The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - How to Talk About Money, Raise Independent Kids, and Build Real Wealth — ft. Morgan Housel

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

In this special episode of Office Hours, Scott brings on Morgan Housel, bestselling author of The Psychology of Money, to take your questions on love, parenting, and financial independence. They di...scuss how income gaps affect relationships, the moral gray zone of college admissions consulting, and why the best investment you can make in your 20s isn’t in stocks — it’s in habits. Morgan’s latest book, The Art of Spending Money: Simple Choices for a Richer Life, is out now. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to officehours@profgmedia.com, or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Quantum computers, the next great frontier of technology, offering endless possibilities that stretch the human mind. But for Roscoe Cudulian and the Phoenix Colony, quantum computing uploads the human mind with life-altering consequences. Audibles hit sci-fi thriller The Downloaded returns with Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, reprising his role as Rosco Cudulian in The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. This thought-provoking sequel from Robert J. Sawyer takes listeners on a captivating sci-fi journey, a mind-bending must-listen that asks, what are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?
Starting point is 00:00:48 The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for the show comes from Calvin Klein. Heat up, give Calvin. This season, give them what they really want. Shop Calvin Klein's gift guide to find best-selling gifts like their iconic logo underwear and teas, timeless fragrances, and comfortable loungeware. Their curated guides take the guesswork out of gift shopping so you can find the perfect gift for her, him, or even yourself, like their classic underwear with that signature Calvin Klein logo waistband now available in limited edition holiday colors and prints. Feel holiday heat and head to KK.com to find something for everyone on your list this year. Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Roscoe Cadulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony
Starting point is 00:01:49 have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Available now, only from Audible. Welcome to Propji on Money, a special series where we're joined by one of our favorites, Morgan Housel, best-selling author of The Psychology of Money, along with his latest, The Art of Spending Money. We're taking your questions on all things money, saving, spending, and everything in between. Anyways, if you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to Office Hours at ProptuMedia.com. Again, that's office hours at Prop.com or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit. Morgan, are we ready to bust into it?
Starting point is 00:03:04 Let's do it. Ready to go. All right. Our first question comes from Libertas Vincent on Reddit, and they say, how do you handle income discrepancy in a relationship, especially one where the traditionally high-earning male partner makes significantly less than the female partner? How do you make sure this doesn't become a point of friction that hangs over other conversations, how do you avoid the female partner feeling like she's under-contributing in the household by
Starting point is 00:03:29 focusing on her career? Morgan, thoughts? I think the first thing to point out is that this is not really a money question. It's a merits question, a little bit different, but a very important question, nonetheless. There's a quote that I love, which is to be in a good relationship, you need to be a very poor accountant. And the meaning of that was if you are constantly keeping score and saying, hey, I did the dishes, what did you do? Hey, I paid this bill. What are you doing? If you constantly wake up every morning and look at your spouse and say, what have you done for me lately? That's a very difficult way to make it work. It's a transactional relationship. The problem with transactional relationships is that life is volatile. And so if you say, look, I pay the bills,
Starting point is 00:04:06 I make the money. There's probably going to come a time in the future when you lose your job or your bonus declines this year. And all of a sudden, do you have no value anymore? And so one of the problems with money is that it is so quantifiable. And so you can say, look, I paid $500 a bills last month. What did you do? Well, what you may have done is help put kids to bed, read them stories, clearly done this and that, that are less quantifiable. You can't put a score on it. And so I think one of the issues with money discrepancy is that it's way too hard to quantify. There are a million things that my wife does so much better than I do. She's more empathetic. She's better with the kids. She's better at bedtime stories.
