The Best Financial Advice You’ll Ever Hear

Mel Robbins

This episode delivers the best financial advice you’ll ever hear.   It will teach you the 5 money habits that can change your life.   And it’s your guide to taking control of your money: how to make it, save it, and invest it no matter where you're starting from.   Whether you're trying to feel more confident with your finances, buried in debt, living paycheck-to-paycheck, or want to learn more about investing, this episode  will shift the way you think about money, and what to do with it, for good.   Mel is joined by Morgan Housel, the bestselling author of The Psychology of Money and one of the most trusted financial experts in the world. His insights have helped millions of people feel more in control of their money and now he’s sharing them with you.   Morgan breaks down: -The #1 mistake that’s keeping you broke  -The 5 habits that will transform your financial life  -Why every dollar you spend comes down to two kinds of decisions  -How to stop letting comparison control your spending  -What to do every time you get paid  -How to build wealth even if you're starting from zero  -The exact investment strategy that beats virtually every single money manager   Mel will also share her story of going from $800,000 in debt, with maxed-out credit cards, a lien on her house, and no idea how she’d make it out - to how she finally turned things around.   You’ll walk away with a smarter, more empowered approach to money.   This is simple, practical, and research-backed financial advice that works.   If you're ready to stop feeling overwhelmed and start taking control of your money, this episode is where it begins.   For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page https://youtu.be/-VBNqkzNMlE  Sign up here to get exclusive access to presale tickets for Mel's live tour, Let Them Tour 2026, before tickets go on sale to the public:   Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram:   / themelrobbinspodcast     I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode.   In this episode:  00:00 Meet the Guest 07:16  You Can Get Good with Money 28:58 The #1 Thing that Will Keep You Broke 37:54 Every Dollar Comes Down to 2 Decisions  47:18 Morgan’s Top Investing Tips  59:30 The Difference Between Being Rich and Wealthy 01:07:49 The Importance of Saving 01:15:54 Enough is Better Than More 01:21:34  You Can Change Your Financial Story

Transcript

00:00:00What's the number one thing that keeps people broke? It's ignorance. It's not a

00:00:05lack of intelligence, it's ignorance. Today you are getting the best financial

00:00:10advice you'll ever hear from the man that changed the way that I think about

00:00:14money, the way that I make money. You're gonna love this. Ten million copies sold,

00:00:17unpacking the five biggest takeaways. Let's go.

00:00:20Morgan Housel.

00:00:23He's the author of The Psychology of Money.

00:00:27We live in a society that it's very easy to overspend. A lot of people are

00:00:30willing to give you credit cards, give you debt. It's very easy to have bad

00:00:34financial habits. Instagram has basically become the new QVC. If you're buying

00:00:40these things particularly on credit, you have bad habits, you're getting yourself

00:00:42into debt. Every dollar of debt that you have is a piece of your future that

00:00:47somebody else owns. You can be one of the richest men in the world and have no

00:00:51independence. Morgan, what do you recommend we do every time we get a paycheck or get

00:00:56paid? I view savings as an expense, just as I would view rent or food or whatnot.

00:01:02Any time in finance that you can automate it, so automating your bank and say every

00:01:06paycheck you're gonna move $50 to savings, whatever it might be, and making it

00:01:10automatic. What are the odds that at least one of these happens to you over the

00:01:13course of your life? Job loss, divorce, medical illness, wayward children, living

00:01:17through a giant recession, whatever it might be. What are the odds that at least one

00:01:20of those will happen to you? And the answer is 100%. And I think a lot of people don't want to

00:01:24admit that. And when that happens, the savings that you have is going to be more

00:01:27valuable than anything that you've ever had. And for the person who's still

00:01:31thinking, I mean, what's the point? I can barely pay my bills. What do you want them

00:01:36to know? The first thing I want you to know is I feel you. I empathize with you. I don't

00:01:40judge you. The second thing you should know is that it is. Hey, it's your friend Mel and

00:01:45welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

00:01:52Hey, it's Mel. My team was showing me that 57% of you who watch here on YouTube are not subscribed

00:02:00yet. Could you do me a quick favor? Hit subscribe. It's free. And that way you don't miss any of

00:02:06the episodes that I post here on YouTube. It also lets me know that you're enjoying the guests

00:02:11and you love the content that I'm bringing you because I want to make sure you don't

00:02:15miss anything. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for hitting subscribe. All right. You're

00:02:19ready. I bet you are. So let's dive in. Morgan Housel, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

00:02:26Thanks for having me, Mel. Happy to be here. I am so glad you're here. Thank you for jumping

00:02:29on a plane. I am a huge fan. I got to give a shout out to my husband, Christopher Robbins,

00:02:33because he was the one who first introduced me to your work. The psychology of money changed

00:02:40my life. I am so excited for your new blockbuster, the art of spending money. And we're going to

00:02:46get into all the takeaways from your mega bestsellers. But I wanted to start by asking you, Morgan,

00:02:52if you could speak directly to the person who is here spending time together with us right now

00:02:58and share with them what could be different about their life or the life of somebody that they care

00:03:05about that they share this episode with. If they take everything to heart that you're about to

00:03:09share with us and teach us today and apply it to their life. I think it would be that your ability

00:03:14to feel wealthy, to feel rich, to be financially independent is absolutely in your control.

00:03:21It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, how much money you make, what your job is,

00:03:26you can do it. And we, I think we've told ourselves for generations that in order to become rich,

00:03:31you have to have the right educational background. You have to have the right career. You have to come

00:03:35from the right family. And I don't think it's, it's true. It's not about how smart you are.

00:03:39It's about how you think about money. It's about how you behave and behavior is in everybody's

00:03:43control. I don't know why I believe you, but I do. Like I literally, no matter how in debt you are,

00:03:51no matter how old you are, you can learn. And that's kind of one of the big lessons I'm going

00:03:54to talk about that I've distilled from your work that has changed my life and my relationship with

00:04:00money and the way I think about money, the way I save it, the way I spend it. It doesn't matter

00:04:05the starting point at all. Lesson number one that I've learned from you is you can get good

00:04:11with money. You believe that. I've seen it time and time again. And there are so many examples of it.

00:04:16Let me give you this example here. An ordinary person doesn't have a good education. Maybe they

00:04:20didn't even graduate high school, let's say, but they have good financial behavior. They can think

00:04:24long-term. They can keep their expectations in check. They're patient. They have those behavioral qualities.

00:04:29That person can do very well. But the person who went to Harvard and got an MBA and went to work

00:04:35on Wall Street has the best education, the best connections, the best experience. That person can

00:04:39easily go broke, and they do. Not uncommon for that to happen. And that is not true in other fields.

00:04:46It is impossible to think of an ordinary person who didn't go to high school, didn't go to college,

00:04:51performing open-heart surgery better than a Harvard-trained doctor. That's impossible. That will never

00:04:55happen. But it does happen with money because it's not about what you know. You don't

00:04:59need to know the secret formulas. You don't need to have secret connections. If you just get your

00:05:04behavior right and your thinking right, you can do well. Patience, keeping your expectations in check,

00:05:09not comparing yourself to other people, using money as a tool to live a better life instead of

00:05:14a yardstick to measure yourself against others by. It's very simple stuff, and it's all in your head.

00:05:20And I think it's 99% of what people need to know to do well with money is in your control.

00:05:25Well, I think one of the mistakes that I made for a very long time, particularly before I bumped into

00:05:31your work, is I believed that there was some secret formula, that there was some private club

00:05:37for rich people, that it was about who you know, where you went to school. And what I love about

00:05:43your work is that you basically say, no, no, no, no, you're focusing on the wrong stuff.

00:05:49There are actual behaviors that we can learn that will help you get good with money.

00:05:54Exactly. And they're not that difficult either. They're in your control. It's not to say that

00:05:58they're easy, but they're simple. And so just a couple of the behaviors. If you have an ability

00:06:04to focus internally on your own goals rather than constantly comparing yourself against others,

00:06:11if you can save a little bit of your money, live even slightly below your means,

00:06:15invest that money and be patient. Just those things, just those very, that's a kindergarten

00:06:20list of topics that I just gave you. It's not a bunch of Greek formulas. It's not a bunch of

00:06:25Wall Street gibberish. It's not a bunch of acronyms. These are very simple things. And that's it.

00:06:30Part of this too, is redefining what I mean by financially successful. I'm not talking private

00:06:34islands and private jets, but for most people, what they actually want, if you said, what is your

00:06:39ultimate financial goal? They would say, I want to have a stable housing for myself and my family.

00:06:44I want to have a little bit of cushion to fall back onto if I were to get laid off or have a

00:06:49medical emergency. I want to be able to have a dignified retirement someday. I want to be able

00:06:53to spend time with my kids. Those are very good financial goals. And that level of wealth and

00:06:58success I think is within everybody's control. Well, you said you wanted to teach us how to use

00:07:03money as a tool. Yes. To live a better life versus using it as a yardstick. To measure yourself

00:07:11against others by. Correct. And that's one of the core things you're going to teach us

00:07:16how to do and why this is so important today. Of course. And it's easier said than done. It is so

00:07:21natural for everybody to compare yourself against others. For me to measure my level of success by

00:07:28not saying, what do I have? But by saying, what do I have relative to that guy? Not how comfortable is

00:07:35my house, but by saying, how big is my house relative to that person over there, to my neighbor,

00:07:40to my coworker, to my siblings. And one of the problems that makes it more difficult today than

00:07:44it's ever been is that it used to be for my parents' generation, my grandparents' generation,

00:07:49when they compared themselves to other people, it was relative to their neighbors or their coworkers.

