The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #37 — Shaun Maslyk: Lessons From the Research on Money & Happiness

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Our guest this episode is Shaun Maslyk — a practicing Certified Financial Planner® and Certified Financial Behavior Specialist® who blends financial planning with positive psychology to help people understand their money stories and flourish beyond their finances. Shaun holds a master’s degree in positive psychology from the University of East London, where his research focused on the relationship between money, behaviour change and human happiness. In this conversation, Dave and Shaun explore what the research really says about money and happiness — from whether happier people make better financial decisions to why more money doesn’t always lead to more joy. They unpack concepts like hedonic adaptation, the “arrival fallacy” of wealth and the unconscious money scripts that quietly shape our spending, saving and relationships. Shaun also challenges the idea that financial success is purely about optimization, making the case for peace of mind, values-based decisions and “sailing to the right island” in life. If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re chasing the wrong financial goals — or how to make money decisions that actually improve your well-being — this episode is full of thought-provoking insights and practical takeaways.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Shaun Maslyk (03:39) Do Happier People Make Better Money Decisions? (05:25) Research on Money, Happiness & Hedonic Adaptation (11:45) The Arrival Fallacy of Wealth (13:22) Money Stories & Unconscious Scripts (16:17) How Money Scripts Affect Relationships (20:51) Peace of Mind vs. Mathematical Optimization (24:42) Do Walkers Have Better Financial Behaviour? (26:57) Spending Summaries (28:44) Make Sure You’re Sailing to the Right Island (31:51) The Three Questions That Clarify Money Decisions (35:43) Spending on Experiences vs. Possessions (39:55) Too Much Luxury Can Reduce Joy (41:02) What Would You Do If You Only Had 24 Hours to Live? (43:10) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, The Wealthy Barber, and former Dragon on Dragonstant. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making this subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment, save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever. we'll be here to help you do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note,

nothing we discuss here should be taken as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chiltern, The Wealthy Barber with the Wealthy Barber podcast. How are you, everybody? It's episode of whatever. I have no clue. And we've got Sean Maslick on the show today. Interesting background. Sean is a CFB. He has his B-Calm. Most impressively, he has his master's in the positive psychology area. And he's on today to talk about behavioral finance, the psychology of money, etc. Some of the mistakes he's seeing, some of the things he thinks people can learn about to help themselves to not just manage money better, but to manage their lives better. And to bring that forced to,

together in a very positive way. Sean, nice to have you on the show. Dave, it's a real honor. Thank you for having me. Now, what got you intrigued by this space? You were doing conventional financial planning. You had the CFP taking the path that so many take, but you got drawn more into this end of things and it become very much a specialist in this, very knowledgeable. Again, went out and got your master's. Tell us a little bit more about that journey. Well, yeah, I got my CFP. Perhaps I was interested into money because of the wealthy barber. There's the first book my dad ever bought me. No joke.

I remember him still bringing it downstairs to me, give him in that book. But there was something about money that attracted me. And I didn't know what it was until I started really digging into beyond the numbers. So your question is what got me into this work. It was actually, now that I look back, a desire to collect more designations. I was a CFP professional. It is. And it took me a long time to realize that.

And it really started happening because when I wanted to collect another designation, it was a financial psychology and behavioral finance one, and it was really experiential. We had to reflect. We had to write stories about our money story, a concept that was foreign to me. I didn't realize that I had a money story. And I was in fact an actor acting in an unconscious script that was given to me by my parents, my culture, my neighbors, all the surrounding influences when I grew up impacted how I think, feel, and behave around money. And when I started doing this, I was like, oh, my gosh,

this is wild. Like, I thought I was just, again, collecting this designation to impress my clients, but I started to really transform that what I thought was to be true about how I saw money, partially, not all of it, partially there was a lot of untold stories. And I started to recognize why I became a financial planner, which really blew my mind. That's fantastic. I love the fact you're open and honest about you went one route or went for one reason and ended up really, I guess, becoming passionate about it. And then you just kept going on the education front, much beyond the designation. You went and got your master's. Tell us a little bit about your thesis. Well, my thesis was, do happier people make better money decisions? Interesting. And

it's complex, it's nuance and there's many different variations. But generally speaking, the answer is yeah happier people make better money decisions and there's a whole bunch of reasons why one in particular Barbara frederickson she did this wonderful work on this broadened and build theory and this just kind of summarizes what's happening here but her theory is the more positive emotions we experience the more good moments in life the more our emotional resilience bank increases where our cognitive bandwidth is not like at scarcity so we can think more clear and have confidence to make decisions that actually align with what we want. And so happier people have shown to save more, to spend more intentionally with what they really

care about. Whereas in the contrast, if we're in a scarcity mindset or we're not sure what makes us happy and we're just trying to find things that make us happy and we're looking at maybe the latest car, we're very social creatures and social comparisons, a big thing. We might be like, oh, I'm just going to go buy that car. And that experience is quite fleeting when it doesn't align with what we really, really desire and value in our lives. You know, when you look at all this, could there be a causation challenge here, though, causation correlation in that a lot of happier people may have a higher income? And so they're making bad and money decisions that's easier to save when you have a higher income.

