George Kamel - Harvard Professor Reveals The Worst Thing To Do With Your Money

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

💵 Create a free budget. Sign up for EveryDollar today!     About This Episode:   Does money really make you happy? In this episode, I’m joined by the brilliant Arthur Brooks, who is helping me answer this age-old question and offering insights into the complicated relationship between wealth and well-being that might surprise you.   Next Steps:   ▶️ Watch “Agree To Disagree | The @MinorityMindset & Humphrey Yang (@humphrey)”    📚 Pick up a copy of Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, co-written by Arthur Brooks and Oprah Winfrey.  🗞️ Read Arthur’s article in The Atlantic, “Why You’re Better Off Not Borrowing.”  📗 Order George Kamel’s new book, Breaking Free From Broke     Offers From Today's Sponsors:  This episode is sponsored by Tello, a mobile service plan designed to save you money. Go to https://www.tello.com/George for $5 off your first month of Tello’s unlimited data plan.   Listen to More From Ramsey Network  🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour   💡 The Rachel Cruze Show   💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights   🧠 The Dr. John Delony Show   💼 The Ken Coleman Show   📈 The EntreLeadership Podcast     Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Student debt lowers life satisfaction. Card debt tanks life satisfaction. Credit card debt is catastrophic for life satisfaction. We've been seeing this for years and years. People who give more money away, they get richer. What happens is when you give money away, you become a problem solver and your mind changes. A recent study from Empower asked Americans how much their annual salary needs to be for them to feel happy, less stressed. Millennials blocked in at 525 kick.

And the deal is that you think that with more money, you're going to be a lot better off. That's something that's really out of sync because we have the expectations about what money's going to buy with our happiness, and it doesn't. It turns out there's five things that you can do with your money. Four of them will bring you happiness, and one won't. Your brain is telling you to do the one thing that won't bring happiness. The worst thing you can do that brings you no satisfaction and lowers your happiness is to... And done. What's up, guys? George Camel here, and today I've got a very special guest on the channel, happiness expert Arthur Brooks.

More officially, he's a social scientist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership, happiness, and social entrepreneurship. And because he does the most, he's also a columnist at The Atlantic, where he writes the popular weekly column, How to Build a Life. He's written 13 books and his latest is a number one New York Times bestseller called Build a Life You Want, the Art and Science of Getting Happier, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. Yes, that Oprah. Oprah can do anything! Gonna add that to my summer reading list. And today, I have the distinct privilege of nerding out

with this brilliant man about the intersection of money and happiness. But before we get started, let's get click happy with those like and subscribe buttons and share this video with your friends, like Oprah, because I want to write a book with Oprah too. Here's my pitch. Getting Over the Hump. One Camel's Journey to Writing a Book with Oprah. Pretty meta, right?

I'm thinking forward by Gail, obviously. We all have big dreams. and sometimes it's better not to dream that dream. All right, let's get to my conversation with Arthur Brooks. Arthur, it is such an honor to have you here. How you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? We built this whole studio just for you. Well, thank you. Are these all my books?

They're all books that you've either written or read, I assume. Especially the textbook of medicine from 1928. That's what you're favorite is. I'm aging well. This is amazing. We got a lot to cover. You ready to get into it? I'm ready. We did our research here. Thank you.

First of all, I love your work in the Atlantic. Thanks. You did a piece called Why You're Better Off Not Borrowing. And I was doing jumping jacks because of what we teach around here. Here's what you said. Want to buy happiness? Wait until you have the money. Can you talk about what you found about how debt affects happiness?

Yeah. So it's really clear. I mean, there's a lot of, I'm an economist by background, but I study the science of happiness. And so putting those two things together, one of the things that I teach my students and I talk about a lot is the ways that you can buy happiness. It turns out there's five things. that you can do with your money. You can buy stuff, you can buy experiences, you can buy time, you can give it away,

or you can save it. Those are the only things you can do with your money, right? Four of them will bring you happiness, and one won't. Your brain is telling you to do the one thing that won't bring happiness, which is to go buy stuff. Why is our brain that wrong?

Because we're evolved in that way. So humans were evolved, we're a kin-based hierarchical, tropical species, homo sapiens. Now, some of that we're going to get beyond. Like, we invented coats. So we don't have to live in tropical places. I live in Boston, which is the world's worst weather.

