[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Tori, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

[00:01:49] Tori Dunlap: Thank you so much for having me, stoked to be here.

[00:01:51] Hala Taha: Likewise, I'm very excited for today's show, young and Profit is Today I'm joined by Tori Dunlap. She's an internationally recognized money and career expert, seven figure entrepreneur, bestselling author, and top podcast host, C N B C called Tori.

The voice of financial Confidence for Women and Time said that Tori Dunlap is on top of the personal finance world. She's a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book, financial Feminist. In this episode, Tori will demystify her investing and wealth building tips for the new generation.

She'll share how to set financial goals, some of the myths that stand in the way of our financial freedom, how to spend and invest mindfully, and her advice for creating a strong financial future. So Tori, you're a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree and recognized as a top financial expert, especially for women and millennials.

And after doing some research on your background, I discovered that you've always been really good with your money. So curious to understand what were your influences growing up around money, and how did that shape your mindset and attitude towards the topic?

[00:02:56] Tori Dunlap: I grew up with parents who educated me about money, and I thought that was the case for everybody.

I thought, okay, everybody knows not to overspent on credit cards. Everybody knows how to save. Everybody knows how to manage money responsibly. And as I got older, graduated high school, went into college and started having more conversations with people, I realized of course that wasn't the case and especially not the case for most people that I was talking to in my generation and specifically women.

So I was the friend, all of my friends who were coming to for advice and guidance around money. It shocks a lot of people to hear and may sha your audience to hear. I did not study finance. I technically didn't even study business. I studied marketing and theater in college, but Donald Trump got elected.

So I graduated college in May of 2016, was trying to figure out the kind of person in the woman I wanted to be in this world. And five months later the election happens and I'm coming into adulthood and really into womanhood in a very different country than I think a lot of us expected. So I'm trying to figure out how do I wanna show up?

What do I care about? What do I want my life to look like? And when you are the friend, all of your friends were coming to for advice. And when you're also starting to see that your own financial background is the reason you're able to have flexibility, you're able to quit the job that feels toxic and find a better option for you, you're able to travel, you're able to donate to causes you believe in.

You start to realize, oh, maybe money is my form of protest in this world. Maybe money is the tool and the resource I need to not only build the life that I love, but also to start shaping a world that I want to see. And so I really became just so on fire about personal finance, but specifically, again, using money as a tool to shape your life into something that you love and to start shaping communities around you.

So my work. Started as a side hustle, her first a hundred k. This now global multimillion dollar business with employees and a podcast and a book was the thing I was doing on the side of my nine to five in marketing. And as I was growing my own confidence as a leader and as someone who was learning how to connect with people and educate them step by step about how to build wealth, I was also seeing in my own life, When I have money, I have options, and so the rest is, is crazy.

Now, I took it full-time after saving a hundred thousand dollars at age 25, which was the origin story of her first a hundred k. I was on Good Morning America. Quit my job three weeks later and now we have 3 million people who were shaping and teaching them how to pay off debt and save money and start investing.

[00:05:29] Hala Taha: I love your story and we have so many similarities. I also started YAP and YAP Media as a side hustle and so from my understanding, The first thing you started was a blog. Is that right?

[00:05:41] Tori Dunlap: Yeah. So it was a blog in late 2016. That kind of era, like mid 2010s. Mm-hmm. Was like the Tumblr blog era, if you can think back that far.

Right? Yeah. I had a blog too. Yeah. So that was what I thought was like, okay, I wanna share my life as a 20 something woman. Like how to navigate career, how to travel, and how to do all these things. And I started to realize, Probably about a year or two in that I was like, oh, all of my topics have something to do with money.

Yeah, I would talk about traveling to Costa Rica, but I'd talk about negotiating our car rental, or I'd talk about finding a cheap flight, obviously with a career, right? I'm working to make money and to hopefully have this sense of purpose or passion. And again, I, I was becoming more political, becoming more educated about systemic oppression and the various.

Aspects of personal finance that I was not seeing covered, right? You think about Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman, these like very well-known personal finance experts, and very rarely do they talk about how racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, have anything to do with money. And I talk about this in my book, financial Feminist, but it 80% of the personal finance equation is the systemic factors that you have no control of.

