Morgan Housel’s “The Psychology of Money” explores how generational experiences shape financial behavior, the role of luck and risk, and the true nature of wealth and financial independence.
Morgan Housel is a well-respected financial writer and investment expert known for his ability to simplify complex financial concepts. He is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and has previously written for The Wall Street Journal and The Motley Fool.
Chapter 1. There Are No Crazy People.
Different generations, raised in different families, with different incomes and values, acquire very different experiences in understanding how to handle money. What seems inadequate to you appears quite logical to me. The thing is, we have lived different lives and formed different experiences, which each of us finds most convincing. And people with the same intelligence may look at where to invest money and how much risk to take differently. If you haven’t experienced a crisis or bankruptcy yourself, it’s impossible to understand them to the extent that it affects your behavior. Therefore, some lessons will not be learned until you experience them yourself. Economists have found that people make life-changing investment decisions based solely on the experience of their generation, mostly acquired during their younger years. If inflation was high during your formative years, you are unlikely to invest in bonds in adulthood. Neither intelligence nor education plays a role. It all depends on the period in which you happened to be born. For example, statistics show that lottery tickets are mainly purchased by families with the lowest income, and on average, they spend $400 a year instead of saving it. In extreme circumstances, they may not be able to scrape together that $400. It might seem reckless to you, but from the perspective of low-income people, it seems they are doing everything right. Because they live paycheck to paycheck, have no prospects for a raise, cannot save for a new car or a vacation. They have no chance of making decisions available to those who read financial books or were born into wealthy families. Buying a lottery ticket is their only chance to fulfill a dream that you have already realized and consider something quite ordinary. However, sometimes, after winning a large sum of money, they don’t know what to do with it and end up spending it frivolously, and after a year or two, find themselves in the same place they were before the win. People can also make irrational decisions because they are newcomers to the financial sphere. For example, taking out loans for education or expensive electronics. What might seem insane to one person may appear logical to me. However, there are no crazy people among us. We make all decisions based on our unique experiences, which seem reasonable to us at the moment.
Chapter 2. Luck and Risk.
Risk and luck go hand in hand. This also happened to Bill Gates. If the school he attended hadn’t allocated money for a popular computer at the time, and he hadn’t been among the few 300 students, he wouldn’t have achieved what he has now. Yes, Gates is smart and hardworking, but he had a one-in-a-million chance of being one of the few lucky ones who had access to a computer. But it works the other way around as well. Gates had a friend who was equally obsessed with computers. But he died in a mountain accident before even graduating from high school. The chances of dying at school age are about one in a million. Bill Gates was lucky. His friend faced a risk, also one in a million. The same odds, but working in the opposite direction. The world is very complex and cannot guarantee that your actions will be 100 percent successful. Even doing the same things as a successful person, you might not succeed because many other factors that contributed to their success might not be in play for you. For example, much of the investment success of one of the greatest investors, Benjamin Graham, was explained by the fact that he held a huge stake in GEICO, which, by his own admission, violated almost all the diversification rules he wrote about in his famous works. If that company had gone bankrupt, he would have lost everything. Now many people will say that it was a calculated strategy because it ended well. But in reality, it was just a lucky break. And there are many such stories. So pay attention not so much to individual people and specific circumstances, but to general patterns.
Chapter 3. There’s Always Something Missing.
One of the maladies of our society, affecting many of its richest and most influential members, is that they do not see limits and do not understand the meaning of the word “enough.” For example, Rajat Gupta came from a very poor family and became an orphan in his teenage years. Sometimes he had nothing to eat. Thanks to his success and luck, by the age of 40, Gupta headed the most prestigious consulting firm in the world. He then became a partner of Bill Gates and sat on the boards of five publicly traded companies. Gupta’s net worth was estimated at $100 million. He could afford absolutely everything, but it was not enough for him; he wanted to become a billionaire. Learning from insider information that Warren Buffett wanted to invest a huge sum in one of the banks, Gupta immediately bought 175,000 shares of that bank. And when, a few hours later, the announcement of the deal between Buffett and the bank was made, the bank’s shares skyrocketed. The Securities and Exchange Commission claims that Gupta illegally earned $17 million using insider information. Ultimately, Gupta went to prison for insider trading, and his career and reputation were ruined. Now you see that he did not have a sense of sufficiency. Many wealthy people, no matter how much money they have, may even resort to crime just to earn more. To make money they don’t need, they risk what they already have. It is simply idiotic. So remember a few things:
- The hardest thing in financial activity is knowing when to stop. If expectations grow with results, there is no point in trying to achieve more because your ambitions start growing faster than your satisfaction. Life loses its appeal if you lack a sense of sufficiency.