It's fine. Agreed. You know, I can live in a house that has heat, et cetera. But I'm not going to get away from this hierarchical kind of kin-based species. And so the result is that we have this natural evolved tendency to want to rise in the hierarchy. How do you do that? By signaling. How do you signal?

By actually being able to have more stuff than you need to survive. The way that you display that, that's the reason that people have five. five watches. Why in the heck do you need five watches? Because you can. It's a flex. And if you can, what that suggests to potential mates, for example, and to people who might want to understand if you're the alpha or the beta in your tribe, as they look at all your stuff and say, huh, George has got more watches than he needs. Clearly, he should be able to have 75 children. This is kind of what your brain is doing. Now, of course, that's anachronistic. You don't know that you're doing that. But it's about status and success. It's about status and success. And, and

And then you try to connect the dots inside your brain by saying, well, since I want that, it must be that I really enjoy that. And then you say, if I get that better car, my car is fine. But if I get that better car, I'm going to really enjoy it a lot and it's going to make me happier. And then it doesn't. You're like, I guess I need a better car. That makes sense to me. So you're telling me that the louder the car, the higher the truck, the more primitive of a species,

they're trying to attract mates. This is what we're doing. This is what our brain is giving these particular signals, but we never quite figured out. Now, once you know that, you're going to notice it, and you have a fighting chance of changing your behavior. Wow. Yeah. So that's the whole point. Now, the other four actually do authentically bring happiness, but those aren't our tendency,

buying experiences with people you love. That's really important. Now, experiences, they cost money, depending. You can walk in the park with your beloved, and it might be free except time. But if you want to go to Cancun, it's going to cost you some dough, right? But if you're going to spend the money, do that and do it with something. somebody you truly love, because then you'll remember it forever. We think that stuff is permanent and experiences are evanescent.

They're impermanent. It's exactly the opposite. You'll forget the stuff and you won't forget the experiences. I learned this, by the way, in a very real way. I'm a social scientist, but I'm living in a laboratory environment called my life because I study behavior. The best experiment. And, you know, I've been married 33 years. 32 years ago, my wife and I were having this knock-down, drag-out fight, ironically, about how to

how to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. And the reason was because we had no money. We had just immigrated to the United States from Spain and my wife didn't speak English yet. And I was working this very basic job. I was in my late 20s, but I was in college, just trying to get my life together. And we had just enough money to borrow or beg or whatever

to do one or two things. We could go to the beach for three days to celebrate our anniversary, or we could use the same money to buy a couch. and we didn't have a couch. And so my wife who's Spanish, she's all about the beach. And I'm a thrifty, practical American. So I'm like, the couch, we'll have it forever.

So you're thinking utility, she's thinking fun. The beach is over in three days, man. The couch is forever. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Yeah. So we're going back and forth. Beach, couch, beach. Finally, we compromise and we go to the beach.

And that's why I've been married 33 years. Took me a second. But my point is that we thought about that recently. and we got the couch six months later, right? Because we had the money and got the couch. I don't remember the couch. I don't remember what color it was, gray, blue. But I remember that beach vacation, everything that we did,

because we were in love and we still are. So your experiences of the people that you love are truly permanent. And I could explain the neuroscience of how you store those and reconstruct those memories over and over again. It goes into a folder in your brain. It goes into a series of folders in your brain, actually, You reconstruct the memories, and every time you do that, it frames up the current context of your life. The couch, nothing.

Who cares? It's a couch. But the beach vacation? With your beloved? No joke. That's number one. Number two is you buy time and spend it wisely. For example, you know, if you don't like cutting your lawn and you've got a little extra cash,

spread the love and hire somebody to cut your lawn. You just created a job. That's a really, a lot of Americans are very snooty about that, or they're kind of, of, oh, that's classist. You know, that's an elitist. To hire someone. Yeah, but that's nuts. Yeah.

It's the best thing you can do if you've got extra money to hire somebody to clean your house. And by the way, pay them fairly and pay them a fair wage and do it honestly and do it legally. Super important. But then don't waste the time. Don't fritter it away on Instagram. That's stupid because that's just a waste of your time. Spend the time in something meaningful, reading a book that you want to read, going for a walk in the country, spending the time with a person.

you love. That's the second way. You're truly buying happiness and you're getting a job. Third is to give it away. Give it to your, something in your community, something that really speaks to you, and it'll give you joy. Well, we get so much flack for this. I tell people, hey, in the budget, 10% should go to giving. And they go, this guy's an idiot. Why is he telling people to give away their money? It's counterintuitive to do that. But what is the science behind the happiness and joy? Well, it's not even behind that. I mean, we can even talk more mechanically about how that works. So I've been tithing my whole life. I've come from a Christian background, and my dad was a tither.

