Hey, this is Morgan Howsle. I'm the author of the Psychology of Money and I guess I have
a podcast now. I don't know how long this has gonna last or whether this is the only
one I'll do or if there'll be many more or how many I'll do, but I've always wanted
to do something like this and I'm just gonna give it a shot and see what happens. So
thanks for being a listener to the very first one. I want to talk about the art of spending
money. It's a topic I've thought a lot about and I'm gonna be writing a lot about in the
future. Let me start this with a little story I heard recently that I think was so fascinating.
It's about Jack Welch who is a former CEO of General Electric. He was a big iconic CEO
back in the 80s and 90s and back in the 1990s when he was kind of at his heyday, he had
a heart attack and he almost died. It was a very serious heart attack. He made it through,
of course. But many years later, he was asked what was going through his mind when he
was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and what usually could have been his last moments
alive on earth. And his comment was what was going through his mind was God damn it. I
didn't spend enough money. That's what was going through his mind and what could have been
his last moments alive, which is a fascinating thing and he was asked why that was the case.
Why would he possibly be thinking about the not spending enough money as like his life
might be flashing before his eyes and he said quote, we are all products of our background.
He said I didn't have two nickels to rub together when I was young. So I've always been
cheap and I've always bought cheap wine. And after the heart attack, I swore to God that
I would never buy a bottle of wine for less than a hundred dollars. He said that was absolutely
one of the takeaways from that experience. Which to be it's just so fascinating that
you have somebody who is in their 70s who has lived an amazing life and as you're looking
back on what may have been the last moments of their life, that's what's going through their
mind. Money is so complicated. There's a scientific side of it, but there's this human element
that can defy logic. It's personal and it's messy and it's emotional. And look, behavioral
finance is well documented. But most of the attention has historically gone to how people
invest their money. How they think about volatility and greed and fear and that kind of stuff.
Jack Welch's story shows how much deeper the psychology of money can go and how you spend
your money can reveal this existential struggle of what you find valuable in life and who
you want to spend your time with and how you want to be remembered. Why you chose your
career, the kind of attention that you want from other people, all of these like really
big behavioral aspects of your life can be tied up in how you choose to spend your money.
So again, there is a science to spending money, which is like how to find a bargain and
how to make a budget, things like that. But there's also an art to spending money. There's
a part that cannot be quantified and a very strong person to person. Now in my book,
I call money the greatest show on earth because of its ability to reveal things about
people's characters and their values. How people invest their money tends to be hidden
from view, but how you spend your money is much more visible. I can see what you spend
your money on. I can see your house. I can see your car. I can see your clothes. So
what it shows about who you are can be even more insightful than how you invest. Everybody's
different, which is part of what makes this topic so fascinating. There are no black
and white rules. But what I want to do with the rest of this podcast is share with you
13 of what I think are just some of the most interesting little nuggets, little anecdotes,
the behavioral sides of spending money, the artist spending money that I've come across
that I think are the most fascinating to me.
Okay, number one, your family background and past experiences heavily influence your
spending preferences. Years ago, I came across this quote from the Washington Post as from
June of 1927, the roaring 1920s, the last hurrah before the Great Depression. The headline
says quote, the more you were snubbed well, poor, the more you enjoy displaying your wealth
when rich. I think that is timeless. It explains so much after the COVID-19 lockdowns, there
was this concept of revenge spending, just a furious blast of conspicuous consumption,
letting out everything that had been pent up and held back in 2020 and revenge spending
I think happens at a broad level too. The most stunning examples I've seen of this are
are wealthy adults who grew up poor and they were heckled and they were bullied and they
were teased for being poor as kids. Their revenge spending mentality can become permanent
and last throughout their entire life. If you dig into it, I think you'll see that
a disproportionate share of those who have the biggest homes, the fastest cars, the
shinies, jewelry, they grew up snubbed in some way. Part of their current spending isn't
about getting value out of the flashy material goods, it's about healing a social wound that
was inflicted on them when they were younger. And even when wound is the wrong word to
describe what's going on here, the desire to show the world that you've made it increases
if you grew up snubbed out of what you wanted. Because look, to someone who grew up in an
old money affluent family, something like a Lamborghini might be the ultimate symbol
of godi egotism. But to those who grew up with nothing, that car might serve as the ultimate
symbol that you've made it and you've come out on the other side. So a lot of spending
is done to fulfill a deep-seated psychological need. Much more, I think, than we give credit
to. And if people become introspective about how they grew up, what was painful to them
when they were growing up, not just as a kid, but even as teenagers and young adults, I
think they can explain quite a bit of their current spending patterns. Okay, number two,
which is what I call entrapped by spending. Rather than using money to build a life, your
life is built around money. George Vanderbilt, who was one of the big Vanderbilt
heirs who inherited billions and billions of dollars, he spent six years building a
house called the Built More. It's 135,000 square feet. You heard that right. It has 40
master bedrooms and a full-time staff of nearly 400 people. But the craziest thing about
it is that George Vanderbilt allegedly spent very little time in the house. And there's
this quote where he talks about how little time he spent there. And he says, quote, the
house is utterly unaddressed to any possible arrangement of life, which of course, it's
135,000 square feet. And it's basically a commercial building. It doesn't feel like a
home. But the house, nevertheless, it costs so much money to maintain that it nearly ruined
Vanderbilt. 90% of the land was eventually sold off to pay taxes. And the house was turned
into a tourist attraction. You can still go visit it today.
