The Science of Happier Spending & How to Set Healthy Boundaries - SYSK Choice

Does your signature reveal more about you than just your name? It turns out the way you sign your name may influence what people assume about your personality, confidence, and even your success—whether those assumptions are accurate or not. Listen as I explain what your signature may be saying every time you put pen to paper. https://graciousliving.typepad.com/the_write_event/2003/11/what_does_your_.html Why do so many purchases that seem exciting at first end up leaving us...underwhelmed? We chase the next gadget, car, vacation, or pair of shoes hoping it will make us happier, yet the feeling rarely lasts. Is there a better way to spend your money so it actually improves your life? According to Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, there is—and it has surprisingly little to do with how much you spend. Michael is the author of the book Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending (https://amzn.to/3iFzDOq). Listen as he explains how a few simple changes in the way you spend can produce far more satisfaction than buying more stuff. Setting boundaries sounds simple—until you're the one who has to do it. Say yes too often and people take advantage of you. Say no too forcefully and you risk damaging relationships. So how do you establish boundaries that people actually respect without coming across as selfish, cold, or difficult? Joining me with practical, real-world advice is licensed therapist and relationship expert Terri Cole, author of Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free. (https://amzn.to/3AhKXwz) Most people only see what happens in the dining room of a restaurant. The real story unfolds behind the kitchen doors. Restaurant workers have revealed some surprising secrets about what goes on behind the scenes—from menu tricks to customer habits—that may change the way you order your next meal. Listen as I share some of the most fascinating insider revelations. (https://abcnews.go.com/Business/13-secrets-waiter-tips-menu/story?id=16948508) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

  I thought I had a pretty good idea of where my money was going. And then I started using Monarch. And it turns out, there's a big difference between thinking, you know, and actually seeing it all laid out in front of you. I've spent some time with Monarch now. I've connected everything and really tested it out. And I like it a lot. Your accounts, investments, savings goals, spending, they're all there in one place. But what really got my attention is Monarch doesn't just show you what's happened. It helps you spot what's happening right now. They have an AI weekly recap, and it can flag a spending spike, or a change in your net worth, or upcoming expenses,

• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

  things that are surprisingly easy to miss on your own. And I found that, once you actually see the numbers, you look at your money differently. If you've ever wondered, where exactly is all my money going? I think you'll find Monarch pretty eye-opening. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SYSK at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code SYSK.

• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, people make assumptions about you based on your signature. So what does your signature say about you? Then, how to buy things that really make you happy, because we often buy things that don't.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  As people get older, they tend to buy larger living spaces. The size of your house, lots of research shows, is completely uncorrelated with how happy you are with your life. It feels like a nicer house would be better for you, but when you look at the data, it doesn't seem to do much for us.

• 1:52Mike Carruthers?

  Also, a peek behind the curtain to reveal what goes on in restaurants that you never see. And the importance of setting clear boundaries that others will respect.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Here's the thing that we have to do if we're the person who wants to be healthier with boundaries. We can't be so afraid of conflict that we live in these silent agreements that make us really resentful. Because is that loving?

• 2:16Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming,

• 3:05Mike Carruthers?

  they have down jackets and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50% to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too.

• 3:49Mike Carruthers?

  And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

• 4:11Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I probably have to talk quickly here. You know, I have a relatively soundproof studio to produce this podcast in. But this morning, my neighbor had his construction crew jackhammering his driveway. I guess he's ripping the whole thing up. And as soundproof as it is, when there's a jackhammer, like 25 yards away from the window, you can still hear it. So if you do hear noises, as you're listening, that sound like a jackhammer, it is a jackhammer. And I'm going to try to voice my parts for this podcast while they're on their coffee break and lunch break. First up today, your signature.

• 4:56Mike Carruthers?

  Your signature is really your logo. People who you have never met will make assumptions about you based solely on how you sign your name. A well-thought-out and well-executed signature shows creativity, attention to detail, and discipline, according to handwriting analyst Elaine Ness. So here are some things to consider about your signature. Illegible signatures are, they're very common, but they do send a message. And the message is, I don't care if you can read this or not. And you have to ask yourself, is that really the message you want to send? If your signature is particularly large compared to the written text above it,

• 5:38Mike Carruthers?

  people may perceive that you're trying to make up for some inadequacy. A flashy or showy signature reveals the need to be noticed. And a tiny signature gives the message that you don't want to be noticed. The idea that an ornate signature is hard to forge is actually not true. A legible, natural, connected, and quickly-written signature is probably the best way to go. It sends a positive message about you, and it is very difficult to duplicate successfully. And that is something you should know.

• 6:14Mike Carruthers?

  How do you decide what to spend your money on? Perhaps you've heard the advice that it is better to spend money on experiences rather than things, because experiences and the memories they create will make you happier than physical things. Well, it's a little more complicated than that, and it's a lot more interesting than that, according to Michael Norton, who's been researching how and why people spend their money and what it does or doesn't do for them. Michael is a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of the book Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. Hi, Michael, welcome.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Thanks so much for inviting me on.