Only 20% of the personal finance equation is. How to get a budget together and making sure you're optimized in your Roth i r a. So mm-hmm. I wanted to have conversations that were more nuanced and during that time, I think a lot of the financial experts were starting to have those conversations post 2016 with Black Lives Matter in 2020, the research, and so that movement.

So I think it was really important for me to have those conversations be something that was not just. You can't buy a house because you buy lattes, and it's like, no, what is the real reason? So yeah, all of that started as a blog as I was trying to figure out my own voice too.

[00:07:29] Hala Taha: I love that. And we're gonna talk about how to fight the patriarchy through finances in a bit.

Let's put a pin on that, and I just wanna understand your story a little bit better. Sure. So you had this goal of saving a hundred thousand dollars. Once you hit that goal, you decided to quit your full-time job and go all in on, on, you know, first a hundred K brand and, and everything that you've built so far.

What made you first think of that idea of saving a hundred thousand dollars? Was that really intentional that you did that and you knew that that was the plan? That I'd love to hear that story.

[00:08:03] Tori Dunlap: I'm just that person that set goals for myself. From a very young age. I literally have joked in like the promotion of my book.

I sat down when I was seven or eight and said, I wanna write a book someday. Now, did I think it was gonna be like a personal finance book? No. Hell no. That was not the plan. But for me, a hundred k was, I was reading another personal finance blog and I saw someone write about their a hundred K net worth at 25, and I was probably 23 and I started doing the math and I was like, If I can increase my income by X percentage and if I can continue to save X percentage, and if my investments perform like they're performing, I think I can hit this.

The joke was, as long as I do it the day before I turn 26, it still counts. It was, you know, a hundred K at 25. And that a hundred k happened, I think three months after my 25th birthday. So Wow. It was a combination of a lot of things. It was the privilege of being able to graduate college debt free. I was working three jobs on campus, getting scholarships.

I also had parents who were financially minded and who were able to contribute to my college. Like to acknowledge that right off the bat because it's not something that everybody has the privilege of doing. I was also saving a huge percentage of my income. My take home pay 27% at the peak was going towards savings.

Then everything I made in my side hustle, I was able to contribute to the a hundred K goal as well. I was focused on value-based spending. I was still traveling internationally. I was still going out to eat. That's the other question. People are like, oh, you ate oatmeal for and ramen? And I'm like, no, actually I still did all of the things in a, you know, huge US city that I wanted to do as somebody in their twenties.

But yeah, that a hundred k, and this is, this is the thing that's so important is a lot of people, I find, especially women, they're not necessarily motivated by the numbers. For me, there was something about seeing a hundred K in the bank account that was like that. You know, that burst of serotonin. But it's very difficult sometimes to get somebody to care about money when they think it's just numbers.

We know that money is psychological. We know that money is emotional, and so when I thought about that a hundred K and when shit started getting hard where I couldn't save, or there was a period of time that I spent unemployed, so I was not only. Not saving money. I was spending the money I had already saved.

I was trying to figure out, okay, I set this arbitrary goal for myself. What's the point? The a hundred K meant that I got to quit my job. That was the promise I had made to myself is I attached the number to a goal and to a feeling I literally imagined, like, what would my life look like if I didn't have to make somebody?

I didn't respect Rich. What would my life look like if I didn't have to? Ask to take p t O and get it denied. What would my life look like if I didn't have to commute into a job that I didn't feel aligned with my passions or aligned with the mission and values of my life? What did that feel like? And it felt amazing.

And so that a hundred K goal, yes. Part of it was seeing the a hundred k being able to see the headline, which I'm. Grateful that there are many, you know how this 25 year old saved a hundred K, but really it was about how does my life change? So if you're out there and you're trying to get yourself motivated, how do I become debt free?

Right? Or how do I, you know, invest enough for retirement? Or how do I make ends meet so that I don't feel panicked all of the time? Associate that with a feeling, right? What does it feel like to not have somebody demanding that you send them money every month for your student loans? What does it feel like to know, oh yeah, I can buy this thing without guilt or shame because I've budgeted for it.

What does it feel like to know that you are going to be set for retirement, that 65 year old you is taken care of? What does that feel like? That for me was really the driving force of how does my life change and what does it feel like to use money as a tool to get me there.

[00:11:58] Hala Taha: I love that. I think that's really good advice.

