More Money Podcast - 416 Invest Your Way to an Extraordinary Life - Author of Experiencing The American Dream, Mark Matson
Episode Date: December 11, 2024What does the “American Dream” mean to you? Or if you live in Canada like me, the “Canadian Dream”? Personally, I think it’s something only you can define for yourself, but for me it means l...iving in a country that gives you access, freedom, opportunity, a voice, and the potential to reach heights you never thought possible when it comes to your career, finances, and life in general. In this podcast episode with Mark Matson, author of Experiencing The American Dream: How to Invest Your Time, Energy, and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life, we discuss this topic in-depth including how the “Dream” is still alive despite what some people may think, how money itself can’t make you happy (so don’t lose sight of what matters), how to create your own purpose, and how to actually realize your the “Dream” by investing strategically for the future. Follow me: Instagram @jessicaimoorhouse Threads @jessicaimoorhouse TikTok @jessicaimoorhouse Facebook @jessicaimoorhouse YouTube @jessicamoorhouse LinkedIn - Jessica Moorhouse For full episode show notes and transcript visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/416 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
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and welcome back to the more money podcast i'm your host jessica morehouse and in today's
episode we're talking about the american dream or canadian dream or any version of that depending
on where you live because it honestly means different things to different people but at its
core is the belief that anyone can realize their own version of success, security, possibility, and freedom
through their own actions. And what it means to me is believing that no matter where you're
starting from, if you're not happy with where things are going with your life, there are things
that you can do to change that. You're never stuck, even though it's really important to acknowledge
that none of us are starting at the same starting line. Some of us have to deal with more obstacles
than others, and it may just be harder for you to reach your ideal life compared to someone else
based on your situation or circumstances. I mean, privilege exists. We cannot deny that. And our social system is
anything but perfect and does not treat everyone equally. Nevertheless, this dream ultimately means
having hope to create a better life for yourself. And I think we can all agree that, yeah, that's
kind of important, which is why I invited Mark Mattson on the show today to discuss this topic in depth.
He has a brand new book out called Experiencing the American Dream,
How to Invest Your Time, Energy, and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life.
But he also has been helping people create their own versions of the American Dream
by working in the financial planning and investment management field for over 30 years.
He's also created the American Dream Experience and the Mattson Method, helping make Nobel Prize
winning investing research accessible to everyday investors. And this isn't his first book either.
He's also authored books that include The Dirty Filthy Lies My Broker Taught Me, 101 Truths About Money and Investing, and Main Street
Money, How to Outwit, Outsmart, and Outinvest the Wall Street Bullies. And you can often find him
sharing his knowledge about money and investing as an expert on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Yahoo Finance.
Now, as always, I will be giving away a copy of his book. So make sure to listen to the
end of this episode to find all the details about that. But we've got quite an episode for you. It
was such a great interview. You're going to absolutely love it. It's going to inspire you,
give you a little hope and some excitement to, you know, get into your budget, start investing
wisely, do some of that hard work that maybe you've been saying, oh yeah, I'll do it over
the weekend, and then you never get to it, and then the week goes by, and it's another
weekend.
This is going to give you a little boost.
So without further ado, let's get to that interview with Mark.
Welcome, Mark, to the More Money Podcast.
So excited to have you on the show to discuss your national bestselling book, Experiencing
the American Dream, how to Invest Your Time,
Energy, and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life. And if anyone's watching, I mean,
I love your background. You're very much representing what you're talking about in
this book. Though when I was reading it, I did feel like, okay, this kind of relates to Canada.
Whenever I hear the American dream, we use that term sometimes too. I feel like we're like,
North American dream. There's definitely differences, but
at the end of the day, we all kind of believe in this idea of opportunity and, you know,
designing a life that, you know, you dream of when you're a kid. Otherwise, what's the point of
trying really? So to kick things off, just for anyone who is new to you, do you want to share
a little bit about your background and what ultimately led you to feel like this book needs
to be written, I need to be the one who writes it, and people need to read it right now?
Sure. Well, my history is I started up my company in 1991. I was 27 years old and really noticed I wanted to be a financial planner because my dad
was a planner when I was a kid. Went into the industry, did what everybody else did, stock
picking, market timing, track record investing, trying to pick the great mutual fund managers
that had beaten the market in the past, hoping they would continue to do that into the future,
and became very disenchanted pretty quickly, noticing that those things weren't very effective.
So I opened up my own advisory firm. We manage over $11 billion today.
Oh, wow.
Yeah. And for people all over, like you said, North America. And it really is not just the
American dream, this idea of freedom, this idea of
creativity, of being able to express yourself and creating something for your family.
I really look at it as something, as a basic human nature is that people yearn for freedom
and they yearn to be expressed. And I noticed that in our industry, the investment industry,
that there are so many
bad actors, I call them Wall Street bullies, that take advantage of investors that, number one,
I knew about the investing side of it. I also experienced throughout my career that money
itself doesn't make you happy because I would have some clients that had millions and millions
and millions. They were very unhappy. And some people had dramatically less. So I wanted to start to really delve into why is it that money can't make you happy by itself?
And then how can you harness the ideals and principles of freedom and free markets
to create wealth and prosperity and invest for your family to create the future that you really
want? Yeah. So in the intro of your book, you kind of talk about how some people, because, you know, it's been an interesting, I'd say, five, 10 years, quite
honestly. It's been a roller coaster of ups and downs, good times, bad times. Why do you feel
like a lot of people feel disenchanted by this idea of the American dream or they don't believe
it exists or it's very different or, oh, that was in the past. It's not possible for me anymore.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think one of the things is just the current circumstances that people are facing.
Yeah.
I mean, you're looking, at least in the United States, you're looking at massive inflation
over the last three and a half, four years.