You may be a little happier with a higher income. Have those studies been neutralized to take that out, that variable, and study people at the same income level? They have. And this is where like social science gets quite nuanced and you can find one research that says one thing and another that says the other. But globally, like if we walk through the historical research of the, the sentimental research around money and happiness, we see like in 1970, Easterland first came out with this Easterland paradox. And that's this idea that he noticed that wealthier nations had naturally just happier people due to the fact that there was more money around. right but this is the paradox he calls it these feeling paradoxes as those nations continue to grow it seemed that the happiness levels did not keep up with how much wealth the nation was getting

and so this is that hedonic adaptation we adapt to our external circumstances which is i mean from evolutionary psychology critical otherwise we would have died in those terrible conditions in the cavemen but from there that that piece of study really set this conversation as is there a set point to money and happiness link. And there was some other research in this, in 78, there was a research that got a lot of media attention on lottery winners.

I remember that study well. Yeah. And the media really grasped that lottery winners aren't any happier than paralyzed individuals in car accidents. And there's truth to that. Yet when it got unraveled, the sample sizes were quite low.

There was like 22 people and 27 in each sample. And so it's not really significant. But an interesting piece in there was that it was shown that lottery winners, and later on people show that in different research that lottery winners are in fact happier, but it's what happy point are we looking at? And so I like to break down happiness from social scientists are defined by basically two things. Am I happy with my life and am I happy in my life? And so one is moment to moment happiness.

One is I'm looking back on my front porch being like, hey man, I lived a good life. And so it's important we actually delineate which version of happy are we looking at. No, that's interesting. And, you know, the set point research is fascinating to me. I mean, for those of our listeners who aren't familiar with, that basically there's an argument out there that we're born to some extent with a set point of happiness. And we can do little things to raise it slightly.

We can do other things that can take it down a little bit. But for the most part, we returned to it, even to Sean's point, when there's a horrible incident in our life, like an accident that puts us in a wheelchair or there's a very positive impact of our life like the lottery victor, we tend to go back to that set point of happiness. A few years ago, that research picked up a lot of momentum. You haven't heard quite as much about it in the last, say, five to seven years. Was it just proven there people come at it or is it just kind of drifted from public consciousness? Yeah, well, so the set point, I want to go back back to 2010 where there's more research that was done. A media picked up on Daniel Coleman's

research on this income flattening. And there's a correlation here with the set point. His research, again, media loved this because we're trying to define this money by happiness, which is very elusive. It's hard to actually quantify this. A lot of social science is, but it seemed to be an answer. There was a flattening. $75,000 back in 2010.

After that, the link between happiness and money was gone. Yeah, or weak at least. Media grabbed that. And what didn't get grabbed is it was. was the moment to moment happiness that they reported that was weak at least. The life satisfaction portion that I feel good about my life in totality, that did continue to grow, but it didn't get caught as much in the research. Then fast forward way in 2020, a guy named Dr. Michael Killingsworth was like, hey, something doesn't feel right about this. Basically, he did research with smartphones

that had much better technology that was capturing them actually in the moment to moment. They'd get pinged on their smartphone and be like, are you happy? Scale. very unhappy, very happy. They were doing it in the moment. Conneman's research was reflective. Like they were remembering recalling, looking back. And so Killingworths came out, be like, no, there's no set point. This thing just keeps on going or there's no cessation point.

It just keeps going. Conneman and him were intellectually conversing and they decided to do an adversarial research. They're like, let's do one together. And this is where we bring in the set point. So the set point of happiness is we have this innate level. that we're born with that defines whether we're going to be happy or not. Again, lots of new ones there. What they discovered in their research was unhappy people who have a more tendency

to just see life in a more negative way. Money bought a lot of happiness up to some point. We don't need to know the number. Right. But basically, that's to buy your way out of financial distress. That's to buy security. That's to buy comfort. There will never be someone in poverty who has a hard time mating their bills that

will tell us that money doesn't buy happiness. It does. It does. What they discovered is it's around 15% in the research that people who have that propensity to have a more negative outlook on life, there was a clear plateau after a certain point. And, you know, we can inflate these dollars. It doesn't matter.