So tonight to me is Astana. You have like one of the richest people in the world who
builds one of the largest houses that's ever been built. And he's a prisoner to it. He
doesn't spend any time there, but it nearly ruins him because it costs so much money to
maintain it. Like what is the benefit of that? There's this 1875 op-ed where someone says
that New York socialites quote, devote themselves to pleasure regardless of expense. George
Vanderbilt had an amazing response where he says actually socialites devote themselves
to expense regardless of pleasure. And the Vanderbilt are obviously extreme, they're
like the most extreme that they get. But that is a common trait among even ordinary people.
The devotion to expense regardless of pleasure. Part of this is the belief that spending
money will make you happier when it by large doesn't either because it never will or
because you haven't discovered the purchases that will actually bring you joy. Your reaction
is that you must not be spending enough so you double down again and again and just keep
spending money thinking that eventually it's going to make you happy. I've often wondered
how many personal bankruptcies or just financial troubles were caused by spending that brought
people no joy to begin with. They're spending money on things that didn't even bring them
any joy. And then that spending makes them go bankrupt or just causes them a lot of financial
grief. It has to be enormous. And it's a double loss at that point because not only are
you in financial trouble but you didn't even have any fun getting there. There's no upside
at all. I have this old friend who buried himself in credit card debt to go skiing in Europe
and he loved every single second of it. That I can wrap my head around. That decision
that makes sense even I wouldn't necessarily recommend bearing yourself in credit card debt.
But he is in control of his finances. He knew exactly what he was doing. But what about
those who spending is just driven by the belief that money is to be spent regardless of
what pleasure it might bring. Money to them has them by the neck. They are held captive
by its influence. They are prisoners to their own money.
Okay, number three. This is what I call frugality inertia. A lifetime of good savings habits
can't be transitioned into a spending phase. Look, I think what a lot of people want out
of money is the ability to stop thinking about money. They want to have enough money so
that they can stop thinking about it and just focus on other stuff. But that ultimate
goal can break down when your relationship with money becomes an ingrained part of your
personality. You struggle to break away from focusing on money because the focus itself
is a big part of who you are. If you developed an early system of saving money and living
well below your means, great, that's awesome. You've won. But if you can never break away
from that system and you insist on a heavy savings program well into retirement years,
what does that look like? Is that still winning? For a lot of people, no, it's not. I talked
to a lot of financial planners who say that one of their biggest challenges is getting clients
to spend their money in retirement, even like an appropriate conservative amount of money.
And so many of them just can't. Frugality and savings become such a big part of some
people's identity that they can never switch gears. And look, I think for some people
that's actually fine. That's okay. Because watching money compound gives them more
pleasure than they would ever get spending it. But that's maybe like 5% of people or something
that actually truly enjoy watching money compound. But those whose ultimate goal is to stop
thinking about money are become stuck and refusing to recognize that you've met your goal
can be just as bad as it never meeting the goal to begin with.
Okay, number four, the emotional attachment to large purchases, particularly buying a house,
I would say, especially your first house. My wife and I pride ourselves on making unemotional
financial decisions. But many years ago, this was eight years ago or so, when we were in
the market for our first house, we found one online on Zell that we liked. And as we headed
out for a tour, we promised ourselves that we would not do anything rash. This was just
gathering information, seeing what was out there. And then as we pulled into the driveway
of this house, it was for sale. My wife gased and she said, I love it. And I did too.