I was on a TV show the other day, a news show.
They were like, well, is inflation transitory?
I'm like, inflation is never transitory. Once it goes up 30%, it's not going back down.
Once it happens, it happens and everything's going to be more expensive. So you have inflation,
you have wars that are going on that you didn't have three or four years ago.
You have a lot of fear, a lot of unemployment still. You have a lot of economic fear, global fear.
So I think people are afraid in general.
But I think to an even more internal extent, it's because they don't understand the American dream.
They think that it's about greed.
It's about money.
It's about having more things, material goods.
And so they don't really understand the very nature of it and how it actually works to begin with. So you have some
people that just love it, the entrepreneurism, freedom, creativity, self-expression, personal
responsibility, and it's just kind of in their DNA. And then you have people that are like,
well, I don't know, maybe, could be possible for me. And then you have the American Dream
haters that don't believe it ever existed to even begin with. And so I address all those three
groups of people in the book and want to open it up and let people understand, look, the American
Dream is still alive. It's still possible. You can still do it for your family. And there's a
great opportunity for you here, no matter what the current circumstances may look like. We're often feeling like we're being told what it is. And then we can't relate. Like if, you know, I look at these millionaires, billionaires flaunting their wealth and they're like, yeah, it's all because of the American dream.
Like I can't relate to that.
And if that's what that is, I don't know if that's, that's not what I envision for myself.
Like I don't want fancy cars.
I know that.
I mean, I don't like driving, so I definitely don't want a fancy car.
So, you know, I think that's the big issue is sometimes we aren't really clear on what we want
because we're letting people tell us what we want and like you kind of mentioned i think there is
over time there's been this connection between american dream and uh greed people having more
which means some people have it less so there's's an imbalance there. You know, the lack of kind
of transparency or, you know, let's talk about privilege. We've got to talk about how it's not
not everyone starts at the start, you know, same starting line, you know, people have different
circumstances. So there's a lot of things kind of, I guess, in the way. But, you know, when we kind
of move past those times that they are so let me do that again when
we kind of move past some of those uh concepts i know there's a part in your book where you talk
about responsibility versus victimhood and i think that's the really uh important thing is there's a
lot of things i talk about this on the show often a lot of things beyond our control there are you
know there's circumstances in the way some people are born
into poverty, some born into wealth, that's going to make it easier or harder for you to experience
whatever your own American or Canadian dream it is. So let's talk a little bit about the
responsibility and what victimhood means. Like, is that something that it's not about, you know,
ignoring the fact that people have different circumstances.
It's more about, OK, but what can we do moving forward?
There definitely, as you pointed out, are different starting points.
Yeah.
And I write about in the book in the beginning the starting point for my family.
And it started out in the hills of West Virginia in Charleston in the hollers.
And my grandfather definitely did not believe in the American dream.
He worked in the coal mines. He worked in the hollers. And my grandfather definitely did not believe in the American dream. He worked in the coal mines. He worked in the chemical factories. And he was very, he was a brilliant
guy. He was really, really smart. But he thought that money was evil. He thought that the only way
you got money was you stole it from other people. He thought that he was a victim. And he basically,
the mind chatter that went on in his mind was, why am I doomed to live
my life like this in poverty?
And I'm entitled to things that are better than what I have without actually earning
them.
And my father totally rejected that.
I mean, my dad grew up in a shack next to the railroad.
They were so poor, they cut the tops off of instant carnation
milk cans and hammered them to the bottom of the baseboard to keep rats from coming into the house.
He had one pair of shoes per year. Right when school started, usually they were barefoot by
summertime because they outgrew them or wore them out. So they really had destitute poverty.
But it wasn't the circumstances of what they were born into that defined who they were.
It was the mindsets and the demons about how they felt about the world and about money
that kept them where they were.
And we would go back there every summer to visit my in-laws.
And my dad had gotten us out.
My mom and dad got us out.
We weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination.
We had about an 1,800 square foot house.
Today, it'd probably only be worth about 250 grand.
But we had freedom.
We had fulfillment.
We had hard work.
We had vision for the future.
We had optimism.
We had a feeling of self-responsibility.
And so my dad rejected that mindset of victimhood and became 100%
responsible for what his family would experience. And he lived by a creed that was,
I don't deserve anything if I don't create value for other people first.
And my grandfather came one time to visit us in Cincinnati. Uh, he came to the front door,
he opened the front door. He said, how many people did you have to rip off to get this house?
And my dad was like, look, I work hard. I, I, I help people invest their money and try to
take care of their family. Um, he said, well, tell yourself whatever you want.
I guess you think you're a big shot now. And so they lived in two completely different worlds.
The starting point, whether you're a billionaire or whether you're born with nothing,
is much less important than how you view yourself and money and the world than where the starting
point is. Because there's many, many people that started in the hills of West Virginia that became
wealthy, and there's many, many billionaires that lost it all and became very poor.
So it's much more about how you see yourself and money and the screens by which you see the world.
And if you see yourself a victim, you'll never have wealth.
You'll never have prosperity.
You'll never have fulfillment.
And you'll never have a feeling of accomplishment in your life.
And no matter what your starting point is.
Yeah, because once you put yourself in that box of I'm a victim, there's kind of no way out.
You're boxed in. There's nowhere to go after that. And so you need to kind of look outside
of that to be like, well, then what? Now what? What can we do?
Yeah, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The things that we're afraid of the
most are the things that we create. And if I believe myself to be a victim and entitled to
something that I didn't work for and that other people should give it to me, then I live my life
as a victim. And at the chemical factory he worked for george my my grandfather they offered
him a job in upper management oh and he refused it oh why and he said i'm not he said because i'm
not going to be one of those people i'm going to stay here on the line and breathe in these toxic
chemicals and eventually it killed him he literally died to keep his screen in place. So we don't see it as a screen.