• 6:54Mike Carruthers?

  Money is such an important topic to people. We talk about it a lot. But really, the talk isn't so much about how we spend it.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  It's funny, there's so much thought that people put into how much to save and when to save, and do they have enough saved? But then they have an amount of money that they decided they don't need to save, that they can spend. But we often put absolutely no thought at all into how we're going to spend money. So we spend it on things that are immediate. We spend it on things that we think we want, that will make us happy. And in our research, we really try to get people to think more carefully about anything you are buying. Is that thing you're buying actually going to do anything for your happiness? And if not, maybe you could think about doing something else with that money.

• 7:39Mike Carruthers?

  But you must differentiate between discretionary spending and things you have to spend money on. I spend, most people spend, a lot of money on things like rent, mortgage payments, you know, utilities, food. It's not a question of whether it makes me happy or not. If I didn't pay those things, the consequences would make me unhappy. But those are just things you spend money on.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So we sometimes have people do a credit card audit, where we have them go through their credit card statement for last month and start categorizing things. You know, what did I spend it on? What are the buckets of my spending? And then we also get them to think about, did that make them happy last month as well? So it's kind of a spending audit, but also a happiness audit. And for sure, of course, most of the money we spend is stuff we have to buy. We need rent, we need a roof over our heads, we need clothes and things like that. We're trying to say, once you've taken care of the basics, how could you think differently about the money you have left to really get something out of it?

• 8:40Mike Carruthers?

  So give me some examples of things that people spend money on that they think might make them happy, that really don't make them happy.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  One of the biggest categories, if we have people do an audit of themselves, it turns out that tons of the money we spend is on stuff, and in particular, stuff for ourselves. So it's true that we need pants, for example. But we probably don't need as many pairs of pants as we have. Same with shoes, same with technology, same with everything else we have. Same with coffee every single day. It's not that those things are bad to buy. It's that we're often buying too much of them, or we're buying them too often. And we can see in the data that when we do things like that, your 50th coffee of the week, it turns out, doesn't really make you very happy to be drinking that much coffee. That's the kind of spending where we'd ask you to say,

• 9:30Speaker 01

  stop on stuff for yourself and try thinking about a different category of spending.

• 9:35Mike Carruthers?

  But a lot of that kind of spending, like when I buy a cup of coffee or a pair of pants, I'm not thinking I'm doing this to make me happy. I'm doing this because, you know, I need to do this, or this is just what I do. I get a coffee in the morning, that's just what I do. It's part of my routine. But I'm not sure happiness, I don't put happiness in the mix.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I think it's partly that sense of, this is just how I spend my money. People often have the feeling that money comes in and money goes out, and they're a little bit in control of it, but not exactly. It just feels sometimes like spending happens to us instead of us taking control of it. And when we buy pants and when we buy coffee, typically, people are doing that because they think it's going to be good. I really like those pants, or I really need coffee right now. And right after they buy those things, they do feel good. Coffee tastes pretty good. We like new pants and things like that. But what we see is that in the long run, those things don't add up to any more happiness, that they're just kind of getting us in a wheel of doing the same thing over and over again. And instead, we can think about, you

• 10:40Speaker 01

  know, maybe forty-nine coffees is enough this week, and I could take the money from the fiftieth coffee and do something a little bit different with it.

• 10:48Mike Carruthers?

  By doing what? What could I spend that money on that would make me happy instead of just buying the fiftieth cup of coffee?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  One opposite of buying stuff for yourself is very simply getting rid of the stuff part and spending money on experiences instead of on stuff. Experiences, really broadly defined, I mean, a trip to space would be fantastic as an experience, but also going out to lunch with a friend, spending time on your hobbies, for example, which are more experiential. Those kinds of purchases where instead of just a thing you're putting on a shelf, it's a thing that you're going to interact with, that you're going to have an experience with. Maybe you'll even do it with other people instead of by yourself. Experiences, on average, tend to get us more happiness with our money than buying more of the same stuff.

• 11:34Mike Carruthers?

  You've said a couple of times, you know, it would be better to do this, or it would be better to do that. These seem like judgments that you're making. But what do you mean by better? What are you supposed to get from this? Is it a feeling? Is it a sense of satisfaction? What is better?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  We do a few things to try to decide, you know, on average, should people shift from doing more of that to doing more of something else? And one of the key ones is if we ask people, you know, would you like to be happy in life? Most people say, yes, I would. If we say, would you like to be happier? Most people say, yes, I would. And so then we ask them with any behavior they engage in, do you think that behavior is making you happier? When you did that, did you feel the same after? Did you feel worse after? Did you feel better after? So we're trying, in a sense, to help people, if they have this goal of being happy in their lives, feeling good about their lives, we're trying to give them some advice, a little bit of guidance on things they might do that might

• 12:35Speaker 01

  maximize that happiness for them. And so you can think about, sometimes we do experiments where we give people money and send them out in the world and have them spend it in different ways. For example, buy something for yourself or buy an experience. That night, we can call them up and say, how happy are you? Literally, just one to 10, how happy do you feel right now? And what we can see across many, many experiences and a lot of research is, some things, after you do them, when we ask, are you happier? People tend to say, not really. And other things, after they do them, if we say, are you happier? People tend to say, yeah, I'm a little bit happier. When people do more of these things over time, we do see that those people tend to be happier overall. So when we shift you

• 13:16Speaker 01

  from business as usual with spending to some of these other pursuits, those people also tend to say, I'm actually happier with my life overall now.

