Mick Unplugged - Why You’ll Never Feel Rich with Morgan Housel

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Morgan Housel is not just an author; he's a financial philosopher, an alchemist of understanding who transforms complex financial concepts into relatable human narratives. With a staggering 11 million books sold worldwide and translations into over 60 languages, Morgan's brilliance lies in his unique ability to unpack the intricate dance between human behavior and financial success, offering unparalleled insights that resonate deeply with business leaders and entrepreneurs alike.Takeaways:The Power of Storytelling in Finance: Housel emphasizes that effective financial communication lies in compelling stories, making concepts memorable and relatable, far beyond the dry memorization of formulas.Redefining Financial Goals: He advocates for an inward-focused assessment of financial goals, distinguishing between genuine happiness and the social hierarchy-driven pursuit of more, encouraging listeners to define success on their own terms.Quiet Compounding for Lasting Success: Housel introduces the concept of "quiet compounding," highlighting that financial success often stems from a long-term, internal benchmark-driven approach rather than outward showmanship or fleeting achievements.Sound Bytes:"I always said this in my first book, The Psychology of Money, there are two topics that impact everybody, whether they like it or not, which are money and health. Like whether or not you're interested in those topics, those topics are interested in you and they will have a profound impact on your life.""If I could tell a cool story, that was A, it was timeless. And an article that was relevant yesterday might be relevant 20 years from now. And like, man, there's incredible value in that and B, it was much less competitive with other people.""That's the goal. That right there is the goal. It's gratitude and contentment. And the idea of like, I'm only gonna be happier if I can anchor my gaze and my expectations on what other people have and I don't. That's the formula for perpetual misery."Connect & Discover Morgan:Instagram: @morganhouselWebsite: morganhousel.comPodcast: @themorganhouselpodcastX: @morganhouselBook: The Art of Spending Money🔥 Ready to Unleash Your Inner Game-Changer? 🔥 Mick Hunt’s BEST SELLING book, How to Be a Good Leader When You’ve Never Had One: The Blueprint for Modern Leadership, is here to light a fire under your ambition and arm you with the real-talk strategies that only Mick delivers. 👉 Grab your copy now and level up your life → Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million FOLLOW MICK ON:Spotify: MickUnpluggedInstagram: @mickunplugged Facebook: @mickunpluggedYouTube:  @MickUnpluggedPodcast LinkedIn: @mickhunt Website:  MickHuntOfficial.comWebsite: howtobeagoodleader.comWebsite: Leadloudseries.comApple: MickUnpluggedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get Unplugged. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged. And today we're talking to a gentleman who gets to raise my kids,

I don't have to do it anymore. I'm so honored that I could pass the buck off to our next guest. He is truly a visionary. He's an unstoppable force and understanding the intricate dance between human behavior and financial success. With over 11 million books sold to date translations over 60 languages, he is the guru, and you all know I don't use that term often. When it comes to wealth, psychology, and the art of living,

please join me and welcoming the brilliant, the insightful. I guess my kids knew like, financial father, Mr. Morgan House. Morgan, how you doing today, brother? Doing well. Thanks for having me, Nick. Dude, thank you. So much I want to get into, I was telling you offline, like your latest book, The Art of Spending Money, has changed my household because I don't have to talk about finances anymore. I get to let Morgan teach my kids, and they're already starting to do some cool things and ask me questions. So thank you for letting conversation about money happening to my house,

although my kids don't live home, but, you know, they're quasi-adults, as I like to say now. But thank you, brother. It's great to hear. I mean, I always say, I said this in my first book, the psychology of money. There are two topics that impact everybody, whether they like it or not, which are money and health. Like whether or not you're interested in those topics, those topics are interested in you and they will have a profound impact on your life.

I think health, a lot of people understand that and they want to get in good shape. They go to the gym. And maybe they're not always eating the way that they should, but people understand health will impact your life. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, money has been much more. of a topic that people feel comfortable putting off and not talking about it. Maybe a part of the reason is that physical fitness and health are visible and money is not. You know, when you're walking down the street, I have no idea what your net worth is,

how much credit card debt you have, et cetera, et cetera. So it's easier to hide those problems. But I'm glad some of these topics have sparked a conversation within your old household. No, absolutely. And you're spot on, man. Like those two topics, not only are they going to come find you at some point, we shouldn't run from them either. And I think that that's what happens with a lot of people.

