essentially, it's just all about how luck and risk can impact our lives in very, very different ways. And so this chapter was really, really good because he basically spoke about Bill Gates. And then Bill Gates also had a friend named Kent Evans and just how luck impacted both of them.
14:27So Bill Gates essentially was super lucky. He went to the right school. The school had the funding to buy a computer. And all these things were very rare events. And he easily could have never been exposed to any of them, in which case, you know, we would never have Bill Gates. We wouldn't have Microsoft that we know today. But then he had a friend who apparently was just as brilliant as he was. And he unfortunately passed away in school due to a mountaineering accident. And, you know, so who's to say one of them couldn't have replaced the other just by pure luck or unluck, unfortunately. And the other thing that I also thought about with this chapter, especially, is how outcomes are affected by luck and how we like to...
15:06If something good happens to us, we like to attribute that to our own personal skill. And those are all biases. But the fact is, is that a lot of luck impacts us in ways that maybe we can't even imagine. But in my opinion, you should accept the fact that luck helps you and accept that it's going to help you because you have to put yourself in front of that luck in order to take advantage of it. One of my favorite quotes here was that when judging others, attributing success to luck makes you look jealous and mean, even if we know it exists. And when judging yourself, attributing success to luck can be too demoralizing to accept.
15:41So that just kind of shows you how we have double standards, right? Other people's success is different than our success. But when you think about it rationally, that's not the case. I really like this chapter at the start of the book because it has very little to do with investing, but it encourages the reader to think about where they are in their life and what risk and reward and luck has put you to where you're at. It's a nice framework to jump into. So before I pose my question to you, David, just an interesting concept that he had on here was on process and outcomes, which is something I learned a lot reading Howard Marks.
16:19So essentially, Especially in investing, year to year, your results are, I'm not going to say completely up to luck, but it's a bit of a crapshoot. Anything can happen. You can have a really good year. You can have a really bad year. So in the short term, luck definitely has an impact on your results. But in the long term, it becomes more and more skill that produces your outcome. So Howard Marks taught that the process is more important than the outcome. Because if you have a good process over a long period of time, the outcome is going to be basically derived off of what your skill base is. So yeah, I found that just a really important concept.
16:56So my question for you on this chapter is, can you discuss an event in your life where luck had a part in helping you succeed? From a macro level, sometimes I think about how lucky I've been to be born in Canada, how I've had loving parents growing up and grew up in a stable household. I I mean, I really do think about this stuff. And just how happy I am to have been married to my high school sweetheart. And it's been a very, it's been great, right? And, you know, it allows us to accomplish many great things in life, having that relationship. But I mean, if I'm going to get down to a specific event, it's probably my first job.
17:36I mean, one of my best friends growing up was working in the office where I was given my first job opportunity. community. And it was a unique office that gave me unbelievable experience in public practice. And it gave me the ability to have the skill set to run my own public practice. And I know I was only there for three or four years, but I had so much experience early on touching many, many aspects of public practice. And here it is 20 years later, I'm the managing partner of almost a 25 person firm, you know, I was kind of lucky to get my start. Okay, so chapter 10 is probably my favorite chapter in the entire book.
18:17And it's so simple, save money. And for me, I really resonate like this. And some of the key points that Morgan's making is saving can increase happiness. And you might ask yourself why? Well, really, it's the control over your time. And much like the points made in chapter 7 about freedom, having control over one's life is the best predictor of well-being, right? And there's a couple of really good quotes I'd like to read, and they're just short. The only factor that you can control generates one of the only things that matters. And the first idea is simple, but easy to overlook. It is that building wealth has little to do with your income or investment returns and a lot to do with your savings rates.
19:06And I just think, how wonderful is that? Like, you can hire people to do your investments. You can hire people to do your taxes. A savings is a DIY adventure. You've got to do it yourself. And, you know, that's part of what we talked about in chapter one about, you know, having good financial management as a key concept in your life. DIY savings will always be the thing, right? And as I internalize this chapter, I'll just share my experience. Again, I said I'm in my early 40s. My wife and I have been really good savers. In our 20s, we probably saved about 20 % of our income. As our income grew in our 30s, we were able to save 30 % of our income.