• 13:25Mike Carruthers?

  I don't, you know, I don't know. I mean, if I go out to dinner with my wife, I don't know that, is that the kind of happy you're talking about? Like, well, that was fun. That was nice. That's happy. Yeah.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  For sure. I think that's part of it. So I think we're not often saying, I'm about to buy something, and then I stop and say, hold on, let me assess my happiness on a scale and ensure that, you know, this happiness, this purchase is more, is better than another purchase. We rarely do that. But when we do buy things, we're doing it with the expectation that we're going to feel good about it. So when we buy a new car, or a new house, or a new anything, we're doing it, in a sense, almost implicitly saying, this is a really good use of my money, because I'm really going to like that thing that I'm going to buy right now. I could buy anything in the world for that amount of money, but I've chosen to buy this specific thing with the theory that we're going to like the fact that we bought it. What we try to ask people to do instead is, there's nothing wrong with

• 14:21Speaker 01

  buying whatever you want to buy, but sometimes take that beat before you buy and say, hold on, this feels like it's going to be really great. But if I think about what it's really going to do for my happiness, is it really going to pay off in any way? It's a little bit like eating healthy is one way that I think about it, which is, when we get a pizza and eat it, it's awesome. You know, there's no doubt that pizza is fantastic, and we get it because we like pizza, and as we eat the pizza, we love the pizza. So we're making a good decision up to that point. After the pizza is where the problem happens, though, which is, yes, it tasted good right then, but afterward, maybe we ate too much. Maybe we have health problems later. We're not often thinking about not just the feeling

• 15:05Speaker 01

  when we're buying and consuming, but what it means for our lives overall. We get stuck in the moment in the, I want a new shiny thing. And it's harder for us to bump out of it to say, wait, do shiny things actually make me happy? Have they made me happy in the past? Or should I be thinking differently about the problem?

• 15:23Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't it just human nature that we like shiny things until we get them? That really, it's the anticipation or the pursuit of the shiny thing. And then, once we get whatever the shiny thing is, you know, in a little while, you know, it's in the closet and we forget about it.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. And if you, if you think, you know, if we were smart as humans, and I'm including myself here as not being smart, why haven't we learned by now? You know, so we, we have a closet full of shoes that we never wear. So we know, we can see it every day, that each of those that we bought ended up not doing much for us. But the next pair of shoes seems like it's going to be the amazing pair. For some reason, we have a really hard, we're very good at learning all kinds of things in the world. For some reason, we're really not good at learning that something that might feel good in the moment doesn't necessarily mean it's going to have any lasting impact on us.

• 16:17Mike Carruthers?

  So what you're talking about is really a very deliberate shift in how we think about money and what the goal is for that money.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  The goal is to think about every $5 you spend, is that the optimal way to spend that $5? When you spend even $5, you are foregoing something else, and maybe sometimes that something else would be better for you. Maybe sometimes, instead of buying a $5 thing, taking a friend to lunch would be a better use of that money. But we don't often think of the money in those terms. We get really focused on the category that we're in. What should I have for lunch? What TV should I buy? Instead of thinking, I have money, how should I allocate it across everything in my life to make sure that, overall, I'm allocating it in a way that will make me happy?

• 17:06Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about how you spend your money, and my guest is Michael Norton. He is a professor at Harvard Business School and author of the book, Happy Money: The New Science of Smarter Spending. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what

• 17:49Mike Carruthers?

  you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple. And when an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And importantly, there are no seller fees on Vinted. So when you sell something, you keep everything you earn. I like this whole idea, because instead of clothes just taking up space, somebody else gets to wear them, and you get some money out of the deal. Your closet looks better, too. I mean, everybody wins, even the closet. So maybe it's time to stop waiting for someday. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn.

• 19:05Mike Carruthers?

