655: Morgan Housel - The Simple Formula For Happiness, Betting on Others, Gaining Independence & Purpose, Family Vacation Secrets, The Art of Spending Money, & The Death Bed Lesson Every Leader Needs to Hear

23:56And the answer is maybe, probably not. It's almost like in a negative way, when I think about the art of spending money, I would venture to say it is 40 % about how to spend money to make yourself happier. And it is 60 % about realizing what money cannot do for you and the boxes that need to be checked, the other areas of your life to invest in before it's gonna make any difference whatsoever. One of the really interesting things to come out of behavioral finance just in the last decade is, in my mind, settling the debate over does earning more money make people happy? And for decades, literally decades, half a century, some studies said yes, some studies said no.

24:34Some of the more like metadata that's come out in the last decade more or less shows that if you are already a depressed, anxious, unhappy person, earning more money is not going to do anything for you. If you are already a happy, joyful, content, empathetic person, earning more money will make you happy. It's like it leverages whoever you are in either direction, which gets back to the point of like, there are other things in your life you need to invest in before spending money is going to make much of a difference. You say, if you want an example of someone that you would call wealthy, right?

25:09And you can distinguish the difference between wealthy and rich and others, have a look at Chuck Feeney. I'm pretty sure I'm pronouncing that right. Can you tell me more about Chuck Feeney and why he is the example of wealth? So Chuck Feeney started the duty-free stores that are in every international airport in the world. You get off your international flight and you walk through and you can buy like seven gallons of tequila or whatever they sell in there and like in those stores, duty-free. And he made an absolute fortune. He made about, for himself, he made about$10 billion for himself. Very lucrative business.

25:41Now, the well-known part of Chuck Feeney's story is that he was probably the cheapest billionaire to ever exist. He lived in like a tiny little middle-class apartment. He drove a middle-class car. He flew coach. He lived like an ordinary person when he was worth$10 billion. That's the well-known part of his story. He gave everything away. I think the statistic was he and his wife kept$2 million for themselves and gave away$10 billion. It's an extraordinary story. The less well-known part of Chuck Feeney's story is that when he first became very wealthy in the 1980s, he started living the life of a billionaire.

26:15He had mansions all over the world. He had a private jet. He had a yacht. He lived like you would think a billionaire would. And he realized it was not for him. He realized he just didn't like it. Society told him he should live like that, given his wealth. And he tried it and said, this isn't for me. He has a quote that I love. He 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. So he just chose to live that life. And what I love about Chuck Feeney is not that he lived that life. I'm not saying everyone should go live like a miser and give away 99.9 % of your money.

26:46It's cool that he did it, but that's not what I admire. What I admire is that he chose it for himself. He picked it. He said, society tells me to live like this and I don't like it. So I'm going to live like that. He was in total control over his wealth. And a lot of people, even at much, much, much lower levels of money, you don't have to be a deck of billionaire to experience this. The money controls their personality. The money tells them how they should live, where they should live, what kind of house they should live in, how they should dress, how they should travel. The money dictates that for them.

27:18And it's in full control over their personality. And a lot of those people are not that happy because they're not using money as an expression of who they actually are to leverage who they actually are. It's like money is forcing them to put on an act and do things and live a way that is not consistent with their personality. So what I really admire about Chuck Feeney is that he used money as a tool to live a better life. He did not let it dictate his personality and tell him how to live. I love those stories. I went whitewater rafting yesterday, Morgan, with some of my closest friends and our guide.

27:51You know, you can imagine it was in West Virginia, the Upper Gauley. It's like one of the best places you can go in America to go whitewater rafting. It was intense. I fell out, like where all I scrambled. It was amazing. Anyway, our guide though, he lives in a bus currently. He bought a school bus and he lives in a bus. He's got a kid, he's in a relationship. And to me, we talked to him for the course of an entire day. We were together. We had lunch, all this stuff. It felt like this dude was doing exactly what he wanted to be doing every day. Is his life perfect? I'm sure it's not. But man, he seems so comfortable in his own skin and content and happy and appreciative of being out on that water and looking at all the beauty around us in West Virginia.