19:54And I can tell you now into our 40s, we're probably saving close to 40 % of our income. And I can tell you from starting my investment portfolio with$0 in it, like probably most people in this world or the people listening to this podcast, my savings rate is still outpacing my returns for the most part. I'm getting close to that flipping. But early on, it starts with savings. And I don't know what year Charlie Munger talked about this, but he said, you have to get to$100 ,000. You have to eat Kraft dinner, whatever the cheap food is in those years. And you've got to get that snowball started so you can get it rolling down the hill.
20:38And of course, understanding the power of compounding and all that good stuff. I've got to look that up because I've got to know if that's going to be inflation index to today's dollars or what that$100 ,000 mean, but it's a really key concept. So I might flip back to a little more discussion on this, but I'll just throw it over to you, Kyle, about what strategies you and your family have put in place to save. Yeah. So for me, unfortunately, I wish I learned about saving a lot younger. I did save a very, very small amount when I was in my late teens and my 20s. But essentially, my savings rate didn't really skyrocket until I learned just about financial independence in my 30s.
21:19So now it's been about four years. And I've done a pretty good job considering I'm in Vancouver and it's hard to save here. So I managed to save anywhere for almost basically since COVID started, I've been able to save approximately 20 % to 25 % of my income. And so that's been really, really helpful in just basically building my portfolio. And my wife's also saved a decent amount of money as well and kicked that into our portfolio that I manage. So that's been really, really helpful. And yeah, I mean, without saving, it's hard to get ahead in life. So I just actually interviewed JL Collins, who's wrote a couple of really, really good books.
21:56And he had one really good little part from his latest book called Pathfinders, where this woman was saying that she felt like saving was deprivation. And so he kind of reframed it in a brilliant way. He said, I actually haven't saved a penny in my entire life. I'm paraphrasing here. He says, every single time I get cash, I spend it immediately. But the difference is I spend it on freedom for later on in life. And I just love the way he worded that because it really takes that deprivation angle out. I can tell you with certainty that savings also has a multiplier effect. And what I mean by that is because you're training yourself to live within your means and save, your savings end up growing.
22:37And because you've trained yourself to spend less and live within your means, financial freedom comes much, much faster. And then you don't need as much as you think you need to retire. So it's got this multiplier effect to it that's beautiful. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Even Einstein had blind spots. That's why modern science is built on the idea of peer review. Investing may be more art than science, but that doesn't make peer feedback any less valuable. The tricky thing is finding qualified people who are interested and willing to help vet your investment ideas.
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25:42And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. So the next chapter I want to go to was chapter six titled Tales You Win. So I really like this chapter. Essentially, the gist of it is that you can be wildly successful based off of just a few decisions that offer super outsized returns, despite being wrong very, very often. Investing is the perfect vehicle to explain this concept, which is... Look at Warren Buffett, for instance. He said that his entire career essentially has been based off of 12 decisions. And if you remove those 12 decisions, he's an average investor.
26:23So he's made... I think someone's counted up. It's somewhere between 400 and 500 investment decisions over his entire lifetime. And only those 12 decisions really have made him into the person that he is today. If he hadn't made them, he'd be just some other hedge fund manager that probably most of us have never even heard of. I found this chapter really interesting and it made me connect to a really cool concept that God and Bade actually shared with Clay on We Study Billionaires. And that's basically, he was talking about concavity and convexity and how powerful compounding is and how it can easily carry your success even when you have some major your losers.
26:59So he gave an example. Well, let's say you have two investments. Say you have$20 ,000, so you can put$10 ,000 into each investment. One goes up by a 26 % compound annual growth rate for 10 years, and one goes down by a 26 % compound annual growth rate for 10 years. If you don't understand compounding or the math of it, you would think, okay, well, one goes up, one goes down, I just end up with the same amount of money. But no, that's not how it works because yeah, your loser goes down significantly, you lose a ton of money, but your winner goes up so high that you're actually making a 17.76 % annual return over that period of time, which is just crazy.
27:33And that basically means you're wrong. You're completely wrong, 50%. That was really interesting. And then another interesting concept was, so Pulak Prasad in his book, What I Learned About Investing from Darwin, he discussed this concept of punctuated equilibrium and how powerful it can be when used correctly. Basically tying it into this was he essentially just buys things at very, very concentrated period of time. It's not very often. He'll have years to go by where he literally doesn't buy anything. And so that kind of just goes to show you that when these events happen that open up opportunities, you have to pounce on them as quickly as possible.