It was awesome. We had an infant son, our first child. And there was this kid's tree swing
in the front yard. Like everything was perfect. And after that moment, that was it. There
was a lot of emotions in the equation that were involved in this. And there's nothing
we could do about it. It was an emotional decision full stop. And I've, we have zero regrets.
The house was great. And it worked out. It was our first house. Everything was awesome.
But no one should pretend that you can make a life changing decision that will massively
impact you and your family and treat it like it's a math problem. Like it's a spreadsheet
equation that you're just trying to find the answer on. That's just not how it works.
Jason's Waige of the Wall Street Journal, he once wrote about his mom selling her long
time house. And he writes, quote, I have no emotional attachment to the house. I never
liked it physically. His mom told them, but everything important that ever happened in
our life as a family is here. And I just can't leave that all behind. Now, look, if I
said, how much are the memories with your kids worth? You would say it's impossible to put
a dollar amount on that figure. You can't. But if I said, how much is the house where you
form those memories with your kids worth? Or how much to staying in your local town,
impact your salary, you could probably spit out an exact dollar figure with ease and understanding
the difference between those two between the emotions and the memories and the sentimental
value of some of your big purchases and the ease at which you are able to attach a dollar
amount to the actual house that you're buying that explains a lot of spending decisions.
Okay, number five, the joy of spending can diminish as income rises because there's
less struggle, sacrifice, and sweat represented in your purchases. It is 1903 book The Quest
Through the Simple Life, author William Dawson writes that quote, the thing that has least
perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy
becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets without any consultation with
his banker values nothing that he buys. Now, consider how you felt when you got your
first paycheck from your first job. If you celebrated with as little as a milkshake
from McDonald's, you probably had this amazing feeling of like, wow, I did it. I bought
this. I bought this with my own money going from not being able to buy anything to being
able to buy something is amazing. The gap between struggle and reward is a big part of just
what makes people happy. And if you can trust that with later in your career when hopefully
you have some savings and your paychecks have grown, it's not that spending won't make
you happy. It's that it won't be as thrilling and as adrenaline inducing as it was when
there was more struggle behind each dollar. I know a guy who has a private chef. He has
served five star meals three times a day and he's had this arrangement for several years.
It's amazing. And I would be lying for my teeth if I said I was not even just a little
bit jealous. But I've also wondered if the joy diminishes over time because he doesn't
have to struggle to get those meals. There is no anticipation. There is no looking forward
to your favorite restaurant. There is no booking reservations. There is no contrasting
gap between a quote unquote normal meal and his daily delicacy that he gets served.
There is a saying that I love that the best meal you'll ever taste is a glass of water
when you're thirsty. And I think all forms of spending money have like that equivalent.
And with these very wise words that I like of from all people, Richard Nixon. This was
after he left office and he was being interviewed by David Frost and they covered so many different
topics and he'd return Nixon talks a little bit about money. And at one point he says,
quote, the unhappiest people of the world are those in the international watering places
of the South Coast of France and Newport Beach and Palm Springs and Palm Beach. They
go out to parties every night. They play golf every afternoon. They drink too much. They
talk too much. They think too little. They're retired. They have no purpose. And while there
are those around us who would disagree with this and say, wow, if I could just be a millionaire,
if you remember Nixon's time in million hours a lot, that would be the most wonderful
thing in the world. If I could just not have to work every day. If I could just be outfishing
or hunting or playing golf or traveling, that would be the most wonderful life in the
world. They don't know life because what makes life means something is a purpose, a goal,
the battle, the struggle, even if you don't win. That is the end of Nixon's quote. I just
think it's I think that's that's so true. There couldn't be anything more true than that.
That it is the gap between struggle and what you have that actually brings joy to spending
money. Okay. Number six, asking $3 questions when $30,000 questions are all that matter.