It's actually the way that we see the world, and it looks like it's the only reality that we have.
And a person that has that screen would never dream about doing the things that an entrepreneur
would do or an innovator would do to create a business. And that's what's so destructive and life-sucking about it, is that those demons, those beliefs that we have about ourselves and the world that keep us stuck really do destroy our life.
Yeah, I remember reading in your book that we as humans just work so hard to not change.
And you give examples, and that's a great example of we'll do everything we can
to stay where we are. And why do you think that is? Is it because we're fearful? Is it because
maybe if we never had an example of someone getting to that next level or changing their
life, we don't think it's possible? Or yeah, we only see or hear these stories of people who were
able to do it, but they're so disconnected from us that we're like, well, that could never happen to me. Why do you think people are so
hell-bent on keeping those worldviews that aren't serving them? And they probably know that,
but they don't want to change. Yeah, that's a great question. I'll give you a personal example.
So when I started my company, we had three employees. And I created a money demon, a way of looking at the world
that was destructive around money, which was employees suck. And that when you hire them,
you waste money, you waste a lot of time, they're not dedicated, they're not committed,
they're not innovative. And the other part of that was that I'm a bad manager.
And that even if I hire them and pay
the money, I won't be able to train them and they'll leave me and they'll take business away
from me. And so I had this vision of creating this company, but at the same time, I had these demons
that these ways of screens around seeing employees that prohibited me from doing that. Now, why would I keep that
in place? Well, because it's really juicy. I got to be the victim. I got to complain about it.
I got to avoid taking risk. I got to play small. I got to complain. I got to whine.
I got to avoid domination. I got to avoid hard work. I got to, I mean, there's
secondary emotional payoffs that I get, and I don't have to get out of my comfort zone.
I don't have to take any risk. So what you do when you are looking at that, you're like, okay, well,
I have this set of beliefs or screens I see the world through. What are they costing me to keep in place? It was costing me the idea of ever getting
to do a podcast with you or write a book or have 70 employees or have over 30,000 clients.
That would have completely killed off the future if I had kept that screen
So I changed the screen which was there are awesome great people out there
It's my job to find them motivate them train them and create a great team
So so I was the victim and we all go through that. Yeah, we all no matter who we are
There's times in our lives where we play the victim
Uh, and we complain and whine and moan because we don't
want to get out of our comfort zone and change. Well, it's one thing, you know, it's easy to say,
and then I changed my mind or I changed my mindset. And you read all these like self-help
books and you're like, and just change your mindset. And you're like, yeah, I mean, if it
was that easy, I'd do it. How were you able to do it? How were you, like, was there anything that
kind of made that shift happen?
Because I think a lot of people want to, and they just don't know how to take that first step.
For me, first I got to identify it and see that it's not true.
It's just something I made up.
So yes, did I have an employee or two that didn't work out?
Yes.
Did they either leave or I had to fire them? Yes. But then, so this thing happened. That's what happened. Some people
left. But then the story behind it that there are no good employees, I'm the one that made up the
story. So I'm the one that added meaning to what actually happened. Now, that story has either positive empowering results or it has disempowering
results. And that's why I call it a money demon, is because if it's disempowering, which it was,
obviously, I have to go to battle with it. And I actually have to kill it off. It's not enough
to just say, well, I'm not going to believe that anymore. I have to do a cost-benefit analysis on it. I got to be like, what am I getting out of
this? Getting to be the victim, getting to avoid being controlled, getting to avoid domination,
getting to complain and gossip, getting to be a victim. That's number one. That's what I'm
getting out of it. But what's it costing me? Well, it's costing me my dreams. It's costing
me authentic relationships. It's costing me reaching more people. It's costing me saving people from gambling and speculating with their money. It's costing me from being a true entrepreneur. And then I got to decide, am'm going to do battle with it. And to do battle with it, I have to kill it off. And to kill it off, I have to create a guardian belief, a new belief system.
And then once I have that new belief, like there are great people out there, I have to go find
them. Then I have to take massive action to convince my brain that it actually is real.
What actions would somebody take who actually believed that there are awesome people out there
in the world and it's my job to find them and create a team. And then through taking that
repeated action over and over and over again, then you start to reinforce those, you actually
rework your brain, you rewire your brain. But it's not easy. As you point out, Jessica,
it's definitely not easy. It's not easy. I think one thing, at least in my life, that's helped with those times where I've been in
that negative mindset, want to change it, but don't know how is sometimes, uh, changing
your environment and changing the people you hang out with.
Uh, if you're hanging out with people who are reinforcing your money demons, I mean,
it's just going to get stronger.
So was that kind of something that you did looking for those people that, who can reinforce these new ideas that I really want to get ingrained
in me? Yeah, that's something my dad, when I was 10 years old, he gave me a copy of Think and Grow
Rich. And inside Think and Grow Rich, there's a chapter on creating a mastermind. I talk about
it a little bit in the book, but it's being around those people. He said, look, everybody wants to make performance seem so complicated. It's not complicated at all. What you want to do
is find someone that's already getting the result that you want in life, whether it's athletics or
whether it's relationships or whether it's spirituality or whether it's business. You
find someone that's already getting the result you want, and then you get close to them. You
either hire them as a coach or a mentor, or a lot of times people will just share with you.
And be around those people and then start to get the mindsets and the way that they look at the
world, and then hire them to coach you in your behavior. And so it's not really that hard,
except you have to actually be able to take the coaching.
And I asked my dad, I said, well, then why doesn't everybody just change?
He said, well, the reason is because most people aren't coachable.
They don't want the coaching.
Because when you're coachable, you have to do things that are going to be uncomfortable,
things that you don't understand, and things you might even disagree with.