You don't talk about health until you have to and you don't talk about money until you have to. And both of the times that you have to, it's a problem that you're in dire straits to fix or to try to solve. So again, thank you for allowing those conversations. Great. This is, this is going to be fun. So, Morgan, I always ask, you know, my guest, this question about what is your because? That thing that's deeper than your why, you know, Simon Seneca said start with your. why, and I think that that's cool, but I think that you're actually fueled by your because,

that true purpose that you have. So much, so Morgan, if I were to ask you what's your why, I could probably guess, right, your family, your friends, your dedication, whatever that is. But when I say, but why, that sentence usually starts with, well, because. And I care about your because and your because changes over time. So if I were to say, Morgan, with all that you've accomplished now and all the things that I know that you're doing, the impact that you're making, What is your because? What is your purpose? Why do you continue to do the things that you do? Well, it's not even my because today. I think my because has always been roughly the same for the last 30 years or so. And maybe most people who you ask that question might give you a positive answer. I would give you a negative answer. And I would say my because is because I'm terrified. I've been terrified since I've been a teenager of not making it in the world. Maybe that's not unique at all. And a lot of people have that. But I always felt like I had a chip on my shoulder. Some of that was my up.

bringing and some personal faults that I had. And again, maybe that's not unique in the slightest either. But if I look back at whatever motivation I had to make money, to have a successful career, to figure out my own life, it's because I was terrified. It was just, I'm not going to make it. And to me, the cost of not making it, however you want to define making it, because, of course, that exists on a spectrum, but the cost of not making it in life was too painful for me to bear.

And I felt like there were moments in my life where I felt like a lot of my peers were enjoying life. And I looked at that not with envy of, man, I wish I had as much fun as you did. I looked at it as like, I can't let myself do that. I need to, I'm terrified of not making it. And I need to get ahead. That was really true when I was in my late teens, early 20s. I had a very unique educational background. I effectively stopped my education at eighth grade. I was a competitive ski racer. I didn't go to high school. I did an independent study program that required nothing, absolutely nothing. It was basically I stopped my education. when I was 13 or 14 years.

And so it was a really cool teenage years. I skied all over the world. But as it became 18 and all my friends or many of my friends were going off to college, I was like, well, what now? Like I'm an idiot. I am statistically. I have no idea. I have an eighth grade education.

And although there was a panic, I had a midlife crisis at 18 of like, what am I going to do with my life now? And I knew. And then this was very justified. This was not a false fear that almost everybody else of my age and my generation. was much smarter than I was because they had this fancy thing called a high school education. And so I knew, I absolutely knew that if I wanted to even come close to matching my peers,

I needed to work 10 times harder. I didn't have whatever kind of cognitive skill that they did. I just needed to work harder. And I think that maintained all throughout my career. It's still with me today. It's still with me today. I think a lot of those things just become an ingrained part of your personality, that whether it is a true, fear when you're 17 or imposter syndrome when you're older. It's this fear that like,

I'm not going to make it. I don't deserve what I have and I need to work harder in order to just maintain what I do have. Yeah. That's that's deep, man. And, you know, I have a very similar because as well. You know, people think that mine is, is all positive. It was like, nah, it was a crappy household situation. And I promised my mom I would change it. And I live with that promise every day because I can't let anybody else down. So I totally resonate with what you're saying, man. Kudos to you, not only for that outlook, but the fact that you're doing something about it. So again, huge fan of the work that you do. I also feel, if I'll make one small part here, I don't know that I could have not done something about it. I think if you're driven by

ambition, it's easy, easy to stop because the path of least resistance is not quite there. It's easy to just be like, I'm really ambitious, but like maybe I don't need to be that ambitious. When you're driven by fear, you can't stop. It never, it never leaves you. So I think there is a point, someone asked me this recently. If I could give my 20-year-old self-advice, what would that advice be? And my advice was, don't worry so much because it's all going to work out. It's not going to be easy. It's not going to work out like you thought it was going to work out, but it's all going to work out. But then I thought, I think to a very real extent, the reason that it has, quote unquote, worked out is because I was scared. So is the right advice telling myself, don't worry? Or was there success because I worried? I think that's very much a thing.