The point is once we get above those basic psychological needs that money can buy us, shelter, safety, security, et cetera. After that, it was the people who had more propensity to a positive outlook on life that it just kept going. You made money and it kept going. Yeah. No, that's very interesting. I mean, I know when I talk to people, they'll often say,

I hear the money doesn't buy happiness, but I would like a chance to prove that to myself. And I think that very much summarizes a lot of people's thinking. But to your point, nobody was ever trying to say that if you were impoverished or it couldn't pay your bills, then more money wouldn't change your happiness level. That was not the point of that talk.

It was always argued that, as you say, there was a level that you didn't improve your happiness much beyond. now you're saying some of the research says for a big group of people, maybe as much as 85%, or at least people predisposed to happiness, that they can keep rising up the happiness chain, the more money they make. But funnily enough, when I look at goatily at all of my friends, I have many friends in Toronto, for example, who succeeded tremendously financially, they're not that much happier as they become wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. In fact, to some extent, it's complicated their life. They started defining themselves by their possessions, by their

success, buy their money. They've got more removed from family and friends, et cetera. So I would argue at some point, not only can it tap, but then actually bounce off the cap and almost start going backward for some people. So this was the reason why I want to research this is because in my financial psychology work, I came across a research of millionaires who had $10 million dollars liquid assets. And they studied their level of well-being. They didn't focus just on happiness more broadly. And again, research is hard because it's averages. But on average, a lot of them report it like, is this it? Like, I've been delaying gratification. I've been chasing this. And like, man, I'm here, but it doesn't feel like what I thought it would be when I started. And it's called

this a rival fallacy that we think when we get to a certain level, when we arrive, it's going to be glorious when I make that, whatever it is, $2 million, $3 million, that rainbows and unicorns are going to We flying all over and life is easy. But if we don't understand what meaning, well-being, happiness, what moments in our lives we really enjoy, money is fuel. It can get us somewhere, but it can't tell us where we want to go. No, you've said that very well. And I mean, I think as you get older, and I'm quite old, you're only 40-ish.

I'm 104. As you get older, you tend to realize. Look good for 104. Yeah, that's work out. And it's a lot of black nives. When you get older, you quickly realize that it really is all. about health relationships, the value add back to the community, et cetera. And those things, for the most part, aren't affected too much by money. In fact, money I seem to destroy a fair

number of family relationships. So I think it makes sense all the research that you're bringing it. You've also made a wonderful point that this is all very nuanced and varies dramatically from person to person. We can talk averages. We can talk on a net basis and did this. But everybody's a little different and now they handle this. And one of the reasons they're different, you alluded to at the start of the show, and that is that we all have a background and money, a money story that to some extent we've bought in. I loved her phrasing there. It's given to you, by your family, but also by your culture, even your place could be geography, it could be your place in society, et cetera. Expand a little bit on that notion. This is, to me, it's,

it's just so incredible that we all take a moment to realize that we all have an unconscious money script like I described. And let me just walk through what happened to me when I looked in it. as an example to hit the point you're saying. I know I was doing good work as a financial planner. Like, inherently, I tried to do, you know, good work. But I realized

as I started doing these exercises, what money meant to me, what fears did it elicit? Because money is also a mirror. It reflects who we are and it can't tell us who we are. It just reflects. So it takes us go inside of ourselves to realize

what money is. And what I realized, is that growing up, I was a super shy kid, like, deathly shy. In university, I would mumble in my presentations because I didn't want people to hear my voice, even though that just seems ridiculous now, but I was super shy. And I, I lived this narrative that Sean is shy, Sean is shy, Sean is shy. It was told all the time. And I was shy, so I just silenced myself. Then I found myself, I remember, this is called a financial flashpoint.

It's money memories that are so strong that you feel it in your bones and they still resonate today. and it unconsciously informs how we think, feel, and behavior around money. But I was at a family reunion, I made some painted rocks. I sold them for about $75. I was like seven. It was, I was like, holy, I just made money. My grandpa was the only customer, though. But nonetheless, I made this money.

And I remember, like, whoa, my older cousins, who I thought were cool, were like, whoa, I want some of that money, Sean. And I was, like, being seen and recognized fundamental human needs that money started telling me can elicit that in me. And so the pursuit of money began. And I just was constantly always focused on money. As a shy kid, it seemed to give me the attention my little inside wanted. And yeah, I became a financial planner.

Yeah, I wanted to help people. But I liked being in that position of power. You know, it sounds bad saying this, but when I'm being honest, it was I liked having these conversations around people. But what I didn't realize is I was so incredibly biased to my view of money because that's how I see the world. So I've had a couple and one had more likely to save and not spend and make big purchases unconsciously, I'm aligning with that person.