28:33To me, it was like, this guy is wealthy. This guy is living now. If you look at his bank account, guessing he's not, you know, but that to me felt like a wealthy life when you see, and just, you can feel it in people when, as they talk to you that they're kind of doing what they want to do. And it leads me to the simplest formula for a pretty nice life. As you write, it is quote independence plus purpose, the independence to do what you want and the wisdom to want to do meaningful things. Can you walk me through the simplest formula for a pretty nice life? I always try to avoid formulas for like this because like I said, it's not a science.

29:16Everyone's different. But if you did come up with a very simple formula, I think it's that independence plus purpose. It's very difficult to have a happy, content, joyful life if you don't have both of those things almost in equal amounts. You need independence financially and independence of thought. The independence to live where you want, do what you want, spend the time with whom you want that you can get from saving and having assets and not letting the ups and downs of vicissitudes of life to really control your day-to-day. So you need that. You need independence of thought. You need the independence to believe what you want to believe, not just going along with the tribe of what you have.

29:55And then you need a purpose. That purpose is very different for everyone. It can be as a parent, as a spouse, It can be religion. It can be your work, whatever it might be. Something bigger than yourself that you are moving to. Everything that I think we know about the psychology of happiness and contentment will lead to those two things. That, look, the kind of spending that might make you happy might be different for me. Maybe we have different taste in food. We have different taste in travel. Everyone's different. The common denominator across people is that they need independence and purpose in order to be happy.

30:27Very difficult to do it without those two things. And so I think about that with money too. For independence, I always view it as, look, I've been a big saver for my entire adult life. Since I earned my first dollar when I was a teenager, I've saved the majority of what I've earned. But I've never viewed it necessarily as savings. I always viewed it as purchasing independence. When I saved$10, I was buying a$10 independence ticket. That's always what it felt like to me. That the higher the savings, the higher the net worth I had, the freer I was to be myself. the freer I was to not let the ups and downs in life that are inevitable for everybody take control over my entire day.

31:05And so I viewed it as buying independence. And then purpose for me, it's different for everybody. It was clear as day. I think maybe you and a lot of people can relate to this. The moment I became a father, it was like, that's it. There's my purpose. Clear as day. Nothing else matters. I don't matter anymore. That's the only thing that matters right there. And so that's my purpose right now. And I think will be for many, many years and decades to come, but whatever it is, you need something that is a little bit bigger than yourself. You will recognize very clearly when people have that. For your rafting guide yesterday, at least probably part, I'm assuming part of his purpose was his work.

31:39He loved it. And maybe there's more to it. He has family and religion, whatever it might be. But you can see it clear as day when people have a purpose in their life. And you can see it clear as day when they don't, when they are just going to work to earn a paycheck and they don't know what they're earning the paycheck for. It's clear when you see when someone is just kind of going through the motions. You can spot that just as quickly as you could spot the guide yesterday who loved what he was doing. So you and I aren't in this category I'm about to describe. A ton of people are. A lot of my best friends are.

32:09Let's say they need to provide for their family, right? So they get a job and then they want to get promoted because they start having kids and they need more money to pay for all the stuff that comes with houses and kids and cars and college and weddings, whatever. So some people say, Hey man, you got to get a job because you got to be a provider. That's our job. That's one of our roles. That's part of our purpose is to be a provider, but they're working at a company and they're, they don't hate it, but they also don't love it. They're just kind of like, yeah, it's good. It's pretty good. You know, I'm a VP of whatever, you know, I have some options.

32:41I get a bonus here and I have a good salary and everything's pretty good people. Pretty good. It's not amazing. I'm not itching to get there on Monday, but it's still good. It's not bad. I don't want to quit. I don't hate it. What about for that person? What advice do you give to them where they're not in a mode of like, I hate this. I got to stop. Or they're not like, I love this. This is my purpose. It is perfect. They're in between those two things. What advice do you give to them with the art of spending money and even the psychology of money of what they're striving to do when it comes to independence, purpose, not loving it, not hating it, just somewhere in the middle.

