Morgan Housel — Contrarian Money and Writing Advice, Three Simple Goals to Guide Your Life, and More

Tim Ferriss welcomes back Morgan Housel to discuss his book Same as Ever and his philosophy of focusing on what never changes rather than trying to predict the future. They explore money's relationship to happiness versus contentment, why wealth amplifies personality, and the concept of 'social debt' that comes with every dollar earned. Housel shares the harrowing personal story of losing two friends in a 2001 avalanche and how it shaped his views on risk and life's fragility. The conversation ranges across raising children who aren't spoiled, marriage and luck, the power of incentives, the future of text versus audio, and Housel's selfish 'audience of one' approach to writing.

• Housel recounts the Buffett 'Snickers' story: during the 2009 recession Buffett dismissed fears the country would never recover by noting Snickers was the bestselling candy bar in 1962 and still is today, illustrating his strategy of betting on things that stay the same forever.
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• Housel admits to giving 'the worst writing advice you could give someone': he is a first-draft-and-publish writer who refuses to leave a sentence until every word is perfect, so by the time he reaches the end of a piece it is essentially done.
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• He introduces the concept of 'social debt': with every dollar earned comes obligation to others, and for athletes or stars there may be $4 of social debt per dollar earned, making 'rich and anonymous' the ideal life position.
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• On raising unspoiled kids, Housel concludes the only real answer nobody wants to hear is to give them less money, because money is only valuable when you have to work hard for it.
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• Housel tells the story of the 2001 Squaw Valley avalanche that killed his friends Brendan Allen and Bryan Richmond after he made a thoughtless snap decision not to join their second run, which he calls the most important decision of his life.
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• He cites that the top 10 richest people have roughly 14 cumulative divorces and references Elon Musk breaking down in tears over time lost with his children, arguing you cannot have extreme success without its downsides.
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• Housel reveals the audiobook of Psychology of Money outsells the physical book two-to-one, and his four-month-old podcast already has a larger audience than the blog he has run for 16 years.
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• He states that all his writing, including both books, is 'selfish writing' for an audience of one—himself—because knowing your audience slips into pandering, the worst form of writing.
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• Housel calls Benjamin Roth's The Great Depression: A Diary 'the best economics book ever written'; a 1932 entry noting the Depression mirrored 1920, 1878 and 1865 is exactly what happened again in 2008.
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• Housel spent time with a family worth $8 billion who are completely anonymous—not on any Forbes list, no interviews, donating money anonymously—and found their children remarkably well-balanced.
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• In a 1960s/70s documentary, J. Paul Getty, then the world's richest man in a castle, was asked who he envied and answered 'people who are happier than me.'
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• Housel notes Donald Trump in early 1980s YouTube interviews appears as a calm, measured, reasonable person, unrecognizable from later, and quotes Getty: 'Nobody would be the same if they could afford to be different.'
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• During the Battle of Long Island, the wind changing direction one night let George Washington escape the British; David McCullough told Charlie Rose there would be no United States otherwise.
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• In Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time, FDR held a daily 6 p.m. gathering with friends where politics were forbidden, and Eleanor responded to D-Day uncertainty: 'To be 60 and still rebel against uncertainty is a bit ridiculous.'
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• Robert Caro's biographies take 10 to 30 years; for Lyndon Johnson he moved to rural Texas and went through roughly 8,000 boxes of material under his motto 'Turn Every Page.'
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• The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed about 200 young women, with locked fire escapes; witness Frances Perkins became FDR's Secretary of Labor and said 'Without the Triangle Fire, there would've been no New Deal.'
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• The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst chronicles a 1968 amateur sailor who faked a round-the-world voyage via fraudulent radio signals, then took his own life when discovery loomed.
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• Housel recommends The Tao of Charlie Munger and rates Munger nine out of ten on wisdom but ten out of ten on succinctness; Munger himself called his 'shut up and let me tell you' trait one of his worst.
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