But if you want the same result that they got, you have to do the same thing that they did and then eliminate the yeah, but part of it. And yes, I agree with you 100%. Being around people
that already know how to get the result you want is critical to change.
Yeah. And it's, again, easier said than done, but it's possible and it's essential. Absolutely. You mentioned money demons, which I think is such a great term
for what it is. I visualize them like that's exactly what it looks like in my brain. Do you
want to kind of share a little bit more about what are some other possible money demons that people
may have that they may not know are currently holding them back?
Well, one of the money demons is that the idea that money can actually make you happy.
Yeah.
This is the reason that just giving people money that didn't earn it
doesn't actually make them happy.
And history is rife with examples of people that had tons of money,
but were very unhappy.
Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe,
Howard Hughes, Prince, John Belushi. I mean, you can go on and on and on and on about all these people that had power, fame, money, prestige, everything, but were absolutely miserable.
So number one, the idea that money is going to make you happy. It won't make you happy.
As a matter of fact, having a lot of money can actually be a huge burden that actually
makes people miserable because it increases the stress and increases the anxiety.
It increases other people maybe being jealous of you or trying to take what you have.
I mean, a lot of families break apart because of money.
And so money is not something that makes you happy.
That's number one. And number two is that the thing that it's been, but people spend most of
their time in life trying to get money because they view money as a, whether it's conscious or
not subconsciously, they view it as a form of survival. So it's hard to get, hard to invest, hard to keep. And as a result, it's a
struggle. And a lot of times they had a no-talk rule in their family growing up. Usually we don't
talk about things that we have shame or guilt about. So they've been taught that it's shameful
or something that's guilty about. So there's all these relationships to money, money demons.
So what I discovered over the last 30 years is that you create a purpose for your life and your
money that's greater than money itself. And then through that purpose, by building your business
or building your career, building your family, then when you do have money, you'll be in a position, by the way, you'll make it faster too,
but when you have the money, you'll actually be in a position to use it in a powerful way
versus a disempowering way. Yeah. I mean, time and time again, we see people who get money quickly,
who thought that, oh, this is what I want. I want money quickly, whether that's lucky, bought Bitcoin really early
and look at me now or the lottery or whatever the case is. And often you see those people blow all
their money or they don't find that they're happier than they were before. They maybe were
happier during the phase of them trying to get the money, like the journey of it, not the destination.
There's actually been studies to that effect where they've looked at lottery winners winning $100 million
versus someone that went through a traumatic accident
and lost the use of their legs.
And six months later, they measured the level of happiness
and it didn't seem to matter whether you lost your legs
or you got $100 million in the lottery.
Your happiness level stayed relatively stable
as your basic setting in life.
So it's definitely... And I know from my own personal experience, there's been times I had
a lot of money, been very miserable, times I had almost none and was very happy. So there's just
no correlation. But we spend so much of our time trying to earn it, 30, 40, 50 years of our life
trying to earn it, and then way more 50 years of our life trying to earn it,
and then way more than we actually need. And then we suffer and struggle over how we're going to invest it and spend it later in life. It's a vicious circle. Yeah. And like you really share
in the book, which is I think really important is, yeah, money is the tool to get to where you
want to go. But most people may not know
where they want to go. They never took the time or it was a long time ago that they set those,
this is where I want to go in life. And they never took another look at that plan that they made,
maybe in their 20s. Because, you know, sometimes when we make plans in our 20s, when we look back
in our like 30s and 40s, you're like, what was I thinking? Oh, right. I was still developing my
brain. I was still trying to figure out how to be an adult. So the goals I had back then, I don't
know why I'm still trying to run towards them. They don't make any sense to me. So I think it's
really important for people to design, like you're saying, their own kind of version of the American
dream, their own purpose. But again, easier said than done. How does one
even start that conversation with themselves, especially when the scary part is, what if this
means I have to really change my life, like everything about it, like where I live, who I
hang out with, my job, my gosh, that's a really scary task to take under. When people think about
the American dream, the Canadian dream, the North American dream, they think about, and there's been surveys done, they think about
several things. Number one, home ownership. These are goals though. And I don't talk specifically
about goals in the book. There's a lot of, and it's not that it's a bad thing. There's a lot of
books on goal setting. Don't need another one of those. But they want to own a home. They want to be able to retire.
Most people still want to have a family of kids through maybe college. And that's kind of like
the vision of the white picket fence in the house. And people will say that's what they want as part
of their American dream. And there's nothing wrong with any of that. But what I talk about in the
book is not the possessions or the financial results that you get,
but who are you actually being in life? How would you live your life so that you woke up in the
morning, moved, touched, and inspired by your own life, by the purpose of your life? And people are
like, well, how do I find the purpose? Well, you don't find it. It's not something that you go out and look for and find like a mountain.
It's not something you're born with. There's no purpose organ. It's not something that you
just discover. It's something that you actually have to create. And that creation process is
looking at your life and looking at what's really the values that you have. So it could be freedom. It could be family. It could be generosity. It could be love. It could
be, there's a million different things it could be. But going through a process of looking at
what are the things that are truly important to me and prioritizing them, looking at them,
analyzing them, going through a process, a coaching process. And then say, if I lived my life like this around my family, around my business, around my money, would I live an inspired life?
And if the answer is yes to that question, then you know what your purpose is going to be, whether or not you have $100 million or you have a dollar.
And that puts you in a position to live an inspiring life. I talk about being extraordinary. So it's not just how do I build
my portfolio? How do I spend my time? How do I spend my energy? How do I spend my focus so that
I can live a fulfilling life? And for the vast majority of the people, it's got something to do around being of
service to others. That seems to be kind of the core of it for most people. But it's definitely
a process, and definitely not something that just happens overnight.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, something that this book will help you work through, for sure,
because it's a big task. It's a big, and it's, and it's not easy.