And I remember I saved my first a hundred K at 28, I wanna say, and the amount of freedom I felt and just agency over my own life. I didn't need a man, I didn't need my parents. I didn't need, all of a sudden I felt like, well, if I don't like this job, I could leave because I have a hundred grand and that's at least gonna keep me afloat for four to six months and whatever.

So it really did unlock a lot of, Limiting mindsets for myself. So I would encourage everybody to have some sort of a financial goal like that.

[00:12:30] Tori Dunlap: Well, and that's the feeling I want for every single person listening. That is the feeling I want, is I am in situations I want to be in rather than situations I'm forced to be in, or I don't have to tolerate bullshit from a partner, from a company.

I can do what I want because I have the financial means to do so. That is so incredibly liberating. And it reflects in every aspect of your life. I show up differently in my relationships because I know that I'm not dependent on somebody financially. I show up different in my career. I show up different in my business.

I show up different to myself in how I talk to myself. And I think, again, that's the feeling I want for every single person listening is when you start becoming financially confident, when you start having that financial foundation, not just your financial life, but. All of the rest of your life changes.

The rest of your life changes.

[00:13:22] Hala Taha: Yeah. And that kind of confidence is actually very attractive, right? Because it's like you're not coming out in an insecure way to anyone, and people gravitate to that kind of confidence. So speaking of confidence,you have a theater background and I've had.

Traditional financial experts on the show like Susie Orman, like you mentioned, Peter Malu and lots of great financial experts. But what's the advantage of learning from somebody outside of a traditional background?

[00:13:52] Tori Dunlap: So many advantages. Thank you for asking this question. I spoke at Morningstar at one of their big splashy conferences probably about a month ago, and I was keynoting, and it was really interesting to see people's responses because I did say on stage, you know, I studied theater and.

I was joking. The girls that get it, get it and the girls that don't, don't like it was. It was very interesting to see what kind of people were like, oh, you're a theater major. How are you qualified? And I'm like, all of these other qualifications. Okay, a couple things. One, I think there's something actually so refreshing about hearing this complicated, inaccessible topic explained by somebody who's not in it.

I know that there's a certain level of jargon. Any industry, but specifically personal finance. And this is no fault of any financial professional, but when you've been in it for a while, that's just the language you use. And I was on a panel at the beginning of her first a hundred k, it was probably 2019.

I was still working as a marketer and this was my side hustle. And I had all of these people in these panel who were, you know, venture capitalists and financial advisors and who had been doing this for years. And it was so interesting to them. They were speaking to this room of 20 and 30 something women who are my primary demographic, and using the words that they thought were investing 1 0 1 terms like asset allocation or portfolio rebalancing you.

And I know what that means, right? But I literally saw the rest, like the entire audience's eyes glaze over 'cause they're like, I don't know what that means. And also this industry is so veiled and so gate kept that I'm afraid of looking stupid if I ask. There's something so refreshing about seeing me not in a pencil skirt, but in a leather jacket, and Adidas being like, Hey, I'm gonna explain everything to you like you're five, and not because you're dumb and not to condescend you, but because nobody taught you this.

So coming outside of that industry I think is so helpful in terms of running a business. There are so many people that I have met who have arts or theater backgrounds who are incredibly successful entrepreneurs. Even in the personal finance space. I don't know if you know Stef O'Connell. Theater person, Aaron Lowery, broke millennial theater person.

There are so many of us who study theater or did theater because when you're an entrepreneur, that is what you do all day. This right here, I'm staring at a camera. This is my theater degree. Am I comfortable speaking in front of 5,000 people? Am I comfortable going live on C N B C yesterday? Am I comfortable doing that?

And am I comfortable being able to story tell? I. What I am doing and why this brand matters, which is your entire job as a C E O or entrepreneur is just like jazz handing your company, right? Just like jazz hands the entire time of like, this is what we're doing, this is why it matters. Storytelling is what theater gave me the opportunity to do as well as be comfortable on stage in front of people being able to adapt.

We run a financial media company much like you. I have tons of knowledge about personal finance, but really I run a media company that just happens to talk about money. I run a feminist company that talks about money, and I think that my theater background and my communications background is absolutely huge for that.

[00:17:14] Hala Taha: I'm like vigorously nodding because I 100% agree with you as an entrepreneur. There's so much creativity that's involved in being an inventor that's involved. And by the way, entrepreneurship is not something that you tackle alone. So if for some reason you have a gap in business or financial knowledge, You can fill that gap with other people that you can hire on your team.