  So Michael, when you're thinking about spending money within a category, and what I mean by that is, let's say you're gonna buy a new car. You could buy that big luxury car, and that's gonna cost a lot more money than if you buy an economy car. But going back to what we were just talking about, once you get the car, after a couple weeks, it's just a car. So you've spent all this money on this luxury car that's gonna cost you in payments a lot more than the cheaper car, and what did you get for it?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. And those payments are coming at the expense, again, of something else you could do. Not our research, but there's really painful research for people who love cars. How nice your car is really doesn't have much to do with the quality of your life. And the reason is, and it's related to our earlier conversation, when we're buying an awesome car, we have in our mind, in fact, marketers even do this to us in their commercials. They show the cars zipping through the mountains at very high speeds in an awesome way. And so when we buy an awesome car, we're thinking, oh my God, I'm gonna be flying through the mountains in this awesome way. It turns out for most people, when they buy a car, what they use it for is commuting. So it is true that it's better to be in a really nice car than an economy car when

• 20:20Speaker 01

  you're in traffic. It still is true. But the difference is much, much smaller, because really what it's about is honking at other people and being really mad at the world. So we think that the fancy car is gonna pay off in this amazing experience. But when we think about how it actually plays out in our lives, it isn't as different as we might have thought from the cheaper option. And therefore, when we go with the cheaper option, we've saved a huge chunk of money that we could use to take our family on vacation, or to do something amazing, or invest in a hobby that we love. But we have a hard time bumping out of the, which car should I get? The nicer one is better? Instead of this sum of money that I have, what would be the best way to use it?

• 21:00Mike Carruthers?

  So can we take that same theory and apply it to handbags, shoes, clothes, kitchen appliances? Or is there something particular about cars?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  It's almost everything that we buy, we typically don't think enough about how it's actually going to affect our lives. So even when you buy a new pair of shoes, it's not as though you're gonna wear those every day for the rest of your life and be incredibly excited about them each time you put them on. We kind of act like we're going to be when we buy it. Think of houses. So with houses, for example, as people get older, they tend to buy larger living spaces. The size of your house, lots of research shows, is completely uncorrelated with how happy you are with your life. Again, it feels like a nicer house would be better for you, but when you look at the data, it doesn't seem to do much for us. And you can think of two reasons for that. One is, if you think of the time that you were happiest in your life, just purely the

• 21:58Speaker 01

  happiest in your life, was it in the place that was the biggest? Or were there other factors in your life that were contributing to the fact that that was the happiest time in your life? Many people say, oh, the best time in my life was when I had four roommates and we lived in this tiny place, and we were all struggling to get by. That's when I was happiest, not with the huge house. But related to the car thing, the other problem with huge houses is they tend to be farther from work. And so when you buy a huge house, what you've also bought is a commute. And commutes are not good for happiness. And that's not just my subjective opinion. The data show commutes are really bad. You basically say every day, for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening, I'm gonna be angry. And then that's gonna be the rest of your life, every day, forever.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  So it's not that the house isn't great, right? Or that the shoes aren't great, or that the car isn't great. It's that when you think of the totality of your life, those decisions to get the better thing often have impacts on other aspects of our lives. Now we get home angry, and we've missed time with our kids. That's not necessarily the life that we'd wanna choose, just to have more square footage.

• 23:04Mike Carruthers?

  What about, though, and I know people who, you know, they have a big house, and they purposely like having people over. They have a pool, so people come over and use the pool. They like entertaining. It makes them happy. So for them, spending money on a big house makes them happy.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  I think people who feel that they need to have possessions, you know, in order to have people spend time with them, it can happen for sure. When people buy new fancy TVs, for example, they're often thinking, I'll have a Super Bowl party, and we'll have, you know, family movie night and things like that. When we look at the data, though, most of the time that you spend with your TV, for example, is by yourself. And even when you're home, if you invite people over, for sure, that's really great. But you also could do that when you had four roommates and lived in a tiny apartment. Do you know what I mean? So there are for sure advantages of having the extra space. I wish I had a pool, for example, no doubt. But are those things a reflection of your life?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Or are they really going to bring in new relationships that are really meaningful to you? Or are people kind of just using you for the pool? We've done research on lottery winners, for example, which is a good example of how money is quite complicated. So you'd think, if you win the lottery, a year, let's say a million, $5 million, whatever it might be, you'd think a year later, you'd be really happy. Instead, many lottery winners are worse off, not financially, but worse off psychologically, in part because everyone they've ever known, including their kids, including their spouse, now just sees them as a walking dollar sign. So the money is good, and they can spend it on cool things, but actually, it's interfering with the quality of their relationships. And again, we could expect that, actually.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  It's just we feel like, winning the lottery is good, I wish I had more money. Again, if I won the lottery, I'd take the money. I'm not saying more money isn't something nice to have. But when you really drill down into it, why is it nice to have? And what are the consequences of the decisions that we make with our money that might be cool in the moment, but have some other effects that we might not be so happy with?

• 25:11Mike Carruthers?