Starting point is 00:04:42 We could sit here for an hour and I could list of things that she's much better than I do. The thing that I do, one of the things that I do, is very quantifiable, which is earning money. And I think that's a problem in relationships. And so I think if you have that, issue of a discrepancy that's causing a problem in your marriage. I would again challenge you that that's not actually a money issue. It's a marriage issue and it's a keeping score issue. I mean, agreement with you, there is one what I'll call, I think, caveat or footnote. And so I love what you're saying, and I preach all the time that the key to good relationships is put the scorecard away. Just decide what kind of husband, what kind of father, what kind of son you want
Starting point is 00:05:19 to be and hold yourself to that standard. And keeping score is a losing game because you will typically or naturally inflate your own contributions and accidentally deflate theirs and always feel like you're coming up short. So I agree with you, Morgan. Just decide the kind of person you want to be and aspire to be in the plus side of the column. Always, whether it's money or affection or logistics or being nice to the other person's parents, whatever it might be. The only thing I would add to this is that there is research showing that when the woman's earnings surpass the man's, ED drug usage triples and the rate of divorce goes up. And distinctive the world that you and I fashion and hopefully try and study to,
Starting point is 00:06:02 there's just a reality that there are certain expectations around roles. And when those expectations flip for whatever reasons or the reality does not hit those expectations, there's less sex and connection sometimes because, one, I think the man feels worse about himself in that insecurity manifests in negative ways. And two, And let me say the quiet part out loud, women are less sexually interested in a man oftentimes when he loses his status as a provider. And I just think there's a lot of evidence supporting that, regardless of what we would like to think. So there is an issue here around, and I don't have a solve for it, and I'll put it back to you, Morgan, but there's definitely evidence showing that the asymmetry or when we're, woman begins to make more money than the man in the relationship, that issues do prop up
Starting point is 00:06:59 distinct of what should happen and we would like to see happen. Any thoughts? I disagree with none of that. And I don't think we can pretend that, even given that we're in the year 2025 and have made so much progress in the world, that we can fight back against millions of years of evolution in which men have historically been the providers. So it's a very difficult issue. I do have empathy for people in that situation and how difficult it would be. And truth be told, my wife and I have not been in that position. So I don't want to say like, oh, here's how we dealt with it. So I think both those things can be true. If you are in a transactional relationship in which you are constantly keeping score, very difficult to make that work. But let's also
Starting point is 00:07:41 true to that point that you just made, let's not pretend that if you're going against what has been the traditional path for millions of years, that's going to be an easy thing to overcome. Yeah, a tough one. Thanks so much for the question. We're going to move on. Question number two, also comes from Reddit. User Boner 79. Well, something interesting, asks. Scott, how much you do you spend on college admissions consultants for your son? And do you feel it was worthwhile? Morgan, do you think investing in your child's future in that manner is worth it? I'll let you go first here, Morgan. You know, it's different for everyone. My parents did something very good for me around the age that I was ready to go to college, which is they did not help. And that was amazing. I think what you really need in that transition,
Starting point is 00:08:27 and college being a transition from childhood into adulthood, which is really what it is, what you really need at that point is confidence. And I have seen so many people in today's era, it's very common today. It was less common 20 years ago, but very common today that when the child is applying for a college, when they're 17, 18 years old,
Starting point is 00:08:43 the parent is holding their hand and going line by line through that application, one line after another and doing everything and hiring consultants to do it. Maybe aventations. There's maybe data that shows that that is a good thing to do, and your child is a better chance of getting it to Harvard, whatever it might be. But also what you did to your kid is you say, you can't do this yourself. You don't have the skills to fill out an application on your own. I've made this joke sometimes when dealing with those people in our own life who are applying for college. And if you cannot apply for college on your own, you're not ready for college. It's the first litmus test on whether you can do it or not. And so I understand and feel the desire to use my money to help my kids and launch them
Starting point is 00:09:22 into that world. They're still young. They're not in college age yet. But I also feel like the greatest thing you can do for your 17 or 18 year old isn't still the confidence that they are able to do it on their own. I agree with everything you're saying theoretically. I would like to set a timer for us to have this conversation again when your kid is 17 and a half. I don't disagree with that. Absolutely. And feeling, because here's...