Totally agree, man. Totally agree. So, you know, Morgan, I told you how I've been a huge fan of yours. I told you about your latest book and what it's done for our household. But here's what's also important, I think, for the viewers and listeners understand about you in your work, in your body of work. Morgan, I applaud you, brother, because you delve into, like, the complex interplay between, like, human behavior and finances. Where a lot of people go into the analytical aspect of money, you really talk about the psychological aspect, right? And I think that, For my boys, at least, they appreciated that aspect. Because it's not like your storytelling, but it is like you are storytelling and you're not going

into the analytics, which can drive most modern people crazy. Did you know that that's initially how you were setting up your books? Because all of your books, bro, are like that. And I have a unique feeling that that's why you've sold as many copies as you have. I think there's a couple parts to this. Prior to writing my first book, The Psychology Money in 2020, I had been a full time. professional finance writer for 13 years or so. And I had written during that period, I wrote something like 4,000 blog posts.

I had a lot of reps in this period of writing about finance. And something that I learned early on in my career as a finance writer is that if I write from an analytical perspective, it's too competitive with other people who can write faster, better, more accurately than you do. So if my blog post was, here's what the Dow Jones did yesterday. It went up 1.2% did this. A, it's boring. Nobody cares about that. But B, there's 8,000 people who can do it faster than I can.

And so there's no competitive advantage. But if I could tell a cool story, that was, A, it was timeless. And an article that was relevant yesterday might be relevant 20 years from now. And like, man, there's an incredible value in that. And B, it was much less competitive with other people. And I think it got you closer to the truth of how money worked. Because so much of money is not the formulas and the spreadsheets. It's just what's going on inside your brain.

why do you want these things? Why do you want more money? What is your relationship with greed and fear? What are your goals? That's what actually mattered. And so not only did it get you closer to the truth of what mattered with money, from a career perspective for me, it was less competitive and it let me carve a little niche of just like, I'm not going to give you any analytical advice because one, I don't know you and B, I'm not smart enough to do it. There's other people out there who can do it much better than me. But I can tell you what I think is a cool little story about what happens in your head. And everybody knows from their back in their time in high school and college, you can memorize a formula the night before the test, but you will forget it as soon as you shake your head after the

test. That formula just pops right out. You don't remember it at all. But if somebody tells you a good story when you're four years old, you remember it when you're 50 years old. They'll stick with you for life. We talk a lot about trends on this show. And AI is the one that just won't quit. But here's the thing. Talking about AI doesn't make you more productive, actually putting it to work. And that's what Zapier did for me. Zapier is an AI orchestration platform that connects top AI models like ChatGPT and Claude to the apps your team already uses. No coding, no IT bottleneck, no complexity.

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And so if you tell a good story, it helps, it's more memorable, and it helps people contextualize their own life. So if I teach you the formula for compound interest, useful, important, but you might forget it. And it's just, it's no different in your head than the quadratic formula in algae. And you're just like, I don't really understand what this is. But if I tell a story about somebody who took too much risk and lost their money and regretted it. A, you remember it. B, you can have empathy with what that person went through and you can contextualize, man, here's how I would have felt if I was in that situation.

If I lost all my money, I would regret it. I'd be crying. I'd feel shame and horror as well. And so whenever as a writer you can contextualize, you can help the reader contextualize their life into what you're talking about, the better you're going to do. That was a very long-winded answer to your question of, I think it very much was intentional.

The last thing I'll say about that is I've always written for an audience of one. I only care about one reader and that's myself. I've been intentionally selfish in my writing because it's too difficult or it's too easy, I would say to pander to your readers if you feel like you're trying to teach something to somebody else. Now, teaching is one of life's wonderful gifts, but when you're doing it to an anonymous reader who you don't know, it's very hard and very dangerous. So rather than saying, I'm an expert and let me teach you. teach you Mr. or Mrs. Reader, that's very difficult. I wanted to say, what stories are interesting

to me? And maybe there's a leap of faith. If this story is interesting to me, it'll probably be interesting to others. Not everybody, but maybe other people will like this. And so I've always just wanted to write topics that I was interested in, in a voice that I found compelling with stories that I found interesting, and then put it out in the world and let people figure out what they want to do with it rather than myself having a grand plan of what this is supposed to teach you. No, it's brilliant. And here's what I'll tell. you my youngest son who's in grad school at the University of Miami said to what you were just saying. Dad, I can tell this story to my friends, right? Because now you've written it in a way that

