How To Become Wealthy, Stay Wealthy & Be Happy - Morgan Housel - #222

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oh, hello, friends. welcome back. My guest today is Morgan Housel. You should be familiar with him, considering he's been on twice already in 2020 But it's a year of financial instability, to say the least. And Morgan's new book, The Psychology Of Money, is everything you need to know about how to become wealthy, stay wealthy and be happy. It doesn't matter if you earn 10 million pounds a year, if you spend 11, then you're not creating any wealth. It's a little bit weird that people can be so rich and yet so stupid at the same time. But thankfully Morgan is here to help us through with his no BS finance advice. So today expect to learn Morgan's golden rule of becoming wealthy, why luck and risk are the same thing, why buying a Ferrari is often a terrible idea, what the hell the stock market was thinking in 2020, whether he'll mud wrestle me and much more. I love having Morgan on the show. Hopefully there won't be any more global crises for us to talk about. But for as long as he's giving personal finance advice, I am all ears. It's time to upgrade our finances with the wise and wonderful Mr Morgan Housel.

**Morgan Housel** (1:23)
So if we could go for it, we can talk about investing, and then have a cage fight after that and see what happens. That would be, like, viewers would like that.

**Chris Williamson** (1:31)
If the people of the internet want to watch me and you mud wrestle for money, there is a pay-per-view audience out there.

**Morgan Housel** (1:39)
I have a price for everything. There's a price.

**Chris Williamson** (1:42)
There's a price on everyone's head. Look, man, let's get started. So, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. This is the third time on the show this year, so to everyone on the internet who is wondering, things are getting pretty serious between me and Morgan now. welcome back, mate.

**Morgan Housel** (2:00)
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. I always enjoy our conversations, so I'm happy to come back for a third, and hopefully more times after this. We'll see if I don't screw it up here for the third time, and hopefully there'll be a fourth coming later this year.

**Chris Williamson** (2:12)
That's the plan, man. That's the plan. So before we get started, you've got a new book out, Psychology Of Money. Why should anyone listen to you on finances? What are your credentials?

**Morgan Housel** (2:23)
Well, here's the thing about money. I don't think that credentials necessarily move the needle. That's not true in a lot of fields. If I wrote a book about medicine or aerospace engineering or dentistry, you should not listen to anything that I have to say. Finance, though, is very different because finance, what matters in finance, is not necessarily what you know. It's not about how smart you are or the education that you have or the sophistication, the credentials that you have. We're doing well with finances, whether it's investing or personal finances, it's overwhelming, it has to do with how you behave. It has to do with just your relationship with greed and fear, how you think about long-term thinking, and who you trust, how gullible you are, those kind of soft topics that is not necessarily what you know. It doesn't matter if you went to Harvard and you worked at Goldman Sachs, if you lose your head during March of 2020 or in 2008, none of that stuff matters anymore. What's important about investing, I'll give you my credentials. I have been a full-time investing analyst and writer for 13 years. I've been researching and focusing on the intersection of investing history and behavioral finance. The history of how we think about money, what we can learn from those lessons and how we can think about finances in a more productive way. That's what I've done and this book is a culmination of the 20 most important things that I learned during that period. I try to wrap it in with a bunch of stories that have nothing to do with investing, but they all have a really important takeaway about how we can think about risk with our money in a more coherent way.

**Chris Williamson** (3:44)
I think that the way that you've written this book, you're my mate, so I'm allowed to, I'm always going to gas you up anyway. I'm always going to say that it's good, but this particular style of writing, especially a nonfiction book, short sentences, very snappy short sentences that sounds a lot like a dialogue, I think makes things easier to read. It's not a superbly a jump about like read chapter one, then read chapter 10, pick it up, put it down as you want, but you could.