33:17We give you three very short stories to summarize my thoughts on that. Number one, there's a great quote from Jeff Bezos where he says, if you can enjoy half your job, that's really good. There's no job where you're like, I enjoy 100 % of it. That by and large does not exist. Sometimes it's more than others, but if you can enjoy the majority, you found yourself a really good job. So just keeping those expectations in check that like work is work very often. There's gonna be coworkers you don't like. There's going to be tasks you don't need to like. Keep those expectations in check. One other that comes in mind, I have a very good friend of mine.

33:48I've known him for 20 years. One of my best friends, salt of the earth. One of the best guys I know. I love hanging out with him. I've never had a bad moment with this guy. That's not an exaggeration. One of my favorite people ever. And he also earns a decent, but not substantial income. And relative to a lot of our friends, he might financially be near the bottom. And it bothers him. He talks about how it bothers him. he expresses that he doesn't like this. And I finally told him one day, I was like, if you are, as he is, a good husband, a good father, a good friend, if you're funny, if you're smart, if you're helpful, if you're honest, you have earned 98 % of the points I'm willing to give you in life.

34:31And if you also happen to be a very successful, rich entrepreneur or whatever, I might bump you up another point or two in terms of like what I think of you, but let's not pretend that makes any difference whatsoever. whatever. I like you because you're a great friend and you're so funny. And I enjoy hanging out with you. Every time we have dinner and go to a bar, I laugh for hours. You think I care how much money you make. And that also extends to his family. He's an amazing dad. It pains me to say this, but I think he's a better dad than I am. Whenever I watch him interact with his kids, I'm like, you got this thing figured out, man.

35:04And so I think his kids don't care that he makes less money than his friends either. I always just think of that when I told him that one day of just like putting the priorities together of just like, you think this matters, I'm telling you, it matters less than you think. And then the third little thing I'd say, I wrote about this in The Psychology of Money. There's a gerontologist named Carl Pillemer and he wrote a wonderful book called 30 Lessons for Living where he interviewed a thousand elderly Americans. A lot of them were 90 to a hundred years old. And the book is him just asking them for life advice.

35:34It's a really cool idea, really cool book. And there's a part of his book where he's talking about money. And he says of the 1000 people that he interviewed, who are 90 to 100 years old, he said not a single one of them looking back at their life said, I wish I earned more money. Not a single one of them looking back at their life said, I wish I chose a career that paid more. I wish I worked harder. Virtually every single one of them, almost universal, were people looking back at their life and saying, I wish I spent more time with my kids. I wish I was nicer to my spouse. I wish I was more helpful to my community.

36:05That was nearly universal. And so if you define risk risk as what you are going to regret on your deathbed, which is a pretty good definition of risk. We know like statistically, you and I, particularly at this phase of our life, we are not going to look back and say, I wish I worked harder. I wish I had added in another side gig to earn a couple more bucks on the side. What is very likely is that you and I are going to look back at these years when you and I have young kids and say, I wish I spent more time with them. And so statistically, just the base rates of what we're likely to regret, I try to keep that in mind too.

36:38So back to your question, if you're one of those people who might feel like you are in a decidedly mediocre career and whatnot, I value ambition and hard work and success and providing as a husband and father. Of course, absolutely. I would challenge you to think, though, that it probably means less than you think, as hard as that is to wrap your head around. You've made me rethink debt, meaning I like to not have any. And I've changed some of the spending. And fortunately, the income has risen to make it a little bit easier for that. And now the last little piece left is the house. There's no other debt in my life other than that.