28:09So I'm just going to pose a question to David here. How have you positioned your investments to amplify the effects of winning and decrease the effects when you lose? David Morgan I thought about this in contemplation of our chat. And I don't know if I have a great answer for you, but I'll try to work it through in a couple ways. If we get to it, we'll talk about in chapter 12 about market volatility. And for the most of my career as a DIY investor, I've been fully invested. And I haven't been in a position to be as opportunistic as I would have liked in key moments. Morgan has a great quote about your success as an investor will be determined by punctuated moments of tear, not in the years spent on cruise control.
28:55And I can tell you that my ability to stay in the game has been tested a few times at this stage in my career, and I've managed to do just fine with that. I haven't set myself up to be like a punctuated moment that Pulak Prasad talks about in his book. I haven't positioned myself well enough yet to take advantage of a 2008 market correction or the V-shaped correction that happened during COVID. But in terms of decreasing the effects of loss, I can tell you that I do index with part of my portfolio. I put it in the believe in the market, don't think about it too much and be financially unbreakable category.
29:35I've got probably 25 % of our family's net worth in index funds. I don't borrow to invest. And I don't invest money that I may need to run my day to day life. So I think I can prevent the downside by those three things. And I'm still working on the upside, Kyle. So in chapter nine, Morgan's talking about wealth is what you don't see. And I think this is a key concept to learn early on in life. Some of the key points that Morgan makes is be careful what you think when you see someone else. And it kind of ties into chapter eight, the man in the car paradox as well. And I'm going to read you a quote that actually comes from chapter eight that ties in really nicely here.
30:24It's a subtle recognition that people generally aspire to be respected and admired by others. And using money to buy fancy things may bring less of it than you can imagine. If respect and admiration are your goals, be careful how you seek it. Humility, kindness, and empathy will bring you more respect than horsepower ever will. And I can tell you in my role as an accountant, you can imagine what I can see into people's personal lives. It's like going to the doctor and disclosing your health issues. I mean, when you come to your accountant, you're seeing all the financial stuff, right? And I really struggle personally with fake rich, I'll call it.
31:04You see someone drive up in a fancy car and you know that they have two years taxes owing that they haven't paid for. And I really struggle with that. And I just think you have to watch in life who you're emulating and who you're respecting. And oftentimes, it's hard not to judge people. It's by nature. I think we do become judgy sometimes, but you have to really train yourself not to do it. And I mean, I had an experience when I was young. I was working for my parents. They have a clothing store and it was Christmas time and the store was really busy. And, you know, I was a kid. I was maybe 16, 17 years old.
31:45And this gentleman came in and I didn't pay any attention to this man. And, you know, I didn't think I was going to make any sales. Anyways, by the end of the night, he was one of the best customers I had had all Christmas season. And I can remember, like I'm talking about it today. hey, I judged the guy when he walked through the door. And I was young enough to not beat myself up about it. But I was old enough at that point in my life to know that I was very aware of my air in those moments. And I've never forgot about it. In fact, Chris Mayer, who was on one of our Zoom calls in the mastermind community, actually talked about meeting someone at an investment conference who was dressed up like a farmer.
32:26And I was like, yes, that happened to me exactly. So early on in life, you're going to make mistakes and you're going to learn this lesson sometime throughout the years, but maybe learn it from me. I don't know, Kyle, have you ever been in a position where that happened to you? I can't really think of too many positions where I've really misjudged someone based on their wealth. And I think that a big part of my upbringing was just you treat everyone equally. And my mom and dad both really instilled that into me. And not Not that your parents probably taught you the exact same thing, but I also wasn't in sales, right?
33:03So I didn't quite have those same types of opportunities. But I definitely observe that, especially now that I find financial independence a lot more interesting because I'm trying to live it now. So I observe things that other people do with their money. And like we said, with people being crazy with the money, no one's crazy, but you can still observe it and you can still see what they're doing. And you can probably assume that some people are saving money and assume that some people aren't saving money. And you obviously would have the best insights into this because you're seeing people's actual money coming in and out.