00:07:54It was a pretty small group of people, maybe a couple of people who you saw on TV or heard about

00:07:59on the radio. But now today, just everybody, including myself, their comparison group is

00:08:04the most sophisticated algorithm on Instagram or TikTok. And so no matter how well you're doing,

00:08:11no matter how great your house is, no matter how much money you're making, you turn on Instagram

00:08:16a hundred times a day, like everybody else, you open it up and there is somebody out there who looks

00:08:20better, happier, more successful, more beautiful than you are. And so this topic I think has always

00:08:26been true. It's always been important. It is more important today than it's ever been,

00:08:31the idea of keeping your expectations in check, because it's easier today than it's ever been

00:08:35to let your expectations just spiral out of control. I see this with my own kids, my nine-year-old son.

00:08:41When I was growing up, normal people drove old pickup trucks and rich people drove new pickup trucks.

00:08:47That was like the definition in my head. Like if you had a new pickup truck, like, oh,

00:08:51there's a rich person. My son, who's nine, his definition of rich is like a private jet and a private

00:08:56island. Cause he watches Mr. Beast. And it's like, oh, sit in the circle and you'll win a million

00:09:00bucks kind of thing. It's a completely different level of expectations than even I had 20 or 30

00:09:06years ago. And so it's- And the hardest thing you're going to have is that even though you're

00:09:10one of the most compelling financial experts on the planet, your kids won't listen to you, Morgan.

00:09:15No, of course not. Of course not. No.

00:09:18I think that's really important place to start because you have already dropped so many takeaways.

00:09:27And one of them was developing a skillset of looking inside yourself for what matters rather

00:09:34than looking outside yourself at Mr. Beast, or what's on the social algorithm or what your neighbor

00:09:39is driving for that yardstick. But you did mention the sense that you're falling behind.

00:09:44Yeah. And so many people today in particular are feeling like they're falling behind. I mean, I

00:09:51have, we have a 26 year old and a 24 year old, and they are already feeling as though, okay,

00:09:56I'm not making enough money. And how am I ever going to buy a house? And how am I going to pay for

00:10:00a life? If the person listening has that sense that they're falling behind, particularly if you're

00:10:06older and you say it's too late, like I've already blown it, Morgan, what do you want them to hear

00:10:13right now? I think there's a couple of things. One is empathy, because there are areas in life

00:10:18where particularly a lot of people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are falling behind relative to previous

00:10:23generations, particularly something like homeownership, where it was more attainable in previous

00:10:27generations than it is, has been particularly in the last couple of years. So empathy, this is not me

00:10:33saying, oh, you should just feel better. You should be more grateful for what you have. You actually

00:10:36are doing fine. There is some empathy that has to be involved here. And also for people that

00:10:40thought they were going to be able to retire at a certain age, and then the cost of living has gone

00:10:45up so much or medical bills are at a certain state that you're realizing, oh my God, I don't have

00:10:50enough money to be able to retire. And so it is important to basically go, these are very real

00:10:58feelings that people have right now. And so if we start with empathy, where do we go next, Morgan?

00:11:02Well, I think you start with empathy because if somebody feels like they're falling behind,

00:11:05that's their truth. But I think it's important to realize too, that all happiness is just the gap

00:11:09between expectations and reality. All right. Say that again. All happiness is the gap between

00:11:15expectations and reality. You have the life you're living. You have the life you expect to live.

00:11:19In between there is where you can find some level of happiness. The wider that gap is,

00:11:24the more miserable you're going to feel. Okay. So let's talk about somebody who is in a situation

00:11:28where they thought they would be further along with their savings and they're starting to panic

00:11:34because they're worried that their money is going to run out before they die,

00:11:37or they're not going to be able to retire. How do you use that happiness definition

00:11:41right now? If that's the reality, this is not true for everybody. This is not black and white,

00:11:46but there are a lot of these cases, I would say the majority of these cases where the reason that

00:11:50person has not been able to save as much as they thought is because their expectations for many

00:11:54years, probably have been spiraling out of control. And they were spending more money than they

00:11:59should have been because they were trying to chase who they wanted to be, even if it wasn't

00:12:04necessarily the level of lifestyle that they could afford. And so they were renting an apartment

00:12:10that was very nice because they had an expectation that that's where they should be. And they were

00:12:14comparing themselves to other people, even if it was kind of out of their budget, they were traveling

00:12:18and dressing and eating out in a way because that's who they felt that they should be, even if

00:12:23they couldn't necessarily afford it. Morgan, you're calling us out here.

00:12:28I'm calling everybody out. I've been in this situation too. There's no shame in it. This is

00:12:33a very common thing that I think everyone will experience. And I think a lot of why I got

00:12:38interested in this topic, every book that I've written started with looking in the mirror and

00:12:42being like, when have I been envious? When have my expectations spiraled out of control? No one is

00:12:48immune to this. So there's nothing to be, there's nothing to be ashamed of.

00:12:51So there's a little bit of, cause, cause you know, just in full disclosure, I entered my marriage

00:12:56with $10,000 of credit card debt that my husband did not know about and then proceeded to hide it

00:13:01from him. But the truth is I just walked my credit card into stores and bought stuff I didn't need

00:13:06with money I didn't have. And then even if I look at what happened to my husband and I, when I was 41

00:13:12years old and his restaurants were going under and taking our house and our entire life savings with it,

00:13:18the truth is we did spend a lot of money we didn't have. We did rack up that debt. And I remember

00:13:28several years later, as we were starting to climb our way out, there was a level of

00:13:36relief when I could say to myself, both I'm responsible for this mess. I can see how I made

00:13:45dumb decisions at the time because I had outsized expectations for how I thought things were going

00:13:53to go. And admitting it to myself in a weird way made me feel like, well, if I've got the power to

00:14:03make dumb decisions, then maybe if I wake up and recognize that I've got the power to make better

00:14:09decisions. Yes, that's absolutely true. What happens with expectations for a lot of people

00:14:15is, look, if I said, I want to be a 10% better dad, that's a good goal. But what does that mean?

00:14:21What does that even mean? How do I track that? How do I measure? That's impossible. But if I said,

00:14:25I want, I'm living in a one bedroom apartment and I want a two bedroom apartment, that makes sense.

00:14:30If I said, I want three new pairs of jeans, that's easy to wrap your head around.

00:14:33Money is so quantifiable. It's so easy to just say, right now I'm making $20 an hour. I want to

00:14:40get to 25. Got it. I can measure it so quickly that it becomes this thing where we chase money

00:14:45because it's so easy to measure. And we chase spending because it's so easy to contextualize.

00:14:50And so if you don't have a good idea of what a good life looks like, it's very easy to just say

00:14:57a good life is one in which I have more money. Because it's so much easier to understand then

00:15:02how can I become a better dad? How can I be a better parent, a better spouse, a better friend,

00:15:07a better worker? That's hard to wrap your head around. Will Smith had this great, I thought he

00:15:11was so astute and profound. He wrote this in his biography. He said, when he was depressed and poor,

00:15:17he could tell himself, if only I had more money, all my problems would go away. And that gave him

00:15:22hope. I just need to go out and make more money. And once I have more money, all of my depression,

00:15:26all of my doubts will go away. And then he became rich and he was still depressed. And then he said

00:15:31he lost hope because he couldn't say, if only I had more money. And so we chase money because

00:15:36it's so easy to wrap our heads around. And we chase it with the idea that it's the solution to

00:15:39all of our problems, even if it can solve some problems, but not the biggest ones, the hole that

00:15:45you're trying to fill, the psychological hole that you're trying to fill is probably not going to be

00:15:49filled with money. So the takeaway that I've got from what you just shared, which is much deeper,

00:15:55is that if you're sitting there listening and you're saying, I'm so behind, I'm so behind,

00:15:59I'm so behind, there's two things to do. First of all, you're in the right place because we're

00:16:04going to be learning from you exactly what to do, Morgan. And one of the first things you said is

00:16:09it's not too late because there are simple, you even said kindergarten level behavior changes

00:16:14that you can make that will help you be good with money. But the deeper thing to ask yourself is

00:16:21what is the hole that money is trying to fill for me? Yes. And are there things that I can do

00:16:27right now in terms of redefining what it means in my 20s or my 60s to be a good friend or to have a

00:16:35good life or to take better care of myself that don't involve hitting myself over the head about

00:16:42my financial life? Exactly. That's it. Got it. You know, one of the things I want to talk about

00:16:47before we really start unpacking some of the tactics is that at this exact moment in time,

00:16:52it is a really challenging moment when it comes to money, finances, the job market. If you

00:17:01really identify with that sense that I'm actually scared, I'm scared I can't get a job. I'm scared

00:17:09about being able to make it. Where do you start, Morgan? I think if somebody says,

00:17:13I'm scared about my money, that's their truth. And you have to empathize with that. If someone were to

00:17:17say it is worse now than it was for previous generations, that I think you can push back on

00:17:22a little bit more. And you can say, because you could look back at how people lived in the 1950s

00:17:28and the 1960s and the 1970s and say, look, I empathize with how scared you are today. It is

00:17:33probably not true that we are worse off today than we were in previous generations. You know,

00:17:38one thing that I've always thought is very interesting is if you ask most Americans,

00:17:42when was peak middle-class prosperity? When were the glory days? A lot of people will point to the

00:17:491950s is what they'll point at as peak middle-class prosperity. But what's interesting is that if you

00:17:54looked at how the average middle-class family lived in the 1950s and who we are aspiring to want to go

00:18:00back to, it is a quality of life that we would consider abject poverty today. I mean, the average

00:18:05middle-class family house in the 1950s was about 800 square feet for, you know, two bedrooms for you and

00:18:10your four kids, no air conditioning, no washer and dryer, no, go on down the list of what it was

00:18:14like back then. They were very happy. They were very content with it back then, but it's not a level

00:18:18of contentment that you would have today. And so a lot of what, what is with, with finance is that

00:18:25it's not necessarily that these things will make you happier. If you were to have more money, it's not

00:18:30necessarily that you would be happier. And that when most people think, oh, if only I had a bigger

00:18:35house, then I'd be happy. And when you imagine yourself taking a fancy vacation, you imagine how

00:18:39happy you would be. The emotion that you're actually thinking about is not happiness. It's

00:18:44contentment. If I imagine myself in Hawaii with my kids next year, and I'm just envisioning that in

00:18:50my head, I can come up with this emotion inside and be like, oh, that would be great. I would be so

00:18:55happy with that. But actually the emotion that I'm envisioning is being content with that. It's being

00:18:59in Hawaii and saying, this is enough. This is all I want. I don't want anything else. What actually

00:19:05happens to people if they do go to Hawaii with their kids is they're sitting on the beach and they say,

00:19:10if only I had stayed at the nicer hotel, if only we had stayed for a couple of days longer,

00:19:14if only we had eaten at the nicer restaurant last night, how come those people got a better room?