  What about, because we've been talking about how spending makes you happy, or it doesn't make you happy. But not being happy isn't necessarily being unhappy, but some spending makes you unhappy, like, you know, the buyer's remorse. You buy a car, and you go, oh geez, why did I buy this car? And it makes you feel unhappy. And I imagine there's a lot of spending that ends up making people not just not happy, but unhappy.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  For sure. One of the things that we see that's really interesting is when we have people reflect back on an experience they bought, or on a thing they bought. So now they've made the decision, the vacations in the past, or, you know, the TV, they've already bought it. It turns out that retrospectively, things still make us less happy than experiences. And the reason is, when you buy a new TV, the minute you put it on your wall, a better TV comes out. And now you feel that your TV isn't so good, or your neighbor gets a better TV, and you feel bad. Or your kids spill stuff on the TV, and it doesn't look as good. So when we buy stuff, we can see it degrading, and we can see that other people are beating us on that thing. A funny thing about experiences, they're gone.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  So the evidence is lost to us. And so what we do is, we tend to idealize them. Like, family vacations were often a nightmare. But in retrospect, people say, that was so wonderful, that's when we came together as a family. And you can't compare them as well with other people. Was your trip to Vegas better than my trip to Vegas? It's a lot harder than, your TV is slightly larger than mine. So even when we look back on our purchases, sometimes stuff traps us into a world we don't wanna be in, and experiences can liberate us from that world.

• 26:54Mike Carruthers?

  Even an experience, a great experience, a family vacation where everyone bonded and everything, if in order to take that trip, you went into debt because you charged everything on a credit card that you're now gonna be paying off for the next 30 years, that seems to me that that would create problems.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Definitely. So debt is, not surprisingly, a huge negative drag on our well-being. It's one of the most negative things we can do for our overall well-being, is to have debt. So these things are, if you're going to buy these things and go into debt to do it, now you're doing a trade-off that's probably not gonna pay off that well for your overall well-being. The thing you're adding is way too negative to make the evening out with your family, or the three-day weekend vacation better than that debt. It is, though, when it's not gonna put you in debt, when your needs are met, that's the space where we're thinking, can people shift around a little bit what they're doing? By the way, one of the biggest categories that makes people happy that we haven't discussed

• 27:56Speaker 01

  is, instead of spending on yourself, spend on other people. So treat your family to vacation, or give money to charity, or give money to a religious organization that you care about. There, again, we find that compared to spending on yourself, giving, for most people, most of the time, also results in more happiness. So sometimes what we're asking people to do is, don't just think about yourself and your own needs, but also think about the needs of other people. Most of us think it's nice to be nice to other people, but we can also show with our research, it actually tends to make you happier than spending that same amount of money on yourself. Again, not at the cost of you going into debt, but if you're going to buy yourself

• 28:38Speaker 01

  a coffee, we've literally shown, it'll make you happier to buy somebody else a coffee instead of just buying yourself your 50th coffee.

• 28:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, listening to you makes me think about, really, about how mindless so much of our spending is. You know, we buy things because that's what we do. We don't give a lot of thought to why we're buying it. And I liked what you said about the fact that the more deliberate we are about what we spend our money on, and spend it on things that make us happy, makes us overall happier people, certainly something to strive for. Michael Norton's been my guest. He is a professor at Harvard Business School, and he's author of the book, Happy Money: The New Science of Smarter Spending. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes.

• 30:27Mike Carruthers?

  How many times have you heard the phrase, "You have to set boundaries"? When you set clear boundaries for others, you let people know what they can and cannot expect from you. They can't walk all over you and take advantage of you. Yet, I would imagine many of us are not really that deliberate about it. When people, especially people close to us, want something, many of us are inclined to try to give it to them because we want to be helpful. We want them to like us. But doing whatever other people ask, whenever they ask, sends a message, and that can cause problems. Here to help is Terri Cole. She is a licensed therapist and relationship expert, and she's author of a book called,

• 31:11Mike Carruthers?

  "Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and Finally Live Free." Hi, Teri, welcome.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Why, hi. Thank you so much for having me.

• 31:23Mike Carruthers?

  You bet. So what does it mean to be a good boundary setter?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  So having healthy boundaries means that you know your own preferences, desires, limits, and deal breakers in your relationships, whether it's professional or personal, with the ability to communicate them.

• 31:43Mike Carruthers?

  I have this image in my head of people, because I know people like this who are very good boundary setters. And my image of them is that they're pretty rigid. They're not real flexible. That, you know, it's their way. It has to be done because that's their boundary.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Right, but you know, Mike, that's a misunderstanding because someone who does that does not have healthy boundaries. They have rigid boundaries. So boundaries come in a couple of flavors. We have healthy boundaries, of course. That's what we want. And then you have boundaries that are porous, which they're too flexible, or boundaries that are rigid, which are too inflexible. And someone who's like, "I must do this at this time, and you must acquiesce to the way that I need to do it." That's not a boundary boss or someone who's masterful. So it really is a misconception of what healthy boundaries look like.

• 32:42Mike Carruthers?

  And so what does a healthy boundary look like?

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Well, it means that you can make a boundary request about something that you would like. Maybe you want something to be different. Maybe you would like, let's say, your friend to stop interrupting you when you're telling a story. Having a healthy boundary is learning the language to be able to honor that desire, which is simply to say, "Oh, hey, Betty, can you just wait one second and let me finish my story? And then I'm all ears for yours."

• 33:14Mike Carruthers?

