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Morgan Housel — The Psychology of Money, Picking the Right Game, and the $6 Million Janitor (#576)

  • Tim Ferriss
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    “You have to have a level of savings in your asset allocation that doesn’t make sense. You have to have a level of conservatism that seems like it’s a little bit too much. That’s the only time that you know that you are prepared for risks that you cannot envision.”

    — Morgan Housel

    Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) is a partner at the Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. He serves on the board of directors at Markel Corporation. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, winner of the New York Times Sidney Award, and a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism.

    His book The Psychology of Money has sold more than one million copies and has been translated into more than 30 languages.

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    The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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    #576: Morgan Housel — The Psychology of Money, Picking the Right Game, and the $6 Million Janitor

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    What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

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    Want to hear an episode with another writer discussing their creative process? Listen to my conversation with Malcolm Gladwell in which we discuss routines, habits, and tools, how to make your stories relatable, and why he eats as little as possible in the morning. 

    #168: Dissecting the Success of Malcolm Gladwell

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    SHOW NOTES

    MORE MORGAN HOUSEL QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

    “If your tolerance for bullshit is zero, you’re not going to make it at all in life.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “All compounding is never intuitive.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “There’s a reason why quoting Warren Buffett is easier than being the next Warren Buffett.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “You have to have a level of savings in your asset allocation that doesn’t make sense. You have to have a level of conservatism that seems like it’s a little bit too much. That’s the only time that you know that you are prepared for risks that you cannot envision.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “I have a feeling that there will never be a clean, uncontested election in your and my lives. Once you set the precedent of chaos, it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “A fine means you did something wrong like, ‘Shame on you, here’s your speeding ticket. Don’t do it ever again. You’re in trouble.’ And a fee is just a price of admission that you paid to get something better on the other side. Like you go to Disneyland, you pay the fee, and then you get to enjoy the theme park. You didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just that’s the fee.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “There’s a cost to everything. And just identifying what the cost is, then realizing that the cost is not on a price tag. You’re going to pay for it with stress and anxiety and dopamine and cortisol. That’s how you pay for these things. I think that’s the only way to deal with those big ups and downs.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “To me, [it] has always been kind of a sad thing that we are so accustomed and attuned to just wanting to use our money … to go out and buy more stuff when we could be using it for freedom and autonomy.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “To the extent that we can use money to gain independence and autonomy, that is, I think, as close as it comes to a universal want and thing that we can use money for.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “You stand apart in the private investing world by having values and a view of the world that is differentiated in some way. And those values do not matter at all unless people know about them. You need to be going out there, showing the world how you think, what you think, who you are, waving your arms. That’s the purpose of hiring someone like me to be a writer.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “Risk is just the odds that something will prevent you from achieving your goals. But the nuance is that everyone has very different goals and aspirations and time horizons.”
    — Morgan Housel

    “You and I, and everyone else, and the smartest people that we know have no clue what’s going to happen over the next 10 years. That’s always been true and I think it always will be true.”
    — Morgan Housel

    PEOPLE MENTIONED

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