33:32The next chapter I wanted to do was chapter 12, which is surprise. Many people use history to help guide the near future, but history only tells us so much. History does a great job of showing us how events impact greed and fear in a variety of emotional states. So it's great for using to understand sweeping generalities. But as you get more and more focused and specific, looking at specific industries or trends in investing, for instance, using history to aid in decision-making becomes a lot less useful. So you can look to history for human, I think for human psychology and emotion. I mean, you can go back hundreds and hundreds of years and starting with tulipomania and the South Sea China bubble and all these bubble events, they happened a long time ago.
34:14They're still happening today. They're still going to happen in the future. But if you want to look at one specific industry that's brand new and try to take lessons from history, you're going to have a hard time because those things just didn't exist. So some of those generalities work really well in history. When you dive into really, really specific events, you can maybe try to use history to help guide you, but it's not exactly going to help you, I don't think, just as much as trying to learn as much as you can about what's happening right now and taking experiences that you have to help build your own thesis.
34:46So a quote I really liked from this was about historians as profits. So quote, A trap many investors fall into is what I call historians as profits fallacy, an over-reliance on past data as a signal to future conditions in a field where innovation and change are the lifeblood of progress. So I mean, yeah, this just kind of goes on to what I was saying that you can use data from the past to help you with some of your decisions, but not all of your decisions. And you have to be really, really aware of that because leaning too much on that can, I think, make you make some pretty big mistakes. So a couple of my big takeaways is that the world is really surprising.
35:21I think you need to accept that and give yourself permission to be wrong and keep your ego in check because you're going to be wrong a lot. I don't think of myself as a macro guy. I think of myself more of someone who looks at specific businesses, but even the specific businesses I choose, sometimes I'm wrong. I'm wrong often and that's okay. And then also, I feel this chapter ties into relying on experts for their opinion because even experts who should know more than anyone else on the subject are wrong often. And you can look at people who make their little macro predictions and they're right on one out of 10.
35:56But I mean, what's the difference of just closing your eyes and flipping a coin? Because that would at least hopefully be about 50 % right. I love how Morgan talks about the outlier events that really moved the needle in this chapter and how unpredictable those events have been. Exactly. And so I wanted to know your your angle on this. So you're obviously a business owner. How do you best prepare and cope with unprecedented events from COVID or whatever to your personal business? I think I'll generalize and then I'll get specific about our business. I think every business needs to operate with some sort of margin of safety in it.
36:36And whether that's ensuring that you have excess working capital, like make sure that your current assets are more than your current liabilities. It's not a complicated concept, but it is important. And you don't want to over leverage your business. To be a little more specific about, you know, my experience, I mean, at our firm, one of our strategies is to always be slightly overstaffed. As an office of close to 25, by doing that, it allows us to navigate the unpredictable nature of staff not being here, or maybe we get behind in work and just having, Being conscious of boat being slightly overstaffed allows us to meet our deadlines.
37:18And it also allows us to be aggressive if an opportunity pops up to buy another accounting firm and just have the resources available and the horsepower when we need it. And, I mean, obviously, the last unprecedented event for us was the pandemic. And, you know, as you know, as a fellow Canadian, I mean, within two weeks, people had to be out of their office. Like you were not allowed to be in a group of more than five people in a spread out office. And our systems weren't prepared at that time to handle that much decentralization. So, you know, another coping strategy for us is to have the right people on the bus.
37:57And because in those two weeks, I can tell you we hustled. And you can only do that if you've got the right people on the bus and driving in the same direction with the business's purpose. Chapter 18 is when you'll believe anything. And the main theme in this chapter is appealing fiction and why stories are more powerful than statistics. And we often focus on what we know and we neglect with what we don't know. And the more you want something to be true, the more likely you'll believe a story about it. And I think when I read this chapter and I think about it, Daniel Kahneman is all over this chapter in terms of some of the things he writes about in his book.
38:44And I'll share a quote that Morgan actually wrote in his book by Daniel on page 198. it says, hindsight, the ability to explain the past, gives us the illusion that the world is understandable. It gives us the illusion that the world makes sense even when it doesn't make sense. And this is a big deal in producing mistakes in many fields. And it just comes back to, are you making up some of the story when you don't have all the information? Are you really going through your due diligence? Charlie Munger talks about no one's smart enough to operate without a checklist. Are you getting through everything you're supposed to get through when you're doing analysis on stuff?