however that connection was with my son came and whatever piece of the story was important to him, he can now tell and translate that to other people. And I think that is so powerful. And I know you get it, but Morgan, I need you to understand how powerful that is of what you do, bro, because you've got 21, 22, 23-year-olds that are able to retell your stories in their way to impact others, and not many people can do that, brother. Well, thank you. That's great to hear. One thing it reminds me of the, from my time in college, pretty much the only course that I remember things from and that I got the most out of was this class on environmental economics, which I didn't give two hoots about then or now,

to be honest. And, but the teacher was this, he was a lawyer and he was a lawyer and he was, He was an environmental consultant. He did like expert witness stuff. And the entire class, it was every lecture would begin with, hey, I read the story in the Wall Street Journal today. Let me tell you some stories about like the background of how that industry works and some of my old war stories from how I dealt with it. And he would be like, oh, so like right now ExxonMobil is dealing with this.

Let me just tell you a story about the history of environmental regulations and how it came to here. And he would just ramble off the top of his head telling stories. And when I compare that to the other professors, who stood at the chalkboard and wrote down formulas and asked you to memorize them. What stuck with me more? The formulas are the stories. By orders of magnitude, the stories stick with you.

And so I think you can apply that to almost any field, no matter what your field is. Yes, technical expertise is very important in engineering or if you're a doctor or a pilot or something. You need to know which buttons to press, the technical expertise, of course. But there are so many fields where just hearing stories about other people dealing with what you are dealing with in the workplace can be one of the most effective ways to teach. Agree. You know, in the intro, I talked to you or I labeled you as the guru, and I don't use that term lightly with most people. I'd love to get your feedback, your stance, your verbal op-ed. And what are people missing when it relates to money and more importantly, money-making decisions? I think there's two things. One, people need to have a very hard conversation with themselves about why their goals are. what they are. So I think most people kind of intuitively understand their goals, even if it's just like a primitive urge for more. Like my goals, I want more money. I want a higher salary out, higher net worth. I want a bigger house. And that's, it's very normal. I have those primitive

goals too. It's important to ask yourself why that is. And I think to some people, that's a weird question. Like, why are you asking me that I want a bigger house? Because a bigger house is better. Of course, if you start asking questions like, well, why? Why do you want all these things? I think eventually if you're honest with yourself, you get to this point of, I want to be higher on the social, on the social hierarchy. I want a bigger house because I want my house to be bigger than that guys. And I want a faster car because it has to be faster than that person. It doesn't necessarily how much you have or how your net worth is or how bigger house is. What you want is to be and have bigger and better and larger things than somebody else. You just want to be higher on the social hierarchy. I think when you frame it like that, a lot of people would be like, well, that's kind of a silly game. Like what I want to be is happy. What I want to be is happy. But what you are

driven to achieve is just to have more than other people. And people have understood this for millennia. Montesquieu, the great philosopher, said, here this quote that I loved, he said, if you only wish to be happy, that is very easy to achieve. But people want to be happier than other people, and that is much more difficult. And so I think for a lot of people, this was true for me. Once I started really analyzing that game and where my urges were coming from, then you can redefine your goals in a much clearer sense of like, what I want out of money is, A, independence, I want to be able to live my life and have the privilege to become myself without chasing other people's dreams, other people's goals,

being influenced by other people's priorities. I want to be independent. And B, I want to use money as a tool to live a better, happier, more content life. And look, the idea of status seeking and inserting yourself on the social hierarchy is in many ways unavoidable. It's just how humans came to be. If life is a competition for resources and jobs and mates and whatnot, then it is true that what matters is not how much I have.

It matters that I have more than you. And that's really what matters. And so I think a lot of this is unavoidable. But once you come to terms with the game that is being played, you can analyze what goals are worth pursuing in life and what is not. The second thing I would bring up here of what people are missing or is easy to ignore are with money is the extent to which my goals might be very different from yours, not because we necessarily disagree, certainly not because one of us is more intelligent than the other, but because

we're different people from different backgrounds, sometimes from different generations, different parts of the country. And we should not pretend that people who grew up and have experienced very different things in life will come to want and value the same things. And so one one like very crude way to think about this is that if you grew up very poor and shunned, and were embarrassed of your poverty. Sometimes in that situation, a fancy sports car or a mansion is the ultimate symbol to yourself

that you made it. And it means a lot to you. And so sometimes the yellow Lamborghini or the big house up on the hill, you're not even doing that to show off for other people. You're doing that as a trophy to yourself and it feels great. Now, if you grew up well off, privileged,

that kind of, the yellow Ferrari might become the ultimate symbol of gaudy egotism. And it's the last thing that you, you want. The big, flashy car in people's faces, a house in people's faces is the last thing that you want. And so, and neither of those are right or wrong. It's just people have very different experiences. And so I think a lot of damage is done in finance when we teach it as there's one right way to do it. Here's how to do it. Here's the formula for how you should save, invest, spend, what your goals should be. And there's not. You really have to go figure it out for yourself.