There is a saying that if you save a little bit of money each month at the end of the year,
you will be surprised with how little you still have. I think that is so true. Author and
a friend of mine, Ramit Sethi, he says that too many people ask $3 questions, which is
like, can I afford a latte? When all that really matters with your money and your financial
success are the $30,000 questions like where should I go to college? There is a historian
named Cyril Parkinson who coined this thing called Parkinson's Law of Triviality. It states
that the amount of attention that any problem gets is the inverse of its importance. Parkinson
described this fictional finance committee, this corporate finance committee, and they have
to do three things. They have three tasks at their meetings. They have to approve of a $10
nuclear reactor. They have to approve for $400 for an employee bike rack, and they have
to approve $20 for employee refreshments in the break room. He says that the committee
will very quickly approve the $10 million nuclear reactor because the numbers are too big
to contextual lives. The alternatives are too daunting to even consider. No one in
the committee even knows how a nuclear power plant works. They just approve it. It's
like it's gone. The bike shed, the $400 bike shed, the bike rack, gets a lot more
debate because the committee members argue whether a bike rack should be water, it should
be metal, or where it should go, and the employee refreshments, the $20 refreshments, that
takes up two thirds of the meeting because everybody has a strong opinion on what's the
best coffee, what are the best cookies, what are the best chips, whatever it might be.
Most households, I think, or many households, operate the same. The big questions like where
should we live, where should we go to college, where should we send our kids to college,
where should we retire. Those questions don't take up that much of the debate. The big
debate comes on like, should we go off for dinner, should we buy lattes, what kind of
clothes we're going to question. Those small problems are easier to tackle because they
are less daunting than the huge problems that actually move the needle. For most households,
basically three or four things are all that moves the needle. Housing, education, transportation
and healthcare, and childcare, I would say. Everything else beyond those two things for
most households barely moves the needle. Those are the things that should gain the huge
majority of your attention. Okay, number seven. Social aspirational spending, which is
trickle down consumption patterns from one social economic group to the next. Many years
ago, the economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote the thing I liked, he said, quote, trickle down
economics, maybe a comeira, but trickle down behavioralism is very real. I think that's
true. There is no such thing as an objective level of wealth. Everything is just relative
to something else. And so people look around and say, what's that person driving? Where
are they living? What kind of clothes are they wearing? And their aspirations are calibrated
accordingly to those people around them. Recently, I spoke with Wired Magazine, Founding Executive
Editor Kevin Kelly. And he brought up this interesting point. He said, if you want to
know what lower income groups are going to spend or going to aspire to spend their money
on in the future, look at what higher income groups spend exclusively on today. So he brought
up like European vacations where once the exclusive playground of the rich, and then it
trickle down to just like the merely wealthy, even down to the middle class, same with college
education. A college education used to be reserved to the very highest earning households.
And then it spread, it spread down to the affluent to the middle class, even the lower ranks,
same with investing in 1929 at the peak of the roaring 1920s stock bubble, only 5% of
Americans own stocks. It was pretty much if you own stocks, it was reserved for the
very wealthy. Today, more than half of US households own stocks in some form, whether
it's a 401k or a Robin Hood account, whatever it might be. So it trickle down from the
very rich to the ordinary people, same with two car households and lawns and walk in
closets and granite countertops and six burner stoves and jet travel, even the entire concept
of retirement. All of those things started at the very, that's something that was the
exclusive domain of very wealthy people and then it worked its way down throughout society.
One of the reason these products spread to the masses is that they became cheaper and
there was this greater access. But the reason that they got cheaper by and large is because
there was so much demand from the masses, hungered by their aspirations that push companies
to innovate for new ways of mass production. So people like to mimic others, especially
those who appear to be living better lives. It's always been like that and it always
will be like that.