Starting point is 00:09:50 Okay, so we have a consultant. And my son is just submitted as apps or his first two apps. And as someone in the marketplace, we all tell ourselves a lie now that college doesn't matter. And typically the person saying that someone with graduate degrees from Stanford and MIT and has already made their money.
Starting point is 00:10:13 I still think it matters a lot. And unfortunately, and this is terrible, it also matters where you go. I mean, there's sort of the top, there's kind of 30 top 20 schools or 50 top 30, if you will. The difference between Tulane and Harvard actually isn't that great. U.T. Austin and MIT, Google and KKR recruited both those places. But the difference between kind of no-name university and one of those schools is tangible, different network, different earnings, different brand the rest of your life. And as someone who is in that industry, and by the way, thinks it's corrupt in a cartel, I see how important it is, and I'm not going to lie. I really want my son to get into an elite school. It's really, I hate to say it, it's just too fucking important to me.
Starting point is 00:11:06 I hate myself for it, but it's really important to me. but it's really important to me. And this is what happens. Your kid's a good kid, or this is what's happened to me, your kid's a good kid. They do well in school. They're not freakishly remarkable. They're not building wells.
Starting point is 00:11:20 They have patents and pharmaceuticals. They're not captain of lacrosse team. They play on the junior varsity lacrosse team and are just okay. And they do well on tests, but not crazy well. They get good grades, but not freakish grades. And it's different now. I could do that. I could do worse than that and get into UCLA when it had a 74% admissions rate. The admissions rate this year is 9%. And all of us begin thinking, I'm not going to get the consultants. I'm not going to put a lot of pressure on them. I'm not going to have tutoring for these tests. And then what you realize is that you don't want to disarm unilaterally. And that is your kid is competing for a small number of spots against other people who may not be as noble as you.
Starting point is 00:12:07 you may not be as good of parents as you long term, but their kid gets into fucking Duke and yours doesn't. And so it's like, I remember so I'm going through this right now. We got pitched. There's a company that should remain nameless. It's backed by a PE firm that basically says, I'll get your kid into an elite school. And I did a call with them and my son.
Starting point is 00:12:31 The guy reached out to me because he heard my kid was applying to college. And the guy reached out to me and said, we'll do this for you, and they had specialists for the testing, specialists for helping around essays, specialists for crafting your narrative, different people, part of your calendar from the age of like the end of 10th grade, beginning of 11th grade, they just start optimizing the kid to get into an elite school. $80,000. And to my son's credit, who was on the phone with me, he's like, dad, there's no way I'm doing this. No, I'm totally uncomfortable with this. And I said, I respect that. We have hired a consultant.
Starting point is 00:13:07 He teaches at a boys boarding school. We paid him $8,000. And basically once every month, he helps review the timelines and kind of the requirements and makes sure that my kid is tracking and says, do you want me to read your personal essay? Yes, no. Okay, this is where I think directionally you're correct or not correct. Do you want me to read your supplemental essays? My son has actually been more independent.
Starting point is 00:13:39 It's almost frustrating for me because I want him to get into a good school and he is very independent. He just submitted another app last night. I never saw it. I didn't know about it. And while I respect that, it's frustrating because I'm like, well, couldn't you have just
Starting point is 00:13:51 at least told me what you were saying and maybe I could coach you. I'm really good at this. But he's decided, no, I want to do this almost entirely on my own. And the reality is when you get this, you kind of end up hating yourself and being part of the problem. What I would love is for all
Starting point is 00:14:13 parents to say, we're all signing a pack, no consultants, no help, but nobody can do it. Because this is yet again another transfer of wealth from lower and middle income homes. When I applied, I don't know what your household was like. My mom was a secretary. The first time she found out I applied to UCLA was when I told her I didn't get in. She wasn't helping me. or, you know, providing tutors or calling someone on the board that was a friend of her bosses or something. She had no idea. But there are people, unfortunately, you're competing against people who have all of those things. And so it's become a keep up with the Joneses because it still matters. I don't have moral clarity around this. What I would say is, you know, talk to your kid
Starting point is 00:14:59 about it, see what they feel comfortable with. But there's just no getting around it. The application process between the testing, the essays, the logistics, it's a massive amount of work. And also, the kid at the same time is taking their APs, their IB test, their O levels here, their A levels, trying to have some semblance of a social life and figure out their pecking order and the social hierarchy, the cafeteria. And then they're supposed to be applying to 12 elite colleges. And oh, you need to demonstrate your interest by coming to the college and sending emails to your local. I mean, it is just crazy how much work there is for the undeveloped brain.