  Why do people, do you think, have such a problem with setting boundaries? Because as you just said, I mean, you can say, "Susie, hang on a minute. Let me finish my story." I mean, that seems like, well, how hard can that be? But people have trouble setting boundaries. And is it just a personality thing? Or being that you're a psychotherapist, I'm sure it's going to be all about my childhood and my mother. But why is it so hard?

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Well, because it's the way we were raised. It's what we associate with being kind, being nice, being polite. So men and women, women in particular, we were really raised and praised for being self-abandoning codependents. Right? The more you worried about other people, the more generous you were, the more praise you would get. And so self-care and asserting our own, even just something as simple as a preference, it's almost like that's become vilified to mean that we are being selfish. So I do think that it's difficult because a lot of us are home training.

• 34:27Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I suppose so. Because, yeah, I mean, I would like people to think of me as generous and giving. I don't want them to think I'm not.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, understandable. But let's look at the reality of having healthy boundaries is being really generous. Because think about when we're really stuck in that disease to please, let's say, like the people-pleasing syndrome. A lot of times, that includes saying yes when you would really rather say no. And if you make a life of making those types of choices, you end up having the closest people in your life not really knowing you. Right? Because you're not giving them. You're giving them sort of corrupted intel or data about you, your preferences, how you feel, what you like, all sort of in the service of being perceived as nice

• 35:22Speaker 02

  or being perceived as being kind. But it really isn't authentically nice to say yes when you want to say no because you end up resentful. You might want to avoid the person. So in reality, talking true, right? Being honest, setting boundaries with kindness, with love, with grace, that is actually being incredibly generous, and it deepens the intimacy in your relationships.

• 35:49Mike Carruthers?

  As you're talking, though, I'm thinking about times in my life, even today, where I, because I work at home, as many people work at home, I try to set boundaries, but there's always something. There's always, the kids need something. This morning, I mean, my wife gets up very early to go to work at 4:30, and I need to get my sleep. And she knows that. But her battery was dead. So I had to get up at 4:30, and we had to resolve that problem. I could have said, "No, figure it out." But that's not who I am.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  And also, that would be a rigid boundary because your wife is not waking you up every day at 4:30 to make her coffee or jump her car. Correct?

• 36:39Mike Carruthers?

  She better not.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  But do you know what I'm saying? Like, being in a long-term relationship requires that sometimes we don't get our preferences met because we're in a collaborative, mutual relationship. And this morning, she needed you to sleep less and jump her car. Correct?

• 37:02Mike Carruthers?

  Indeed.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  So it's not a bad boundary that you did that. You're a good husband for doing that.

• 37:09Mike Carruthers?

  But I guess what I'm saying, though, is that she doesn't do that every day. The kids don't do it every day. But somebody does it every day. There's always something. "I gotta get this at the store for my school project, and I have to get it now." Well, I said, "I've gotta work now." Well, yeah, but I really need it. Well, so it seems like it's a very porous boundary if I'm having to say, "Here's the boundary, but if you need something, just call me."

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. It's a porous boundary if poor planning on the part of the other person continually constitutes an emergency for you. Right? Like, if you say, "My working hours today are this." What might be helpful that if you have a door, put a sign on the door. My husband knows. He just came to the back door where I am. And there's a sign on there that's like, "Do not enter because I'm recording, and I don't want it to be loud," or whatever. And he's like, "Okay." And he has a studio where he works. But maybe if you put a thing on there, and then you stick to it. You have to stick to it, though, right? Because boundaries that are not enforced,

• 38:20Speaker 02

  and of course, if your 11-year-old comes and is bleeding, you're not going to enforce that boundary in that moment. They're allowed to come in, no matter what is going on, if there's an actual emergency. But them not planning ahead doesn't have to be. And the consequence for them not planning might be you get in trouble at school. And we have to allow those things, or they will have to wait until you're done working. And you can hold that boundary with love. Right? There's a thing that you have this feeling, and many people have this feeling, that if I don't do it, I'm being unloving. And that isn't true, especially when you have family agreements, rules of engagement. And these are all boundary ideas within family systems

• 39:05Speaker 02

  when we're living together. You know, where you say, "These are my hours, and I can't be disturbed."

• 39:11Mike Carruthers?

  What do you find are the most difficult boundaries for people to set?

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Parent and children, growing children, that can be very difficult. I think grown kids and their grown-er parents can be difficult as well. But love relationships, friendships, especially female friendships, are very, can be very fraught when it comes to boundaries. So it really depends on what I call your downloaded boundary blueprint, which is basically unconscious paradigm in your mind of what you learned growing up from your family of origin, your culture, country, of how it's supposed to be in the world. Right? So we have a lot of preconceived notions

• 39:59Speaker 02

  about boundaries, good and bad. And I think that understanding what is in that unconscious sort of schema is really important.

• 40:10Mike Carruthers?