37:18And that will probably be done soon too. You write, and you've said this before, quote, every dollar of debt that you have is a piece of your future that someone else owns. Now, some others would say, dude, sometimes you use it and that can help you get richer. You use debt for other things. And I know you said last time, you paid off your house, you don't have any debt. And again, it helps to have a good chunk of money to be able to do that. But I like that idea, that thinking. It's really shifted how I view it from where I used to be just a few years ago to where I am today. I'm like, yeah, I kind of like that.

37:57Can you talk more about this idea of every dollar of debt that you have is a piece of your future that someone else owns? Well, I'd start with the idea that if I look at my life 10 or 15 years ago, relative to where it is today, I never could have seen this path, the good and the bad. I never could have seen foreseen where it ended up. Probably same for you and virtually everybody else. So you start with the idea that your future is very unknowable. extremely unknowable. So that's the first part. And then you add into it this idea that what debt does is it defines your future. Debt tells you, hey, if you take out a 10-year car loan or whatever, 10 years from now, you have to be doing X.

38:34You have to be paying$500 a month or whatever it is. It's defining your future. So debt defines your future in a world where you don't have any idea what your future is going to be. And that can be very dangerous. And the point that I think is important is that whenever people think about the cost of debt, they focus almost entirely like a laser beam on the interest rate. That's the cost of debt. And people will say things like, this is cheap debt. Maybe they don't say it anymore, but five years ago they were. And that's a very narrow way to think about debt. I think what debt does is it narrows the range of outcomes that you can endure in your future.

39:06So if you have no debt, you can handle a lot of what life throws at you. The ups and downs, losing your job, divorce, medical illness, you can handle a lot of the curveballs that life is going to throw at you and I and everybody. And the more debt you have, the narrower that channel becomes. And then you start getting into situations where because you have even a modest amount of debt, life is going to throw you a curveball that you can endure. And that's the cost of debt. It's the narrowing of options and outcomes that you can endure in your life. And you have to add that cost onto the interest rate before you actually understand what that debt is costing you in life.

39:41I like thinking of the internal versus the external scoreboard and living for that internal one. I'm going to mispronounce these names. I'd love for you to tell kind of the story of them. Crowhurst and Montessire. No, that's not even close. Can you talk about the internal versus the external scoreboard and those two people? So in 1968, the Sunday Times newspaper in London hosted this race around the world. The race was the first person who can sail solo and nonstop will win 5 ,000 pounds. And they called it a race, but the truth is nobody in human history had ever done that before. So the first person who can just finish the race is literally the greatest sailor of all time.

40:22So it was a big deal, drew up a lot of attention. 12 people signed up for the race, only one of them finished. But there were these two guys, these two sailors who didn't finish, who had by far the most interesting stories. One of them was this guy named Donald Crowhurst, who really had no idea what he was doing. He was at best an amateur sailor. And about three months into the race, his boat sprung a leak. He didn't want to turn around and go home and face the shame and humiliation of people saying, look at you, you failed. His career outside of sailing was very mediocre. His business was failing.

40:55And so he didn't want to come home and face shame and humiliation again. And he basically spent six months in this little fraud, this scheme that he cooked up, where he would send fake radio coordinates back to England to make it seem like he was still sailing around the world, even though all of it was a ruse. He was just drifting aimlessly in the Atlantic. And when he realized that this scheme of his was not going to work, I detail this in much more detail in the book, but when he realized this was not going to work, he threw himself from the sea and killed himself. And then at the very same time this was happening, a French sailor named Bernard Mortessier was sailing around the world in this race.

41:32And he, unlike Crowhurst, he was an expert sailor. After nine months at sea, he had actually sailed around the world. He was about to win the race and be crowned the greatest sailor in the world. And it really bothered him because he was like, he just wanted to be at sea alone by himself. And he realized that when he got home, he was going to face all kinds of attention from the press and magazines. And they literally had a ticker tape parade set up for him when he got home. And he wanted nothing to do with that. He hated the idea that he was just a prop for the press and for the sponsors when he just wanted to do what made him happy.