I think largely because you have to be vulnerable to yourself to really get to the core of what do
you want and your values? Cause I think often we're not asked or we don't ask ourselves enough,
but it is really important. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about, cause you do have
some really great tangible practical advice for when you
know what your purpose is, then it becomes a lot more clear. Okay.
I need, I need to get money so I can achieve certain things.
And it becomes a little bit easier, honestly,
I think to then digest some of that information,
get rid of those money demons,
replace them with more positive
associations with money. And I guess, you know, part of the process of you figuring out your
purpose is figuring out your own money story and just all of your associations with money, which is
again, very, you've got to be vulnerable and open to do that. It's not an easy thing to dig deep,
but it's super essential. I want to talk a little bit about biases. You talk
a lot about biases. A big thing besides ourselves being in our way is also just our human nature.
And I think a lot of people don't know that there's biases at play. You had a lot that I'm
like, oh, I don't know if I really know too much about some of these prestige bias. I'm like,
I don't know if I've actually stumbled upon that one. Do you want to kind of talk about some of the biases that are preventing us from doing the right thing with our
money and our life? That's great. Yeah. Well, the biases are, the way to think about them as an
investor is the biases are how your brain is hardwired. So it's the computer chips in your brain. And we all have them. Not just other people,
but every single part of being a human being, we have these biases. And some of them are
intellectual, like the prestige bias, but also they tend to be emotional, and they also tend to
be instinctive. So for example, the prestige bias, we tend to invest in things or put our money in
things that tend to convey prestige. So if someone goes to a cocktail party, they might want to not
say, hey, I'm worth a hundred million, but they might say, oh yeah, I just invested in XYZ hedge
fund. And you're like, oh, people are doing the mental math. Yeah. Which then conveys, oh wow,
you know, Madoff. Oh, you know, so oh you know so and so you know which we know in the which we know that yeah that didn't
end well but the people that owned it were really into it they really had like a prestige around a
i'm with made off and they're in the club yeah the very exclusive club and then you uh in the
super bowl uh several years ago you had you had Tom Brady doing the commercials.
It was called the Crypto Bowl.
And he was saying, hey, I'm in.
Are you in?
I'm in.
I want to be part of that crowd, that crypto crowd.
So it's easy to spot in other people.
It's harder to spot in ourselves.
But it's very common to use money, whether it's the car you drive,
the house you live in, the way you invest your money. Hey, everybody's investing in Apple. I
want a piece of Apple. Everyone's in NVIDIA. I want to be part of the in crowd. But prestige,
a prestige bias is one of the big ones that people have when they look to invest their money.
Yeah. And I guess that's largely because,, it comes back to you making decisions, not based off your own information, your own wants and values. It's all based off
what other people think or what you want them to think, which if you live your life based off
other people, you're always going to end up in a place that you don't. Yeah. You'll be like,
where am I? Who am I? What am I doing here? Yeah. You'll never be your own person. And you'll
always be just, you know, looking at out there, trying to look smart or trying to look powerful or trying to look famous or trying to whatever,
get other people's approval. And it just, it's a very flawed way of investing because it ends up
causing people to speculate and gamble with their money versus academically investing it.
Yeah. Which I think we definitely saw a lot of over the past couple of years with
all of the crypto, the NFTs, the meme stocks, all that kind of stuff. And for someone like me,
I'm like, I could see this. I've done the research. I've read so many books about this. I'm like,
oh, wow, this is how it's playing out. And I'm seeing it in real time. But still, even regardless,
when there's so much momentum and there's so many people chatting about it, it's very difficult to stick to your gun,
so to speak, and not go with the crowd. I know that's another bias. The herding mentality
is not following what everyone else is doing because our instincts say, well, back in the day,
that did help us survive. If there was a predator, we'd all run. It doesn't really work out when it
comes to investing, though. I always tell people herding is great for Zebra, terrible for investors.
And it's so easy to fall into, regardless of how smart you are.
I think that's another error that people make is that, well, I'm really smart in chemistry.
I'm really smart as a neurosurgeon.
Therefore, I can read a couple brochures or do a little light studying about
investing and be successful on that. I call that an attribution error. But intellect doesn't help
you with the biases. So for example, Isaac Newton. At the time, the South Sea bubble,
everybody was doing it. It was very prestigious. He arguably had 190 IQ,
one of the smartest people that ever existed on the planet, but he got sucked in with the
herding bias. He lost $2 million in today's terms. He lost all of his wealth at a very old age.
And so even one of the smartest people that ever was on the face of the planet
got sucked in with herding bias. And whether that's Bitcoin, as you said, NFTs. I remember
when Justin Bieber was buying the $2 million sat ape or whatever that thing was.
Yeah. That was such a weird time. I'm like, am am i crazy right now why is everyone talking about these receipts
for things like it's when it didn't make any sense to me i'm so glad that eventually you know
correct played itself out and then yeah then you didn't hear a damn thing about them didn't you
like no one's talking about those anymore my gosh i feel bad for anyone who spent millions of dollars
on these ape cartoons like i don't know but yeah. But yeah, like you said, it's so
hard to fight against some of these. But I guess the other kind of component to this, and you share
this in your book, is how the investing industry in general is flawed. They don't make it easy for
you to make these good decisions anyway. And, you know, we saw, again, a lot of this in the past
couple years when everyone was kind of had to stay at home. And then we saw again, a lot of this in the past couple of years, um, when everyone was,
uh, kind of had to stay at home. And then we saw this surgence of people, uh, investing money
because they had a lot of free time, but they were doing it in a very speculative way. And because
there was a lot of gamification with lots of these investing apps, um, do you want to kind of speak
to, you know, especially in your experience, you've probably seen it all, what are some of these traps that we need to avoid when we do like, okay, I want to get into investing?