39:27I think it's easy to develop. I think we all have incomplete views. And then it's very natural for us to complete the full narratives around our view. So we have to be so, so careful about what we're telling ourselves. And there's a really good chapter in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow about an outside view. I think it's chapter 23. And for those of you who may not have read this book or not familiar with it, it's where people maybe underestimate how long it may take them to do something without getting expert advice involved and sharing an outside view on what they know because they're experts in the field and shedding some light on the situation that they're in.
40:19And it's like running a business and thinking you have all the answers yourself. You probably don't. And to be able to get to fill in the blanks is really, really important. And I guess I'll just kind of backtrack a little bit in terms of some of the examples that Morgan gives in this chapter. It's back to the we'll believe anything and stories are more powerful than statistics. We overestimate the truth all the time. 85 % of fund managers cannot beat the index, but there's over$5 trillion invested in it as people are looking for the next Warren Buffett. I mean, I love that quote in the book. Madoff, he was the most notorious Ponzi schemer since Mr.
41:04Ponzi himself. And his returns never varied. He had an auditing firm that was unknown, yet he raised billions. And I just think what an amazing storyteller that gentleman must have been to be able to, you know, have people invest with such little due diligence on their end. Yeah, it's just, it's almost like FOMO is real, you know, the fear of missing out. So there's so much psychology in this chapter. It's unreal. Yeah, I don't know, Kyle, have you ever completed? Have you ever worked through something, only get to get to the end of it and realize that you did kind of fill in some blanks when maybe you actually didn't know the answer itself?
41:47Yeah, absolutely. And investing all the time. So I talked a little bit about, I try at the end of the year to think about what my most cherished belief was that I destroyed in a particular year based off of what Charlie Munger said. And I love it. So last year, I was thinking about that. And to me, so last year, I exited a lot of three investments I had in China. And while I still think China is a great country and will probably have some very good outperformers, I did a lot of research. I spent a lot of time trying to understand the country. And I thought I had a really good understanding of it.
42:18And I spent years essentially building up this thesis on three of the companies that I owned. And I thought I had a pretty good picture of the country. So I had my thesis. And you can kind of think of it as a thesis. It's the same thing as a story, right? You build it. Hopefully, you use as many facts and data as possible. There's some story stock investors, they just look for the story, that's it. And they don't pay any attention to any of the fundamentals. And that's definitely not the way I am. But even with using data and trying to back up my story with the fundamentals of the business, I feel like I was wrong on that.
42:53It's easy to fool yourself. And for me, it was really hard. It took me years to basically admit that I just don't understand China in terms of business as well as I thought I did. And maybe I'll continue probably learning more and more about it and And who's to say I won't go back in at some point, but it just felt like that was a story that I, to some degree, was telling myself. And I made some errors on that end. I can tell you from my own experience, I've made the air hiring before where I've read a resume and I've given an interview to an individual and they've started with our firm. And I filled in a complete narrative of that person before I really knew who they were.
43:33I mean, I think I feel like I'm a little bit better these days. But earlier on in my career, I used to do that. And it was only through experience and kind of learning my own admissions to be able to develop the skill to kind of get through that. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore. from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows.
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47:13All right, back to the show. My last chapter I wanted to go over was chapter 15, which is nothing's free. I really like this chapter because essentially what he's talking about is that any benefit that you observe comes with a fee. And so, for instance, let's take this into the investing realm. If you're indexing, your fee is volatility. You have to pay the volatility fee in order to stay in and hopefully get the benefit of owning indexes for a long term, which are very good benefits. But a lot of people don't get those benefits because they're not willing to pay the fee. Essentially, any success that has a benefit is going to come with some form of fee.
47:51But the problem is that sometimes that fee is hidden and you don't know. So he used the example of an executive who had done a really good job. It appeared that he did a really good job, but under the veil of all the success, there was a lot of issues that he made. And there was a lot of, I guess, fees you could say that he had to pay. And that, I think, just goes along with anything. I mean, in investing, for sure, you have to pay volatility. That's always a fee. And that's whether you index or if you invest in individual stocks. Because even if you own individual stocks, look at Berkshire. I think it is the best performing stock ever.