00:19:18How come they got better beach chairs? And so you're not actually content with the experience

00:19:22that you're having. And so when you realize that what you're actually chasing is contentment,

00:19:26you're not chasing more. You're chasing just, I just want to be happy with what I have.

00:19:31The first step is realizing that a lot of your money woes and a lot of what you're feeling in terms of

00:19:37falling behind. And a lot of your gap between what you have and what you want is solely a factor

00:19:42of your expectations. What if you don't think you're good with money though? Because for a long

00:19:47time, I had a story in my head, I'm just not good with money. I'm bad with money. And let's say

00:19:53you're somebody who's gone through a divorce. You're financially wrecked. You gave all the power

00:19:57to your partner. Now you're starting over. Can anyone get good with money for real?

00:20:03You can, if you want to. And I think the people who say I'm not good with money don't want to be

00:20:07this. They use that as their excuse to say, come on, really? I think that they use that as their

00:20:13excuse. This is not a difficult thing to wrap your head around. This is very basic arithmetic,

00:20:18spend less money than you make, save the difference, be patient. That's, that's it. That's what we're

00:20:23talking about. You can explain this to a five-year-old. And so if you're saying I'm not good with money,

00:20:26it's, you're making a choice to not get better. Nothing is easier than bad financial habits that

00:20:34you want to have. Like we live in a society that it's very easy to overspend. A lot of people are

00:20:39willing to give you credit cards, give you debt. It is very easy to have bad financial habits. And

00:20:44if you want those, that's an easy thing to do. As soon as you actually want it, this is not a

00:20:49difficult thing for anybody. This conversation reminds me of something that I saw a musician say,

00:20:54I wish I could remember who it was, but I saw a musician saying, everybody loves it when I tell

00:20:59the story about how I had to live in my car for a year while I was just starting out. But nobody

00:21:05actually wants to live in their car for a year. Nobody ever wants to do it. While they're starting

00:21:09out. Right. And so a lot of these things for people who are in debt, you, you, you are one of these

00:21:15people, you can empathize with this. I know is that, yes, it's going to be a sacrifice to get out of

00:21:20this. This might require a downshift in lifestyle relative to what you were used to. And so for a lot

00:21:26of people who say, I'm not good with money, I think what they're, what they're actually saying

00:21:30is I don't want to make the sacrifice. I'm unwilling to make the sacrifice to do it. And I

00:21:35think that is, that is true. Now, what is true? The reason that you like the story about the guy

00:21:40living in the car is because I think people actually love stories or doing this themselves

00:21:46of suffering for a noble goal. I think this is true in so many aspects of humanity that it's not

00:21:52that people, like humans are very willing to suffer and put in hard work and sweat if the goal

00:21:59is noble enough. I'm wondering if the noble goal for getting good with money is so that you'll be

00:22:06content with your life, not so that you'll make a lot of money. To me, the noble goal, what it's always

00:22:10been for myself, and I think this is true for the majority of people, is independence. I have no desire

00:22:15to be rich in the sense of a big, a giant house, flashy cars. I have no desire to live that life.

00:22:22I want to be independent. I want to wake up every morning and say, I can do whatever I want today.

00:22:26And I'm using money as a tool to foster that. That's always been my goal. Now, that's very

00:22:31different from saying, I want a bigger house or I want a house. You know, it's a goal of independence.

00:22:38And my grandmother-in-law who had no money was completely independent. She was beholden to no one

00:22:43else's influence, but her own. And she lived an amazing life because of it. There are billionaires,

00:22:48there are deca-billionaires out there who are completely beholden to the opinions and the

00:22:54influence of other people. And so there are a lot of people for whom money is a financial asset,

00:22:59but it's a psychological liability. It completely controls their identity and who they are.

00:23:04And there's other people who actually don't have that much money. They have no psychological

00:23:08liability. They're in complete control over their personality and their goals.

00:23:14I've often used this. It's a very imperfect idea. But I think about if I was on a deserted island,

00:23:21maybe with just me and my family, nobody else could see how I was living. Nobody else could see my house.

00:23:27Nobody else could see my car. It's completely invisible to everybody else. What kind of lifestyle

00:23:31would I live? If nobody else was watching, what kind of lifestyle would I choose to live?

00:23:35And in that situation, myself, and I think most people, would instantly shift from

00:23:41status to utility. I have no interest in status if nobody can watch it. I have interest in utility.

00:23:48And so the kind of house that I would want to live in, the kind of car that I would drive,

00:23:53would instantly shift from what are other people impressed by towards what is actually going to

00:23:58foster a good life for myself and my family. And they're very different things. You could make

00:24:03a hundred million dollars a year and feel like you're falling behind if you're chasing other

00:24:07people. There's a great quote from the comedian Jimmy Carr where he says,

00:24:10everybody is jealous of what you've got. Nobody is jealous of how you got it. And that's another

00:24:15one of these points. It's very easy for me or you to look at people who are more successful than we

00:24:20are and say, if we had that level of success, I would be happier. Because when we look at them,

00:24:26I can see your house. I can see your car. I can see your clothes. I can see the material aspect of

00:24:31your success. I cannot see the hard work and the stress of how you got it and what it took and what

00:24:37it took to get there. So this is one of the problems with envy and financial envy that we

00:24:41have for other people is that you don't have a good sense of what their life was and what else is

00:24:47going on in their life outside of money. And this is why some of the studies that are so hard to wrap

00:24:51your head around, because it's so hard to even believe that these are true. The studies that show

00:24:55that people who are wealthy are not necessarily as happy as you would think they would be.

00:24:59But here's the thing. When I hear that study, I'm like, who cares? Because I just want to be

00:25:02wealthy. You know what I'm saying? Like, let them be unhappy. I'll be the one person who's wealthy,

00:25:06who's happy. I promise you, Morgan. Or there's a lot of people who say, okay,

00:25:09that might be true, but let me experience it myself. They're like, let me get there. Because

00:25:14I think the pull is so profound in our heads that if only I had more money, these problems would go

00:25:20away. It seems like, how could that not be true? And I think the people who have experienced it

00:25:25would say, no, it can be true, just much less than you thought.

00:25:29As a financial expert with more than two decades of experience of research and writing and teaching

00:25:37this topic, what's the number one thing that keeps people broke?

00:25:41It's this overwhelming sense of keeping up with other people and this overwhelming sense of other

00:25:47people have more than I do. And they're doing better than I am. And they're happier than I am.

00:25:52And that treadmill has no end. There's no end to that treadmill where you're going to say,

00:25:57if only I had this much money, then I'd be content. If only I had a bigger house,

00:26:02then I'd be content. Once you're on the treadmill, it goes on forever. And if you're on it,

00:26:07it's almost impossible to feel like you're doing well with money. There's no amount of satiation of,

00:26:13if you got a raise, then, then you'll be okay. If you, if you bought, if you bought these nicer

00:26:18clothes, then, then I would be happy. Then I would be content with it. You can be content with

00:26:22a pretty low level of material items. Of course, there's a basic need of food and shelter, whatnot.

00:26:28Above what you need, you move into the realm of what you want.

00:26:33Well, I think we're all there. Like any one of us, if we're being honest with ourselves,

00:26:36can walk into our closet and say, there are roughly 12 pieces of clothing that we wear all the time.

00:26:41Yes. And the rest of it were all things that I wanted in the moment, or I thought I needed,

00:26:46or I thought would impress somebody if I were going to a wedding, but you didn't actually need it.

00:26:50And that is what keeps people broke. That's it. It's the simplest thing. I think people know it.

00:26:55They may not want to hear it, but they know it, that it's your desire to keep up with other people.

00:27:00Your mega bestseller, The Psychology of Money, changed my life, changed the way I think about money,

00:27:06changed my mindset about money. And I want to read to you on page 41. This is the chapter Never Enough.

00:27:16And you write, the hardest financial skill is getting the goalposts to stop moving. If expectations

00:27:23rise with results, there is no logic in striving for more because you'll feel the same after putting

00:27:28in extra effort. It gets dangerous when the taste of having more, more money, more power,

00:27:34more prestige increases ambition faster than satisfaction. In that case, one step forward

00:27:43pushes the goalpost two steps ahead. You feel as if you're falling behind. And the only way to catch up

00:27:51is to take greater and greater amounts of risk. Can you unpack that for us?

00:27:55It's funny when you read that. I remember writing those sentences. I remember where I was when I wrote

00:27:59those specific sentences. I was in my basement at a house in Virginia where I wrote this book.