42:03He didn't care about getting anyone else's attention. And so when he was just about to win the race, he quit and he turned his boat around and he set sail for Tahiti, where he built a house on the beach and married a local woman and lived happily ever after. And so I use that as an example of like Donald Crowhurst just wanted everybody's attention. All he wanted in life was for strangers to look at him and say, you're so great. I'm so proud of you. You've accomplished so much. It's all he wanted. And when he realized he couldn't have it, he literally killed himself. And Bernard Bortessier could not have been more polar opposite.

42:35He just wanted to live a life for himself. And when he realized that strangers were gonna start giving him attention, he was like, to hell with that. I don't want anything to do with that. I just wanna be happy myself. That is like the most extreme example I found between the internal and the external benchmark. And I think the irony is that if you look at those two people, most of us will say, I wanna live a life that is closer to Bernard Mottessier. There were very extreme examples, but I just wanna do what makes me happy. I don't care what anyone else thinks, just what makes me happy. But the irony is that so much of the modern world, modern society pushes you to living a life closer to Donald Crowhurst.

43:11How can I get other people's attention online and social media? How can I get other people to look at me and say, you're so great, you're so cool with the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the house that I live in, what I post on Instagram, whatever it might be, particularly for young people that can dominate their life. the external benchmark dominates their life. But the internal benchmark is, I think, what people actually aspire to, even if it's so much harder to actually chase relative to the external benchmark. I think everybody listening to that would agree. The next part is actually doing it and living that way.

43:41How? How can you get better at living for that internal benchmark versus the external? And what can you actually do to make that happen? To me, it's the constant reminder. And you have to constantly remind yourself because it is not intuitive that no one's watching. No one's thinking about you. No one's paying attention to your stuff. If they are looking at your material possessions, they're doing one of two things. They are either imagining themselves having that. They're imagining themselves having the sweater that you're wearing, the car that you're driving, the house that you live in. So they're bypassing you.

44:17They're just thinking about themselves. Or if they are thinking about you with those things, by and large, they're envying you for them, which means they hate you for having them. They're not saying like, wow, Ryan is so cool for having that house. I'm so proud of him. They're either not thinking about your house, they're imagining themselves in your house, or they're looking at your house saying, screw that guy, he didn't work hard enough. He thinks he's better than me. And so it is very easy to massively overestimate the social reward that we get for having nice stuff. And you have to take a step back and realizing nobody is thinking about you as much as you are.

44:52They are too busy thinking about themselves. That is all over the place all the time. And so I have to remind myself about that because it's very, it's so easy to say, if only I had this thing, people would think better of me. And you have to remind yourself, no, no, no, they wouldn't. No, they wouldn't. They don't care. And they might actually envy you for it, which means they hate you now. And so the message there is not don't buy nice things. I love nice things. I like nice homes. I like nice cars. I like nice clothes, all of it. the message is like, you are going to overestimate what it's going to do for you.

45:24And then once you come to terms with that, it's been more helpful for me to say, okay, they're not going to admire me for that new car. So maybe I shouldn't buy it. Maybe I should use that money to buy what is going to make me happier, which is independence. And again, I don't view that as saving. I view that as purchasing independence. Because then the more independent I am, the more I can wake up and say, I can do whatever I want today with whomever I want for as long as I want. And that to me is like the highest purpose of money. That's where you're going to get the highest ROI. And so that's what's been helpful for me.

45:57The constant reminder that nobody is thinking about you as much as you are. Let me run like a theory by you just because I love the way you think about things. When I go for walks, I had this conversation with my wife while we were walking. I like walking in neighborhoods with big houses. This is weird, but it makes me think bigger. I like going to events with people who have done really well, because when I leave those events, whether they're small ones, big ones, have conversations with people that have, let's say they've done big things within their career. Now, I don't know their full lives, right?