- The problem of comparing yourself to others. Imagine a rookie baseball player earning $500,000 a year. By any measure, he could be considered wealthy. But he will compare himself to a star earning $40 million a year. For any star, this is an unimaginable sum. But the star will compare themselves to the top ten highest-paid managers, who earn $340 million a year. People in this top ten will compare themselves to those who earn even more, and so on. Winning this race is unrealistic, and the only way to win is not to enter it and understand that you have enough money, even if someone around you earns more.
- “Enough” doesn’t mean “little.” If a person feels that they have enough, it means they understand that continuing might lead them to a point where they will regret not stopping. This could be emotional burnout from excess work or asset allocation in investments that exceeds your risk tolerance. Failing to let go of an extra dollar will sooner or later lead you to trouble.
- There are many things worth not risking, no matter what profit is at stake. Reputation is priceless. Freedom and independence are priceless. Family and friends are priceless. The love of someone who is dear to you is priceless. The best way to preserve all of these is to have a clear understanding of when to stop to avoid risking what you hold dear.
Chapter 4. The Paradoxes of Accumulation.
The time when you start investing plays a huge role in how much money you will accumulate by the end of your life. Accumulation is influenced by the effect of compound interest. Warren Buffett has such wealth simply because he started investing at age 10 and continued doing it throughout his life. This effect works everywhere. For example, in the 1950s, the maximum hard drive capacity was 3.5 megabytes. In the 1960s, it was 20 MB. In the 1970s, 70 MB. And then boom, in 1999 a 6-gigabyte hard drive was produced. In 2003, it was 120 GB. In 2006, 250 GB. And in 2011, 4 TB, and so on. This is a telling example of how compound interest works.
Chapter 5. Getting Rich and Staying Rich.
The only way to preserve your wealth is a combination of frugality and paranoia. Earning money is one thing; keeping it is another. You need to be prepared for the possibility that everything you’ve acquired could disappear. You should be frugal and understand that your earnings are at least partly due to luck and that past achievements are not necessarily permanent. Remember:
- There are no profits worth risking everything for.
- Don’t forget about compound interest. It only shows up if you give your assets the opportunity to grow over many years. It’s like planting an oak tree. You won’t see much growth in a year, but after 10 years the changes are significant, and after 50, they’re astounding. Warren Buffett never went into debt. He didn’t panic or sell his assets during 14 recessions. He didn’t tarnish his business reputation. He didn’t stick to one strategy or approach. He didn’t rely on other people’s money. He subscribed to the “Bukich” YouTube channel. You need to understand three things:
- I need not just high income but financial stability. Financial invulnerability will allow me to last long enough for compound interest to work. Only continuous income into the investment account, especially during times of chaos and disruption, will ensure your success.
- Planning is very important, but it’s even more important to plan for what to do if things don’t go as planned. For example, no one can predict a real estate market crash, financial crisis, or the spread of a virus. So, usually, three different forecasts are made: ideal, more or less, and failure. In this case, you will already have a plan for saving and reallocating funds to other investments, etc.
- A person should be, on the one hand, optimistic about the future and, on the other, paranoid.
Chapter 6. “Long Tails Win.”
Collectors can buy items of art in bulk. Some of the art may be worth a lot, some may be worth nothing, and some will just appreciate a little bit over time. This is a strategy based on the fact that some items are likely to become very valuable in the future. In terms of investing, it’s a similar story. There are more long-term investments with the potential for huge returns than there are those that will bring average or poor returns. That’s why it’s worth diversifying investments. The overall result will be that the long tails will help to accumulate wealth.
Chapter 7. The Seduction of Pessimism.
Pessimism has a strong grip on people. For example, an infectious disease outbreak such as COVID-19 causes a wave of panic and pessimism. People’s attention is drawn to bad news and disasters rather than to what is working well. This makes them more afraid and cautious about their finances. Media is designed to scare you and keep your attention on what’s wrong. This distorts the real situation and creates a sense of urgency. Pessimism is powerful because it’s often true and because it’s easy to believe. It often seems more real and credible than optimism. It’s easier to predict the future of technology than the future of the economy. Optimism is less exciting but is just as important as a stabilizing force. It is what helps us make long-term investments and decisions without panicking at every little hiccup in the market.
Chapter 8. The Value of Enough.
The concept of “enough” plays a central role in financial decision-making. It is about understanding and appreciating what you have and recognizing when you have reached a point of satisfaction. The struggle for more, driven by comparison and ambition, can often lead to dissatisfaction and risky behavior. Knowing when you have enough is crucial for maintaining both financial and personal well-being. It involves setting realistic goals, understanding your values, and ensuring that your pursuit of wealth doesn’t overshadow the other important aspects of life.
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