00:28:04And I remember writing that and thinking, I mentioned this earlier, but so much of what I

00:28:09write about is self-reflection. And it's not that I've mastered these things and I'm just trying to

00:28:14show you how smart I am. It's like, I wrote that because I've fallen for that trap all the time.

00:28:19It's true that the expectations game has no ending. There's always somebody who is getting richer,

00:28:26faster than you. And if you're always just seeking validation, if your key to happiness is always,

00:28:31if only I had what that person has, you're never going to be satisfied with what you have.

00:28:36And the more dangerous thing, I think, is once you have that mindset that if only I had more,

00:28:43I would be happier, then it kind of grows exponentially. Because if you tell yourself,

00:28:47I'll be happy once I have $10,000. And then you get 10,000 and you're like, oh,

00:28:51maybe it's 100,000. If I had $100,000, then I'd be happy. And then maybe you're fortunate

00:28:56enough to get that money. And then it's, oh, maybe it's a million. It grows exponentially.

00:29:00And so I also think that there is this thing that happens, at least it happened for me,

00:29:05that as I started to feel like I wasn't under such crushing debt, or I got some reward at work,

00:29:12a small bonus, whatever, I immediately upticked the amount of money or the expense of the thing that

00:29:19I was already buying. Right. And part of that, I think, is fine. I think people can spend money

00:29:25in a way that's going to make them happier. There are some people who would give you the advice of,

00:29:28like, it's never going to make you happier. Just save everything that you can. Live like a monk.

00:29:32And that's not my message. I think you can spend money as well. I found ways of spending money in

00:29:37my own household. I'm like, oh, that was well worth it. But I also, back to the expectations thing,

00:29:41I grew up around Lake Tahoe, California. And this was before Tech Money, where Tahoe and Truckee,

00:29:46the town that I lived in, was not very wealthy. It is now because tech money came in. But back then,

00:29:51it was very much a middle class town. And then I went to college in Los Angeles. And I couldn't

00:29:57believe making that shift from middle class mountain town to Beverly Hills kind of area,

00:30:05what it did to my definition of rich. As I said earlier, it used to be that my definition of rich

00:30:10was a new pickup truck, a new F-150. That's a rich person. And I moved to LA and it just exploded.

00:30:17No matter how successful you are, you pull up to a stoplight. And even if you're driving a Lamborghini,

00:30:21there's 17 others right there. And you never feel like you're getting enough. And the conditions for

00:30:27happiness, I think, were much greater in that middle class town. Now, I did a pretty good job in LA,

00:30:34in my own mind, of still keeping my expectations in check. I think a lot of that was fear. I always

00:30:39had a fear that I was never going to make it. And so, I was saving as much as I could just out of a

00:30:44sense of fear. But if I look at everybody else, who was happier? It was the people who were living a

00:30:52modest life, enjoyed their family, had a good time with their friends, focused on their health,

00:30:59and lived what was by comparison to others, a very modest life. And so, I think about that now,

00:31:04like, what should your aspiration be? It's interesting with parents. If you ask parents,

00:31:09what do you want for your kids, particularly if their kids are young? Most parents will say,

00:31:14I just want them to be happy when they're older. And then if you say, well, do you want them to be

00:31:18rich and successful? The parents will probably say, well, yeah, that would probably be great,

00:31:23but I just want them to be happy. And I think parents say that because you know there's a difference

00:31:26between the two. You know there's a difference between being rich and being happy. You've

00:31:30experienced it as an adult. And so, even if your kids are middle class, doing modest by expectations,

00:31:39you know that they can be happy if they're keeping their expectations in check and they're focusing on

00:31:43the things that matter. Well, what I love that you keep coming back to is that your definition

00:31:47truly for the word happiness and the way we casually use it is contentment, which means you are

00:31:53in the present moment of your life and you are not seeking something more. You are able to be okay

00:32:01with where things are and where things aren't. How can somebody figure out why they're buying something?

00:32:08Because I think most of us mindlessly spend money because in the moment we want that thing,

00:32:13or we're bored or stressed or whatever. Like most people don't actually know why they're spending money.

00:32:18So how can you, Morgan, start to become conscious of exactly why you're spending your money on things?

00:32:26I think with every dollar that you spend, it's always one of two buckets. And you should ask

00:32:30yourself which bucket this falls into. Is buying this thing going to make me and my family happier,

00:32:37or am I buying it to impress other people, most of whom are strangers? It's always one of those two

00:32:43things. If I'm buying food, that's for me and my family, clear as day. If I'm buying new clothes,

00:32:49a lot of that might be, or a new car, a lot of that might be my attempt to impress strangers,

00:32:54most of whom are not paying any attention to you whatsoever. It's always one of those two things.

00:32:58Do you want to use money as a tool to live a better life? Or do you want to use money as a yardstick

00:33:04of status to measure yourself against others by? It's completely normal and natural to have that.

00:33:09But when you realize that that's the game that you're playing, that a lot of these aspirations

00:33:13that I have are to impress people who are not even paying attention to me. And they're not paying

00:33:17attention to me because they're busy worrying about themselves. They're busy in their own heads

00:33:21saying, are people impressed with me? Are people looking at me? And that's a huge part of what's

00:33:28going on inside these people's heads is that their biggest aspiration in life is trying to impress

00:33:34strangers who are not even looking to begin with. Well, that was a huge, that was one of the big

00:33:39lessons from your work for me, which is every dollar you spend falls in two buckets. One of

00:33:44those two things. You're either spending money to make other people think something about you,

00:33:48or you're spending money in a way that makes you feel good about you. How do you know the difference

00:33:54between the pair of jeans that you're about to buy that you don't need, but they look really cool.

00:34:00And you know, you think you're going to look good in them and you're also feeling bad about your body.

00:34:04So you hit spend. How do you dissect that? Because I think a lot of us don't understand

00:34:10exactly why we're buying things. I had this experience in, in college. I wrote about it in

00:34:16my first book, The Psychology of Money. I was a valet at a five-star hotel in Los Angeles.

00:34:20I love this story. It was, it was so much fun. It was such a cool job. There's never been a better

00:34:24job. I would, I would go back and do that job again. Why did you love that job so much?

00:34:27It was two things. I got to drive very fancy cars. And in the mind of a 19 year old boy,

00:34:32parking a Ferrari, there's, there's nothing better in the world. And two, I didn't really

00:34:36realize this explicitly at the time, but it was my first window into the psychology of very wealthy

00:34:42people. And that to me was absolutely, I learned so much during those years, age, you know, 18 to 22.

00:34:48And one of the things I realized, and I remember when this hit me during a shift that if somebody came

00:34:54into the hotel, driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, I would stop and look at the car and be impressed,

00:35:01but I would never look at the driver and say, that guy's so cool. What I would do is I would

00:35:06imagine myself as the driver. And I imagine that if I was driving, people would look at me and say,

00:35:12look at Morgan. He's so cool. And one day I was like, do you see the irony? I don't care about the

00:35:16driver, but I want to be the driver because I think people will care about me. And it was this stark

00:35:22realization of like, nobody is thinking about you as much as you are. They're busy thinking about

00:35:26themselves. And even when people are impressed with your house or your car, what they're actually

00:35:31doing is saying, if I had Mel's house, if I had Morgan's car, then I would be happy. Then people

00:35:37would look at me. And so the idea that everyone is pretty selfish and self-centered in that sense,

00:35:44where they're not impressed with you, they might be impressed with your stuff because they're imagining

00:35:49having your stuff. Once I came to terms with that, my desire for impressing other people plunged.

00:35:57Didn't plunge to zero. I don't want to walk around in a burlap sack. I want to impress

00:36:01my coworkers and I want to look professional. Back then when I was trying to find a girlfriend

00:36:07who became my wife, then it was very important. But the idea that no one's thinking about you as much

00:36:11as you are will collapse your aspirations in a wonderful way. And it will get you towards

00:36:18contentment much quicker than anything else. That is such a mind blowing realization.

00:36:24Because if we're all chasing all this stuff on the outside so that people look at the stuff that we

00:36:31have and then think we're amazing. Yeah. You're proving in that simple example,

00:36:37that's not how the human brain works at all. They think the stuff is cool. They don't think you are.

00:36:41Everything being a competition for resources. It's rarely saying, being impressed with other

00:36:48people. Not never. I think it's the same with your spouse, your partner. My wife does not care at all

00:36:55what kind of car I drive. She doesn't care about what new jeans I bought. What she cares about is,

00:37:01am I a good dad? Am I a good spouse? Am I a good friend? Am I patient and understanding and helpful?

00:37:07That's it. And I think you can extend that analogy to anything else in your life.

00:37:11Your friends, your coworkers, your relationship with your children. We spend so much time saying,

00:37:16if only I had nicer things, bigger things, better things, then that would be better.

00:37:20What matters, and people know intuitively that this matters, is that you are a good spouse,

00:37:25a good friend, a good parent. If you do want strangers to be impressed with you,

00:37:29they're not going to be impressed with your car. They will be impressed with how kind and caring

00:37:34and helpful you are to them. Now, that's easier said than done too, because I think the overwhelming

00:37:38urge is, yeah, Morgan, I might believe what you're saying, but I still think this car would make me

00:37:45happy. It's such a powerful thing that we have that it's not something that you can just get over

00:37:51immediately. And even after doing this for 20 years and writing these books, it's not something that

00:37:55I've been able to fully overcome.