Right. Yeah, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And where it really hit home is when I got married. And I was like, why can't we get this money right with my wife and I? It's just like, it was a bomb. And like I had this money story that was about scarcity. I was holding on to the university, like unpaid bills to the last minute because I didn't want to put ways with money.

Because my inner critic, who I call Mr. Shai, he was like, you can't spend your money. You're going to lose your sense of self. And my wife had a money story of like ease and like, it'll be okay. Her parents bought her things. It was nice. And these stories like collided. And it was really in there that I realized that I could be financially right, but I better be relationally right as well. So how did you work out?

What compromises did you end up striking? And don't say no, she left me seven years ago, Dave, and I've been crying ever since. Did it all work out? Were you able to find a good ground? Well, you got the, you got the story there. No, you know, I would say it's a work in progress all the time. But what it came to me is I had to have a realization that budgets matter, but relationally, we each need to have a voice.

And ultimately, a lot of money, it gets camouflaged to a desire to. to get power, control, even to buy love in some cases. And I had to realize that I needed to relinquish control from this inner money critic I call Mr. Shai so that it could be relationally right. And she also had to recognize that, even though I'm making financial decisions, that doesn't mean I'm stripping her and eroding her of control. That is a partnership. But I think every couple, every couple that I talk to, it needs to be a mutual understanding.

Sean, I think you, that's great stuff and you've said all that very well. And I mean, I see it all the time because I've seen so many budgets and spending summaries over the years. And that's one of the reasons I advocate the couples working together and communicating regularly and being very open in those communications about their strengths, their weaknesses, their desires. To your point, the money story, although a lot of us don't really recognize our money story. I think I very much inherited mine from my parents. Neither one of them were stuff oriented at all. They weren't in a stuff. They weren't into possessions.

And I very much have been like that my whole life. Like I live in a small house. And I don't want things. In fact, I find them a burden. I find things heavy. I don't want people giving me gifts. I don't want that kind of thing. But again, you take that from your parents.

If you go back and look at your life, your shyness played such a huge role. So you and your wife, how often do you communicate about this type of thing? And is that a big part of how you've been able to move this forward? We communicated about every day whether we realize it or not. But intentionally, I would say we don't do it enough. Because we have kids now. I mean, there's different ways now. But I would say a healthy way is for sure monthly.

Just checking in, if not sooner. Like some of our clients will do it weekly and it's over a cup of coffee. And it's not, it doesn't have to be a full financial plan. It has to be just an ability to check in being like, hey, you know, when, for example, when you decided to buy our son a hockey stick, like it's not about the stick. but you know you want me coming to you for these certain things it feels like the same way so little things like that help keep the steam from just boiling over so those big emotional events because Dave the thing that's really fascinating is like we're struggling with our own internal

story around money and yet then we're trying to understand our spouses as well or whomever we're commingling our money with so if we don't take the moment to notice then those big those big moments happen. You know, I find some couples in their 30s who I've come to know over the last X number of years are actually doing a very good job on that. And by the way, using the exact of the time frame you brought up, they're going out once a month

and to your point, it's not a full financial plan. They may do that annually and working with either their plan or on their own, both, whatever. But once a month they're out, hey, let's look at the spending summary. Let's talk through where we are right now with our goals and everything else and some of the things that may have gotten this off track. It's always very friendly.

nobody's trying to attack and say that you blew this or anything else. I think that's so important and it brings people closer together. I think it makes a lot of sense, but let's be honest, not or not people do it. And what you're talking about is there's a term in the financial psychology world now called financial intimacy. Yeah, I love it. And it's being able to be intimate and around our money. And we all have deep fears seated in ourselves that are attached.

Again, money's a mirror of what's actually going on inside of ourselves. And to be able to share that with a spouse, I'm a man. mean, it is intimacy. No, I agree. You know, I'm getting an example, by the way, of the power of all of the psychology, and getting to tell yourself and getting to know other people. Morgan Housel did our podcast recently, the Psychology of Money Author and, of course, 8 million copies sold, tremendous guy. And he talked about how he paid off his mortgage when he knows it doesn't make mathematical sense. He had a 3.2% interest rate in the States, of course, it's tax deductible interest. He recognized that over the long term, the stock markets were likely to outperform that

dramatically on a compounding basis, but he likes the peace of mind and not having a mortgage. And that tradeoff made sense for him. And so he said, forget the spreadsheets. There's a lot more involved than just that. And you have to think all of that through. Peace of mind, of course, you can't put a price on it, power of getting sleep, et cetera. A lot of that is what you're talking about here and these communications. But in general, a lot of that is your focus. Yeah, Morgan's work is fantastic. I really, his book is wonderful. And his new one too is equally as great. This story there reminds me of during COVID, you know, the world changed as we know it overnight. And my wife was working at a university. They had to learn how to do it

online and it was really, really taxing. There were so many uncertainties. Our children were four and two at that time. And it just was a lot, a lot happening. And we decided to have her stop working for what was a short term and turned in to be fairly long term because it came down to like Aristotle talks about the point in life is to live a good life a meaningful life and here we have two wonderful kids four and two in a time we'll never get back absolutely it's often a push pull between time the thinnitude of time and money and mr shy was crapping his pants being like okay we're going to do this decision my financial calculators are going to going out the wall right now.