A lot of people don't want to do that. They want somebody to give them the answer. And it just doesn't work like that. And so I think those two things, the understanding of why you have these urges and goals and the introspection to figure out what you've experienced in life and what truly works for your personality. Those are the two biggest things that people tend to miss. Real talk. I'm always on the move. Always jumping on some airport Wi-Fi or hotel network without thinking twice. Then it hit me. How exposed my passwords and banking information really were. And that is when I started using NordvPM. It locks down my data. wherever I am. Even on public Wi-Fi, it's the fastest VPN out there, no buffering when I'm

streaming, and one account covers up to 10 devices, and it's the price of a cup of coffee a month. Premium cybersecurity, total no-brainer. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com slash Mick Unplug. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. Go check out NordvPn.com slash mic unplugged. Dude, I've been saying that that last part, probably for the last 15 years, especially when talking to my children, because I do want them to be, not just fiscally, but I want them to be very money aware, very financial literate, right, if that make sense because, you know, two people, two households can look structurally the exact same,

but from a financial situation be polar opposite or not have the same type of credit score or, you know, the means to capital, but could look almost identical on paper. And I think that's where people get it wrong as well, too, is you compare yourself to someone else in their situation because you think that it's right. But as I put it in business, the work is always the work, meaning the things that you're doing with your money might look differently to get different outcomes. It's good to have a standard. It's good to have a barometer, but you still have to do things for you that other people or other entities just aren't going to be able to see. Yeah. One way I think about this, too, is in sports where if you are a power lifter, then being huge and thick and burly is what you want to be.

And sometimes a lot of power lifters look obese even. They're just gigantic guys with big pot bellies. and that's the perfect body for their sport. Now, if you are a marathon runner, you want to be a toothpick. And you want to be as lean and skinny and lack of muscle as you can, as, as, as, as, are world class athletes. The giant dude with a big pot belly and the skinny little twig are world class athletes.

They are perfect for what they are doing. I think that can be an analogy for like for finance as well. That if you're, if you are a type A person and you're like, I'm only happy if I'm starting successful companies and selling them and building my money. as fast as I can so I can buy the private jet, whatever it might be. That could be success for one person. There are so many other people who are like, I just want a half decent job where I'm home at four o'clock to hang out my kids.

And if I can have a very modest retirement at age 65 and live in my 800 square foot house and go fishing on the weekends, that's a perfect life for me. And both of those can be perfect. Both of those can be the perfect situation for each of those people. It is too common, though, in finance that the type A entrepreneur, you're only successful if you're as rich as I am, that that person could look at the modest, humble person who just wants to go fishing and hang out with his kids as a failure. Because by the standards of the type A person's life, the fisherman is a failure. But the fishermen might look at the type A person and say, I would never

want that life. I'm happy doing my own kind of thing. And so the realization that there are infinite number ways to have a wonderful life, I think goes missing in finance where we want to distill everything down to one formula. Yeah, totally agree. So Morgan, I want to talk about this book now. The Art of Spending Money, Simple Choices for Richer Life. Obviously, I've read it. I'm on my third read of the book. And so for those that are watching, this is it. I'm going to do something cool towards the end of the day and probably purchase some copies of this book. But there's a certain chapter. And you've hinted at it a little bit, but look at them. I haven't highlighted. My bookmark is right there. Talk to us about look at them. But before we go there, I'd be remiss.

Let's talk about the book, the premise of you writing this book, why this book, why now? I had spent 13, 15 years or so as a finance writer. And the vast majority of what I wrote about was investing and gaining wealth, which is a very important topic, a wonderful topic, I think. But it was a self-realization a couple years ago that if you asked me my philosophies around investing and gaining wealth, I could talk to you for hours and hours. and hours on end. I'd put so much thought into crystallizing those views. But if you asked me, what are my philosophies and thoughts around spending money? I would have drawn a blank. And what's so interesting about that is that investing impacts some people's lives, about 50% of Americans own

stocks in some form or another. But it's a minority of certainly of the world that is going to experience the emotions of investing in the stock market. Spending money impacts every single person on the planet in some way or another, from the very richest to the very poorest. And the psychology of spending impacts almost everybody, almost every single day. And it's a topic that up until that point, as much focus and study as I had put into this topic, I had not thought about at all. And a lot of this, again, back to being a selfish writer, I was just trying to figure out my own life.