00:37:55And another way to prove this point is that I guarantee you in your social circle,

00:38:02there is somebody that you know that has a huge house or an amazing car and you would not want

00:38:06to be near them and they're miserable. And so just having all that stuff that you want doesn't make

00:38:12you like them. And so I think intellectually, we know this, but if you have bad spending habits,

00:38:20how do you change them, Morgan? I think you first have to ask the question,

00:38:23why do you have bad spending habits? What hole are you trying to fill? What has buying these things done

00:38:30to your happiness in the past? And if the answer is nothing, which is probably the answer,

00:38:35trying to fill that hole first, trying to answer that question first.

00:38:39So I think you have to kind of start on the therapist's couch literally or figuratively

00:38:44and take a look in the mirror and being like, what am I trying to achieve?

00:38:47Who do I want to become? Why do I want to be that? And why am I striving for these things?

00:38:52And for a lot of people, it's kind of like a binge spending that has gotten them into trouble

00:38:56where it's a stress relief. It's a relief valve. And I think what the valve, I think in your head,

00:39:02what you probably think it is, is if I bought these things, then my problems would go away.

00:39:06And the truth is that that might be true in the moment. For spending, it's almost never true.

00:39:10It's very rarely true that your binge spending is going to fill any kind of emotional hole that you

00:39:14have. And the other thing is that if you're buying these things, particularly on credit,

00:39:18you have bad habits, you're getting yourself into debt. The new sweater that you bought might give you

00:39:23a day or two of happiness before it's either worn out or you don't care about it much anymore.

00:39:26But the paying it off is going to stick with you for years or months or even decades. And so that

00:39:32kind of thing of controlling your future and independence, every dollar of debt that you have

00:39:38from these poor spending habits is a piece of your future that somebody else owns. It's a piece of your

00:39:43time that you owe to the bank, you owe to the lender. And the opposite of that is every dollar of savings

00:39:50that you have, the reverse of bad spending habits is a piece of your future that you own,

00:39:54that you have control over every single dollar. I viewed this since I was 17, that every dollar

00:40:01that I save, even if it was literally $1, was $1 of my future that I gained back. That's always

00:40:07how it felt to me. And that's always been my goal for saving and my motivation for saving was I just

00:40:14want to be independent. I just want to wake up and do whatever I want. And I feel like my savings has

00:40:20bought that. When I save money, it's not because I say, oh, I'm saving up to buy a new car, even

00:40:27though there can be that and that could be great. If I save $100, I view that as purchasing $100 of

00:40:33independence. I'm spending that money. It's giving me independence today. And I think that can be an

00:40:39antidote to bad spending habits. A lot of people will say, why save money? They don't really understand

00:40:44the purpose of saving money. Right. Because if you don't have a lot of money, it feels useless.

00:40:49It seems weird. Why would I put $20 away from my paycheck? Because that's all I can afford to do

00:40:54right now. It's all that you can do. And so it feels like, why even bother? I might as well just

00:40:58YOLO to spend all of it. Yes. I think once you shift the mentality from why save $100 to spend in the

00:41:05future, if I could just spend $100 right now, why am I delaying this gratification if I could have it

00:41:10immediately? If you view it like that, then I understand the mentality of YOLO, spend everything.

00:41:15Why even save? Doesn't matter. Let's just go into debt. Who cares? Once you view it as that $100,

00:41:19you are purchasing today $100 of independence, $100 of peace, $100 of sleeping better at night,

00:41:27then it completely shifts the game. And so if I save $100, that's not delayed gratification. That today,

00:41:33in this moment, today and tonight gives me $100 of happiness and more contentment today,

00:41:39because I feel like I'm more independent than I was before I saved that money.

00:41:43And when you get back to, I think what most people want out of money.

00:41:46Oh my God. Most people think that buying the nice car is the flex. You're saying-

00:41:50Independence is the flex. There's a great quote from Nassim Taleb where he says,

00:41:54my only metric of success is how much time you have to kill. And now, there's obviously a spectrum of

00:42:03that, but that's always been, I just want independence. And you can have independence at a

00:42:07pretty low level of financial income and assets. That was my grandmother-in-law.

00:42:12She had nothing and she had pure independence. You can be one of the richest men in the world

00:42:17and have no independence, completely beholden to the opinions and the desires of somebody else.

00:42:25And there are multi-billionaires who are way less independent than my grandmother-in-law.

00:42:30And that I think is an empowering message of your feeling of being independent. It's a story that

00:42:37you've told yourself. There's no financial level at which like, okay, once you have this much money,

00:42:44then you're set free. You can be a multi-billionaire and completely beholden to other people.

00:42:49You can have very little money and have pure financial independence in your head.

00:42:54Let's touch on investing because you have a really great take on this. You said that

00:42:58success in investing has more to do with long-term thinking and avoiding jealousy-driven behavior.

00:43:07Yeah.

00:43:07Why is that so powerful?

00:43:09All compound interest. So compound interest is an incredible thing of just,

00:43:13you're growing your money over time and it grows at an increasingly higher level. And that's how you

00:43:17become- Can you explain that to the person listening who may not know what that is?

00:43:20Because I know a lot of people are going to share this episode to people in their lives who may have

00:43:25never, ever listened to anybody when it comes to the psychology of money or how to change your

00:43:32behaviors around money. So what is compounding interest?

00:43:34Let me explain it very simply. We have a hundred dollars and we earn a 10% return on our money this

00:43:40year. So in one year we have $110, 10% return. So you're, you're in $10 in profit this year.

00:43:47I'm also going to earn a 10% return next year. So now I earn 10% on $110. So my profit that year

00:43:53is 11. So my profit in year one is $10. My profit in year two was $11. My profit in year three might

00:44:00be 12 or $13. It's growing every year because you are earning gains on your gains. And if you extend

00:44:07that over a lifetime, over 30 or 40 or 50 years, the returns get absurd. And so the example that I use in

00:44:14my book is Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of all time is worth over a hundred billion dollars.

00:44:19Nobody comes close to the level of investing success that he's achieved. 99% of his net worth

00:44:25was accumulated after his 60th birthday. Say that again?

00:44:2999% of his net worth was accumulated after his 60th birthday. Now, when he was 60, he was a billionaire,

00:44:36absurdly successful by any metric, but he became worth over a hundred billion dollars from age 60 to,

00:44:42he's 94 today. And so the reason that's the case is that how compound interest works,

00:44:48it's not necessarily about what your returns are. It's about how long can you keep it going.

00:44:53And I think what is so empowering for ordinary people is that if you can be an average investor

00:44:59for an above average period of time, you can achieve absolutely incredible returns.

00:45:05And so a lot of people when investing, they look, well, I can't compete against Wall Street. I can't

00:45:10compete up against all these smart hot shots and the hedge funds. They know more things. They can

00:45:14earn higher returns than I can. And so you become discouraged. The truth is that you don't need to

00:45:19do anything extraordinary with your returns. You need to have extraordinary patience. And so if you can

00:45:24be average for 30 years, you will end up in the top 1% of investors. My parents really personified this.

00:45:34My parents are smart, educated people, but they have no financial experience, no financial education,

00:45:39no financial background, no connections, no information that anybody listening to this

00:45:45doesn't have. But they have had extraordinary patience and self-control and discipline.

00:45:52So they have been investing consistently every month for 40 years, never sold anything. Every month,

00:45:59they invest a little bit of money, leave it alone for 40 years. If you look at their returns,

00:46:03they would literally be in the top of professional money managers without knowing anything, without

00:46:08having any extra information that you and I or anyone listening can't have, because they had the

00:46:13one skill that actually mattered, which was just patience and discipline. And that's all you need.

00:46:18That's the only thing that you need. And there's some very interesting stories of professional

00:46:24investors who I remember hearing the story about this professional investor who in any given year

00:46:29was never in the top half measured against his peers. In any given year, you look at this money

00:46:34manager and you're like, yeah, he did okay. Nothing extraordinary. But over 30 years, he was the best

00:46:41because that's all you need. It's not about what you earned this year. It's about how long can you keep

00:46:44it going for is all that matters. You know, having been $800,000 in debt and having liens on my house,

00:46:53I am clawing my way out of it. You know, it's funny in almost every interview I get asked,

00:46:58how did you get out of debt? I'm like 15 years of just clawing away at the bills and saving more than

00:47:07I spent. I mean, it was lowering expectations for my lifestyle. I mean, it was grueling, but now I

00:47:13noticed that I'm afraid to really do anything that feels slightly risky. And I know there's a lot of

00:47:23people that are worried about losing their money. And so if you have a mindset where you're worried

00:47:28about losing the money that you have, do you still recommend that people invest in the stock market?

00:47:36Yeah. But it's always, the question is how much. And so I have that fear. I was, I've never been

00:47:42buried in debt. I've always been a diligent saver, but I probably have. And if you put me on the

00:47:47psychologist's couch, you can maybe pull a string of why this might be, but I've always had kind of a

00:47:52worst case scenario, prepare for the worst mentality of everything that I've done in life. So I think

00:47:58that's why I've been a big saver. And so I have, if you looked at my entire net worth, I'm trying to,

00:48:04it's probably a half, maybe a little bit more than half in the stock market.

00:48:09Most financial advisors, if you looked at somebody my age and my income would say,

00:48:13you can have way more than that. And I said, no, no, no, like this, that's, that's fine.

00:48:16That's plenty because I have this kind of worst case scenario thinking and that's fine. That works.

00:48:22That works for my personality. My, my financial goal in that aspect is maximizing for how well I sleep

00:48:27at night. I have no desire for my tombstone to say he was in the top 5% of investors.

00:48:32He outperformed the S and P five. I couldn't care less. I want to use money as a tool to help me

00:48:38sleep at night. That's the metric I'm going for. And so during periods when the market has done very

00:48:43poorly, 2008, 2020 during COVID, uh, it didn't really have that much impact on me because it was,

00:48:49I was never a hundred percent in it. I always had plenty to fall back onto if things happen.