Okay, number eight, an underappreciation of the long term costs of purchases with too
much emphasis on the initial sales price. It is so common to find someone today who bought
their house in like 1974 and they paid $60,000 for it or whatever and today it's worth,
let's say, $350,000. The owner feels like they've made this amazing investment, the
best investment of their lives. But those numbers above that I just said, they equate
to an average annual return of 3.75%. Now, property taxes tend to average about 1%. So that
brings our real return to 2 and 3.25%. Maintenance and repairs vary greatly, very greatly, but
you should average spending at a 1% to 3% per year of your home's value on upkeep. So
it's the expectation. So where does that leave our long term returns? If we've earned,
you know, it's called a 4% per year over the last 50 years and then you take out property
taxes and you take out upkeep, where does that leave our long term returns? It's actually
quite dim. Now, the price is very easy to calculate. What you paid for the house and what you
sold for it, those numbers are easy. Costs are much harder to figure out. They tend to be
a slow drip over time, which are easy to ignore, but they add up very fast. And it is the
same for cars and boats and a lot of your hobbies. You could even say the cost of smoking cigarettes
is the price of a pack plus a long term costs of medical care associated with it. Like,
one is very easy to calculate and the other is very different, very difficult. So there's
always this emphasis on the price that we paid or the price that we sold and almost a complete
ignorance for the costs that tend to go along with it. All right. Number 9. No one is impressed
with your possessions as much as you are. If you see someone driving a nice car, rarely
do you think, wow, like the person that drive driving that car is so cool. That's not
what's going through your head. Instead, if you see someone driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini
or something, what you probably think is, wow, if I had that car, people would think,
I'm cool. Subconsciously or not, if you find yourself gawking at nice cars, that's
probably what you're thinking. And there's a paradox here, which is that people tend to
want wealth to signal to others that they should be liked and admired. But in reality,
those other people often just bypass admiring you, not because they don't think that wealth
is admirable, but because they think that your wealth, as they think, they use your wealth
as a benchmark for their own desire to be liked and admired. And that's like, that's
the paradox of wealth. I've called it the man in the car paradox that people just want
to be the guy in the driver's seat. But people, but when you see somebody in the driver's
seat, you don't actually admire the driver. You just imagine yourself as the driver. When
my son was born up seven and a half years ago, I wrote a letter to him on the day that
he was born. And it's like financial advice from my newborn son. And it says, in part,
you might think that you want an expensive car and a fancy watch and a huge house. But
I'm telling you, you don't. What you want is respect and admiration from other people.
And you think that having an expensive stuff will bring it. But it almost never does,
especially from the people who you want to respect and admire you. Now, I like nice homes
and I like nice cars as much as anyone else. The point here is not to shoo away from nice
things. It's just a recognition that no one is as impressed with your stuff as much as
you are. No one's thinking about you as much as you are. And they're busy thinking about
themselves. Always, it's true for virtually everyone. People generally aspire to be respected
and mired by others and using money to buy fancy things may bring less of it than you
imagine. If respect and admiration are your goal, be careful how you seek it. Because
humility and kindness and empathy will bring you much more respect than the car that you
drive or the home you live in ever will. All right, moving along. Number 10, not knowing
what kind of spending will make you happy because you haven't tried enough new and strange
forms of spending. What I want to do here is give a little analogy. Evolution in my mind
is the most powerful force in the world. It is the force that is capable of transforming
single cell organisms into modern humans. Like nothing in the universe is more powerful
than evolution. But evolution has no idea what it's doing. There is no guide. There is
no manual. There is no rule book. It's not even necessarily good at selecting traits
that work. The power of evolution is added, quote unquote, tries trillions and trillions
of different mutations. And it is ruthless about killing off the ones that don't work.
What's left? The winners are what sticks around. Now, there is this theory in evolution.
It's called Fisher's fundamental theorem of national natural selection. It's the idea
that variance equals strength. Because the more diverse a population in is, the more
chances it has to come up with new traits that can be selected for. Nobody can know what
trait will be useful. That's not how evolution works. But if you create lots of traits,
the useful ones whatever they might be will be in there somewhere. And I think there's
an important analogy here about spending money. Because a lot of people have no idea what
kind of spending will make them happy. Like what should you buy? Where should you travel?
How much should you save? There's no single answer to those questions because everybody's
different. People default to what society tells them, which is just whatever the most
thing is most expensive will bring you the most joy. But that's not how it usually works.
You have to try spending money on tons of different oddball things before you find what
might work for you. For some people, it's travel. Others can't stand away being from home.
They travel for work. They like nothing is more appealing than them than not traveling.
For other people, it's nice restaurants. Other people don't get the hype and they prefer
cheap pizza and Chipotle. By the way, that's me. I know people who think spending money
on first class plane tickets is a borderline scam. And there are other people who will not
dare to sit behind row four to each their own. Everybody's different. The more different
kinds of spending that you test out, the closer you will likely get to a system that
might work for you. And these trials don't have to be big. Maybe it's a $10 new food
item there. A $75 treat here. Slightly nicer shoes. Whatever it might be. My friend
Metsethi says again, he says, quote, frugality is about choosing the things you love to spend
extravagantly on and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things that you don't love. So there
is no guide on what's going to make you happy. You just have to try a million different things
and figure out what it is that fits your personality.
Okay, number 11. The social signaling aspect of money on both things you buy for yourself
and charity given to others. I heard this saying recently that I really liked. It was that
if you get public recognition for donating money, it's not charity. It's philanthropy.