48:26And it's had four different 50 % drawdowns. So that means that even with all the success they've had, and even though their success has been relatively linear, if you wanted to capture all that success, you had to live with paying the fee of volatility. A question I had for you on this chapter, Dave, was what fees of the market are you willing to pay in order to reach your financial goals? Yeah. I mean, for me, it's simple. It's volatility. And I know we've discussed this already. But I mean, I've been in the markets long enough to see a couple very large downturns with my portfolio. And I know I've got the temperament and the ability to withstand that.
49:03I wasn't prepared to be as opportunistic as I would have liked. But even withstanding the volatility is an experience in itself. And being able to not make a brash decision when you see your investments go down by 40%. I mean, I can share an experience with you that I learned from a client. I mean, it's great to learn from other people's mistakes. In 2008, I was in my 20s, late 20s, pretty young, chartered accountant in Canada. And I remember this gentleman panicked a little bit, sold all his investments and put it in a GIC. And I can't tell you exactly what month that was, but that had a profound impact on me because six months later, the market pops back and this gentleman had permanent capital erosion.
49:53And it stuck out like a sore thumb for me. And I've always been one who's been able to learn from other people's mistake. And that one's seared into my memory. It's really interesting because oftentimes, if you're explaining how financial compounding works, you always use simple terms and you take an interest rate without volatility to illustrate its power. right? Like you're going to say, here's$100 ,000 invested today. If you make a 9 % return for the next 20 years, this is what your investments are going to be worth. Well, the market rarely returns the average. And so you really need to be tested a few times.
50:31And I think it's important early to get tested so that as your wealth grows later in your life, that you've been battle tested in terms of volatility. And I can't tell you where, I think I read this in William Green's book, Richer, Weiser, Happier, someone calling it a learner's fee. I could be wrong on which book that came from, but I think the learner's fee is true. It's a very important lesson to learn early in life. And it will only be a fine if you sell your investments. Why don't you take off with the last chapter? And then after that, we're going to go into the confession, which I think is going to be a lot of fun.
51:14Okay. So chapter 13, room for air. The main theme in this chapter is that the most important part of every plan is your plan not going according to plan. You have to leave room for air. And just got to throw this Mike Tyson quote in, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Have you heard that one, Kyle? Oh, yeah. Yeah, right. You've got to prepare for a black swan event. That's a key point in this chapter. And you aren't always going to know why, what or how something's going to happen to challenge you, whether it's in your investments or the business that you're running, but you've got to prepare for it.
51:57And Morgan has this beautiful concept that runs through a lot of the book about being financially unbreakable. And I love it. I say it all the time now. You don't want to take yourself out with leverage or sell your investments during a market downturn. I mean, we've talked about that. Some of the examples that Morgan has in this chapter is Berkshire leaves enough cash in its insurance claims. And Warren's been public saying, I'm not going to lose one night's sleep over not having enough cash on the sidelines. And of course, early in Microsoft's days, Bill Gates said, I'm going to have one year's cash and expenses so I can meet payroll.
52:41And it's just an unbelievable commitment to being financially unbreakable. And I think it's just so important. And we'll see if I can tell this story well enough to get some humor out of this. This happened to me with my car twice in my life. So I just get a kick out of every time I see this story. In World War II, Germany had the best tanks in the world. And in one of the great battles of that war, where they were trying to occupy the Soviet Union, they weren't successful. And Morgan writes that the scholars all agree that that battle marked the turning point in the war in favor of the Allies, the Germans lost.
53:24And do you remember what took out the German and their great tanks in that battle? Do you remember what it was? I do, yes. Mice. Yeah. Mice. Mice chewed the wires to their tanks and they were inoperable. And talk about a black swan event like who could have ever prepared for that and i love actually in morgan's new book same as always which which just came out i think in november of 2023 which which we've already uh done a book club review on in our tip mastermind community risk is what you don't see and you've got to prepare for it but you don't know what it is and it's just so important to be to position yourself to be financially unbreakable.