00:48:53So I have quite a bit of cash and bonds and like boring, basic savings. Same.

00:48:58And look, you like you, you can overdose on that. You can overdo that. But I think the idea that most

00:49:06financial advisors would just say, well, look, you know, if you want to maximize your investing

00:49:10returns, this is, this is how much you should have in the stock market. That can be true for some

00:49:14people, but you really have to look in the mirror with you and your, maybe your spouse and your

00:49:17partner and say, well, like, what are we trying to maximize for? And I think there's no amount of

00:49:22investing return that can compensate for waking up at two in the morning and saying,

00:49:28oh, am I doing this right? Have I gone too far? There's no amount of return, at least for me,

00:49:33that would be worth it for that. I would much rather just use money as a tool to be happy

00:49:39and look at my savings and think, you know, I have young kids right now. When I think about my savings,

00:49:45I think about if something terrible happened to our family, my career, our health, whatever it might be,

00:49:50this savings is a cushion to prevent hardship on my children. Now everyone's in a different

00:49:55situation, but for me at this phase of my life, that's, that's what it is to me. And so it's not

00:50:00about like, oh, am I maximizing investing return? It's, am I using this as a tool to give myself and

00:50:05my kids and my wife a better life? That's what it is for me personally. Well, and that's what you said

00:50:09at the very beginning. You either use your money as a tool in order to live a good life and to be

00:50:16content and you've now introduced this question, what am I maximizing for? Right. And, or you're

00:50:23using it as this yardstick so that you can measure up with people externally. Right. And those are the

00:50:30two things. And there's a graveyard of stories of people. Most of them are very wealthy people who

00:50:35the goal of their investments was beat other people. Yeah. Their goal was outperform the next guy.

00:50:40And it completely backfired on their, they were chasing a goal that had no impact on their quality

00:50:46of life. And that is, that's never made much sense to me. It's always just been like, how can I use

00:50:50this as a tool to be happier? And there are a lot of people I explained in psychology money, how I

00:50:54invest my money. And I was maybe not surprised, but I think it's so interesting to me that it seems like

00:50:59their goal is making the spreadsheet happy. Yes. Their goal is so that you could come up with a formula

00:51:05that says you're maximizing return. And my goal has always been use it as a tool to live a better

00:51:11life. What is the shorthand version? I do. I know you do write about it in your book for how you do

00:51:16invest your money. So I invest in what are called index funds, which are very boring, very basic. You

00:51:22basically own every stock in the universe, pick a public company. I own it in this fund, very low cost.

00:51:28And I invest consistently every month, every quarter, and I've never sold anything in any

00:51:35significant amounts. And I hope to do that forever. I hope this is money that I pass along to my kids or

00:51:41charity or whatever it might be. And that's it. It's as boring and basic as that. And if you look

00:51:46at my entire net worth, it's a house, cash, index funds, and shares of a company called Markel,

00:51:52where I'm on the board of directors. And that's it. It's as simple and boring as basic as you can get.

00:51:57The more complicated your investments are, the lower the odds that you can actually stick with

00:52:01them for 10 or 20 or 30 years. And getting back to compound interest, like all that matters is,

00:52:06can you stick with this? Can you keep this going for years or decades? And I think the simpler it is,

00:52:12the fewer levers you have to pull in your portfolio, the higher the odds that you're

00:52:16going to be able to stick with it for a long period of time. You keep saying the word patience.

00:52:20Yeah. And I think it's both patience with the things that you're doing, patience with yourself

00:52:27as your life is not meeting your expectations, patience with your emotions when you feel like

00:52:33maybe if you bought that new thing, those new set of golf clubs, it'd make you feel a little less

00:52:38depressed. Patience, patience, patience. For somebody who's never invested, they don't look at their

00:52:45money. They feel intimidated by this. What would you say to them, Morgan?

00:52:52One of the most important things about investing in the stock market is that we know historically you

00:52:56can do very well over time. You can make a lot of money in the stock market over time.

00:53:00Like anything else in life, there is a cost of that. There is a fee for doing that. And when I say fees,

00:53:06I'm not talking about fees to your advisor, fees to your broker, the fee for doing well and investing

00:53:11is putting up with a constant never ending chain of volatility and uncertainty. That's what you're

00:53:17getting paid for. That's the cost of admission is putting up with the fact that I am very confident

00:53:22that the stock market will do well over the next 20 years, but I have no idea when that return is

00:53:27going to come. We might get all of that return next year and then have 19 years of stagnation.

00:53:32We might get 19 years of stagnation and then it all comes in year 20. We have no idea when

00:53:37it's going to come. And enduring that and putting up with that is the cost of admission.

00:53:42There are other investments out there that have no volatility. A savings account in the bank,

00:53:47you have no volatility, very predictable what your returns are going to be. Your returns are going to

00:53:50be low. Those are the returns that you deserve. And so if you're willing to put up with volatility

00:53:55on uncertainty and not knowing, that's the cost of admission. And historically, that has been

00:54:01a cost of admission that is worth paying. That if you can put up with that over time,

00:54:0510, 20 years, you can do extraordinarily well. You know, Morgan, you make a huge distinction

00:54:09between being rich and wealthy. Can you walk us through the difference and why it matters?

00:54:15I think if you are rich, then by my definition, that means that you have the money in the bank to

00:54:21buy the things that you want. You can make your mortgage payment. You can make your car payment.

00:54:24You can pay for your dinners out, whatever you want to do. That's rich. Wealthy is independent.

00:54:30It's money in the bank that you're not spending. It's things that you have not purchased. It's

00:54:36savings. It's investments that's sitting there, not being spent, but it's giving you independence.

00:54:42It's giving you financial independence and psychological independence where you can live

00:54:47your life in your way without chasing what other people, what you think other people want out of

00:54:53you. And there's some pretty astounding examples of the two sides of the spectrum. I use this in

00:54:58the book, The Art of Spending Money. The Vanderbilt family was the richest family that the world had

00:55:04ever seen. Back in the 1800s, Cornelius Vanderbilt, if you adjust it for inflation,

00:55:09he had something like half a trillion dollars was his net worth. And some of the other very wealthy

00:55:15families, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, did a pretty good job at giving most of their money away

00:55:20to charity. The Vanderbilts basically said, we're going to give it all to our kids and our grandkids

00:55:25and our great grandkids. And their job is to live the biggest, most ostentatious life that you can

00:55:31possibly imagine. And the biographies that came from there of those Vanderbilt heirs would show,

00:55:37I think without exception, that every single one of them was miserable. Every single, these are,

00:55:42you know, if you were a Vanderbilt heir in the early 1900s, the day that you were born,

00:55:47you got half a billion dollars trust fund. And the only thing that was ever expected out of you

00:55:52in life was that you spend as big as you possibly can. And every single one of them was miserable.

00:55:58There's a book called Fortune's Children, written by one of the heirs named Arthur Vanderbilt,

00:56:02and he talks about the history of his ancestors. And it is a sad, one of the saddest books I've ever

00:56:09read. Because these people are people who maybe you and I and people listening would look at and say,

00:56:15you're so lucky. I can't believe how lucky you got. You just got a billion dollars a day you were born.

00:56:21And you read it and you say like, I would not, I would never, I would never want that life.

00:56:25Because they were so, they were very rich. They were the richest people in the world,

00:56:30but they had no independence. Everything was dictated about, even including who they were allowed to marry,

00:56:36was dictated by kind of the social circle of their family. And to me, the most interesting part of the

00:56:42Vanderbilt family is that by this point today, virtually all the money is gone. There are a couple

00:56:48of Vanderbilt heirs that have some money, but the first Vanderbilt heir who got no inheritance,

00:56:54no trust fund, was Anderson Cooper, the CNN post, who I'm sure most people are familiar with. His mother,

00:57:00Gloria Vanderbilt, was kind of the last person to get a big trust fund. And Anderson Cooper has talked about this,

00:57:06that being the first Vanderbilt heir who didn't get much money was probably a good thing. He was the

00:57:12first person in his family in like 150 years who was told, you have to go figure it out for yourself.

00:57:18You have to build your own career, make your own money, figure out your own way. And he's talked

00:57:22about this, like he's probably the happiest person in his career. Not that he's had a perfect life,

00:57:26but he's probably one of the happiest. And I think that is again, like if you look at the richest people,

00:57:31because the Vanderbilts were the richest people in the world and they had no wealth,

00:57:35by my definition, they had no independence. They had no ability to live their own life.

00:57:39I think that's the difference between rich and wealthy.

00:57:42It all comes back to what are you actually using money for? And the clearer you are about the drivers

00:57:49for why you're doing it, it changes what and how you're doing it.

00:57:53Yes. And it's so clear in my head, like, would you rather earn $70,000 a year and your kids admire

00:58:00you, you've had a great marriage, you have barbecues with your friends and you sit and laugh

00:58:06and you're in good health. And would you rather have that life or make a million dollars a year

00:58:11and you're on your fifth divorce, your kids don't talk to you anymore, you're in terrible health,

00:58:15you're being sued by all of your business partners. It's when you frame it like that,

00:58:19it's the most obvious thing in the world. Like, would you rather have a good life and less money

00:58:23or more money and a worse life? If you frame it like that, it's obvious. But still,

00:58:28even if you agree with that framing, it is so normal and natural to say,

00:58:34okay, but I'd still rather make a million dollars a year. Like the pull is still always there.

00:58:38Well, because you think you're going to be the exception.

00:58:40Everybody does. Everybody does. Right.