And by the way, you're also allowed to be a dynamic person that can be good at business and finance and the arts. Right. So I'm totally aligned with everything that you're saying. So something that you touched on that I wanna dig deeper on is this fact that you were speaking to all this women and you felt like these words were sort of just glazing over their heads.

And I know you've talked about in the past about how women and men are sort of taught different things when it comes to finance from when we're young children. Adulthood, the way that we're taught this financial information tends to be different. Can you talk to us about that?

[00:18:07] Tori Dunlap: Yes. The entire thesis of my book really is that is just the lack of financial education and specifically how money affects women or any marginalized group differently.

And if you are a man listening, I need you to not like check out because this is not like I hate all men. The patriarchy does not mean we hate men. The patriarchy hurts men just as much as it hurts women. So when we're talking about the way we speak about money, first of all, nobody's taught about money unless you were, and that sounds kinda like, no doubt, but like unless you had parents like mine who sat down to teach you about money, you were not taught about money regardless of your gender identity.

That's the reality. It's like there are very few places to actually learn about money, and even when it's taught to you, it is emotionally charged typically, and it depends on. Your parents or your teacher's background. I can't tell you the amount of first gen or people of color who have come to me and been like, I learned about money.

I learned that credit cards were evil and that I shouldn't trust banks. And that money was the thing we didn't have enough of so that when we got money, we had to just hoard it. And that's not exactly the perspective we want. Right? So first of all, nobody's taught about money. Second, I could spend an hour talking to you just about this, but I'll give you a very specific example.

I. Look at the toys that we give boys versus what we give girls. Stereotypically. We give boys Legos, trucks, things to build, right, things that build their sense of self-reliance and of creativity and of their own ingenuity. What do we give girls Dolls? Easy bake ovens. Things to take care of. We give a literal child, another child to take care of.

So what we're telling kids is we're telling boys, your inherent worth and value is in your own creativity and your own thinking, right? Your own initiative. We're telling girls your value to society and your identity is in caregiving and altruism. Now that altruism is beautiful and lovely, and it's one of the things I love most about being a woman.

But what happens then when we do start becoming financially confident as women? I do go on social media and talk about the fact that I'm a millionaire. When I do talk about me negotiating my salary or me negotiating my rate, suddenly it's Why aren't you grateful for your opportunities? she's greedy, she's bossy, she's bragging.

The weaponization of the altruism starts happening. So when we are conditioned to be altruistic, we're conditioned to be givers, which is again beautiful, and we should donate and we should give. When we don't conform to that roller identity, when we're no longer controllable. 'cause really that's what it is.

When I have money, I'm no longer controllable. The perspective shifts to, we need to remind her that she needs to tax herself and just be grateful for where she's at and not go above her station. We don't do that for men. A man can post a photo on Instagram or on Twitter with him at the golf course in a Rolex.

The comments are cool. Rolex, bro. You're doing well for yourself, right? The comments for women, if I show up in a designer dress, or if I have the audacity and I'm putting this in quotes to flaunt my wealth, suddenly it's, why aren't you donating more? It's not aspirational the way it is for men. Also, it's more socially acceptable for men to not only pursue wealth, but to talk about wealth. Nobody's educated about it, but there is the shift that happens with teenagers, literally teenage boys, like going on Reddit, talking with their friends about crypto or the hot stock.

Women are just not allowed into those conversations and not socially conditioned to have them. And my final point, I'll make, in hetero narrative relationships, when a man is with a woman The men are handling the wealth building, the women are handling the day-to-day finances still.

So in 2023, women are handling the budgeting and the coupon clipping and like the household management, and that's important. That's how households run, but that's not the wealth building. Men are handling the real estate and the investing, and these like $30,000, $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars decisions.

Women are handling the like, which cottage cheese is cheaper. And so if we really want to see. The wealth gap start to lessen. We have to have conversations about money and we as a society have to be comfortable with women's pursuit of wealth in a way that we just aren't right now. We are okay with men pursuing wealth.

We are okay with men managing these huge decisions in a way we just aren't with women.

[00:22:50] Hala Taha: It's so interesting to hear you talk about this and then thinking back to my own experiences. I feel like my fans and my listeners very positive about me speaking about money and how to make money and, and being really supportive.