I was trying to figure out the spending philosophies for me. And I did not write this book as an expert trying to impart my expertise on the reader because I started this book with none. I was just trying to figure it out in my own life. How do I think about spending and greed and envy and ego and social hierarchy? How do I think about those in my own life? And then I tried to put on the same lens that I put on it with investing of I don't want to give anybody advice. I want to think about this from a behavioral like psychology, sociology, sociology perspective.

And I just want to tell some stories about it rather than thinking that there's a formula as a self-help person that I could give to anybody because I can't. And so that was that was a premise of the. the book. It really started was trying to figure out what I identified was a whole in my own life that I was trying to understand. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. So two chapters really quickly, Morgan, that I want you to highlight for us. Again, the first one, look at them. For the viewers for the listeners, walk us through a couple of highlights of that chapter. One thing back to thinking about my own life, it's a useful mental exercise, I think, to ask yourself constantly, if I were alone on a deserted island with maybe just me and my family, my wife and kids, how would we choose to live?

If nobody could see our clothes, cars, house, jewelry, there was no Instagram, we could show off vacations, there were no eyeballs on us at all. How would we choose to live? And I think for many people, not everybody, but many people in that situation would live a very life, a very different life than they do now. And it's a mental exercise to force yourself how much of your lifestyle and your goals and your aspirations are because they make you happy versus you want the eyeballs and the attention of other people. And so the idea of looking at other people and trying to gaze your position in the world relative to them and always assuming that the people who are above you in income in size

of their house in that kind of positioning realm are not only above you but happier than you, I think is one of the biggest things. One of the things that's very difficult with money is that I can see your clothes. I can see your car. Maybe I can see your house. I can see a lot of material things that you purchased. I have absolutely no insight into what's going on inside of your head. I have absolutely no insight into how happy or tortured or joyful or miserable you may or may not be.

And so it is too easy when looking at other people to say, well, that person with the better car and the better house is living a better life than I do. And that is a very tenuous proposition to think to yourself. It is much more common, I think, that there are people, quote, unquote, below you financially and social status-wise that are much happier than you. And there are a lot, to an even greater degree, there are people, quote, unquote, above you who are making a lot more money, who are so much more miserable, not only than you realize, but more miserable than you are today. That is so, so common.

I've used this example. I've talked about this a little bit because I live in the Seattle region. for literally decades, Bill and Melinda Gates were the king and queen of Seattle. And think about if you were to summarize the life of Bill Gates five years ago. A simple summary would be this. He created technology that impacted almost everybody in the world to a profound degree. He became the richest man in the world doing it. And he was going to give away 99% of that wealth for the betterment of humanity.

If you just think about that, that is a fairy tale biography that I just told you. And then what's happened in the last five years? well, they got divorced. Epstein stuff came out and whatnot. There's so much, I just bring that up because there's so much going on behind the scenes that you don't see from the outside. And that is true in everybody's life. And so rather than looking at other people and gauging my life relative to them, because there's a lot going on that I can't see, I just wanted to turn the benchmark inwards and just say like, am I happy? Am I having a good life?

I again need to make the disclosure that I don't think I'm an expert in this because there are plenty of times. in my life when I look at other people, look at their nicer house, whatever it might be, and feel a sense of inadequacy and I feel a sense of like, oh, I'm beneath them. Once in a while, I was just telling my wife, I had one of these experiences like this past Saturday, like a couple days ago where I woke up and I was just drinking coffee sitting on the couch and I just had this sense of just like, God, I'm so grateful for just what I have right now. I'm just like, I don't, everything around me, I just so great. for this and my aspiration to have tons more.

It's just not really there. When you have those like unfortunately brief and fleeting moments, you realize like, that's the goal. That right there is the goal. It's gratitude and contentment. And the idea of like, I'm only going to be happier if I can anchor my gaze and my expectations on what other people have and I don't, that's the formula for perpetual misery. So I think that's always the realization.