And one time I asked it when I was, you know, coming of age, I said, dad, before or after taxes. Right? And he's like, I tithe before taxes. And I'm like, dad, after taxes, what's wrong with you? And he's like, just in case. Just in case I get up there and like, what? It's like, I don't care about the tax system, said St. Peter and with the keys to heaven. Anyway, it's a really important thing.

And one of the things that I've shown in my research going way back. back 25 years in my research is that the more you give to charity, the richer you get. And what do you find? Yeah, yeah. You find that in subsequent years, when you give a dollar to charity, on average, there's about $1.60 that comes back to you in subsequent years. Now, I was thinking when I first saw this, got to be the hand of God. Nah, it doesn't make sense. I didn't believe it, actually. I thought there was something wrong with my data. And then I was working with this psychologist. I'm an economist. I was working with a psychologist. He says, no, we've been seeing this for years and years. People who give more money away, they get richer. And they make

way more money back than that, which they give away. And I'm like, is this, you know, the wheels of, you know, this isn't like a karma thing, like you give what you get. It's not one of those. What happens is when you give money away, you become a problem solver and your mind changes.

You become a more effective person. People who solve problems and give their money away are people who feel more effective and they earn more money. And I talked about the practical side. I could tell you about, you know, how it makes people think you're better looking. I've got data on that.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, it's unbelievable. Women find men more attractive when they're seen to be giving and volunteering. When they give a big tip at the end of that dinner, they go, man, that guy's good looking. Now, of course, evolutionarily, it says, I should try this.

He's got enough money. You know, he's got extra money. So there's a piece that's financial. If he has the money to be a generous giver, that's attractive on its own way. But what you find also is that people who are already in couples, women find men more attractive, even if they're already in a couple.

If they've been married 25 years, your wife likes you more when she sees you being charitable toward others. There's a lot of laboratory evidence that suggests that using human participants in these experiments. So that's giving money away. But you've got to find something. You've got to do the work to find out what animates your soul to figure out what you want to give to.

And last but not least, so that's one, two, and three that'll buy happiness. Here's the biggie. Put your money away and save it. Every dollar you save will buy happiness for you. And the reason is because we're evolved to make progress. Human beings don't get that much satisfaction from arriving at a goal, but at making progress toward a goal. You know, I've done a lot of research over the years on, you know, why people are so happy

when they're on a diet. And the reason is because the scale goes down, and it's well worth not eating what they like. Because the scale going down is a daily reward. We're making progress. Is that its own drug in a sense? It is incredibly rewarding, and it actually satisfies the dopaminergic pathways. I mean, the dopamine pathways give you an anticipation of reward, and that anticipation is really the sweetness of life. Well, we've been helping people get out of debt for decades now, and there's something about that sacrifice.

When you're knocking out, you're doing the debt snowball method, small as largest balance, you free up a payment. And it seems to change their physiology and give them more agency over their life. It affects other areas. They start to lose weight. Their marriage is better. They're communicating more. So that's amazing how... That's the progress principle.

Yes. That's how it works. When you're making progress in one part of your life, you start making progress. in all parts of your life. Now, the better way to do it is to not be in debt in the first place and just start making progress toward a bolus of savings. Because what that says is life is going to be more secure later. I'm going to leave more for my kids.

I'm going to be able to buy a house without a mortgage at some point. Or maybe. I mean, how wonderful is that kind of thing? But even if you are in debt, getting out of debt will give you the same progress principle. The problem, the worst thing that you can do with your money, the worst thing you can do that brings you no satisfaction and lowers your happiness, is to spend it when you don't have it for consumption. In other words, buy something you don't have the money for, that's just fun for you right now. So, for example, running up your credit card bills is the stupidest thing you can possibly

do. No, I get it. Sometimes there's like a moment of desperation. You've got to put groceries on your credit card. Okay, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like, I don't know, man. I can't afford this vacation to Cancun right now, but you know what? I'll pay it off over the next six months. Okay, if you do it with your beloved, that's good enough. I guess even worse than that would be, I want to buy a big screen TV and put it on my credit card

and pay that off over the next five months. Worse, worse, worse is I'm going to buy an $85,000 truck. Oh, boy. And I'm going to put it almost all on credit, and I'm going to pay it off over the next five years, $600 a month. That is insanity. because the truck enjoyment will wear off very, very quickly, and five years from now is still eating away at you,

and you're not making progress, you're going backwards. And if progress brings happiness, regress brings unhappiness. That's the reason that debt is a form of happiness death. I love that. Happiness death. It's the best way to snuff out your happiness. I got to tell you, this conversation is making me very happy. And the other thing that makes me happy is saving money. It feels really good.