Starting point is 00:15:38 No, I think that's right. I think it's a good litmus test for whether you're ready to go to college. And I think the truth is a lot of 18-year-olds are not, and that is no fault against them. 18-year-old is not that young. If you can take a couple years off and start college when you're 20, I started when I was 20. I got a late start. And the truth was, I was not ready at 18. And I looked back at that.
Starting point is 00:15:58 What did you do? I was a valet. I was a valet at a hotel in Lake Tahoe. But gap year is actually a misnomer, too, because I really didn't have much of a high school education. That's a different story as well. And so I was not ready at all. I knew that I had some level of intelligence, and I wanted to do it, and all of my other friends were doing it. But at 18, I was lost, and I had no idea.
Starting point is 00:16:20 And I look back at that, and who knows what the alternative history would have been. But if I had forced myself, or if my parents had forced myself into that college gauntlet when I was 18 and wasn't ready, it would have been a disaster. and almost what I think would have happened is I would have got there I would have been so overwhelmed and not ready for it that after a semester or two I would have said this isn't for me
Starting point is 00:16:40 I'm not smart enough, I'm out of here and I probably never would have gone back and so the idea that I waited until I was ready and then I did it myself was very important for me, different for everyone, and I will absolutely grant you that when in seven years
Starting point is 00:16:53 when my oldest is applying for college I might feel very different about this because there is a tragedy of the commons whereas if I stand on my moral ground and say, I'm going to make him do it on his own. He's probably not going to get into a great school. I would say, though, that, and I don't know the answer to this. This is very, you know, not that clear to me, but who would you rather hire?
Starting point is 00:17:15 Someone who got into UT Austin on their own, did everything on their own, or somebody who got them, or someone who went to Harvard, but their parents hired every consultant and every advisor to get them in. But the recruiter doesn't know that. The recruiter doesn't know that information. Right. Yes. You don't know that.
Starting point is 00:17:32 But who would you bet on if you didn't know that? Who would you bet on is going to make a better adult, is going to make a better employee, a better spouse, a better, someone who's doing it on their own. That's who I would want to bet on. 100%. I get it. And a couple of things you said really resonated.
Starting point is 00:17:47 One, I really do believe, especially for men whose prefrontal cortex is just more mature than a girl's. I think gap years are really valuable, especially for boys. You know, my son worked in a food truck. this summer. And I think it was probably the best professional experience he's had. Just working with people who were Englishists in their native language, showing up on time, having a boss,
Starting point is 00:18:11 dealing with rude expectant people who didn't get their lobster roll as quickly as they would have liked. I mean, it was just great for him. And I would have liked to have seen him do another year. He decided that he wanted to go to college and he wanted to figure it out. And to your point about not being ready, I showed up, I was 17. I didn't know how to handle. alcohol. I didn't know how to handle the discipline of school at UCLA. I was on academic probation by the end of my first year. But I figured it out. I matured during those four years. And it ended up being, I think, a good thing. It worked out. It could have easily not worked out. My second week in my fraternity, I got drunk and I had never, I had had very little experience with alcohol and I was
Starting point is 00:18:59 not feeling well, and I stumbled outside, fell, banged my head against the wall, and ended up in an emergency room. You know, that's not how you want to start college, right? And it's because I lacked the maturity and the experience to be at UCLA, to your point. I think I probably could have benefited from a gap year. But Morgan, I can't wait, Morgan. How old is your oldest? Ten. Ten. Okay. In seven years, I am so all over your ass saying, no consultants, no A.C. Tudoring. You can't look at his or her app. Let's just let the chips fall. So we're going to set that. We're going to set that clock. Deal? I don't doubt in the slightest, though, Scott, that I will fall for those pressures. You're right that it's a tragedy of the commons.