00:58:42So if you're in your twenties and you're just getting started, you haven't been a big saver,

00:58:48you're just got your first job out of college. Morgan, what is your advice in terms of getting good

00:58:56with money? A really simple tool that I came to this by realizing that most people who are making

00:59:02financial mistakes and have a problem with money, it's not because of the lack of intelligence,

00:59:06it's ignorance. And for most people, they actually have no idea how much money they're making or

00:59:11spending. And if you ask them, like, how much money do you make per month? And how much money do you

00:59:16spend per month overall? Most people in that situation either couldn't tell you or they

00:59:21would give you an answer that's false. And I think the very basic, such boring advice that goes the

00:59:27longest is check your bank account balance every single day. It takes every single day, every day,

00:59:34every day. It takes 10 seconds. It's not that hard. And just to give yourself some sense of how much

00:59:39money is coming in and how much is going out, just be cognizant of it. I've never known people don't do

00:59:44this anymore. But back in a different generation, balancing your checkbook was always a big thing.

00:59:48Most people don't do it anymore. But I remember for my entire life since I've been a teenager,

00:59:53I've never had any desire to never need to do that because I know my bank account balance down to the

00:59:59dollar every day since I've been 16 or 17. And I think just having that awareness of what's going

01:00:05in and what's going out is the most basic advice. But for people who are new and starting out,

01:00:09nothing goes further than that. It's not a lack of intelligence. It's ignorance. You just have to

01:00:13become aware of what you're spending and how much is coming in and how much is going out.

01:00:17That's the very first thing. And what's the next thing?

01:00:19The other thing is financial independence exists on a spectrum. It's not black and white. So most

01:00:24people would say, we talked about this earlier, why save $20? That doesn't seem like it's going to

01:00:29make any difference whatsoever. So I'm not even going to save. Every dollar that you save is a piece

01:00:34of your future that you own. Every dollar that you save is a little bit marginally more comfort

01:00:39that you're going to have. If you get laid off, if you have a medical emergency, if your car breaks

01:00:44down, every single dollar is getting you to that place. So if you view independence as black and

01:00:50white, either I'm filthy rich or there's no reason to do it, then I understand why you would say,

01:00:55why even save? When you view it as every dollar that I save is a piece of my future that I control.

01:01:01It's a night of sleep in the future. That's going to be a little bit better.

01:01:04I think the desire to save becomes even more and you don't feel like it's idle money,

01:01:09like you're saving money and it's just sitting there not being used. It can give you pleasure today,

01:01:14right now. And I think some of the best financial decisions I've ever made was what I didn't do.

01:01:21I almost bought a house in my early twenties that I wouldn't have been able to afford,

01:01:24that would have locked me down to a region of the country that I didn't want to stay in,

01:01:28that would have done all kinds of things that in hindsight would have been terrible.

01:01:32And the freedom, the independence that I had by renting earlier in my life of getting up and

01:01:38going, moving to where the jobs were, I look back at that in hindsight as being an absolutely wonderful

01:01:42thing. Well, you know, as I listen to you, what I'm realizing, it's also a matter of expectations.

01:01:47Yeah. If you expected to be able to afford a house in your late twenties or early thirties,

01:01:53then of course you're going to think you failed. Right. But if you shift your expectations and say to

01:01:59yourself, if I'm patient, markets go up and down, inflation goes up and down, mortgage rates go up

01:02:06and down. If I am patient, I will be able to figure this out. And when the timing is right,

01:02:11and when I can afford it, I will find the right house for me. Yes. And that's the way that you

01:02:17manage the stress that you feel right now, because it's your expectation based on what society's telling

01:02:22you or your parents are telling you that is making you miserable around the topic. You know,

01:02:27one of the other big lessons of your work is the importance of mastering saving money. And I had

01:02:33always made the mistake of thinking about making more money. I got to make more money in order to

01:02:39have more money. And you really switched my thinking to focus on saving. Can you talk about why saving is

01:02:48so important versus the obsession with making more? Well, so much is, is just what you need to be happy and

01:02:55content. And, you know, for someone it's, I've always felt like my level of savings since I don't

01:03:01need that much to be happy. We live a, my wife and I live a good life, but not a, not a very materially

01:03:07flashy life. So we don't need that much to kind of check the boxes in our life. And so I feel like that

01:03:13can be a superpower for your savings. If, if you need $10,000 to be happy, but I only need $1,000 to be

01:03:21happy. Like I'm getting way more out of that savings than you might. And so once you realize

01:03:26that, that gap between expectations and reality is like the few, the soup is like supercharging your

01:03:32savings, then it has a totally different feel. And so this was especially true when I was younger,

01:03:37where saving a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, that was, that made an extraordinary

01:03:42difference in my life. I think the wealthiest I've ever felt was when I had $5,000 in the bank.

01:03:47And I remember just feeling like that's, it was such an unfathomable amount of money at that

01:03:52phase in my life. And I look back at it now where that would, that's a less meaningful amount of

01:03:58money to me now than it was back then. But I look back at it now, I'm like, yeah, but I was like,

01:04:02I thought it was more extraordinary back then. And isn't that kind of sad that like,

01:04:06that made me feel so rich. I remember waking, when I had $5,000 and just being like, I can't even

01:04:11fathom how much this is. And now I don't get that feeling with that kind of money. And isn't that kind of sad?

01:04:16That's what happens when your expectations kind of, kind of spiral up. So the idea that the power

01:04:21of your savings is completely dependent on the expectations of what you have and the lifestyle

01:04:25that you want to live, I think is, is, is, is a pretty powerful idea.

01:04:28How do you switch the focus though, from this obsession of making more

01:04:33to understanding the importance of saving?

01:04:37I've, I've always viewed it as again, back to independence. And if you are earning a high salary,

01:04:43but you need that money to pay your bills this year, you have no independence whatsoever.

01:04:48But if you have lower expectations and a lower level of life, still a good life,

01:04:52not a, not a completely frugal life, a good life. And your savings can cover some portion of that.

01:04:57That's going to give you a better sense of contentment in there. And so look,

01:05:01I want to earn more money. I want to earn more money this year than I did last year. I want to earn

01:05:05more money next year. I have that as well. I think ambition is a, is a wonderful thing,

01:05:09but I also have a level of savings that would tell me that if I did not earn more money next year,

01:05:14even with my income collapse next year, I'd be okay. And particularly at this phase of my life

01:05:19with kids, nothing matters more than me to that. If my career collapsed next year, we'd still have

01:05:24our house. We'd still have this level of savings that I've been saving for, for, you know, 25 years,

01:05:29having the savings built up to which we're going to be okay. Because income can be much more fickle than

01:05:35savings is, you know, most people over the course of their life, what are the odds that you will get

01:05:40laid off at some point in your life? Very high. Guaranteed. Almost a hundred percent that at some

01:05:47point in your life, your income is going to fall to zero. It might be for a week. It might be for a

01:05:51year. It might be for, you know, who knows how long it's going to last, but it will happen to you.

01:05:55So income is much more fickle than savings. And when that happens to you and it will, maybe it already

01:06:00has the savings that you've built up in the previous years is going to be the most valuable thing that you've

01:06:05ever imagined. Morgan, what do you recommend we do every time we get a paycheck or get paid?

01:06:11I view savings as an expense, just as I would view rent or food and whatnot. Now,

01:06:17obviously it is more subjective. You don't have to save in the sense that you have to buy food,

01:06:22but if, but once you view savings as a nice to have, it's, it's almost unavoidable that you're

01:06:29going to, you're going to avoid doing it. Once you view it as I don't need to do this,

01:06:34you're going to view it as I shouldn't do it then.

01:06:36So how do I think about it? If I think about it as an expense,

01:06:39I think about savings as the most valuable portion of my, of my financial life. I think

01:06:46the idea that life is more fragile than we want to admit. Careers are more fragile than we want to

01:06:51admit. The economy and geopolitics are more fragile than we want to admit is why you should save. If we

01:06:58all lived in a world where we knew exactly how, what our income and expenses would be

01:07:02in the future, this would all be very easy, but we don't. It's a constant chain of, of unknowns

01:07:07and surprises in your personal life and throughout the broader country, the broader world.

01:07:12And that's why savings is mandatory. And I just like, I think everyone has a desire,

01:07:17has an obligation to manage their health. You have to manage your health. You can't just put

01:07:22it off. It's going to affect you whether you like it or not. I think money falls in that bucket or two

01:07:27as well. Even if you don't have any desire to learn about money or finances, you have an obligation to

01:07:32learn about it and to respect it because it's going to impact your life whether you like it or not.

01:07:36Here's one way that I have started treating savings like an expense. Use the 10% rule. No matter what

01:07:43you're getting paid, save 10%. So if you're working a restaurant shift and you get 50 bucks in tips,

01:07:50save $5. That's the 10% rule. If you watch somebody's dogs this weekend and somebody's paying

01:07:56you a hundred bucks to watch the dogs over the weekend, save $10. That's the 10% rule. And that's how

01:08:02you can make savings a habit, no matter how little or how much you make.

01:08:06Anything is exponentially better than nothing. And I meet people, I remember when I was younger,

01:08:13when I was a teenager, saving $5, saving 10. I remember transferring $15 from my checking account

01:08:19to my savings account. And that might seem completely worthless to people, but it made sense to me back

01:08:25then of like, that's, that's, that's a meal in my future that I have now that I didn't have before.

01:08:33It's like anything is better than nothing is, is, is the most important rule of thumb.

01:08:36Is there a simple and effective way to make saving money a habit?

01:08:43Any time in finance that you can automate it as well. Okay.

01:08:46So automating your bank and say every paycheck, you're going to move $50 to savings, whatever it might be,

01:08:51and making it automatic. The more that you can take behavior out of the system,

01:08:56because we're all flawed. We're all emotional. We're all biased. We've all got social pressures.