Like, you know, Freedom 55, retire. Every of these expectations that I had were going out the window. But it was the right decision to make, similar to what he was saying about Morgan saying about the mortgage. And that time, Dave just allowed us to slow down. And since 2020, I've been able to walk my kids to school every day once COVID finished. And like, that is just gold to me. Absolutely.

That is. No, that's a great story. And I did a similar thing. right at the peak of the wealthy barber, I walked away at home school, my son for three years and my daughter for one. They never recovered, by the way. Yeah, they never got past that. I took them backwards on almost every front, but still, for me personally, it was a great experience. I was going to say, how about you? Yeah, no, I loved it. But I think they're still trying to get past it and they still get counseling. But no, it was a lot of fun for all of us

and bound us closer together. And so I think you're right. Those kinds of things that we often term sacrifices aren't sacrifices at all. They're investments. They're just a different type of investment. it's not always about the money. And I thought that was funny when you said your financial calculators were going off because it makes sense that they would. The Freedom 55 would become Freedom 92. But I'm sure you've recovered. And there's a certain advantage to peace of mind that often leads to better financial results too. So your wife may not have been working at her conventional spot, but you may have been prosper at your work because you're so pleased with the overall decision and the quality of life that's brought into your situations.

It's exactly, exactly right. Going back to a broad and build theory, is like when our ability to think clearly, to have more confidence in our thinking, we make more aligned decisions with what matters the most in life. For sure. When we're scarcity. So Mr. Shai had me thinking scarcity. Like I would hear people's portfolios and he'd be like, oh, what's wrong with you, buddy?

Like, Mr. Financial Planner, pick it up. But when we have time and space to think and reflect, we can realize that, like, Mr. shy was born when I was shy, like, and now I'm a 40-year-old man. I don't need to listen to him. but he always pops up he's there we we dance together you know you know what's interesting i've talked before about when i look back at the people who handled their money really well whom i've dealt with well over the years but i've known very well too and i say what are the common denominators among those people beyond their financial habits is there anything and really

only one jumped out they were all walkers and that really jumped out i'm talking about a big number but it really plays to what you just talked about they're getting grounded they're going for that daily walk of an hour and an hour half, it's fresh air, it's sunlight, it's all those other good things, but it tends to make your decisions more aligned with what's really important in light, well-being, and it tends to roll right into better financial decisions. I don't think it's a coincidence that those people tend to be aggressive walk or spending a lot of time out of the fresh air. A friend of mine did some research on people who get more sun exposure exponentially save better. And again, there's all this causation stuff,

but it's a published paper. So when I, when I, when I, I started going through this journey of financial psychology. Okay, we got money stories that impact how we think, feel, and behave around money. Okay, great. That's what led me to the positive psychology and understanding does money or do happier people make better money decisions. And this theory called Perma, it's a framework by Dr. Martin Seligman that answers the question how do people experience well-being or thrive in life. Right. And Perma stands for people experience positive emotion, engagement, R for relationships, M for meaning, A, for accomplishments. Going outside, if it's with someone, sometimes walkers walk with people, you're hitting positive

emotions, you're outside in nature, you get engaging conversations, or you engage with nature. Like, I mean, I live in Emmettin. We just had fall here. Great. I would look at these trees, Dave, and be like, how does this thing go from? green in the summer, beautiful, crunchy. You know that crunchy when you step on the crispy fall leaves? It just like, it, it just feels good.

It all drops. Winter comes, minus 40 year in Emmettin. And then it just comes in the spring. It's like amazing, but I'm engaging with nature when I'm doing that. And so like just walking outside in nature hits on a lot of these elements in Perma. So I'm a big believer getting outside of nature. That's great.

