How To Create & Manage Your Personal Wealth | Morgan Housel | Modern Wisdom Podcast 142

Morgan Housel is a writer and investor. Understanding the basics of money management is something none of us are taught but all of us need. Today we get a fantastic run down by a guy who's spent most of the last decade thinking about what wealth can do for us, how we can attain it, and more importantly how we can keep it. Expect to learn... What is wealth? Why do rich people go bankrupt? Should I invest in Bitcoin? How can I maximise my wealth? What are the most important rules in trading? And much more. Extra Stuff: Follow Morgan on Twitter - https://twitter.com/morganhousel Check out Morgan's Website - https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/ Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #money #finance #wealth - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  And I think at the highest level, what I've thought about in terms of wealth, and that I really believe in terms of wealth, and I'm studying this stuff for so many years, and studying other wealthy people, and thinking about money myself, is I think what wealth can really do for you that will legitimately make most people happy is to the extent that you can use wealth to control your time, to give yourself options, to let you do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, that is wealth's great power.

• 0:32Chris Williamson?

  Mr. Morgan Housel in the building. How are you, man?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  I'm good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Chris.

• 0:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, me too. Me too. We're talking wealth today, right? Everyone, everyone wants it, but I don't know how to get it.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  It's, it's very elusive. And it's not even that people don't know how to get it. I think it's a lot of people don't even think about defining what it is, or what it's gonna mean to them, or what it could do for them, or why they want it. I think there's just a natural urge to want more of it, but answering the question why, it seems like a funny question to a lot of people. Like, of course I want to be wealthy. Why, why would you even ask? But you start getting these like more philosophical questions of like,

• 1:13Speaker 00

  why do you want to be wealthy? Is it a status thing? Is it because you want more stuff? Is it because you want more control over your time? Is it because you think it's gonna erase problems that, you know, that you currently have in your life? If you had more money, those problems would go away? And I think there's a lot of different elements to that. And I think at the highest level, what I've thought about in terms of wealth, and that I really believe in terms of wealth, and I'm studying this stuff for so many years, and studying other wealthy people, and thinking about money myself, is I think what wealth can really do for you that will legitimately make most people happy is to the extent that you can use wealth to control your time, to give yourself options, to let you do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, that is wealth's great power that it can do for us.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  But that's usually not what people think about wealth wanting to do for them. Usually what they think about it is more stuff. Bigger house, nicer car, better clothes, maybe some travel, whatnot. And there's nothing wrong with that. I like fancy cars. I like big homes. I like it all. Um, but we just have so much evidence. It's almost, it's, it's, it's almost cliche at this point to say, you know, buying the bigger house and the fancier car won't make people happy. We have a lot of evidence on that. That there's this hedonic treadmill that people, when they're anticipating getting the Ferrari, that's really exciting, but then they actually get it and they say, eh, it's just a car. It's just got a steering wheel and whatnot. And there's a lot of different elements to that. I think what's really, this is something I learned when I used to be a valet at a fancy hotel in Los Angeles when I was in college. These people would come in driving their Ferraris.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  And I would look at that, I would look at the car and be like, wow, that's, wouldn't it be cool if I had that car? Wouldn't it be cool if I was driving that Ferrari? And it took me a while to realize the irony of that thought, which was that those people drove in and I never said, wow, that driver, the guy driving the Ferrari, he is really cool. He must be impressive. As an observer, I just said, I wanna be in that car. I didn't care about the driver. All I did is I, I imagined myself driving his car. But the guy driving in, when he's driving the Ferrari, he's probably thinking, everyone thinks I'm cool. And they did it. The valet on the curb was thinking, I wanna be in, like, I don't care about you. I just wanna imagine myself be sitting in that seat.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  And I, it was just like this irony of like, no one cares about the guy in the car, but everyone wants to be the guy in the car. And, and to this, to like, to the extent that you wanna buy a Ferrari, and a Ferrari is like, of course, the extreme example. It doesn't even need to be that luxurious, but the extent that you want, uh, wealth to buy you stuff because you think it's gonna bring you respect and admiration and prestige. I think, eh, eh, you know, there's probably some of that that has a good signaling effect. But to, a, a lot of that is just a misconception about, you think people are thinking X, but they're actually thinking Y. I think that's a big reason why the perception of being wealthier seems like, oh, I'm gonna be so much happier when I'm wealthy. But if you look at the statistics about how happy wealthy people are, they're just, they're not that much, they're not that much happier

• 4:03Speaker 00

  than the rest of us. Of course, there's like a minimum level of meeting your daily needs and comfort and whatnot. But after that, a lot of like the status wealth, the it's propensity to make people happy is is really not there. But I bring that up because what we know does make people happier, has like a legitimate lasting long term impact on their happiness. Is when they can control their schedule, when they own their time, when they can do what they want, when they want. When they can wake up every single morning, seven days a week and say to themselves, I can do whatever the hell I want today. That makes people happy. So if you could use wealth to generate that, to own your schedule. And for ordinary people, maybe that's taking a job that doesn't have a long commute.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Or you're working in a job that pays less, but it's doing something that you love for and something like that. Or if it's at, you know, at a higher level, retiring early, just retiring when you want to, or retiring when you're thirty two, which is like a big movement these days. Stuff like that does make people happy. When you can control your time, that's a lasting impact. So when I think about wealth at like the highest, the fundamental level, the first question is like, what do you want it to do for me? And for me personally, it's just a a level of independence. It's a level of waking up every day and saying, I can do what I want now. That's what, that's the goal of wealth for me.

• 5:18Chris Williamson?

  I get it, man. Man, I've got a a million doorways open in my mind, one of them being um. Being rich might not make you happy, but being poor will make you miserable. Like, I love, I love that quote, and it really is, it really is very, very true. Anyone that you know, it's what I call diet brain, you know, when you're on a diet and the only thing that you can think about is food. It's the same, precisely the same as that if you have money worries. There is nothing that happens that is not framed by, but I don't have enough money, but what happens about the next paycheck, but about my bills.

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Right. My, my mother in law brought up an example years, maybe a decade ago now, that I really, I really thought was really insightful. She said, camping is fun, being homeless is miserable. The difference, the difference between those two is one is a choice and one is being forced. But you're sleeping in a tent outdoors, but rich people, and it's like, I really have to choose my words carefully and not, you know, and I, I, I really, I try to, to really empathize with people who are homeless, but that's, I think that's a great way to frame the extreme ends of it.