Starting point is 00:19:46 If you don't do this and stand on your moral ground, your son's going to fall behind. And that's, and it's a, it's a, it's a terrible thing. I totally agree with that. Even if I went through with the process of, I do this completely on my own. My parents didn't even know when I applied for college. I didn't ask them. I didn't show them. I just did it. I did it on my own.
Starting point is 00:20:03 And that was so important for me. Even if I know that and experienced it, to do it to your own kids, knowing where it's going to set them on the spectrum, on the hierarchy of getting in is a very difficult thing, I'm sure. This is a great conversation. And again, we don't have answers. We just have life experiences here.
Starting point is 00:20:22 But that's a great question. We'll be right back after a quick break. support for the show comes from upway if you're tired of being stuck in traffic or watching gas prices climb higher and higher you're not alone there's a better freer way to move through your day and it might just change how you feel about commuting an e-bike from upway can give you that feeling of freedom fresh air no traffic no stress it's not just good for your health it's better for your wallet your time and honestly your happiness upway makes it easy They offer top brands, including specialized Canndale and Eventon at up to 60% off retail. Every e-bike is thoroughly inspected by a professional mechanic and comes with a one-year warranty
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Starting point is 00:23:58 Hi, Scott and Morgan. Can you touch on how much your early investing in savings contributed to your success? For those in their mid-20s and early 30s, did investing early help you, or do you think self-investment presents a higher return? For example, gym, clubs, education travel. Thanks for all you do. This is so up your alley. Someone asked me about this personally, because when I got my first job when I was 16, maybe seven, and I've been a huge saver since. I've been employed every day since then, and I've been, I've saved the majority of what I made since then. And I looked back at this when I was 17.
Starting point is 00:24:31 When, let's say when I was 17, I saved 100 bucks, which is heroic when you're 17. That's a fortune when you're 17 years old, making $8 an hour or whatever. And let's say I invested that money. And today, I invested in the S&P 500, it's worth $600. I don't know if that's true, but it's probably close to it. $600 means nothing to me today.
Starting point is 00:24:48 But it was heroic when I was 17. So was that a mistake? Because I could have used that $100 to take my friends out to dinner, gone on a road trip, whatever it may have been. The answer, and maybe this is just me trying to justify that decision, is it was not a mistake at all. Because the savings habits that I built when I was a teenager led me through today.
Starting point is 00:25:07 And it's foolish to think that I could have had a Yolo mentality back then and then flip the switch and become a big saver when I was 30. It probably doesn't work like that. So even if the money itself was so important back to me today and it's grown into something that's not that important to me today, it created a habit that I think has given me an enormous benefit today and financial independence today. And so even if it's tempting to look back and say,
Starting point is 00:25:30 I should have gone out to the bar with my friends back then and blew that $100 and had great memories and taken a road trip to Tijuana, it created a habit that has given me enormous benefit today and therefore I don't look back and regret it. Now, it's always a sense of balance. I had amazing experiences during those years. I traveled a lot, met a million different people,
Starting point is 00:25:47 lived in a dozen different cities, saw the world. There was no holding back. But I think the habits that were formed back then are so important to me today. So this is an example of, I say what you say. I didn't do what you say. And that is, both Morgan and I, I'm going to plug both our books, have written financial literacy books. Morgan's book, The Psychology of Money and my book, The Algebra of Wealth. My book was, I think, a bestseller for six months. Morgan's book has been a bestseller for like six years. The psychology of money is one of those iconic books that is sort of must reading for, I think, young people around financial literacy or just approach to money. Morgan is absolutely right. And I'm the cautionary tale of how things