Love it, brother. Love it, love it, love it. All right. So the chapter that has had the most conversation, the one that the 21, 22, 23-year-olds at the University of Miami are talking about, and that's the real conversation just so you know, is quiet compounding. And you talk about in that chapter, the fastest way to get rich is to go slow. And so I want everybody that's watching or listening, especially, like, if you're an early startup entrepreneur, if you're that person that's looking to, even to save or to go from. X amount of money to three to five years, this amount of money. This chapter in and of itself is where I would start.

And I know there's some build up, Morgan, but when I read it and again, my sons ended up getting copies for some of their friends, they started at this chapter. Briefly, like, highlight a myth or two or a strategy or two on quiet compound. I think it's a philosophy that I tried to implement in my own life very much, that a lot. lot of finance and you can put investing and spending into that category is loud. It's both comparative to other people. What do I have relative to you? And it is ego driven show off signaling. And I think a lot of that so that's it's very normal and natural.

But I think a lot of the best financial behavior in the biggest financial successes are quiet. It is internal benchmark. It's I don't care how well you did. I just care whether I met my own goals. That's an internal benchmark, rather the external benchmark. and it's quiet in the sense of like, I don't have any desire to signal to other people how well I've done.

I just want to have a happy life within the confines of my own house. And that's it and just be quiet about it. And so I think it's a very simple and kind of vague philosophy. But part of it too is in order to do well financially, you need to be able to stick around for a very long period of time. It's not necessarily how well you did this year, you know, in the stock market or in your job. It's can you keep doing well for,

10, 20, 30, 40 years. That's when you, that's when the results really start getting crazy and, and, and, incredible. And I think you really only have a shot of doing that at in longevity and endurance. If you're doing it in a quiet, internal benchmark focused way, that's kind of how I always think about it. And a lot of times when I have a financial goal or another way to phrase goal is like, urge and desire, I always try to ask like, is this, does it fall into the quiet

compounding realm? And everybody's different. I think if you're type A, this, that. philosophy might not appeal to you that much. But for me, I've always been, I don't know what type is it. Is it type B, C, D? I don't know where that fits. But I've always just been like, I think to me, a really good life that I would look back on on my deathbed, hopefully 50 years from now or whatever it is, I would look back at it and be like, I was, I had a lot of quiet success that I was, I lived a life that I was proud of and built up money that I used for the betterment of my family and the community.

And I did it in a quiet, unflashy way. You know, someone who I've really, looked up to, and he was not a perfect man by any sense. But George Marshall, who was a general and he was Secretary of State during World War II, lived an unbelievable life, had a profound and I think positive impact on the world. And there are no statues of him. A lot of people, unless you're a World War II buff, you've probably never even heard his name. And so you compare that to the big men, Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower. Some of the of them did a lot of great things too. But I think a layer beneath that, the quiet he heroes are more incredible because they were doing it for the impact itself, not for their own

personal fame or fortune. And so there's also a line in the Fu Fighter song, There Goes My Hero. And it's, there goes my hero. He's ordinary. He's ordinary. He's not like you're, I, so to me, the hero has always been someone who was quietly compounding behind the scenes for their own betterment and for the betterment of their family and their society around them rather than some external ego driven formula.

Yeah. Amazing brother. Morgan, I know how busy you are, man. I'm honored to have spent some time with you. What you personally done for me, but there's no words for it. So I just thank you for that. Leave the floor with you, man.

Where can people find and follow? And I'll make sure I have links to the book as well, too. Well, thanks. This has been a lot of fun and an honor to be here. And every half decent and many and many not so decent thoughts that have ever had are now in my three books. The Psychology of Money, same as ever. And now the art of spending money.

Everything that's gone through my head. that I thought was worth writing down, have been written down in those books. That's where you can find it. I love it. I love it. Morgan, I appreciate you so much. For everybody that's watching,

this listening, check the show notes, check the descriptions. There's links to Morgan's social there. There's links to the book there, to all of his books are there. Do yourself in favor. Get all three. They're going to be relevant.

They're going to be timely. And all of them are going to teach you strategies that you need today to understand how you think and feel and are motivated or demotivated by money. Morgan, brother, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know, my man. Thanks so much, Beck. This has been fun.

You got it. To all the viewers and listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. That's another powerful conversation on Mick Unplugged. If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen, share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave a review so more people can find there because. I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven.

Stay focused and stay unplugged.