• 6:20Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Is that it's not even like the absolute conditions that we're in, it's whether we have a choice to do it or not.

• 6:26Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  And if you're forced to do something. Eh, that's against your will. You don't wanna be homeless. You don't wanna be out sleeping in the cold. That is miserable. But if you're, if you're camping, it's kind of the thrill to it. Some of that is because you can't for one night. You're not doing it all the time.

• 6:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  But it's just like, I, I thought framing that as, uh, you know, just the difference between whether you want to do it or not makes all the difference in the world.

• 6:47Chris Williamson?

  Hundred percent.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  There's this great story about FDR, Frank Delano, uh, uh, Roosevelt, where he's, his mom was talking about, I think FDR was like ten years old at the time. And he complained to his mom that he was unhappy in life because his entire day was structured in, in a really strict regiment. At seven AM, you do this. At eight AM, you do that. And he came to his mom and he said, all these rules make me unhappy. So his mom said, okay, for one day, you can do whatever you want. It's all, it's all up to you. And his mom wrote in her diary that night, that during that day when FDR could do anything he want, he followed his own ru, his old routine. He did the same, he ate at seven AM and then he did his homework at eight AM. But just, just the fact that he was doing that on his own will, rather than someone telling him to do it, made him feel better.

• 7:30Speaker 00

  It's like, people don't know what to do. And even if they get to do what they, if they're doing what they wanna do on their own terms, they still might do the same thing. But they're doing it on their own terms. They're camping, they're not homeless.

• 7:43Chris Williamson?

  That's such a good distinction, that agency, the, the, uh, uh, allowance to make a choice. Another thing as well, you were talking about the guy in the car and it makes me think about, uh, the Naval Ravikant quote, which is, um, you cannot take part of someone's life, you have to take the whole. It's like, you look at the guy in the car and you think, fuck, that car's cool. But what's the price he's had to pay for that car? Not two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Like, what are the sacrifices he's had to make? Like, how many relationships has he destroyed? How many, or, uh, uh, uh, she, has she decided not to have, forego children? So that she can make it to forty years old and be the CEO of some company?

• 8:23Chris Williamson?

  You don't know what the price that someone has had to pay to acquire that wealth is. And I think it comes back to what you said before. It appears to be, the, it's very, very essence. What wealth gives someone is freedom, agency, control of their own time, control of what it is that they get to do, what they have to do. And that's a much more holistic way of looking at it than like. Dan Bilzerian it. That's not to say that the Dan Bilzerian approach isn't a good thing, but you get what I mean.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally. And of course, you know, back to your point, when you see the Ferrari, you don't see what went on to getting that Ferrari. All you see are the shiny wheels and the big growling engine. You don't see working till midnight. You don't see, you know, never getting to hang out with your kids. Not that everyone who drives a Ferrari is in that, is in that boat, but there's a sacrifice that you don't see. But the person driving that Ferrari, they're acutely aware of it. They know how hard they had to work for that thing. So there's a big difference between what you see and what actually, what it takes to get that stuff. And that I think is another reason why the perception of wealth feels a lot better. The dream, the daydreaming of wealth feels better than actually having it. Because when you actually have it, you know, you, you, you realize all the costs that are associated with it.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I think there's this thing too, that once you've gained wealth, a lot of people get paranoid about losing it. And you don't, it's, it's not easy to think about that before you have it. When, when you're sitting here thinking about, if I won the lottery, what would like be like? You think about all the fun trips you're gonna take and all the beautiful house and the beach and everything. A lot of people don't, it's very hard to conceptualize until you're there, what it's gonna feel like to, to think to yourself, what if I lose all of this? What if I make a bad decision? What if I spend it all? What if the huge annual bonus that I got last year, that was a one-time fluke? I'm not gonna get that again? And then so therefore maybe I don't wanna spend, maybe I wanna hoard this? It's hard to really think about those feelings until you're in the trenches.

• 10:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Imagine those feelings, but those are real feelings that happen and people doing this. Bill Gates had a quote, uh, I heard him say this a long time ago, but I've yet, I have not been able to find the source from this. So I'm paraphrasing what he said, but, uh, it was something to the effect of now that he's the richest man in the world, like his biggest, his only money thought was not losing what he had. It was not growing more. He already had more than he could, it was just not losing it. And how many people who are thinking about Bill Gates' wealth, his money mind frame, think that he's sitting at home worried about losing what he has. He's got more than like, it's it's absurd, but that's what goes through people's heads. And I think that it's a really common thing that comes up when you hear very wealthy people talk about the psychology of

• 10:58Speaker 00

  their own money. Being paranoid about losing what they have is a big thing that comes up. And that's a stress that is hard. You know, of course, there's a a big point of this where it's like boo hoo.

• 11:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, there's someone who's living on the poverty line. That's like, oh, yeah, it sounds really hard.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Exactly. But there's also a sense, and this is not a popular statement, but first world problems are are real problems. Like anxiety in your head is real, no matter how wealthy or how absurd it looks to someone else. Anxiety is real. High blood pressure is real, no matter how crazy it looks. And a lot of people in those situations have issues that you cannot fathom until you're in their shoes.

• 11:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I I was talking to James Altucher the other day, who is he's like the patient zero for make it, lose it, make it, lose it.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:46Chris Williamson?

  Make it again. Also, as well, on that kind of relativistic worldview, I remember this really early memory with my mum and I was walking down the street and she's I was complaining about something, something small. I was cold or it was wet or it was whatever. And she turned and said, um, I was only 10 at the time. She turned and said, Christopher, look, like there's bigger problems in the world than you being cold or wet. And I remember turning to her and saying, yes, but this is my world. This is the biggest problem in my world right now. We're not absolute beings. We are relative beings.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Right. I mean, one person in the world right now is suffering more than everyone. And everyone else, their suffering is just is is all just relative, right? It's always like, it's all on a spectrum. And everyone, no matter where you are in that spectrum, like someone is probably, there's only one person who is who is suffering more than anyone. Everyone else is just a matter of perspective. And we all live on that. I mean, I I wrote a piece many years ago that a lot of people did not appreciate. But it was it was during, it was in 2011 during the Occupy Wall Street protests, if you remember that, where there was a big public backlash. I think a lot of it was justified against the 1%. And it was the 1% versus 99%. And I wrote a piece that said, look, in the United States, no,

• 13:05Speaker 00

  in the world, if your if your income is over, I think it was $32,000 per year. Uh, you're in the top one percent of the world. And everyone, so, and how many of the people in the United States saying, the one percent are, are, you know, it's unfair, they're ruining it. They are actually part of the one percent of the world. And I didn't mean it in this, I just wanted to add some perspective. I wasn't, I wasn't saying that their protests were wrong. I just wanted to say like, it's all a matter of perspective. And we're all sit on this, this spectrum. And we all kind of think that we are, where we sit is the, the baseline, the foundation. But it's not. Your foundation is like the top of the mountain for other people.