  If you're not somebody who's really good at this, and I hear you talk, and I say, "Okay, well, I'm gonna start setting some boundaries." And you're not known as the boundary setter kind of person. It seems like this is gonna rub people the wrong way, at least in the beginning, because, well, where did this come from? I could always come and talk to you before, whenever I wanted, and now you're saying no.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Right. Well, here's the thing. When we change our relationship dance, our boundary dances with people, especially established relationships, of course, they're going to notice. Now, they can notice. And when we change, most of the time, people who we're dancing with don't like it because, you know, unconsciously, they're worried that we'll leave them, we won't love them anymore, maybe they'll lose us because we're changing. You know, as humans, we like things to stay the same. It just goes all the way back to, you know, safety and security. So part of it is when you really want to become masterful at boundaries, you have to realize it's a process. It's gonna take a minute. Yes, someone's gonna notice. And if they say, "Well, what is this?

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Why are you not letting me call you at 2:00 in the morning when I have an emergency?" If you have a friend who does that often, let's just say, you can say, "I'm actually trying to take better care of myself, so I'm turning my phone off at 10:00 so I can sleep. It's not personal to you. It's what I need to do to be healthier for me." So you mean, I can't call you at 2:00 in the morning? I mean, you can, and I'll get that message in the morning, and I'll call you back when I can.

• 41:51Mike Carruthers?

  It sometimes seems though that you can say that, but that that's not the end of it, that there's gonna, it's gonna create conflict. There's gonna be a problem that goes beyond, "I'll get your message in the morning and call you back then."

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yes, that is accurate because it takes repetition for people to do a new dance. You don't just show them the steps once and you may have another conversation and they may say, "You know, I feel really hurt that I can't call you at 2:00 in the morning." And you can say, "I see that. I understand that. I'm sorry about that. And I still need to turn my phone off at 10:00."

• 42:32Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, because who hasn't had someone say something like that to try to guilt you into giving them what they want? And it's very hard to stand up and say, "Gee, that's too bad. You may need that, but you're not going to get that from me."

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Here's the thing, though. The more you do it, honestly, Mike, the easier it gets. Where, think about it this way, you can stay lovingly connected to that person and still hold your boundary. I could say to that friend, "Listen, Betty, I love you. I care about you. And yet, my love does not have to be expressed by me having my phone on 24/7 because I need to sleep. So I'm sorry that you're upset that I'm changing the way we interact, but this is what I need to do." Like, you may have more than one conversation. I would say it probably is going to take six months to a year of

• 43:31Speaker 02

  consistently holding that boundary. But here's the thing that we have to do if we're the person who wants to be healthier with boundaries, is we can't be super thin-skinned. We can't be so afraid of conflict that we live in these silent agreements that make us really resentful. Because is that loving? Is that generous?

• 43:57Mike Carruthers?

  It all sounds good, but like, how do you put this into practice? What's the methodology here? If this isn't something you've been real good at in the past, how do you start to slide this into your life?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Well, we start very small and slow. So I always tell people, especially if you have a tendency to say yes instantly, like some people are, you know, the auto yes or the insta yes people, is that we just start by buying time. So, you know, do a seven-day exercise where for seven days, you cannot instantly agree to anything. And then I'll give you a couple of phrases where you can buy time, like, "Hey, I need to think about that. Let me get back to you tomorrow. I'd like to check with my partner, my roommate, whoever, whoever the person is." Because it is so much easier if you do want to say no to something, to do it if you haven't already said yes.

• 44:56Mike Carruthers?

  And very often, I think, when people say, "Let me think about that," I know that's a no in process. Because if it was yes, it would be yes. And "let me think about that" means you're going to get an email or a text from me later because I'm too chicken to say no right now.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Maybe. And that might be true for you. It might not be true for other people. It could be someone buying time and it could be them really thinking, "I have a 7:00 meeting. I really like this person. I really want to go to this event. Let me see how I sleep tonight, and then tomorrow I can determine," you know?

• 45:30Mike Carruthers?

  What other tactics like that are there to help people do this easier? Because I imagine it's pretty scary for people who always say yes to start saying, "Hold on a minute."

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Right. Well, let's say that you need to alert someone to a problem, because this can be very difficult. Like, let's say you were in your team meeting and Bob interrupted you seven times and kept cutting you off while you were trying to talk about the thing, whatever it is. If you didn't say anything at the time, but you were just kind of burning up, but you really felt like you wanted to say something, the next day you could say, "Oh, hey, I wanted to bring something to your attention. Yesterday in the meeting, I was really frustrated when you kept interrupting me. So I would like to bring it to your mind, because I don't believe you would do it on purpose. And I would like to make a

• 46:26Speaker 02

  simple request that you allow me to finish my thought when we're talking about ideas in the meeting."

• 46:31Mike Carruthers?

  But that's just Bob. Everybody knows Bob does that.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  No. Here's the thing, though. Bob being clueless, if it negatively impacts my career, I'm going to say something.