54:12Yeah, absolutely. And for me personally, to be financially unbreakable is probably all the same types of things that you're doing, which is obviously stay away from leverage. I mean, you have to do that if you want to be financially unbreakable. If you're using leverage, I mean, you're just exposing yourself to so much risk because bad things happen. And when they do, if you're leveraged, the people are going to want their money back. And oftentimes, all your investments or however you're looking at it is going to be depressed. And that means it's going to be very hard for you to stay afloat. And then in terms of my portfolio, I try to buy businesses and own businesses that have some degree of an ability to withstand big financial events.
54:54But I mean, let's be honest, it's hard, right? I mean, even right now, are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? But you look at certain businesses and they have very slowing fundamentals. And this is nothing close to like a 2008, right? So I guess part of it also is being willing to look long-term. That I think to me helps me be financially unbreakable because if something were to happen to my portfolio to draw 50 % or more or whatever, I'm honestly fine holding onto it. Obviously, I look at individual businesses I have, I'd have to probably reassess them to see how the, whatever the event is, is going to affect the operating fundamentals of those businesses, but I'm willing to wait a couple of years for it to make that money back or reallocate to something else.
55:38As value investors, those events, those are the things that we hope to see, because if you have some money to deploy, that's where you're going to get amazing returns. I wanted to finish this off looking, I think it was chapter 19 or 20 that Morgan has this, it's called Confession. So he basically talks about two things, how my family thinks about savings and how my family thinks about investing. So Dave, why don't you start? Just go over a little bit, a couple of points about how your family thinks about savings and then I'll do the same thing. Morgan writes the two ethos in medicine in this chapter are that every patient wants to be cured and there is a universal right to cure them.
56:19And so if I define my business and investment ethos and kind of tie it into my wife and I's financial, personal financial situation is we are, and we being my wife and I very much on the same page, are amazing savers. And I've talked in this episode already about our savings rate. We treat wealth like a game, not from ego. I think that's really important to have some humility and kindness in what you do. My wife and I don't have elaborate needs or wants. And in fact, the older we get, it's actually the less we want, not the more we want, which is kind of interesting. And, you know, one of our ethos is to be humble, kind and compassionate.
57:09And I know I talked about fake rich in one of the earlier chapters. I mean, personally, I identify as fake poor. And I think that actually might sound funny. I've taken that quote from Chris Rock. He's used it in a comedy routine. I mean, that guy grew up dirt poor, and he's worth a lot of money and has done extremely well in life. And he says he still identifies as fake poor to this day. Right. And so, I always get a kick out of that when I hear him say it. But it resonates with me and my wife as well. And also, one of my ethos at this stage in my life is just leading by example. If you're familiar with the term ikigai, it's from an island in Japan where people try to lead their life with purpose and define that.
58:01And one of mine is to educate people on business and finances and lead them and help teach and lead them in that. So that's definitely one of my ethos. Yeah. So for me, I mean, I guess I came to this conclusion from looking at the angle of how I was raised and why certain members of my family taught me about saving and how they saved. And my mom and dad, they taught me a lot about saving. They both saved a decent amount, not as much as, I guess, not as much as they should have to retire super early, but they both have savings and that's awesome. And my mom really, she had some bad doubts of getting into debt.
58:43And so she really instilled into me how important staying out of debt was. And she helped me understand the strength of building an RRSP and savings in that end. And then my dad, my dad is, so my dad's from Myanmar and he was actually a monk when he was a lot younger. So he understands a lot about, you know, just living below your means. I mean, Myanmar is not a super wealthy country. And then being a monk on top of that is, you know, you're, you're definitely not, you're not eating very well. You're eating rice basically all the time. So my dad is incredibly good at living below his means. And I've definitely learned a lot from him on that.
59:18And so that's helped me really understand the power of savings and living below your means and staying out of debt. So that's kind of how I think about savings, how my family thinks about savings and how I learn. So do you have any other insights into how your family thinks about investing? Well, if we think about what we talked about in chapter one, about our lived experiences, accounting for so much of how we're wired, you make a good point here that not only our lived experiences, but I think our parents teach us so much about their lived experiences become our lived experiences. And I think it's really important to frame that early in your life.