• 13:41Chris Williamson?

  That sphere of awareness is so biased, right? Like, it's not the one percent. It's not down with the one percent. It's down with my one percent. Down with the one percent that I see, the one percent that's close to me.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Your one percent.

• 13:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's what it is. Um, so.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's also, the point that I want to make too is that, you know, when I say something like that, I'm not saying you, like, you people are out of touch. Because everyone lives in their own world. Everyone, like, and again, like, your problems, whether you are like Bill Gates's problems or someone else, like, anxiety is anxiety, fear is fear. We're, losing sleep is losing sleep, no matter how wealthy you are. It still hurts the same the next morning. So, like, you, you, we, it's, it's wrong to say, hey, because if you make thirty-two thousand dollars, you're in the one percent, so you should feel wealthy? Shame on you for not, that's not the point whatsoever. The point is just, uh, you know, we all live on this spectrum. And it's all just a matter of perspective. And I think the bigger point is realizing that people who are on a much higher spectrum, i- it's not that if you're on a lower spectrum, you should feel thankful.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  It's that people who are on a much higher spectrum, they also hurt. They hurt as well. And sometimes that's not a popular view, I, I get that. But I think, I think to me, the bottom line is like, no matter what your wealth is, the psychology of money and what it does to our feelings and our wellbeing and the lack thereof is pretty universal.

• 14:58Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. So let's get into it. Let's talk about the basics of, of wealth creation. What is, what is wealth? Is there a difference between being wealthy and rich? And, and how, how do I get it?

• 15:07Speaker 00

  I think if there is a difference, of course, this is just, this is just semantics. This is not, and you know, this is sort of something I've made up. But my definition of rich is you have a big income. Big relative to your peers around you. So of course, that's a big range as well. But if you have an income higher than most of the people around your peer group, you can call yourself rich. Wealthy is much different. Because wealthy is you have assets in the bank that you can spend in the future. And that's very different from being rich, because a lot of people will have a large income this year, but they're not, they're not saving any of it. They're on the razor's edge of insolvency. They're blowing through all of it as quickly as they can. And those are, there are a lot of people who are rich in that sense, but not necessarily wealthy.

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Years ago, Chris Rock, one of my favorite comedians, made, made, it was in one of his skits, and he was talking about the difference between rich and wealthy. And he says, and I have to preface this thing, this is Chris Rock joke, I'm not taking, I'm not taking credit for any of the social dynamics of this, but he said, he said Shaq is rich. The guy who signs his check is wealthy. That's the difference between them. Like that's, and I think that was a great way to put it. And the, and the thing is like, no, Shaq is wealthy. Shaq is like, he's, he's got an empire. But I thought that was like a great way to frame it that applies to a lot of us too. Because there are people who make forty thousand dollars a year that save a lot of it. And they're wealthy. And there are people who make five million dollars a year that blow, that spend six million a year. And they are on the razor's edge of poverty.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  So it's just a big relative thing that doesn't like, rich has to do with your income, but wealth has to do with your savings rate. And savings rate is totally independent of your, of your richness, of your, your, your annual income. And we've seen this in a big way in the last decade, when the FIRE movement, Financial Independence Retire Early movement came along. Where you have people who are making forty, fifty grand a year, you know, sometimes more a hundred, two hundred grand a year. They live a very low-key lifestyle, and they save fifty percent of it or more. And those are people whose incomes are not that impressive, but they're wealthy. And you can compare that to a lot of people that we've heard of, I'm, I'm writing about, I'm writing a book on psychology and money right now. It starts with a story about someone who made a tremendous amount of money on an annual

• 17:20Speaker 00

  basis, and blew it all, and went bankrupt. And so, you know, we, I think we very often think that wealth is just how much money you make. And there's a lot of evidence that that's not it. It's a personal lifestyle choice, more than it is anything to do with the number of zeros in your annual income. And so, uh, to me, it's just been about, you know, it's less how much money you make or what your investment returns are. And more just the decisions that you make about how you're gonna spend your money and what you value in life. Do you value a big car? Do you value fancy clothes? Do you value jewelry, going out to dinner? A lot of these people, for, uh, for a lot of people, including me, some of those answers are, are yes, I do value those things.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  But there are other things that I really don't value whatsoever, and I would rather save money to build wealth. And that wealth that you save is what you, it's what people don't see. So it's the, like, wealth is the Ferrari that you did not buy. It's the car you didn't buy. It's the square footage that you did not buy. It's the first-class seat that you didn't buy. And I think that's, uh, like, of course, that's what it is. Wealth is what you don't spend. It's the wealth, it's the money that you saved up. The problem with that is that when we, when you and I and everyone else is trying to look at the world and see how other people are managing their money, all we see is what they spent. We don't see what they didn't spend. I see the car that you drive. I see the, the, the house that you're in. I don't see the house that you could have afforded, but you did not buy.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  And that house that you could have afforded, that's your wealth that you have right now. The car that you, that you could have bought, that you didn't, that's your wealth. But I never see that. And that's why I think a lot of people have this misconception of what wealth is, is because we don't see it. And I've used the analogy of like, uh, you know, when people exercise, they get into good shape, and being in good shape is something that you can see. You can see muscles, you can see, you know, thinness. You can see that. You can see the opposite of exercise. It comes in obesity and whatnot. And then therefore, so everyone else viewing you, I I can look at you, Chris, and say, you look like you're in good shape.