Now, listen, I've got a question. You're really well positioned answers. So over the last five, years. I was probably weak as early as an educator. I've really gotten people question to do spending summaries. So for a three-month period, they'll write down everything they spend, kind of monitor, and they can learn a lot about where the leaks are and where they're spending without getting the appropriate joy units, etc. But the most interesting aspect of that to me has been that they often make changes after doing the spending

summary without consciously deciding to do so. So this isn't them taking all that data, sitting down or redoing a budget or sitting down with someone like me and saying, help me to do this, they tend to subconsciously start doing better things and allocating the money to work, gave them more joy or closing off the leaks. How does that whole thing work? Why is that happening? Carl Young, fantastic psychologist, he said, until we make the unconscious conscious, it will continue to dictate our life and will call it fate. Right. So going through that exercise of documenting, it's very similar to looking in the past at our money stories, what influenced us. what we're doing is we're just making the unconscious that is dictating us conscious there.

And in your example, these people are now bringing light to, oh, shoot, I'm spending like $500 on skip the dishes or whatever. And maybe they aren't like consciously now making a decision. I'm not going to do that. But that awareness now informs us on our decisions of what we don't want to do. And so, you know, until we turn the lights on, we don't know what's in the room. right no that's right i called carl young carl jung for the first 40 years of my life i'm embarrassed to say you know seriously it wasn't why i was from 40s and i finally heard somebody called carl young and i said

i thought that was carl jung my whole life so i'm glad that that's been strained out a little embarrassing it was just your canadian accent yeah i know thanks you're very very diplomatic what mistakes do you see when you look at people we all have biases we all have things beyond our money story just societal biases the way the human mind works that take us down the wrong path i mean you look at thinking fast thinking and slow and that wonderful book. What kind of things do you see in the world of money that you at least try to address and help people and point out to them? Mine goes around money buys happiness because we talked about this nuance.

Right. And the reason being is we have one life to live. We get one song to sing and we get one chance at this. And I know that I've spent many years desiring more, desiring better things. And while that's totally normal and actually that perma model, I talked about, accomplishment is fundamental to our well-being. But doing it rudderless without knowing what I like to use a sailing analogy. I've never been sailing before, but I was sailing to the glorious island that had a lot of money

and recognition and prestige. So I think something that I see what we get wrong is sailing to the wrong island rudderless because we don't really fundamentally take the time to know what we want. And I mean, look at the world. We're busy, busier than ever. We have so many pulling complexities in our lives. So that would be mine is rudderlessly going to the, whatever island seems the most prestigious to us without really determining.

What island do we really want to go to? Yeah, that's interesting. You know, my father, by the way, is a master of all of this. He really is. So he always wanted to be very accomplished. But he measured that by making a difference in other people's lives or maybe a better way of it being the best he could be at what he chose. goes to do as a profession, high school principal. But the trappings of the accomplishments

in terms of people recognizing it or being able to live a better life by owning possessions, couldn't care less about any of them. And definitely the happiest person I've ever known, not a stress person in any way. That's why I don't think he'll ever die. He just told us recently he's going to live to be 115. And the family said to, no, you're not. Dad, we can assure you you're not going to live to be 115. That will be taken care of. But so much of this, he has mastered. And you alluded earlier in the show to, we care so much about what other people think that we're all looking for status. We're all looking for that clue. Yes, you are worthy. For some reason, he rose above that. And funnily enough, therefore got the status and got the yes,

you're worthy because he was out doing very important things and impactful things. How do we get around that? How do we protect ourselves from falling into that trap of defining our lives? But when we think other people are thinking. I just love how much adoration you have for your dad. Yeah, thank you. You've mentioned him a couple of times. You know, going back to our evolutionary brain, which is very much still the same, social comparison was another survival skill. I needed to see what the other person, like, who threatened my survival was going to do. So my brain is constantly scanning. Now it does that with money and recognition and prestige.

And so I think a way we start to do this, A, getting clarity on what do we really want in this life? George Kinder, are you familiar with George Kinder? Yes. Yep. I love his exercise of three questions. Yeah, they're very good. I like all his stuff. And he's fantastic.

And essentially his questions are, which I think help us get beyond the social comparison. There's many different tools. We can write a letter to our future self on our deathbed, etc. I like the George Kinder questions. Essentially, it's like if I won the lottery, I had enough money to survive. What would change in my life? Right. You answer it.

Now you're diagnosed with a terminal illness. You have five to 10 years to live. How, if anything at all, does that change? And then you go back to doctrine. They say, sorry, we got it wrong. You have 24 hours to live. Now the question isn't what would you do differently. It's who did you not become?