And unfortunately, it's not an easy, yeah, it's kind of a minefield a little bit.
You've got to be careful.
Yeah, I interviewed Dr. Eugene Fahm, a Nobel Prize winner.
I asked him this very same question, you know, does technology make it easier or harder to be a prudent investor? And he said, look, there's more ways to lose your
money now and faster than ever before. Yeah, that's true.
And 34 years ago, when I started my company, I thought, wow, there'll be this grand renaissance
because the academics were clear even 30 years ago about efficient market theory, modern portfolio theory, factor models, cost of capital, these well-established Nobel Prize
winning concepts. And I thought naively at the time that the brokerage community and the investing
community would catch on to this. And then everybody would give this grand renaissance
where people would stop speculating, gambling, and prudently invest.
And it's been the exact opposite because there's 24-7 news cycle now with the cable.
You've got your app in your pocket. You've got Robinhood right next to your DraftKings.
Yeah.
Yeah. You've got all the email. You've got the social you're fighting. You've got TikTok. You've got all of these things
that are causing people to be more addicted, more tuned in, turned on emotionally to speculating and
gambling with their money. And so stock picking, market timing, track record investing, investing
in toxic asset categories are more prevalent today than they've ever been. And now at 61,
I don't expect it ever to get better. I only expect it to get worse over the next 20, 30 years.
Yeah. It's not looking good. It's not looking good. That's for sure. It's unfortunate because
there are a lot of just like any kind of innovation. There's some great things that
have come out of it. It has kind of democratized.
It's a lot easier for an individual investor to start buying, you know, index funds by themselves instead of having to, you know, go through all these different avenues.
But, yeah, like you said, it's there's just so many things that are making it very easy to lose money, which is not not good at all. But it's funny. It's like, you know,
you write in your book, here is what you do. If you want to build wealth, these are the tools.
And I've read similar things in many other books. And yeah, I'm like, yeah, I mean, all these really
smart people are saying this is what you're supposed to do and people still aren't doing it.
Do you think that's another possible money demon in that people think it just can't be that simple? It can't be that straightforward that someone would write the
actual guide on how to invest in a smart way in a book. It's got to be more complicated like that.
So that's why I'm going to follow this person on TikTok who says you have to buy this coin I've
never heard of. Is that maybe one other thing that's working against people?
Well, I think there's a complexity bias where we think if it sounds
more complicated, it has a fascinating story behind it, that that makes it a better investment.
Look, gravity works no matter what the story behind gravity is, because it's science. It's
math. It's a force of nature. And investing can be that way too. There are actually academic scientific studies about how markets work, what premiums are,
how to diversify, how to control risk, and write about them in the book.
But people still want to be perceived.
It's like the matrix.
It's the red pill, blue pill.
Do you want to live in a lie, in a myth about how you can get rich quick?
And even Tony Robbins wrote his latest book. It's basically the theme is, if you want to be
a billionaire, invest like a billionaire. But the problem is they don't show you the tens of
thousands of people that tried it and went bankrupt. And they don't ever really talk
about the real risk that really is behind the strategy. So it's seductive,
but it's not real. Number one, you have to understand the academics. And like you said,
you can get index funds. You can get better diversification. You can get certain ETFs
that might be helpful. There's a lot of things that you can do to help. But at the end of the
day, it doesn't make it easier because what I see when we analyze portfolios, I call them Frankenstein portfolios.
They might have, somebody might have a million bucks and they'll have two or three index funds.
Okay.
Theoretically, not too bad.
But then they'll have NVIDIA and then they'll have Delta and then they'll have Bitcoin and then they'll have ESGs and then they'll have, I mean, it's this long-term bonds with
high volatility and they'll have all this garbage. And most of the garbage, the only reason they have
it is because the broker sold it to them because the last two or three years it was high, not
because of seven years of academic data. And so they're getting seduced in and they end up with
this amalgamation of destruction in their portfolio and the brokers don't care.
No, they got paid.
They absolutely don't care.
Yeah.
I remember when I went to my broker dealer when I was 27, I said, stock picking is not working, market timing, all these things we tell people to do, it's not working.
And he said, what's your problem?
Just sell them something else.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. we tell people to do, it's not working. And he said, what's your problem? Just sell them something else. Just take the commission. When it doesn't work out, bait and switch them. And now we have fiduciaries, but quite frankly, Jessica, a lot of the fiduciaries aren't any better because they'll
do whatever the client says just to keep the money. And they won't tell the client no when
the client wants to do something, but those same fiduciaries still have all the biases.
They have prestige bias, hindsight bias, attribution bias, survivorship bias.
I mean, they have emotions and instincts too.
And if the S&P has a good five-year track record, and it makes – go back to 1995 to 2000, the S&P made 22% per year for those five-year periods.
Tech stocks made 45% for five years.
Everybody wanted large tech stocks.
That's all anybody wanted.
And they lost 75% after that of all their money in tech stocks.
NASDAQ crashed.
S&P crashed 50%.
It was a full decade before that came back.
It was still negative 10% for the large US
stocks. This is exactly what people are doing today. They're ignoring diversification. They're
ignoring the science. And it's like the history may not repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.
I like that saying. Yeah. That's true. Especially for me, even though I haven't
maybe been investing for, I don't know, now I have to do my own mental math.
I don't know, 10, 15 years?
I can't remember.
It was in my mid-20s, so something like that.