• 19:19Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  I can see that you probably, I can see that you exercise because I can see it. But but I have no idea what you're net worth. I I can't see your bank account. I can see your physique, but I cannot see your bank account. And that's why I think uh something like exercise is something that it's not very controversial, like people understand what it is. They have a good, they have role models, they have anti-models. Wealth is totally different. For wealth, there's people who live that you that you know, I think almost everyone knows someone who is ten times wealthier than you think, but you don't know that because you can't see it.

• 19:49Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:50Speaker 00

  But there's no, but there's no one who is ten times heavier than than you think. That doesn't exist, because you can see it. So I think like the fact that it's just hard to see wealth makes it very difficult for people to wrap their head around and learn about.

• 20:03Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. Again, I I can, you can tell that I'm currently spending a lot of time researching Naval Ravikant because every quote I'm coming out with is his, but the the forefront of my mind. Uh and he has a thing where he talks about socialized rewards versus internalized rewards. And he talks about the gym being a socialized reward, meditation being an internalized reward. And that's precisely the same dichotomy that we've got going on here, right? And even the wealth that some people have that is being shown outward is, as you've identified, it's not real wealth. I absolutely love that quote, that your wealth is the Ferrari that you didn't buy. It's the square footage in your house that you didn't choose. I think that's such a great heuristic for people to use.

• 20:46Chris Williamson?

  And again, with that, this is the sort of message which I think helps to educate people about what wealth is. We are memetic beings, right? We just look around and see what other people are doing. You're like, that guy's got money. That guy's got a fancy car. What's he doing with his money? It must be fine. And you just, oh, well, I I'll take that. You know, we don't learn about how to become wealthy in school. So I'll just learn by proxy of what other people do that have money. But you don't know if that guy, as you say, that guy's just on that, absolutely raises edge and next mu- next year he's going to be filing for bankruptcy. So do you?

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Sure. And here's the thing, there like there are, of course, there are a lot of people who drive Ferraris who are legitimately wealthy. But the only thing you know about their wealth is that they have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars less than they had before they had the car. That's all you know about it. So there there is a lot, and there's also a lot of people driving Honda Civics, driving Honda Accords, driving Toyota Camrys that are very, very wealthy, but you would never know it. So we just don't know how to size these people up. And when you don't know how to size someone else up. Most people have a lot of misconceptions, just a lot of distorted thoughts about what wealth is and how it's generated. That is, I think, why this topic is so difficult and sets people on a painful path very often.

• 21:58Chris Williamson?

  Got you. So fundamentals, is wealth just what you don't spend? Is that it? Or is it more about things that generate money on their own? Or is it money in the bank? Is it if I've got assets that are earning passively? How does that all fit together?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  I think less about that. It's more just what you've chosen not to spend. Take the most extreme example in the world, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates. They're both worth, let's just round and say they're both worth about a hundred billion dollars. They could have spent that money in the past. Jeff Bezos could have sold all of his Amazon stock in 2001 and gone, gone out and done whatever, but he didn't. He left it there. So his wealth is what he did not spend. That's true for everyone at every income level. So to me, it's less about how much you're earning on that wealth, whether it's like cash in the bank earning no interest, that's wealth. Stocks in an index fund, that's wealth. Even the equity in your home, your real estate, that's wealth. You know, it's not liquid wealth, but it's still wealth. It's just what you have not spent. Because I think

• 22:53Speaker 00

  anything that you could spend, but you have not spent is wealth. That's what it is. If you have, if you have the option to spend it and you choose not to, that is, to me, that's the definition of wealth.

• 23:05Chris Williamson?

  I love it. So how do I go about, I just need to spend less, I need to have money in the bank account? Are there any real fundamental principles about how I can maximize my wealth? How I can make the most of it?

• 23:17Speaker 00

  The easiest way, Chris, is just to be born to a wealthy parent. That's the easiest way.

• 23:21Chris Williamson?

  That would be great. Yeah, yeah. Dynasty money. That's what I want.

• 23:24Speaker 00

  And of course, I say that tongue in cheek, but that's honestly, I think people very often overlook, not the money that they necessarily inherit from their parents, but how much, how many doors are either open or closed for you based on who your parents are. Bash Karma Zander, who has shown that income among brothers is more correlated than height or weight. So literally, if you have a brother that is tall and rich, you are more likely to be rich than you are tall. It's more correlated, it's more, like, the income among brothers is more hereditary than height or weight. Uh, because those brothers probably had the same educational opportunities. They probably had the same doors open by their parents in terms of, hey, I can get your job, or I can't get you a job. I can send you to a good school, or I can't send you to a good school.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  So it's not, like, it goes both ways. The income is correlated on the downside and the upside. And it's, it's easy for a lot of people to, uh, to overlook how powerful that is. That some people are just born on a very different, uh, base. And it's, no one wants to, I think if you are very successful, you don't wanna say, well, I just got lucky. Like, successful people don't wanna say that. And, uh, but of course it's true, it's always true. You know, I've written, uh, forward something really minor that might not seem like a big deal, but to me, it's just, i- it's just extraordinary. Bill Gates went to the only high school in America that had a computer. Like, you think of, like, you think about that, and it's just like, of course he was lucky.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  That's not to say that he's not talented, he's not smart, he's not motivated, he's all those things. But look where he started. And would, and he had no input on that. He went to this high school, it was called Lakeside School in Seattle. Uh, I, I, I believe the story was because he was kinda, he was, uh, very smart and not doing well at his old school because he was so much smarter than the other kids. So his parents put him in this private school, Lakeside, Seattle, that happened to have a computer. And he found it, and who else was at the school, um, was, uh, was Paul Allen. The other, you know, he and Paul Allen was at the same school. And they started working on this computer together, and then, and, and then Microsoft came out of it. That's not to say that Bill Gates would not be enormously successful anywhere else, but he would not be Microsoft Bill Gates.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  He might be Attorney Bill Gates, or Doctor Bill Gates, very successful entrepreneur Bill Gates, but not a hundred billion dollar Bill Gates. Like, that part was a luck. And he, he's admitted this. He said, this is not a direct quote, but he said something to the effect of, without Lakeside, there would, there would not be Microsoft. That might actually be a direct quote, but I don't know, it was very close to that. So he's, he's not in denial about this, but I think there's that for everyone. I've had a certain amount of luck, you've had a certain, everyone has a certain amount of luck and misfortune. Bill Gates had a certain amount of misfortune. Bill Gates, not to harp too much on this, but uh, when Bill Gates was in school, he had uh, his best friend was Kent. I'm forgetting his last name, but his name was Kent.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  And Bill and Kent were the, the two computer geeks. And they did everything together. They were like inseparable best friends. They were equals in terms of their computer programming ability. And um, Bill Gates said, this is in uh, the documentary that's on Netflix, Bill Gates was reminiscing about Kent and he said, "Yeah, you know, Kent and I, I'm sure we would have gone to college together and we would have, we would have worked together." Kent may have been a co-founder of Microsoft, but he died in a mountain, in a mountaineering accident when he was like 18 years old. So that's like, that's the other side of Bill Gates got extraordinarily lucky, Kent got extraordinarily unlucky. And that's like, risk and luck have always been the, are the opposite sides of the same coin. They're both this idea that our outcomes in life uh, are influenced by more than just the effort that we put into life.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  And that, of course, people know that of course, but it's so easy to underestimate how powerful those things are. And then, so to, to bring all this back, when you said, you know, how do I get wealth? Uh, you know, I'm saying it tongue in cheek, but there's a really true statement in here of like, you have to be born lucky. You don't have to be born lucky, but oh my gosh, does it help? And no one should pretend that um, you know, a college educated white male in the United States is on the same plane as, as a child born in Somalia, you know, and of course, that's an extreme example, but we have, everywhere within there, there's a very powerful spectrum. Um, and so, so that's, that's a, a huge part of building wealth that we shouldn't overlook. And then, so that's, that's the first point I want to make.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  The second point is so much, and we, we talked about this earlier, so much of building wealth is just the lifestyle that you choose to lead, that you choose to lead. And this is true about all incomes groups, but living below your means is everything at, at any income group. At, at, at any income level, choosing to live below your means is the single most important thing to do to, to build wealth. And a lot of what that is, of what living below your means is, is just suppressing your ego. To say, "I could spend X, I could spend 10, but I'm only gonna spend 8." And the difference between the two is like, my ego going down, like, "I could have a nicer car, but I'm, no, I know, I'm not gonna do it." "I could have more clothes, but no, I'm not gonna do it." It's that gap that you're pushing against that's really meaningful.