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for your first month of service. It's been great for my family and I know you'll love it too. That's tello.com slash George to save five bucks. I'll also drop the link in the description below. All right, back to the conversation. Well, we found, you know, as people make these decisions, the car depreciates in value financially. They're underwater on the car. So there's this long-term stress that ends up happening.

They end up calling the Ramsey show saying, how do I get out of this? At the time, it seemed like a good idea. So a lot of this points to the concept of delayed gratification. And instead of the get rich, quick, get happy, quick, I just want it now, which is our entire culture. How do people sort of shift away from that into that? that delay gratification, building the habits over time. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power about your own emotions and about your own happiness.

This is a reason I teach happiness because I want people to have the knowledge. And I've found that when people understand some of the science, like I talk about the blah, blah, blah, you know, the science and the brain and the neuromodulators and all this stuff. But when people have a little bit of that, they're like, huh, I understand me. So don't make the two biggest errors when it comes to money, which is thinking that consumption of stuff will bring you happiness and that borrowing, is somehow okay. Those are the two big errors. And when you combine those two errors, you're in big trouble and you wind up calling the Ramsey show. How do you argue against the math? Because here's

what we get on the show and on this channel. People say, well, George, it makes sense to pay off the highest interest first. And why would I pay off my low interest mortgage when I can make more by investing the money? And so they want to argue about staying in debt because of the math. No, I understand how the math works. And as an economist, I can, if you're rich enough, you actually might want to keep your 2.85 mortgage, even though you can afford to pay it off and then put more money into the market. I get that if you're rich enough. The problem is if you're not, what happens is that the debt that you have, especially consumer debt, is a burden. It's a psychological burden. And when you have a psychological burden, it's like you're carrying an

enormously heavy backpack and trying to run a foot race. You need to actually be free. You need to be psychologically free. And the best feeling you can possibly get, and I say this on the basis, of somebody who studies behavior, and this is about happiness, not about sheer economic calculations, is not having the burden of having somebody have a piece of you. You need to be free.

It's the most amazing feeling. When you have, can you imagine having zero debt in your life? You owe nobody anything. I remember telling my father taught me this. He said, debt is a form of slavery. Now, there's certain cases where it is logical. You're just not going to have enough money to buy a house, and you want to be a good member of your community,

and you want to raise you. And there's a very fluid market for mortgages, and okay, fine. But there aren't that many other cases where you're, and by the way, if you're paying rent, you're not making progress, and if you're paying a mortgage, at least a little tiny piece of the house is becoming yours.

And so that's one of the reasons that the research shows that mortgage debt is the only kind of debt that doesn't lower happiness. It actually doesn't lower happiness unless it's too big, unless it's become too big. Oh, you can't afford the payment. Well, you can afford, even if you can't afford the payment, if it's such a big thing that you're worrying about it every month, then it's going to lower your life satisfaction quite a lot. Student debt lowers life satisfaction. Car debt tanks life satisfaction. Credit card debt is catastrophic for life satisfaction. So that's the important thing. Where have you been all my life? This is exactly what I needed. You smart. You very smart. Well, we've both lived in Boston for a long time. Yeah, you grew up in Boston.

20 years. And so I moved out of there. I got to the south. You have no accent. I've lost it. My parents are Middle Eastern, and so I didn't really accumulate the Boston accent as quickly as my Irish-Italian Catholic friends. Yeah, yeah. Are your parents from Lebanon? Syria, mom, and dad from Egypt. There you go. I got the Syrian side, clearly. I'm like an albino, Middle Eastern. Well, the Syrian and you're raised in a Christian home. Yes, Arabic Baptist, nonetheless. Okay, so there you are. So like all good things, all entrepreneurs. entrepreneurial things, all smart things in America. You dig a little tiny bit, you're going to find a Middle Eastern Christian in their size.