But even with that, because I was right there, finished university when the 2008 crash happened and the subsequent recession, which had a big impact on my trajectory for a long time as a
millennial. And then seeing what happened during the pandemic, for me, I'm like, it's different
story. Yeah. It's like, it rhymes. It's different, but the same, you know, and I'm seeing people do
the same patterns that I saw them do last, you know, the last big kind of catastrophe. And,
you know, in that time, luckily I've been able to do all this research and education. So I knew what I was seeing. But it was so interesting seeing how
people really reacted, even though they also to went through maybe a couple other cycles,
and they still repeated these patterns. And yes, because there's so many things that are
working against them. It's just it's really difficult. So I guess my
question is, especially when you can't even maybe rely on your financial advisor, because they're
human too, and they have biases. And even if they're a fiduciary, they're still, it's not
perfect. How could we stay in our lane, stay to that strategy? Keep the eye on the prize so the so the first thing is to acknowledge to yourself that you have
biases emotional instinctive and so then you want to study the academics of how you would actually
build the portfolio and then you want to look at your own biases you know i talk about investing
being a journey into self i get I get to learn about myself when I
actually invest my money. Absolutely.
So then I look at my biases, my instincts, my proclivities, what I'm going to do. Like you
said, 2008, 2009, the S&P was down 50%. And when that happened, very few people called me and said,
oh gosh, please rebalance my portfolio and sell fixed income and buy more stocks while they're down 50%, which is what we did. But nobody wants to do that because the instincts and the emotions
tell you to do the exact opposite. So then you study the academics and then you have to find
somebody that has a decision control system that will not shortcut the model and that will force the right
behavior when it's the hardest thing to do. So in 2008, 2009, it's rebalancing, selling the fixed
income, putting the portfolio back. But then after 2008, 2009, the market runs way, way, way up,
very easy to become overweighted in your equities.
So then you have to sell those equities, buy the fixed income while it's relatively down,
keeping the portfolio balanced.
And that's the type of discipline that you need to manage your portfolio.
And you need to find someone that, number one, can have that discipline.
Number two, is willing to tell you no, even though you could
pull the money from them and they would make less money. And that's one of the hardest things I've
seen over the last 34 years is to find people who would rather tell you the truth and stay
disciplined and risk losing you as a client than to cave into your emotions and instincts
and do the wrong thing just so they can make money.
No, yeah. Discipline, I think, is the key word there. And again, that is a hard thing. That's
a skill I think you have to, because I think a lot of us are disciplined in lots of areas of
our life, not disciplined when it comes with our money because we weren't taught to be.
And then we're all of a sudden supposed to be.
And we're like, well, how do I get disciplined?
But that's, I assume, like a practice that you build over time
and it gets easier over time.
Even for me, people have asked me,
how do you stay disciplined for 34 years
and not chase the Bitcoin and not chase the tech stocks
and not chase commodities and not chase all these exotic things
when they were super high and everybody wanted them. Well, I have to have coaches too.
So I have to defer to Dr. Fama. I have to defer to the studies by Harry Markowitz. And then I
have to question myself in any drive to change models based on recent hot performance or what's popular in the moment.
That has to be avoided like the plague because that's destruction. Chasing the crowd and chasing
what's hot right now over the last three to five years, that is a prescription for destroying your
American dream. And that's why the purpose part is so
critical too. The natural proclivity for investors is the gamble. And it's seductive.
But if I have a purpose for my life and my money that's greater than gambling,
then I have a reason not to speculate and gamble with my money. I was teaching a workshop and I was
having a dialogue with a woman and she goes, well, everything in life has risk. I said,
that's true. Everything in life does have risk. That's absolutely true. I said, but there's
different types of risk. There's the risk of going out and playing golf on a sunny day.
And there's a risk of going out when there's a thunderstorm and holding your nine iron over your head when there's lightning all around you. And one's prudent and one's imprudent.
But I get the feeling that you like to speculate and gamble. And she goes, well, I do. I said,
well, then you've got to ask your question. Do you want to speculate and gamble with your
retirement or do you want to prudently invest? And I can't answer that question for you. That's
a question you have to answer for yourself. People love speculating and gambling.
It's exciting. It's fun. But again, it's like, if you want to do that, find another
avenue to do that in a safe manner that maybe isn't tied to actual real money.
People think about fear. They think about fear of losing money. But there's another one
that's very prevalent, especially right now or when markets are good, it's fear of missing out.
Yes.
What if everybody else really does get rich in Bitcoin?
Yeah.
What if everybody really does get rich in hedge funds?
What if everybody does get rich on NVIDIA and I'm not one of them?
And so there's not only fear of losing money there's fear of missing out on
making big money yeah i've been there i mean i've definitely made some mistakes because i'm like
whoa and then i've always regretted it every time i've made a decision based off fomo i've always
been like what the heck was i thinking i mean i guess like the only good time it was was oh it
seems like everyone's investing i should uh start. And that was the best thing I ever did. I mean, boring investing, index investing, stuff like that. But yeah, the FOMO
is real. You got to check yourself. It's going to lead you astray likely. So again, I think what's
really important about your book is it just shows we need to get back to what this is all about.
And it's very easy to lose sight of what's what you're doing because there's so many
things pulling your attention in so many different directions.
You need to be really clear on who you are, you know, what your money story is and what
you want it to be and what you want your future to look like.
And then have a really solid plan that will have answers on what to do in different
circumstances so you can stay disciplined. And that is how, you know, it may sound too simple.
It may sound boring, but it does work for people. Ask those people like yourself. It's like,
I've been doing it for 30 plus years. It works. It's just not easy to be consistent,
but if you do it, it works. Yeah, I always tell investors, look, equities are the greatest wealth creation tool on the
planet.
Equities, just think for stocks, they create all the jobs, they create all the businesses,
they create all the great services and great products that make your life better.
And the returns have been absolutely stellar long-term.
Large stocks, no stock picking required,
no market timing. Large stocks have averaged 10%. Small stocks, 12. Small value stocks, 14%.