46:29But the reason why is because it makes me think grander. It makes me think bigger. It makes me feel like I can make a bigger impact. And when I start reading your books and going through this, I think maybe this is misguided. Maybe this is wrong. Why do I feel this way? Why do I think this way? Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know if it's either of those things. What do you think about this idea about, I like walking to see big houses because it makes me think big. I like being in rooms with really impressive people where I am not even near the smartest person in the room because it makes me feel challenged and make me think grander and bigger.

47:05What do you think about that? I want to repeat what I said earlier, that you asked such good questions that no one else has ever asked me. I don't think I've ever told the story, but I can tie so much of my career ambition to one moment. This was probably 2010 or 2011. My wife and I lived in Bellevue, Washington, in the suburbs of Seattle, which is right on Lake Washington, giant, beautiful lake that is surrounded by enormous mansions from people who've made a fortune in Microsoft and Amazon stock, by and large. And we went kayaking. And so we were not married in our early to mid-20s, let's say.

47:38And we went kayaking on Lake Washington. We were paddling around these gigantic mansions. These are$25 million mansions, you know, 30 ,000 square feet just out of this world. And I remember kayaking and basically telling my then girlfriend, now wife, I was like, we need to go home. I need to work harder. I want one of those one day. And it was not envy. It was ambition. It was, I was being driven by that. I was like, what that is, I want it. And I think when you walk through the neighborhoods of big houses, that's probably it too. It's like, man, there's another world out there and I want to work hard to get it.

48:09I think this is not black and white, what I'm about to say, but I think it's roughly true. It's a shade of gray that it's easy to have that feeling when you don't know the people, when you're just viewing their house from the outside or just paddling past their house. It is more common, although not black and white. If you disagree with this, I probably agree with your disagreement. But it's more common that once you get to know the person, it becomes easier to envy them, to go from being inspired by their success to saying, man, you think you're better than I, don't you? Maybe that's not true for you and I in these situations, but for a lot of people, that's what it is.

48:43And so the line between being driven by somebody else's success, which is a very good thing, and then tiptoeing into envy, which is a catastrophe for both of you, is very common. And so I like that too. I will say, I'll go ahead and name this person. One of the people who has been the biggest inspiration in my career as a writer is James Clear, who wrote the book, Atomic Habits. Psychology money would not exist if it were not for Atomic Habits, full stop. James has inspired me so much. And he is a dramatically more successful writer than I am, objectively. and I have absolutely not a single cell of envy for him because he is the nicest guy you will ever meet.

49:28You will not meet a nicer human than James Clear. You will not meet someone who is as successful as he is and more humble than he is. He is another saint in my life. And because of that, I look up to him and I'm like, I adore every bit of this guy, so I cannot envy him. And so I am just inspired by his success, full stop. I will not name names of other writers who are also more successful than me that I don't like their personality. And sometimes, I hate to admit this, but it's true. Of course, I'm a flawed human that sometimes I look at their success with envy because I don't like them. I don't like their personality.

50:03I think they're jerks. I think they look down upon me and others. And I think about that a lot. James is so unbelievably kind that I am just inspired by his success with no envy whatsoever. But for a lot of these people in those mansions that you and I walk past or paddle past, if you got to know them and saw bits of the personality that you didn't like, it's very easy for that ambition to tiptoe into envy. I love James. He lives in Ohio about an hour from here where I'm standing right now. So I love this writing when he just wrote at jamesclear.com. So I'm happy to add onto the love fest. And we did a live podcast before Atomic Habit, like a year before the book came out.

50:39And I'm doing one with him actually next Wednesday in Ohio University on campus for all these students. It's going to be amazing. I'm pumped. but talk about as good of a human as it gets. We went to dinner with him and his wife, Christy, who is also equally as amazing of a human as James. It's like two perfect humans got together and now they have three kids. It's like, I just love Morgan. I mean, I view you as the same way. I love when great things happen to great people. When those great people worked like crazy for years and years and years to make those things happen and then they get the reap the rewards.