Hey, I like this guy. Well, being that we both spent a lot of time in Boston, why does everyone from Boston seem unhappy? That's a schick. Is this a schick? Because they love it. They'd never leave. So I'm like, well, they're not unhappy enough to leave. Yeah, no.

Similar with any big city, you know, New York, it's a very just like, you just got a muscle your way through the day. You have to, part of the schick is that everything sucks and you're stupid. Anyway, that's my view, but it's also one of the things that we find in the science of happiness, that one of the greatest barriers to happiness, and that actually brings unhappiness, which is not the same. Happiness and unhappiness are processed largely in different hemispheres of the brain. So they're not opposites, and we have both kinds of, both negative and positive emotions in response to threats and opportunities in the environment. One of the greatest stimuli for negative emotion, negative affect in our lives is aggravation. And so people will say to me sometimes, like, well, I'd be happier if I cut my commute and move closer to my job?

The answer is no. But you will be less unhappy if you do that. Because commuting is the number one activity, not involving other people that people do that brings unhappiness to their life. You want to know what's the number one interaction with another person that brings unhappiness people's lives every day is? What's that? Spending time with your boss. That's the number one unhappiness-provoking interaction than the average person's day. spending time with your boss. That is why. I don't know if I can agree with that, Dave, Ramsey.

I would love hanging out. Wuss. Seriously. But work is a source, just like finances can be a source of unhappiness. Yeah. Well, a lot of people in the youth, they're miserable at their jobs, and they're wondering why they're not making good money and why they can't make financial progress. It's all kind of tied together. A lot of it is tied together. And a lot of it has to do with the way that they're designing their lives. And so life design is a lot of what I do. Emotional self-management

is a lot of what I do. And again, The secret is in the science. You know, once you understand what's going on between your ears, then you can manage yourself a lot better. You can change your habits. And once you change your habits, you can actually start passing on these ideas to other people. And that's the real gift is when you become a happiness teacher.

That's powerful. Let's get into salary and happiness, because we've done a lot of content around here about... Celery and happiness? Celery is part of it. Our writer wanted us to have celery. And I said, Arthur, he's a professor. Harvard. We can't have celery-salary jokes. And now that I know you enjoy this, I regret not having

celery. Hey, man, I'm turning 60 next week. And I'm all about plays on words that are incredibly annoying. That's perfect. I am looking forward to 60 now because this is where I am now. This is kind of what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. It's like dad jokes and it's that reminded me of a thing. And so I'm just going to talk about it for like an hour. That's amazing. And they're like, Grandpa's going crazy, guys. He's finally lost it. Now for an open-mouth He's on the salary salary train again. It's amazing. I love this guy.

Recent study from Empower asked Americans how much their annual salary needs to be for them to feel happy, less stressed. Gen Z said 128K. Gen X, 130K. Boomer is 124K. Millennials clocked in at 525K. What's going on here? Why is it when millennials are so much higher and is there an actual correlation between salary and happiness? So, yeah, when people are asked to speculate on the amount of money that would be enough,

because that's really what it is. It's not about happiness. It's about having enough. To be comfortable, which is so relative. What that means is to not be bothered. That's really what it comes down to. All of those, how much would you need to be happy, are really questions about how much would you need to not be unhappy? And the sources of the unhappiness of the aggravations that come because you're worried about money

or you're feeling pressure for money. That's really what it comes down to. And so people are speculating on, man, how much would I need? So I'm not feeling kind of out of sorts. I'm not thinking about money all the time. It's not living in your head rent-free. Exactly right. And what you find is we do know what that number is,

but the speculative number isn't very meaningful because according to the data, it's almost 40% more than you have. And so that's a moving horizon. And the reason is because they're not watching the Ramsey show and trying to live within their means. If you live within your means, your horizon's not going to change.

But if you don't live within your means, in other words, you're going to go to the hilt and what you can spend to be comfortable as always going to be 40% out. Which means you'll never achieve it because it's always what's the magic salary? More. That's no way to live. But if you're living within your means, then then it's sweet. And that's really why this is so critically important. Get out of debt. Don't spend beyond your means. You will live a happier and less unhappy life. Bottom line is what it comes down to.