Just own them all in that asset category, diversify, rebalance on ups and downs,
own international. Don't just dump it all in thes or in canada You got to globally diversify and then own high quality short-term fixed income
Because those equities will be volatile and when they're volatile you can use your fixed income to rebalance
It sounds easy. It's like a diet. Yeah, eat more eat less move more. Yeah
I've tried it the other way doesn't work that way
Uh, you know eat less move more. I've tried it the other way. It doesn't work that way. Eat less, move more.
It's theoretically simple, but the discipline is really, really hard to do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like people should just have that clip saved for when they're in a moment where they're like, wait, wait, what am I doing?
You're like, oh, yeah.
Like literally if someone's like, no, but tell me what to do in less than five minutes.
This is literally what you should be doing.
And it's exactly what no one is doing.
So we need to reframe things and get back to what's important.
Well, and it's so easy to pervert something that's a great idea and destroy it. So for example, instead of rebalancing, rebalancing and sell the thing that's relatively high,
buy the things that's relatively high, buy the things
that's low. You'll have people say, well, tax lost harvesting. Well, tax lost harvesting means
selling the thing that's low to try to get a tax write-off and buying more of the thing that's high.
Yeah.
And then you have to stay out of the market, at least in the United States for 30 days. Well,
there's some months where the market can go up 15% or 20% in 30 days.
So you take these rules, own equities, rebalance, diversify, those simple rules, but then you destroy them because of gimmicks and tips and people trying to act smart.
I want someone to help me and my money grow, not to sell losses so I can get tax write-offs.
That's insane. Yeah. Any kind of strategy when it comes to money or investing that the focus is on taxes first is
like, for me, it's a red flag. It's like taxes, we shouldn't be annoyed or upset that we have to
pay taxes. It's what we got to do to live in the country, to pay for the roads and everything.
And so if you're coming from a tax first place, you're going to make some
mistakes because ultimately lots of them are contradictory to smart investing rules. So yeah.
Now, I'm sure I can talk to you for another hour because you have so many great gems, but
I mean, a lot of your gems are in your book, which I highly recommend everyone to get it so they can
build and experience their own American dream. Once again, it's called experiencing the American dream, how to invest your time, energy, and money to create
an extraordinary life. Mark, it was a pleasure having you. Where can people grab a copy and
maybe find you online so they can follow and kind of learn more? Yeah, you can grab the book on
Amazon, experiencing the American dream. Rob Lowe, my buddy wrote the forward to it. Yeah, like hello, Rob Lowe, forward, that's pretty cool.
He's also a Midwestern boy, grew up up the street from me in Ohio.
Oh, nice.
And Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote an endorsement. Gary Sinise also wrote part of the book about
the American dream and his American dream. So it's a pretty good read. You can grab it on Amazon.
And I always tell people, look, the American dream is only one generation from dying. You're not born with it in your DNA, and it has to be taught and passed down from one generation to the next. And if you believe in that freedom and independence and creating wealth and prosperity for your family and others, it's a good read for you. And mattsonmoney.com is the website.
Amazing. Great. Thank you so much, Mark, for coming on the show.
It was such a pleasure having you.
It was great to work with you.
Thanks, Jessica.
And that was my episode with Mark Mattson.
Make sure to check out his website, mattsonmoney.com.
You can also follow him on Instagram at markmattson1.
And grab a copy of his new book, On Shelves Now, Experiencing the American Dream, How
to Invest Your time, energy
and money to create an extraordinary life. And honestly, I personally believe that we all every
single person on this earth deserves an extraordinary life. And he's got some great advice
and, you know, ways on how we can shift our mindset, because I know we all have money demons,
I've definitely had money demons that I am still working through. And that's just kind of part of money and life and all that fun stuff.
So make sure to check out the show notes for this episode. Go to jessicamorehouse.com slash
podcast. That's where you can find all the episodes. There is a link specific to this
episode, which is jessicamorehouse.com slash the number of this episode. It is clickable in the description wherever you're listening or watching. So check that out. And if you ever need advice on, hey, what was that episode about so and so or this and that, or do you have an episode about this? Shoot me an email, jessicamorehouse.com or DM me on Instagram. I do not mind one bit. And like I mentioned,
I'm giving away a copy of his book. I'm giving away copies of other books that are featured on
this season of the show. Just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest to enter to win.
And speaking of books, and I'm sure you're sick of me talking about this, but I'm going to talk
about it until my damn book is on bookshelves. I have my book coming out not
too far away now. We're counting down the weeks, really. My book, Everything But Money, The Hidden
Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom is on shelves December 31st, 2024. Pre-order now at all
major retailers. If you just go to jessicamorehouse.com book, that is where you can find
information about how to pre-order.
And also if you pre-order, there is a form on that page where you can submit your contact details and
you would put your proof of purchase. And then when the book is on shelves, I will give you access
to all of these amazing freebies that are only going to be available to people who have pre-ordered.
So not going to be available to anyone else. These are special things that I've created just for you. So again, go to jessicamorehouse.com slash book
to pre-order now. Well, that's really it for me. Thank you so much for listening and watching. If
you're watching this on YouTube, FYI, if you're just listening to this, you can watch the whole
thing. You watch all of this season and last season on my YouTube channel, jessicamorehouse.com
slash YouTube. If you're interested, I got a fancy new camera. So it looks really good this season and last season on my YouTube channel, JessicaMorehouse.com slash YouTube,
if you're interested. I got a fancy new camera, so it looks really good this season.
But anyways, I will be back next Wednesday with a fresh new episode of the More Money Podcast. So
until then, have a good rest of your week, and I'll see you then. The More Money Podcast would
not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor Justice Carrar and podcast producer Matt
Rideout, who you can find at mrabcanada.com.
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