• 28:27Speaker 00

  The point that I made recently about where you really get a benefit from exercising is after you exercise and you're very hungry because you just burned 500 calories and saying, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna replace those calories with a cheeseburger. My body is saying, hey, you're hungry, Chris, you're hungry because you just exercised, go eat a cheeseburger. And you're saying, no, I'm gonna suppress that hunger. That's the benefit of exercise. It's the suppressing that really helps you.

• 28:48Chris Williamson?

  Even though you feel, even though you feel like you've earned it, right? You feel like you've earned the cheeseburger. You feel like you've earned the money. The money is in your account. I worked hard for this money. I should be able to spend it.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  But you have to willingly say, I could and I deserve it, but I'm not going to. And it's not, it's not the earning, it's the, it's that push down that, that is what wealth is. And that to me, I think is really important. It just gets back to like the fire movement. People who make 50 grand a year, but that save half of it, they just have a tremendous propensity to keep pushing down, down, down. And they're wealthy because of it. And because they're wealthy, they have control over their time, they can retire early, they can do whatever the hell they want, and they're happy for it.

• 29:28Chris Williamson?

  How much of someone's set point, their materialistic set point, do you think is predetermined and how much is in our control? Because I'm fascinated by thinking about this. I very fortunately have a low set point for materialism, right? Like I, I don't take, it doesn't take much materialistically to make me happy. I like nice things, but like a new Nike t-shirt, which I'm currently wearing, or, you know, like whatever, like I, you know, I'm not, I don't have huge, huge materialistic goals. But I can imagine in some other iteration of the world, if my mom and dad had been more like keeping up with the Joneses when

• 30:08Chris Williamson?

  I was growing up, and that your, what you wore was a marker of your worth and, and other things like that, I can imagine a very different me. How, how much of that do you think can kind of be learned and unlearned?

• 30:22Speaker 00

  I think you're on to something really powerful. And I think a very extreme example of this, but that we see very often, are people who come from very poor backgrounds and become professional athletes. And they might go from literally from food stamps to making twenty million dollars a year. And I think those people have a much higher propensity for flash, for the biggest homes and the fanciest cars. Because it's like a chip on the shoulder from their past and showing like, I've, like, I used to be there, but now I'm up here. Whereas if you were born with a certain level of wealth, I think there's less just trying to prove yourself. You're just kind of like, this is me. And look, I'm where, I don't really have much to prove. This is just who I am and who I've always been. So I think you're on to something really, really important, which is kind of how you're raised, not just how you're raised,

• 31:06Speaker 00

  but your social status in life is really important. My wife, I say this with confidence, my wife will love me no matter what clothes I'm wearing or car I'm driving. If that were not the case, if I did not get as lucky with my spouse and I had a spouse who was really adamant that I drive the fanciest car, I might have a much higher propensity to spend than I do today. So has my spending been influenced by the way in which my spouse loves me? Absolutely. And that's, you know, I can't, it's easy for me to say, I'm frugal, I don't spend that much money, and therefore you should too. When things that are outside of my control, like the spouse that I happen to get lucky has a big influence on my spending. And that's why it's, there's really no one-size-fits-all advice.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  And sometimes I really get upset with, not upset, but I don't like financial pundits or financial advisors who say, you should do this. It's different for everybody. And so I think if you could add context about how people think about wealth and try to add different perspectives to think about it, but then say, now that I've maybe helped you think about it, you gotta go figure out what works for you. It was kind of the way to do it. Because we're all in such different, we all have different goals, we all have different aspirations, we've come from very different backgrounds, we see the world through a totally different lens through no fault of our own. It's not because I'm smarter than you or you're smarter than me. It's just we've seen the world in a different area through a different lens. So people have very different views on what's important to them.

• 32:35Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  And that is a big influence on spending.

• 32:38Chris Williamson?