Now, how much do people actually need if they live within their means? And the answer is less. than you think. The answer is less than you think. Even with inflation and all the rent going up. Yeah, I mean, okay, I mean, index it for inflation if you want, but there was a very famous study in 2005 that was actually put together by two economists at Princeton that looked at how much people needed to max out in their life satisfaction. And what they found is $75,000 a year. Now, of course, if you're in New York, San Francisco versus Nashville versus Tupelo, Mississippi, I mean, different, you know, it's relative. It really is relative. But the whole point is it's less than you think. Why? Because you get above that threshold of avoidable unhappiness problems.

Where your kids are getting fed, you're able to make the rent, you're able to go to the doctor, you're able to do other stuff, and that stuff's not bothering you anymore. And anything above that is not really going to wipe out that much more unhappiness if you're living within your means. Now, maybe it's 250, maybe it's 400, and there's new research out there from a guy at Penn, named Matt Killingsworth, who's a great researcher who says that it's actually a higher number.

Here's the really interesting thing about it. It does get flat at a relatively low pace. People evaluate their lives as much better with more money, but don't feel it. So this is a funny thing. So on paper they go, I'm happier. They say, I should be happier, but I'm not. So this is a weird thing where I evaluate my life and I'm like, that's a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, my life is really, really good.

But I feel crummy. What's the deal? And the deal is that you think that with more money, you're going to be a lot better off. And so when you find that you're actually pretty prosperous, you judge your life as being really good, but your mood balance and your level of anxiety don't match that. That's something that's really out of sync because we have the expectations about what money's going to buy with our happiness, and it doesn't. So we think my life will be perfect, and then it's still my life. And my life should be perfect, but it isn't perfect.

And that's a cognitive dissonance that people are sure. struggling with an awful lot. When you can make, when you can understand the science that we're talking about here, you can marry these things up and be at peace. And that's one of the great secrets. Well, I'm going to end with this idea that you wrote about called this Happiness 401K. You've said half the population tends to get happier after age 65 or 70. The other half starts to become unhappy. And I love this quote as well from you. Your well-being is like a retirement account. The sooner you invest, the greater your returns will be. Are those two things coinciding? the people who invested earlier.

They're on the upper trajectory, and the ones who don't, start back down. It's that simple. It's what you invest in in your life. And again, you can, it's a metaphor for what we actually do with our budget. You know, if you invest intelligently and, you know, early on, more growth stocks

and later on more bonds and having more in cash and such that when you're older, you're stable and secure and not worried, that's great. But the same thing is true with the investments that you make in your life. And there's four investments you need to be thinking about over the course of your life.

your faith, your family, your friendship, and your work that serves other people. That's what it comes down to. And what that really, really comes down to, the bottom line on that, maybe the best last word, is that when I talk about those things, I'm talking about love of the divine and love of your family and love of your friends and the love that you express to the whole world, whether you enjoy it every single second or not through the way you earn your daily bread. It's love, love, love, love, and more love. Your investments are love investments.

If you do that, you're going to be on the upper trajectory for the rest of your life. All you need is love. I can't think of a better ending. Hey, man. This is so fun. I could talk to you all day. I want to be you when I grow up, but unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be a Harvard professor. You'll always have that hair, too.

Hopefully. By the way, when you grow up and you're my age, you're going to still, you know. Will I still have this? If I had it, I'd be president of the United States. You know what that means, guys? 2028. It's my year, baby. If you were the president, what's the first thing you would do?

I buy a mini fridge. Arthur, it's such a pleasure. Thank you. Make sure to check out all of his work, his books. They're all incredible. You're a genius, and thank you for supporting the work that we're doing here with the science behind it. You're helping a lot of people to be happier, and I think we need a happiness revolution in this country. And all you're doing here at Ramsey Solutions is at the center of that revolution.

I appreciate that so much. Thank you. And I will amen and retweet that all or re-exit all day long. Right on. Thank you so much, Arthur. Pleasure. Man, I am. I'm happy to have had that conversation, and I am sad that it is over.

What a delightful human being so grateful for Arthur and his time with us today. Be sure to check out his books, From Strength to Strength, and the Newest One, Build the Life You Want, among many others. I'll also drop a link below to his piece in the Atlantic on why you're better off not borrowing. Be sure to read that. And if you like videos of me having a conversation with other smart humans, check out this next video with two of the biggest personal finance YouTubers out there, just sprate from Minority Mindset and Humphrey Yang.

worth a click. I'll drop a link in the description as well. Thanks for watching. See you next time. On to the next read. Robert De Niro.