59:59I mean, you might have learned amazing habits from your parents, from how they thought about money, but the reverse can also be true in terms of learning poor habits or just not understanding concepts. So, you know, if you're a 25-year-old listener today, I would encourage you to really think about how you interpret money, what has been your thoughts, what has been your parents' thoughts, and come to some agreement with yourself on what you think the right answer is. I just think that's really important to try to figure that stuff out early in life. And, you know, if you could think about that early, especially early, I think that opens up a lot of opportunities for you to start the compounding engine early.
1:00:45Because once you understand the power of the compounding, I wish when I was 10 years old, I could have started putting$5 a month or something like that away. Because the amount of money that that grows to, it's incredible. And starting late, obviously, it's not an advantage, but starting no matter what your age is, is always going to be an advantage. So if you're not saving now, now's the best possible time that you can have for saving. Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying, when's the best time to plant a tree 10 years ago? When's the second best time? Today. Exactly. Exactly. So David, I wanted to say thank you so much for coming on the show today.
1:01:25But before we go, we talked about a bunch of books that you referenced being part of the TIP Mastermind community. So would you mind just maybe sharing some of your thoughts on the investment community for the audience? Yeah. So I'm really passionate about being involved in the TIP mastermind community. I'm really thankful to be part of it. Everyone is going to internalize why the community works for them. For me, it's simple. It starts with the commitment to lifelong learning and pushing yourself to be better. And just ignoring the fact that we study and share investment ideas for a moment. I like to think of we're the product of the five people that we associate most with.
1:02:07And I like to consider this community as one of my five people. I mean, this group is made up of amazing people who at the end of the day, just want to better their knowledge. I mean, where else can you surround yourself with like-minded people who like to read, study, like to invest and share ideas on the same? I can almost assure you that it's not your spouse and it's probably not the people that you grew up with, right? So it really fills a need for a lot of people that are in the community. Circling back to the investment side, we do some cool things like share one-page stock pitch ideas that people have researched.
1:02:46If someone's done a real deep dive into a business and developed a robust thesis on it, we'll jump on a Zoom call and have that individual pitch the stock. Some other cool stuff that we do or that we did last year for me was we read the book, The Joys of Compounding. And then we were able to have God and Bade join us on a Zoom call. And we were able to talk to him about the book and quiz him about his investment ideas. And we were also able to do that with Chris Mayer and 100 Baggers as well. And so just having the access to talk to people that you wouldn't otherwise is really special to me. And Kyle, I just want to give you a big shout out and thank you for all the work that you and Clay are doing organizing the community.
1:03:33And I want to personally thank Stig for some really meaningful conversations that we've had in the past year. And just like we talked about in Chapter 4, relationships are like investments. They compound over time. And that's the hope that I have with this community. Okay, folks, that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here very soon.
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From the publisher
Kyle Grieve chats with TIP Mastermind Community member David Fagan about the universal truths about money, hidden areas of life where compounding happens, why we should welcome doses of luck to help us succeed, how to be financially unbreakable, why asymmetric investments are so powerful, why we all must pay a fee to earn our wealth (and why it’s worth it), the power of narratives in building wealth, and a whole lot more!
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN
00:00 - Intro
04:29 - Why we disagree with others on money and why that’s ok.
12:07 - Why we should all strive to compound knowledge.
14:04 - What shapes our willingness to bear risk.
14:04 - The role of luck in success and failure.
14:52 - Why we should understand how luck impacts our outcomes.
16:53 - Why saving can increase happiness.
16:53 - Why building wealth has little to do with your income and everything to do with your savings rate.
22:51 - How you can be wrong 50% of the time and still generate life-changing wealth.
22:51 - The power of concentrated bursts of activity while defaulting to inactivity.
23:41 - Why it’s so difficult to understand the effects of compounding.
25:13 - Why it can be hard to “see” wealth, but not the rich.
25:13 - Why the stock market offers asymmetric upside.
29:43 - How to use history to help guide us into the future.
30:22 - Why we should expect to be surprised regularly.
41:07 - The hidden costs of success.
41:26 - Why we should be willing to pay the fees to benefit from investing.
41:26 - What those fees are and why they can be perceived as being difficult to pay.
44:41 - Why you should be financially flexible.
49:22 - How Kyle and David think about saving and investing.
And much, much more!
*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.
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