What did you not get to accomplish? And I think that pulls us from like those forests from the trees to really look at, what do I value in this lifetime, which can help us be reactive to those social comparisons. And when we start to understand, and this is why I really love positive psychology, is it helps us understand what do we savor in life like what is important for us to savor in life how do we like to spend our finite time because we never get back to this day then it helps curb us against the the reactive more scarcity mindset that we fall prey when we have social comparison

no you said all that very well and i'm amazed at the power of social comparison i mean you know you know me for a little bit now i fanatical about how much people spend on cars and i don't judge by the way any other spending so when i see all these spending summaries over the last 40 years, especially the last 10, I never say, you know, that's crazy what you're doing there. You just try to help in any way. Cars on the other hand, drive me nuts. Because so many people spend so much on cars, they're squeezing out any potential savings, especially in these high cost days, high real estate cost days. Again, doesn't that go back to exactly what you're talking about, though, the social comparisons, the trying to send a message out, the car really

represents you, it's an extension of you, none of which should be the case or is the case. Yeah, Dave, because of your work, I drive a 2012 Ford F-150. Love it. And my wife has a 2012 Honda, a court, or Civic. You know, maybe she doesn't agree so much as a me, but I've got to work on that later on. But, yeah, I've full subscribed to this vehicle thing. And I've determined, though, I don't like vehicles.

I actually don't care about vehicles. Liz Dunn actually did some really great research around people's happiness when they buy vehicles and it goes 100% in line with how you've already thought except there was a nuance because all of this is nuance because we're humans like we are complex creatures if someone really loves vehicles like you know those guys who like our girls who like to like pet their car and they understand every nuance behind the engine we go from spending something for like a social status to like an experience and we know experiences have enduring levels of satisfaction in life so absolutely I want to address that because some people are like, no, cars can.

And it's true. But like many things, there's two sides each thing. No, I think that's an important distinction. You're right. For the car fanatic, the true car fanatic, it is a little different because it is an experience. But for the rest of us, and that's probably 90-odd percent, the habituation sets in so remarkably quickly. It's crazy.

I just had a family member say this, said, you know, I got tired of my new car for three weeks. And three weeks is actually pretty good compared to what I'm normally. I'm excited for about four days. You mentioned Liz Dunn. I think a lot of her. research is fantastic. And maybe one of the reasons I'm drawn to this, it very much matches up to the real life examples that I've seen. A lot of times you read people who are writing in theory or academics. Neagle, that sounds interesting. I like the way they put that together, but it doesn't

match up to all the anecdotal evidence I get to see in real life. Her stuff constantly does. I think she's excellent. Yeah, she's remarkable. And if I go back to the meaning of life, in life, not of life, like the meaning inside of my own life, social relationships have consistently proven to be one of the most important things since the existence of humans. And I love her research around pro-social spending. Like if I spend on other people, it has this reciprocity that I feel good, they feel good, and now together we're feeling good. And that just gets me spiraling, thinking of her work on vacations as well, making things a treat. not going on vacation all the time, but making it a treat.

I spend money on my family or a friend to go to a concert, which is to me another fantastic way to spend our money is an experiential event like a concert. There's this collective effervescence, this energy in there. It engages the emotions. If she's pointed out, you have the anticipation of a lot of these major events and then you have the memories up to boot. Did you see that research that came out a couple years ago saying

that if you're going on a trip, that's more than I make necessarily. up, but more than 12 hours away, I think it might have been 14, it doesn't give you the anticipation because you tend to be thinking about the horrible travel day leading up to it as opposed to the vacation. So you still get the benefits of the memories, but you don't get the benefits of the anticipation. And I thought, that's great research because I'm like that. If you told me I could go on a 24 hour flight somewhere, anywhere I would go in, I said, I want to go to 24 hour flight. That's due long for me. So that makes a lot of sense. No, I love all

that stuff and you're right she's done an excellent job and chronicling all of that and you know going to sporting events point to concerts as we said pulls people together throughout an event that again engages the emotions and makes them bond more closely it deepens the friendship yeah i've been resisting because i'm like a podcaster at heart asking you questions but i i'm going to ask you in here do you go to concerts i've never been to a concert in my life well i shouldn't say that i've been to one In 1972, my parents took me to see Sunny and Cher. That's my only concert in my life, Sunny and Cher. Really?

No, but I go to a ton of sporting events. So I'm a Detroit Lions season ticket holder. We go, and the whole family goes. Like, we're very much into Detroit sports. So we go to those. But yeah, and my kids love, well, I shouldn't say that. My son does it. My daughter loves concert, but I'm not a concert goer at all.

Love music, though. I just don't go to concert. Next time Bruce Springsteen rolls through Toronto. Try that one. And I love him. I asked that because of this, like I mentioned earlier, this collective effervescence you get, but you get it from sporting events as well. For sure.

Well, no, our team's usually lose. So we get a collective depression. So it's a little bit different, but I know what you meet. But, but it's still collective, which is so interesting. It's a shared heartache. I mean, I'm an emminton oil fan. We've lost two years in a row and it's like heartbreak, but it's shared. And we can, we, there's, there's meaning in that.