Starting point is 00:26:35 can go wrong. I always made more money than my friends. I'm talented and I'm hardworking. My first job, Morgan Stanley, right out of UCLA, I was making double what all of my friends were making. When I was in the internet, you know, it took a company public, millions of dollars, sometimes tens of millions, at least on paper, but I never really had a disciplined approach to saving. I wasn't stupid with money, but I spent a lot of it. I didn't think about it. I was in my real sin was I was always way too concentrated and would, I was that guy that I grew up in the, in the valley, in the 90s, came in a professional age where you're supposed to put everything back into the company. And so when my company that went public went out of business, I lost everything
Starting point is 00:27:18 and more. And it was about the time my oldest son had the poor judgment to come marching out of my partner. If I had taken, I'm not even saying 10%, if I'd taken 3% of my income from an early age from 22 when I got that first job and did what Morgan espouses and what I say in my book, my businesses could have gone out of business. And by the time I was 40, 45, I would have had several million dollars in backup. But instead, I was broke because I bought into this notion that you go all in on the companies you start. You know, you're in it to win it. And by the way, the valley promotes that ethos, or at least it used to, that you weren't allowed to do secondary sales like entrepreneurs can do now. And so I ended up, I've been wealthy three times, which means I've
Starting point is 00:28:00 lost it twice. I lost it in the dot-com implosion. All of my money was my e-commerce startups. Boom, gone. I crawled my way back, 2007. doing well 2008 great financial recession again all my money in tech stocks boom gone and so the third time I was really lucky and got financial security again but I basically took Morgan's advice started diversifying investing not swinging for the fence making sure I was always living beneath my means and no matter how much money I thought I had always saving a certain amount of money saving and investing every month because assume hope you're going to go double platinum have a best book, sell a company, go public. But assume you're not. And you don't need to. If from an early
Starting point is 00:28:46 age, you just start saving a little bit of money, don't let the money hit your hands, have four savings, comes right out of your check. You don't need to be a hero, diversify, low-cost index funds. And when you're sitting here at my age, or Morgan, who's younger, even if things, even if you don't hit it out of the park, you're just fine. And I didn't learn that. And it almost cost me bigly. And the amount of stress I had at the age of 42 when I had my first kid in the Great Financial Recession, it just happened. And I was broke. That amount of anxiety and self-loathing was much more emotionally damaging than it was financially damaging. And what I would say to anybody is don't ever set yourself up for that sort of emotional anxiety and do what Morgan
Starting point is 00:29:33 is suggesting. And that is from a very early age, just put a little bit of money away every month. it's always a balance of because I do know people who save too much and live too little. That absolutely exists. I think what's important, I've never viewed
Starting point is 00:29:49 savings money as either idle cash or as delayed gratification. It's always given me pleasure today right now knowing that I have this independence and this backup. And I think a lot of people,
Starting point is 00:30:02 the idea of saving money just feels too cautious. It feels like you're not taking it, it feels like you're not living enough. I always felt like it was one of my most prize possessions, how much I saved so much, because I knew that I had freedom and independence
Starting point is 00:30:14 and flexibility. If this job isn't working out, I can just quit. And even if I don't find another one for six months, it's fine. It's not a big deal. I can live wherever I want. I can go on vacations whenever I want. That level of independence was so huge. And I think we do a lot of damage to the extent, particularly for young people, when we associate savings with saving for a rainy day, when it's actually giving you something right now, like very tangible, the feeling of independence is one of the greatest feelings in the world. Morgan Housel is the best-selling author of The Psychology of Money and a partner at the Collaborative Fund.
Starting point is 00:30:47 Market Watch named him one of the 50 most influential people in markets. His new book, The Art of Spending Money, is out now. I absolutely love Morgan and his stuff. I can find a lot of his financial advice in a lot of places. What he's able to do is connected to humanity and happiness. That's his superpower. Anyways, Morgan, very much enjoyed this. Thanks for being with us today.
Starting point is 00:31:08 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Jenner. Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGPot from PropGMedia.

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