01:09:01I do. You do. Everybody does. The more that you can take emotion out and put automation in,

01:09:06the better you're going to do over time. And for the person who's still thinking,

01:09:10I mean, what's the point? I can barely pay my bills. What do you want them to know?

01:09:16The first thing I want you to know is I feel you. I empathize with you. I don't judge you.

01:09:20I'm sure you're a good person and you should not be embarrassed about it because there are

01:09:24tens or hundreds of millions of other people in your shoes. So knowing that you're not alone,

01:09:29I think is an empowering thing for most people, because a lot of people

01:09:32look at their lack of savings, look at their poor financial skills, and they feel guilt,

01:09:38shame and embarrassment. And you shouldn't. This is a very, very common thing. It doesn't mean

01:09:43you're a bad person. But the second thing you should know is that it is in your control.

01:09:47I use this in The Psychology of Money. It's an astounding story. There's a guy named Ronald

01:09:51Reid. Ronald Reid came from the most humble, if not impoverished background that you can imagine.

01:09:57And even as an adult, he spent his entire career as a janitor and a gas station attendant.

01:10:02And when he died, he left millions of dollars to charity. And everyone was like,

01:10:07where the janitor has millions of dollars? Like what in the world happened here?

01:10:10And the answer was, he saved what little he could. $10 a year, $20 there, maybe $100 a year.

01:10:16He invested in the stock market. He left it alone for like 70 years. And that's it. That's the whole

01:10:22story. And that's all you need. If you have the right behavior, if you have the right mindset,

01:10:27you don't need much else to even achieve extraordinary returns over time.

01:10:31You know, one of the big lessons from your work for me is also this idea that enough

01:10:36is better than more. And I'm reading from your blockbuster bestseller, The Art of Spending Money.

01:10:44This is page 36. Desiring less can have the same impact on your wellbeing as gaining more money.

01:10:52And desiring less does not mean giving up. It doesn't mean you don't know how to spend money

01:10:58and have a good time. I think it's quite the opposite. To be content with what you have

01:11:04is the deepest way to enjoy the house you've purchased, the clothes you wear, and the vacations

01:11:11you take. Talk to us about that. Having enough does not mean you have no aspirations for more.

01:11:17I want to work very hard this year and earn as much money as I can. I want to do that next year

01:11:22and the year after that. But with as much emphasis, with as much strategy and will,

01:11:29I want to think about my expectations and keep my expectations in check.

01:11:32And when you realize that wealth is what you have versus what you want,

01:11:37and the wider that gap is, the worse you're going to feel. The narrower that gap is,

01:11:41the better you're going to feel. You can mix aspirations for wanting more with contentment

01:11:47with what you have and appreciation for what you have as well.

01:11:50How do you do that?

01:11:50You have to go out of your way to think about it all the time because it's not normal and natural.

01:11:55What is normal and natural and everyone's knee-jerk reaction is,

01:11:58I want more, and once I have more, I'm going to be happier about it.

01:12:01The idea of being gracious and having gratitude for the world that we live in,

01:12:06for what we have rather than what we don't have, for me, it takes effort to do that.

01:12:11But every therapist, every psychologist would tell you how powerful gratitude is.

01:12:16And it sounds kind of mushy and wishy-washy, like how can that possibly be a thing?

01:12:22Nothing in psychology I think is more powerful than keeping your expectations in check and being

01:12:26gracious for what you already have. There's a great quote from Stephen Hawking,

01:12:29the great scientist who, of course, had ALS and had absolutely no control over his body.

01:12:35He could not even speak. He was in a wheelchair for almost his entire adult life.

01:12:39And he gave this interview with the New York Times several years before he died.

01:12:43And in the interview, he was talking about how unbelievably happy he was

01:12:47and how grateful he was to be able to do this research and how great his life is.

01:12:51And if there's any of us who have the right to complain about life,

01:12:54it's somebody like Stephen Hawking. If there's anyone who has the right to wake up and say,

01:12:59I was dealt an unfair hand in life and I'm so jealous of you and me, it's him.

01:13:04And he wasn't, he was so happy. And so the New York Times asked him, they said,

01:13:08what's your secret to happiness? And he said, my expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21.

01:13:14That's when he got his disease. And he said, everything else since then has been a bonus.

01:13:18And it just made him in that dealing with that tragedy, made it much easier for him

01:13:25to exercise gratitude for what he did have. Now, obviously, I hope to not be in that situation.

01:13:31I hope you not. And I hope nobody is in that situation. But it's unavoidably true

01:13:36that when you experience that kind of trauma, whatever the trauma might be, it can be losing

01:13:39a job, it can be divorce, whatever it is, that it can push you closer towards appreciating what you do have.

01:13:46How do you take that quote? Everything was reduced to zero. So anything else that happened became a

01:13:52bonus and use that philosophy to change your mindset about money, you know, for somebody,

01:13:59because I, because there was so much that you just shared that I think is super important.

01:14:03And I want the person listening who maybe has no savings, who's living paycheck to paycheck,

01:14:09to be able to take everything that you've shared with us and really use these two tools. Because what

01:14:14you're saying is, whether it's constantly comparing yourself to other people, or having outsized

01:14:22expectations for where you are, or the power of being grateful and just stopping for a minute,

01:14:28that you are where you are, and that you can change your behaviors based on everything that you've

01:14:33shared with us today, that that's a foothold to be able to work with. Like, how do we apply this to

01:14:41flip our mindset right away? I remember reading the story many years ago about a family, husband,

01:14:47wife, and two or three kids and their house burned down, burned completely to the ground. They lost

01:14:51everything. The house that they had grown up in and imagined their future being in. And when their

01:14:56house burned down, everyone is distraught. And in tears, we lost everything. And the mom gathers

01:15:01everyone together and says, guys, everything that we need to be happy is right here. The five of us,

01:15:06this is all that any of us ever need to be happy. It's right here. We have each other. We lost

01:15:11everything material, but none of that mattered. Everything we have is right here. And I think

01:15:15there is some version of that in everybody's life, regardless of what your family situation is,

01:15:20that you have all the tools that you need right now to be as happy as you are capable of becoming.

01:15:25It's not to discount your problems. It's just that everything is the gap between expectations

01:15:30and reality. And you have those tools right now. And I think if you go out of your way

01:15:37to not compare yourself to what you don't have, but to appreciate what you do have at any level of life,

01:15:44I think you get a little bit closer to that feeling of what you're trying to get to,

01:15:47which is contentment. And rather than waking up and saying, what don't I have and what hole is that

01:15:52going to fill? You're waking up and being like, look, I'm pretty grateful for the control that I

01:15:56have over my emotions. I'm grateful for the hope that I have in the future. I'm grateful that I

01:16:00can control those thoughts without them being dictated by society and move ahead from there.

01:16:05I love it. It's also a way to double down on what you are capable of doing

01:16:09once you get out of your own way. Right.

01:16:11Morgan, if the person who's listening wants to change the story they tell themselves about money,

01:16:17what is the story that you would say, this is what you should say to yourself from this point forward?

01:16:22Money can make you happier. Having more money, spending more money can make you happier,

01:16:27just not in the way that you probably think and not as much as you probably think.

01:16:31That you can use it as a tool to live a better life. And that is a great thing. It can also be

01:16:37much more commonly a yardstick of status to measure yourself against others by. We've

01:16:42repeated that multiple times because I think it's the most important thing today in this era

01:16:46about money is that because it's so easy to measure, it's so easy to quantify and our society

01:16:52has made it so that that is the level of success, that your net worth is equal to your self-worth.

01:16:58And it's obviously a broken and damaging story. And once you exercise controlling your expectations,

01:17:04controlling your emotions, having gratitude for what you do have, I think that's the ultimate wealth for me.

01:17:11It's not necessarily about what your net worth is. It's your ability to control what you think and be

01:17:17grateful for what you do have. If the person who's spent this time together with us takes one action

01:17:24today from everything that you've shared, what do you think the most important thing to do coming

01:17:29out of this conversation? Realize that other people are not thinking about you as much as you are.

01:17:36That you and your goals are often attached to wanting to impress other people, but they're not

01:17:41paying attention because they are busy worrying about themselves. That's the first step to controlling

01:17:46your expectations. Once you can control your expectations, you get much closer to what I think

01:17:50the ultimate goal is, which is being content with your money. Well, the most important thing for me

01:17:56right now is to thank you. You and your work have made a huge difference in my life. And so thank you,

01:18:03thank you, thank you for what you do. And thank you for being here with us today.

01:18:06Thank you, Mel. This has been fun. Thank you for having me.

01:18:08You're welcome. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for making the time to listen to something

01:18:14that is going to improve your financial life. He talked a lot about independence and what I heard

01:18:20in that was freedom. And when you apply the simple things that he told you to do, I promise you,

01:18:27you're not only going to gain more independence, you are going to feel freer.

01:18:30And one more thing, in case no one else tells you this, as your friend, I wanted to be sure to tell

01:18:35you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life.

01:18:40There's no doubt in my mind, if you and I apply everything that Morgan taught us today,

01:18:45we will create and we will live a better life. Already, I will be waiting for you. In the very next

01:18:52episode, I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there. And thank you for watching all

01:18:57the way to the end. I love being here with you on YouTube. And I know you're thinking,

01:19:01okay, Mel, tell me what I should watch next. But first, I got to tell you something. Hit subscribe.

01:19:05Got it? Good. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for supporting the team. Now,

01:19:09let me recommend the next video you should watch. You're going to love this one. And I will welcome

01:19:13you in the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.

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