Yeah, I'm just a big, you mentioned about that anticipation. that actually changed how I thought about surprise trips, surprise birthdays, because that very research shows that we can anticipate. And there's savoring in that, thinking about where we're going. I did a surprise birthday for my wife one time. I was planning and I was really enjoying it. And I kind of robbed her from that. Like someone who once told me that when you surprise someone, you robbed them from the anticipation.

That's good point. I think just whether it's concerts, experiences, traveling, like you said, you get that anticipation. you get the experience and then that recall and it just lives on and on and your brain then like distorts it like it was better than it was for sure which is a good thing compound interest but you know what's really interesting about travels too you don't tend to compare your vacations to other peoples and feel like wow they had a grander one than i did or they stayed in nice we don't for some reason tend to do that and i love that part of it like when you go and do other things you buy a car you make yeah but that person has either nicer

car, but with vacations, none of us tend to think that way, which is even better still. Now, you made a really interesting point about Liz Dunn saying that if you do too much of this, it loses that treat feel. It loses the specialness that habituation sets in. And I agree with that too. It has to be something you do, you know, as often as you can, but not so often that again, it overwhelms the senses. Yeah. Again, that's a superpower of humans. We habituate. We do. And I think we, going back to the lottery research from 1978, one interesting finding was that the lottery winners felt less satisfaction from mundane experiences, which are like eating, walking, like the mundane experiences, which make up, if you put a pie chart,

like the most of our time, most of our time. And it's because it's relativity. Like, I was just exposed to up here. And so let's go back to travel. If I now, I'm like traveling first class all the time and five, five, of course, dinners. Like, this is now my relativity bias. This is what I expect and I'm habituating to.

It's hard to come down to the other experiences that might not be so luxurious. So I get torn. I don't know if it's Mr. Shy and me. Like, I get torn on luxury travel. My wife and I spent two years traveling around the world. We spent $30,000 in two years. And we ate on the streets for two years.

And I don't know if that's set my baseline or Mr. shy makes me feel really frugal when I spend. but I like to still, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to ruin it. No, no, that makes sense. Now, listen, before we let you go, you mentioned the three questions. One of them was the 24-hour one. What would you do if you're only 24 hours?

I know I'm immediately leaving the doctor's office and going to A&W. Like, that's my first stop. Probably will go there three times in the 24-hour period. What about you? How do you spend that last 24 hours if that's all you have? What are you eating there? Two team burgers, fries, and a large diet root beer. Although I'm not sure I go diet if only had 24 hours.

I mean, at that point, you're like, whatever, just give me the Calvaries. The part that I think about is the, not only what am I doing, but like, what did I, what did I not get to do? Right. And for me, it's to see my daughter go down the aisle. It's to see my son go and marry someone, which reinforces that a big island, so to speak, our orientation in my life is my kids and my family. You know what? This is kind of sad. It shows how deep you are and how shallow I am.

you're worried about seeing your kids get married. I want to go to A and W. I mean, it's really quite pathetic. But how old are your kids? They're nine and seven right away. Well, you're not going to marry them at nine and seven if you only have 24 hours. No. No.

So what I mean is that it's a reframe that I won't get to do that thing as like an objective thing that fathers want to do in life. And orientates me to shut the emails at night, shut down the rumination of Mr. needs to, like, I got them right now. I guess it's, it's helping me realize that I got them right now and take the advantage of it, because that's holistic health, our wealth to me. For sure. Do you have a dog, by the way? I do.

Yeah, dawns bring great joy, don't they? I mean, it's just incredible. I don't know, David. I don't know, Dave. If I'm, if there's something wrong with me, I actually was like, I thought it's man's best friend. Right now, it's like, he pooped, he pees, but he's only year. So maybe he'll wear him.

Yeah, I have a year old too. And they are a lot of work. I mean, there's no doubt about it. You have to get into all the routines. My dogs spend a lot of damages to my house. He ate the seat belts out of the back of my car, that kind of nonsense. But they're hard to be in terms of the companionship. And it gets better and better as they get that little bit over and make the adjustments.

Anyway, you've been a real pleasure to have on the show. Honestly, I love your positive attitude and you're so well researched, the way you can quote all these different things. You've shed great light and a lot of things love to have you back on at some point. You know, it's been a pleasure and I love the work you've done. And it really has informed a lot of the way I understand and relate to money. So thanks for all the work you're doing. No, that's great. Keep in touch and good luck.

There's my dog barking in the background. What's his name? His name is Jasper. And he is one of the most poorly behaved dogs I've ever seen. Like literally. Yeah, I've never seen a dog behave so poorly, but I do love him. And I live alone. And so it's nice having the companionship for sure.

Okay, be well. Well, thank you so much. You too. Thank you.