  One of the things that I tell the guys that work for us, we have a lot of formative years, the adult formative years, as I call them, eighteen to twenty-one, big group of university students who come and work for us, it's their first professional position, it's the first time they've earned even a moderate amount of money, usually, and I'm talking to them about the way that they spend their money, and I'm like, look, man, like, you have two choices here, you can choose to keep some back and then spend on the summer holiday, or whatever it is, or you can continue to spend as you earn as it comes in, but if you drill this materialistic lifestyle now, and you don't break that habit, it's going to be, number one, hard for you to do later in life, and number two, if you still have

• 33:20Chris Williamson?

  a materialistic habit, when you get to be in your later adult years, you'd better hope that you've got an amazing job, because if you don't have an amazing job, and you've still got this materialism trigger going, like, you are in for a very, very tough time, because you're never going to feel good enough, you're never going to feel like you're earning enough.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think to bring this back to another analogy about athletes, I remember hearing a football player said, who said, a lot of former NFL players are very obese, they're just mortally obese, and the reason why that occurs is because after they, after their football careers are over, their eating stays the same, but their exercise is plunged. And I think it's, I think that's, and it's, I really, I haven't had a dozen, I'm sure that's the case, if you get used to eating ten thousand calories a day, and that's just your baseline, this is what you do, you eat, you wake up and you eat a seven egg omelette, that's just what you do, but you go from working out four hours a day to one hour a week, or whatever it is, that's gonna, that's gonna make a big impact, and I think it's very similar for income and spending as well, if you're making a great income,

• 34:24Speaker 00

  and you're spending a ton of money, you, you set your baseline about what, that's like your baseline for eating, it's like, I, I only feel good if I'm spending X, or if I'm eating X, and then if your income falls, for whatever reason, and I think everyone will go through a period in their life where their income falls at some point, some worse than others, but everyone will go through that at some point. You better hope that your spending is in line with whatever your new income is. And it's very difficult to go down. Going down in life is so difficult. Going down one inch is so difficult. And going up ten feet can feel like just okay. No one ever wants to go down. If you have to, if you have to downsize your house against your will, just because it's what you can afford, that's gonna have a big impact on your well-being.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  So to me, it's just like creating a gap between likely future scenarios to my income, of like my income going down and what I'm spending today. And just making sure that, you know, asking yourself, if my income fell by five percent, ten percent, fifty percent, what would that do to my spending right now? Um, and, and maybe something like fifty percent is, is too extreme to think about for some people, but, um, for, for a lot of people it's not. And I think just looking at your, your habits in life and saying like, maybe this works right now, but let me think about alternative scenarios in the future. And I think the biggest guardian of your happiness, of your well-being, is having the biggest gap in between what you need to spend to be happy and what could happen to your income in the future.

• 35:51Speaker 00

  The wider that gap is, the better you're gonna be. Because that's, you're, you're, you're decreasing the scenarios in which you're ever gonna have to, uh, push your spending level down.

• 36:02Chris Williamson?

  An inbuilt safety net, isn't it?

• 36:04Speaker 00

  Inbuilt safety net. If you can have a situation where your income can fall thirty or fifty percent and you still don't need to change your spending, you're, you're probably, like, in terms of financial happiness, well-being, you're probably gonna be set for life. If you're in a situation where if you take a three percent pay cut and you gotta sell your car, and that's not an extreme example, that's not a crazy scenario that I just proposed, you're gonna have a really hard time in life. So I think setting these things that you have control about, how much money you spend. A lot of, for a lot of people, how much money you make is not necessarily that in your control. To a great extent, but how much you spend is much more in your control. And I think it's the more important part of the equation than how much money you make in terms of financial wellbeing.

• 36:45Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Going back to the point that you mentioned about people getting lucky. There's this like hyper cliche now, right of that guy that we all know that put a thousand dollars into Bitcoin 15 years ago and just through sheer ridiculous market return now doesn't need to do anything. You know, that's a perfect example that I've just, I've just sort of had in my head about that. One of the questions that I got off Matt from Podcast Notes, this is specific to Bitcoin. There might be some people listening who think like cryptocurrency, I've heard I can make, make my fortune on that. There's this guy on the internet, 50 Cent once made like a whatever, and then he sold it to Vitamin Water, whatever it was. Question is, is there any reason it doesn't make sense to invest 1 to 5% of your net worth into Bitcoin?

• 37:32Speaker 00

  I think that can make sense for a lot of people. It does not make sense if the, the math that you're doing is by saying, oh, I can only put 1% in, but Bitcoin is going to go up 10,000 fold. So that 1% is still going to make me rich. If that's your calculus, I think it's, it's just setting your expectations of, look, Bitcoin's gone up a lot in the last decade. What does that mean for it going forward? No one has any idea. I really don't think anyone has any idea. It's not to say that you shouldn't, you shouldn't own it. A lot of very smart people that I know and who's, who's thinking and decisions I really respect own more than 1% of their money in Bitcoin. I think if you're looking at it as a flyer in terms of this is probably not going to do anything,

• 38:15Speaker 00

  but there's a small chance that it's going to do well, then fine. I think it's also fine to have 1% of your money in Bitcoin if you just think it's intellectually stimulating. You like the math behind crypto and cryptography, it's really interesting to you. I think that's great. We don't have to make our portfolios based off of, you know, the perfect academic portfolio of how are we going to maximize returns? I think if, if your portfolio is interesting to you, intellectually stimulating to you and helps you sleep at night and it keeps you engaged with your money versus just forgetting about it and ignoring it, I think that's a great thing. So I don't personally own any Bitcoin, but a lot of people who I respect do.

• 38:52Chris Williamson?

  That's kind of like a Patreon for content providers, right? It's like, I've got my favorite YouTuber and I'm gonna put some money towards him making his thing. So I really love blockchain. So I'm gonna put some money into something that contributes to the blockchain. And now I feel like I'm a part of it.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a big part of it. And people feel good about that. The biggest variable in terms of how well you will do in your investment portfolio, this is true whether it's stocks or real estate or Bitcoin or anything, is your ability to maintain those investments when times get hard. When there's a bear market, when Bitcoin's gone down, your stocks have gone down. If you can still just hold on during those periods and hold on and hold an asset for 10 or 20 or 30 years, that's the variable that's gonna really determine your success. And if you love an asset, you love Bitcoin, you love Google stock, you love real estate, whatever it is, if you love it, and by the fact that you love it means that you're gonna be more likely to hold on to it for the long run, that's a good thing. That's a great thing.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  So a lot of people, there are a lot of investors who will say almost like, as a badge of honor, I'm not attached to my investments. I'm very unemotional about my investments. And they're proud of that. And I've often thought that's not something to be proud of. I think you wanna love your investments. Because if you love them, you're more likely to stick around with them when they get hard. If you don't love your investments, and then you own some stocks and they have a bad year, and you're like, ah, I don't love these, I'm just gonna get rid of them, just sell them. That is gonna impact your performance to a huge way over time. Whereas if you love your investments, and even in the bad year, you say, look, Google stock's down 30%, but I love Google, I'm sticking with it, that's gonna pay off in the long run.