• 46:46Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, but I would be concerned that if you said that to Bob, knowing Bob as I do, that he may not like that. And then if Bob has the ability to sabotage you somehow and to get back at you for your criticism, because that's, I suspect, how he would perceive it, you've got to be careful about that.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Right. But Mike, here's the thing. How Bob perceives what you're doing, that's Bob's side of the street. That's not my side of the street, right? So part of what we learn through this process is how codependently we are connected to others. Anytime you think to yourself, "I don't want them to think. I don't want them to feel," that's, we're already on their side of the street. We've got to be dogged into what we think and how we feel. And yes, you have to weigh it out. Is it worth saying something? Is it not worth it, right? We choose our battles wisely. That doesn't mean avoid conflict because Bob isn't going to like it. You know why? Because what Bob likes is not my problem. And I could

• 47:53Speaker 02

  do that with humor. I could do that with love, with kindness. I could say to him, "Hey, you know, Bob, I love that we collaborate so much. And I know that this wouldn't be your intention, but I wanted to let you know what happened for me the other day in the meeting. When I was trying to get this out and I felt like you kept interrupting me and it was really frustrating, I would love it if you could just be aware of this." Not saying something is basically colluding with the lowest part of Bob, who might just be clueless.

• 48:27Mike Carruthers?

  But I imagine that a very common thought that people who have trouble setting boundaries have is, "Oh, it's just not worth it." That's the justification for not setting the boundary because, "Oh, it's just not worth it."

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know, I've been a psychotherapist for 25 years and I promise you, it's worth it. To me, that goes in the category of like, the lies we tell ourselves to avoid having hard conversations, where we either make excuses for someone else's crappy behavior, or we say, "It isn't worth it." But here's the thing, you being authentically known is worth it. It doesn't mean that people have to acquiesce to what we say. So keep in mind that expressing a boundary desire or preference or limit, that isn't about controlling others. It's about honoring ourselves. And that's a win regardless of what they do.

• 49:28Mike Carruthers?

  Anybody who knows people who are good at setting boundaries, I think that you tend to have more respect for those people, that there's something about those people that they are being who they are and they are being true to themselves. And that's something, that's pretty admirable.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, Mike, I totally agree. And the reason is because someone who has healthy boundaries is trustworthy. If you do not have the disease to please, people can trust your yes, and they can also trust your no.

• 50:06Mike Carruthers?

  I really like this because it's, as I said before, the people I think about in my life that are good at this, there's something about them that I admire, that, you know, like you said, they're trustworthy. Like, you can count on them. If no means no, then no means no. And I think we tend to think, when we say no to people or set boundaries, that they're going to get hurt and upset more than they probably are.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  There is definitely an exaggerated fear, especially if you have your own fear of abandonment, or rejection, or being perceived as mean. So much of the time, we project it onto the other person. We're like, "They're going to be devastated because we fear that we would feel devastated." And another part of this process is realizing that not everyone is going to acquiesce to what we want. And if you really want to become masterful of boundaries, you need to be able to accept and respect the boundaries of others, which means accepting when someone says no.

• 51:16Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it seems like if you can get good at this, it's very empowering.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  When you start saying no and standing up for yourself, and saying yes when you want to as well, there's this internal shift in confidence that grows and happens from realizing that you can count on you.

• 51:35Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I imagine everyone listening at some point has let somebody cross their boundaries, or never set clear boundaries, or got a little lax with their boundaries and regretted it. And this is really empowering and interesting information that people can really use. My guest has been Terri Cole. She's a licensed therapist and relationship expert. And the name of her book is Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and Finally Live Free. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Teri.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  This was so much fun. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.

• 52:12Mike Carruthers?

  There's a lot going on behind the scenes in restaurants that you probably don't know anything about. A survey of several waiters and waitresses revealed some fascinating little secrets. For example, after 8:00 PM, you could be getting decaf coffee even if you order regular. Since decaf is more popular at night, some restaurants don't bother brewing both. Even if you're at a very fancy place with the best breakfast buffet in the world, 99 times out of 100, that big pan of scrambled eggs is made from powder. The single greatest way to get your waiter to hate you is ask for hot tea. For some reason, an industry

• 52:57Mike Carruthers?

  that's managed to streamline everything else has not been able to streamline tea. You've still got to get a pot, boil the water, get the lemons, get the honey, bring a cup, get a spoon. It's a lot of work for very little reward. If you order a frozen drink and the bartender doesn't feel like making it for you, he might just say, "We're out. Sorry." But if you order water as your second choice for your drink, suddenly you may find they can make your drink after all, because they want the money. Skip the lemon. One waiter said he never orders lemon in a drink anymore because he's seen how everyone touches them,

• 53:38Mike Carruthers?

  no one washes them, and they just sit there in your iced tea. And that is something you should know. You know, people are always looking for new podcasts to listen to. And one of the ways they decide which podcast to choose is to read ratings and reviews. They really help. So if you would leave a rating and review of this podcast, preferably five stars at Apple Podcasts, that would be most appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 54:10Speaker 04

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• 54:38Speaker 05

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