And if you demand recognition, then it's not even charity. It's a business deal. There's
a clear social benefit to you that give her in addition to the recipient. I don't and
I don't mean that in a negative way. Good donations to worthy causes would plunge if
donors didn't get recognition. But most forms of spending, I think are like that. They have
two purposes. One is to bring some sort of utility to the owner and the second is to signal
something to other people. Homes are like that. Cars are like that. Close jewelry. Obviously
fin to that category. But even travel does as well. Like how many vacation destinations
are picked at least in part by what people will think will make a good Instagram picture
where that it just sounds cool to go there. My, my guess is that the majority of people
who took, who traveled to Bali, fall into that category. They went to Bali not because
it's actually the most amazing place to go, but because it sounds good and it takes a
good picture for other people to look at. Psychologist Jonathan Hyde has this great
saying. I think it explains so much. He says people don't communicate on social media.
They perform for one another and spending money is like that too. It's not always a bad
thing. If you've merely thought about what clothes will you look best in before you leave
the house in the morning, you've engaged in signaling. And it's not always about even
just looking the best. It's intentionally dressing casually to a formal meeting like
wearing a hoodie to a formal meeting. That sends a powerful message about who holds the
power. Before being caught in his, Shane is sham. Sam Begman-Fried said that he intentionally
didn't wear pants to meetings. He always wore shorts to create a sense of mystique about
who he was. Like that's signaling too. The thing to recognize is that spending money
on yourself, or quote unquote, on yourself, is often done with the intent of influencing
what other people think about you. And that should spark three questions. Number one,
whose opinion are you trying to influence? Number two is why? And number three is, are
those people even paying any attention to you? All right. Number 12, the social hierarchy
of spending, positioning you against your peers. This is a really important one. There's
this old joke you've probably heard it. It's a cliché joke, but it's so good. There's
two hikers out in the woods and they come across a bear. One of the hiker puts on his running
shoes and he starts to run. The other hiker says, are you crazy? You can't outrun a bear.
And the runner says, I don't need to run faster than a bear. I just need to run faster than
you. I know it's a cliff. You've heard it a million times, but God is so good. All success
is simply relative to somebody else. Usually those around you. There's no objective
measure of wealth or success. It's just relative to the people around you. Are you doing better
or worse than them? That's important for spending money because for so many people, the
question of whether you are actually buying nice things, the as you act to the question
what you are asking is, are the things you're buying nicer than other people's things?
The question of whether your home is big enough is actually just is your home bigger than
your neighbors. That's the question you're actually trying to ask. And not only is the urge
to one up your peers like that, it exists, but you also may feel the need to continually
surpass your own spending. Like is the vacation that you take this year better than the one
you took last year is your next car fee and so you're then your old car. You're not just
trying to match your peers. You're trying to one up yourself. So money to some people
is less of an asset. And I think it's more of a social liability. It in debts them to
a status-chasing life that can leave you miserable. And it's a dangerous trap if you don't recognize
the game and how that game is played. It's been going on forever. Montesquieu, he wrote
275 years ago. I love this quote. He says quote, if you only wish to be happy, this could
be easily accomplished. But we wish to be happier than other people. And this is always difficult
for we believe others to be happier than they are. Oh, that's a good one. Okay, the last
one here, number 13, spending can be a representation of how hard you've worked and how much stress
went into earning your paycheck. Somebody who works 100 hours a week and hates their job
may have an urge to spend their money frivolously in an attempt to compensate for the misery
of how their paycheck was actually earned. Never have I seen money burn a whole insulin's
pocket faster than like a lawyer or an investment bank or receiving their annual bonus. Because
after 12 months of working until three in the morning, modeling in Excel, the most God
awful miserable jobs, you have an urge to prove to yourself that it was all worth it,
to offset what you sacrificed. And it's like someone who is like howled underwater for a minute.
When they get above water, they don't take a calm breath. They gasp. They're compensating
for what they lost. And it's the same for people who've worth their asses off in a miserable
job, kind of have that same sense of gasping with their money to spend it as fast as possible.
I think the opposite can actually hold too true as well. I can only back this up with anecdotal
experiences, but I think the most capable of delayed gratification, like the most patient
people with their money are often those who enjoy their works and genuinely love what
they do. And the pay might be good, but the urge to compensate for their hard work with
heavy spending just isn't there. And look, I would wrap this up by saying, spending money
to make you happy is really hard if you are already happy. A good spot to end it there.
Thank you so much for listening. Maybe we'll see you next time. If there is another podcast,
I don't know, we'll see. Thanks again.