51:14That's again, back to it. That's when I feel like the world is right. The world is right. When people like Morgan Housel and James Clear have great things happen for them because of all of what you guys have done for others by having the guts to put your thoughts out into the world for everybody to judge. And then we read them or we talk to you and say, oh my goodness, man, this is really changing my life for the better. So I love, love, love stories like that. One more thing before we run, I want to talk to you about. I love standup comedy. I think they're some of the greatest speakers. They're the modern day philosophers.

51:49I think they're some of the smartest humans on earth because the way they think and they make you laugh. You wrote comedians are the best thought leaders because they understand how the world works, but they want to make you laugh rather than making themselves feel smart. And that is so true, like for leaders in general, to think about standup comedians, to think about how they make people feel. So not that leaders in the world are going to be the funniest people, but that last part is that so many people in the leadership space want to make themselves look or feel smart or feel better than you, whereas comedians just want to make you laugh.

52:27And I think there's a lot to learn from a leadership perspective from those. I'd love to hear what you think when you add on to that. Yeah. I mean, if going down the list of the great comics, George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Bill Burr, whoever they might be. If you strip out the humor, they are so smart. They are observing truths about psychology and society that are just very deep and profound, but they deliver it in a way that makes you laugh. And there's a great quote from Will Smith who says, nobody gives a shit about anything other than how you make them feel. I think that's universal in any context.

53:05The only thing you care about is how did you make me feel in this interaction. And comedians want to make you laugh, do make you laugh. And so they are delivering profound insights that can teach you about the world, teach about yourself, teach about others. And they do it in the most incredible way, which is rather than patting their own back and putting themselves up on a pedestal, they're saying, let me make you laugh for the next 60 minutes. And I adore them for that. And I feel like my favorite comics, if I watch their Netflix special, not only do I come away smarter with insights about myself and other people.

53:38But I do it in the best way possible. This is not like dense bedtime reading. I'm going to sit here and laugh for an hour. What could be better than that? I think there's some of the greatest people around. I'm with you 100%. Man, the latest book's called The Art of Spending Money, Simple Choices for a Richer Life. Not surprising. You'll stay up reading it forever. If you try to read it before bed, if you're on the Olympical, you'll be going for hours. It's one of those books. It's a Morgan Housel classic. I'm excited for it to get out into the world here soon, Morgan. Thanks again for coming back on the show.

54:07I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Thanks so much, Ryan. Appreciate it.

54:15It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Morgan Housel. A few takeaways from my notes. The simplest formula for a pretty nice life, independence plus purpose. The independence to do what you want and the wisdom to want to do meaningful things. It takes work to figure this out. It takes work to earn that independence, but it is worth it. The simplest formula for a pretty nice life, independence plus purpose. You got to have both.

54:57And then what money can't buy? Morgan told a story that he had learned from a priest that he'll never forget. And this is the type of priest that delivers the last rites in hospitals. He describes the difference between what kids say to their parents when they're about to die. The priest just tells them, hey, tell your parents what you're most grateful for. And in families with some issues and problems, the kids usually talk about something that costs money. You know, thanks for paying for my car or for college. But in the best families, the ones with great relationships, the kids say the same thing every time.

55:32And I think this is something for us who are parents to think about. And they say, quote, thank you for believing in me. Really powerful. And then observe what actually makes you happy. Morgan and I both told stories of family vacations. Mine to Utah to ski, his to Hawaii. And yes, the skiing was amazing. I enjoyed the time on the lifts. I enjoyed the time learning and seeing them overcome challenges. All of that was fun. But when I really analyzed the trip, what I really look back on and get emotional thinking about are the in-between moments, the times when we're laughing, falling down on the ground because of what one of us did, sharing meals together, being in a somewhat small house confined, playing games, making fun of one another.

56:22All of those little things or what seem like little things are the absolute best. And I think it's worth it to observe what actually makes you happy and then try to do more of those things. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Morgan Housel. I think it'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you also go to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and you write reviews, you subscribe to the show, hopefully rate it five stars by doing all of that.

56:55You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.