• 40:29Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 40:30Speaker 00

  So I think, because in any asset, no matter what it is, you get paid to deal with uncertainty. That's where paychecks come from in the investing world. Like, people don't often ask the question, like, you can make a lot of money in investing. Why? Who's giving you this money? Why are you making money? You have to give something up. It's not free. What is the cost of returns? There's an admission price that you have to pay. And the price that you have to pay for any investment is dealing with uncertainty. It's dealing with saying, I'm gonna put a thousand dollars in the stock, and it might go down, it might go up, it might flatline, but over time, I think it's gonna do well. And dealing with that uncertainty is what you get paid for. So if you can stick with an asset when it's out of favor, when it's going through a period where it's not doing well,

• 41:14Speaker 00

  if you can stick with that, rather than saying... Oh, if it's not doing well, I don't want it anymore. Your ability to stick with it and put up with the hard times is what you get paid for in investing. That's where the money comes from. That's the price of admission. And I think people who only want the upside and are not willing to put in the downside, or when the downside comes in and say, I don't want this. I don't want to own these stocks anymore. Those are people who are trying to sneak into Disneyland. They're not paying the, they're not paying the, the, the cost of admission. They don't want to pay the price. And I think if you're willing to pay the price, the rewards are, are great. So if you can just put up with the downside and, and view the downside as this is what I'm getting, this is, this is why I'm going to get made. This is not a punishment, but this is the specific reason that I'm going to do well over time.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  And if you don't want to pay that price, there are other assets that you can, you can go in that have certain returns, like cash. You know, the return on cash is very predictable. You're not going to lose money on your cash. You're going to earn 1% a year. It's very predictable, but it's a low return. If you can take a variable return, uncertain return, that's where the big rewards come from. So I think, you know, just viewing it as a, a cost of admission rather than a fine for doing something wrong is a really important way to view volatility, no matter what your investing is.

• 42:26Chris Williamson?

  It's a lovely way to frame it. It's the same as going to the gym, right? The discomfort in the gym is the growth. That is precisely what's triggering the growth.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  If someone said, I don't like exercising, or, or if someone said exercising doesn't work because my arms hurt after I do bicep growth. Like, they're supposed to hurt. That's what, that's, that's the point. You're tearing your muscles and it hurts and then they'll grow back bigger. That's the whole frigging point. And I think for people that makes sense in investing and they, or, or for exercising, I should say. And they almost like it, like, oh, I'm so sore the next day. That was a good workout. They get it, but no one says, oh, my brokerage account, my brokerage account's down 30%. This is a good, same thing.

• 43:08Chris Williamson?

  So we've spoken there about the success of people who are able to predict things that are coming forward. You know, there's all Forex signals online and, you know, a, a number of websites who can give you advice about what stocks to buy for this year and stuff like that. But I know I've read some stuff that you've put out about the relative success of investors who've actively played the market versus those who've just put their money into a fund or an index and just left it. Do you have some, some examples of that?

• 43:39Speaker 00

  I think the biggest thing, in general, just as a starting comment here. The history of the accuracy of economic forecasting, investing forecasting, is very, very bad. Even the smartest people with the most information, the ability to truly predict what's gonna happen next in the economy and the stock market is horrendous. This is true across generations, around the world. It's just not something we're very good at. And there's two ways to look at that. You could say, one, we're just not smart enough, we're not looking at the right data, we're doing this wrong, and that's why we're not very good at predicting what's gonna happen next. I don't really think that's the case. I think people, if we know what events we're looking at and we have the data,

• 44:23Speaker 00

  I think people actually are pretty good at predicting what's gonna happen next. But we're still not good at forecasting because we can't predict, we cannot analyze, we cannot forecast events that we can't even think about because they're complete surprises that no one would ever think about. We just give you this current example. The biggest story in the global economy right now is the coronavirus. How many people, if you go back three weeks ago, I'm not saying 10 years, go back three weeks ago, when every Wall Street analyst was putting out their 2020 forecast, here's what to expect in the global economy for 2020, how many people said coronavirus? Zero. None of them said that. And I think that example is true all the time. The biggest news story is what no one's talking about.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  And what makes a big story is specifically that no one's talking about because they can't prepare for it. So it's not that we're bad at forecasting the economy because we're not doing the right calculations. It's that we can't calculate things that are unknown. And the unknowns are always what moves the needle the most. If you go back historically, September 11th, huge impact on the economy. And on September 10th, no one, except the terrorists who were involved with it, could have known that it was coming. No one, it was not, it was not that our models did not accurately, you know, didn't accurately analyze what was gonna happen on September 11th. They just did not know what was gonna happen. Pearl Harbor is another example. Lehman Brothers not being able to find a buyer in 2008.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  These are all things that no one the day before could have known that were gonna happen.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  And things that are surprising are always the biggest risk because people have a very good ability to prepare for things that they see coming, which is why I think another kind of good analogy from nature is that earthquakes tend to kill more people per event than hurricanes. And the reason why is because earthquakes come out of the middle of nowhere. You can't predict them, they just boom, they're here. Whereas hurricanes, a lot of people in the modern developed world at least, can have a one week warning before it comes. And they get bored at their windows, they can evacuate. Of course, that's not a blanket statement because there's people that, like Hurricane Australia, where we just didn't, we could not evacuate, we did not evacuate people. So it's not a blanket statement. But earthquakes are deadly because no one can see them coming and no one can prepare for them.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  And that's what makes them, that's what makes them so dangerous. The, just the specific fact that they are surprises is what makes them dangerous. And that's true for the economy as well. So every, the smartest people will say, what is the biggest economic risk for 2020 or 2019? I think the right answer is always, no matter what year it is, is the biggest risk is what we're not talking about. And we can't talk about things that we don't know, that's always the case. And a lot of people think that's kind of a bullshit answer, but that's, I think it's always, it's always the case. The biggest risk is what we don't see.

• 47:11Chris Williamson?

  I've got a, a article clipping here from Richard Shotten, who's a past Modern Wisdom guest, and he tweeted this out recently, and this is just pure Morgan Housel, it's got your name written all over it. AJ Bell, the investment platform, found that the 10 shares in the FTSE 350 index with the highest proportion of sell ratings from analysts had generated a positive return on average of 28.9% last year. That was greater than the 23.2% return generated on average by the 10 FTSE 350 stocks with the biggest proportion of buy ratings.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's, that, that kind of analysis too holds true in the United States. It's almost always the case. So that's exactly what makes that, you know, I think the funny thing, of course, people earn a dollar a year for making those ratings, that's, that's a different story. But I think a lot of what's going on here is just classic contrarian. I, I, I think, well, there, there's several things going on here. We can just say it's contrarianism, and because they had sell ratings, the stocks were cheap, and because they were cheap, they went on to do well. I think that's, that's, that's partially true. A lot of it though is that the narratives that make sense. That a lot of analysts will say this stock is a sell because X, Y and Z because its industry is contracting, because its management team is not very good. A lot of those narratives that make sense and are comfortable for analysts, even smart analysts,

• 48:32Speaker 00

  to put out there are not actually what drives stock prices over time. It might make sense that, you know, if this industry is contracting, this stock is going to perform poorly. But there are so many other variables that influence stock prices that don't fit those really clean narratives, you know? If the stock market as a whole is going up, then even if that company's industry is going down, the stock still might go up too, just because everything is kind of moving. You know, there's, for every individual stock, there's kind of three general dynamics that will move it around up or down. There's the movement of the overall stock market, there's the movement of that industry, and then there's movement of that individual company. And a lot of times when we're analyzing a company, we're just thinking about the news

• 49:15Speaker 00

  that affects that company, or maybe just that industry. But there's also these other forces that have nothing to do with the company or with the industry that have a big influence on stock prices. If this is late 2008, every stock went down. It didn't matter if the companies were doing well, if they were in an industry that was recession-proof, everything went down. And if this is 2019 or 2013, everything went up. I'm speaking very generally, it's not 100% true, but it's very broadly true. Just because there were other macro forces that were independent of the company that influenced prices. I think that's a part of the reason why the correlation between analyst estimates and ratings that are based off of these narratives that might make a lot of sense don't have that much relationship between what the stock actually do over the next year.

• 50:00Chris Williamson?

  Do you ever get really frustrated having to swim through articles of people who are constantly saying that they know what's going to happen in the future financially or economically?

• 50:11Speaker 00

  Uh, no, because I don't, I don't swim in that pool. I just, I, I go to a different pool. I don't swim there. I just, I don't, I just don't read that stuff. It's just not relevant to me. And I, and I, I, I need to be clear that I'm not saying that it's, it's bad, that it's wrong, that it's worthless. That's not what I'm saying. But it's not relevant to the game that I'm playing. Some people, if you're a day trader, then a lot of that news might be relevant to you. But for me, someone who's trying to invest for the next forty or fifty years, it has no relevance whatsoever. It's not going to influence my decisions. It's definitely not going to cause me to take an action. So I'm not going to read it. And I think it's really important for people to realize that investors play different games. We're not all playing the same game. Some people are day traders. Some people are trying to manage for the next quarter. Some people are trying to manage for the next a hundred years.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  And because we're playing different games, we should not pretend that all the information is equally relevant to us. And so something that is, is relevant to one person, it's not that I can say that's bad information and that's, it might be good for someone, it's just not right for me.

• 51:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  And so I, I just, I just try to figure out what is relevant to me and that's all I want to read. And everything else, I'm just, I'm not going to pay any attention to it.

• 51:19Chris Williamson?

  So I suppose one man's signal is another man's noise.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  That's it, that's exactly it. And, uh, you know, this, this, this, this happens very often. I think it happens a lot on financial TV where someone says, is this stock a good buy? And the, the right answer you need to ask is like, well, for who? For a twenty-two-year-old day trader or a ninety-seven-year-old widow? Those are like, we shouldn't pretend that those are the same people. So it's like, goodbye for who? Uh, that's a really important question to ask and just realizing what game you're playing and only paying, paying attention to information that is relevant to your game. But I, I, so you get a lot of danger when we're, you know, we're all in the same field running into each other. And we think we're playing the same game, but we're actually totally, totally different

• 52:04Speaker 00

  things. Um, that I think is a big cause for investor confusion and mistake and regret is taking the cues from people who are playing different games than you. So, you know, you own Google stock and it falls after earnings and you might think, oh, like maybe, maybe these people know something that I don't because they're selling stock. Maybe I should sell too. But maybe the people who sold it are day traders and you're a long-term investor. So like, it might have made sense for them to sell and for you to hold. That makes, that's not a contradiction. That's not a difference in view. It's just a reflection of different games.

• 52:38Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Morgan, we made it, man. We made it. We made it to the end. We got through wealth. We got through the market. We got through Bitcoin. We got through financial forecasting. We've completed it. So, um, where can we go? People want to hassle you. People want to check out your stuff. Where should they head online?

• 52:52Speaker 00

  The biggest area that I live online is Twitter. My, my handle is Morgan Havel, my first name, my first, first and last name. And that's where I spend most of my time online. That's where I'm the most active online. And then my blog is collaborativefund.com/blog. That's where all my writing goes.

• 53:05Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. Man, thank you so much. I'd love to have you back on at some point in the future. We can see how this, this year or later in the year has gone down.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Let's do it. And, uh, you know, later this year, my book, my book's coming out. It's going to be available for sale September 7th. So maybe when that's the case, let's do another episode.

• 53:21Chris Williamson?

  We're booked in. Let's get it. Let's get it locked in already, man. I know what your schedule's like, so I'll, I'll reserve myself a date now.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  That's smart. I like it. Yeah. This has been a lot of fun. Really enjoyed this.

• 53:31Chris Williamson?

  Awesome, man. Thank you so much.