But then at the same time, like I'll have people like my mom who will constantly be like, holla, stop saying how much money you make. And I'm like, why?

[00:23:11] Tori Dunlap: My own parents to teach. Everyone who taught me about money are the ones who will call me and be like, I'm really worried about you. I'm really worried about you talking about how much money you make.

They're not wrong though, because that's the thing. That's another example. Men can talk about how much money they make and they're lauded women. It's a risk, a career risk, a like literally safety risk. It becomes a risk when you are transparent about money in a way that just, it isn't for men. And so I am doing the same thing where like I will show you my pay stubs, I will show you how much I make.

I also now know that there is a certain inherent risk to that just because of my gender identity in a way that there isn't for a straight white man. There just isn't. It's so crazy. And again, we have this own internalized stuff going on ourselves, right? This is not like men necessarily like putting this on us.

This is. So many women coming to me being like, yeah, but I should just be grateful that I have a job at all. And I'm like, yes, and you're not being compensated fairly, so let's get you a raise.

[00:24:14] Hala Taha: So let's talk about how women are shamed for spending and the double standards around that.

[00:24:21] Tori Dunlap: Mm. I have a whole section in my book. We have a whole chapter about spending and one of the just such interesting things ties back to what I was saying before of like the Rolex problem, right?

Men can purchase Rolexes and it's like you're doing well for yourself. Women have the audacity to spend money on anything remotely nice, and it's like, why aren't you donating more? That was a waste of money. Specifically, let's talk about how we think of spending in general. The words frivolous spending almost are only attached to women.

And what are the things that are deemed frivolous? Things that are innately feminine. Lattes, pedicures, manicures. Again, designer bags. The things that we deem frivolous are the things that are innately feminine. They're not N F L season tickets or golf clubs. So when you Google like how to save money 2023, the advice is still minimize.

The advice for men is maximize. Maximize your earning, right? Maximize your investments. How can you make more money? How can you expand? The advice for women is how can you spend less? How can you shrink? The advice for men getting rich is make more money, which is good advice, but the advice for women is spend less money.

There's only so much less money you can spend. In theory, you can make as much money as you want. Again, that's like a huge asterisk, but in theory, you can only not spend. Up to a certain point, you still have to pay your rent. You still have to buy food for yourself. So it's really interesting the difference there in how, again, we educate people about money and specifically like what is deemed frivolous, the frivolous spending, the stuff that's innately feminine.

[00:26:03] Hala Taha: Yeah. Super, super interesting stuff. I wanna move on to talk about the psychology of money and mindsets behind money. So you say that we have to understand our emotions behind money and that money is not inherently bad. So how should we start reframing our mindset around money?

[00:26:21] Tori Dunlap: Yeah. When I was embarking on writing my book and really educating people about money in general, I was like, okay, we gotta get to the actionable advice.

'cause that's what I'm really good at. I'm really good at like, you do this and then you do this and you do this, and here's what a Roth I r A is and here's how to take advantage of one. And what happened in my early days, I used to do one-on-one coaching with people. And what would happen is they would be successful for a period of time, but then they would fall off the bandwagon for whatever reason.

And when I would ask them or like dig into that deeper, I started to realize, oh, there's so many emotional hangups. There are so many psychological. Trauma, quite honestly, about money. Money is emotional. It's psychological. When it's good, when it's bad, we feel a certain way about every financial choice we make, whether that's how we spend our money, how we're saving our money, what we're saving it for.

Everything is psychological. So I very intentionally spent the first chapter before we go into the rest of it, before we go into the how to pay off debt and how to budget about how to navigate the emotional, psychological sides of money. Even we were talking about before, these kind of like narratives you're told about money.

The biggest one is you shouldn't talk about money that's impolite, right? You shouldn't talk about money. That is a psychological narrative meant to keep you underpaid and overworked because if you don't talk about money, you don't know that Chad who was hired two years after you is making 20% more than you.

You don't know that the debt shame you feel your friend group feels too. You don't know. That's one of those that is so steeped in us. The other one is that money can't buy you happiness. That is complete and utter bullshit. Money can a hundred percent buy you safety and stability, and that for most people is happiness.

Now, it's true in theory, right? You shouldn't buy a Ferrari to make you happy, but it buys me the freedom to purchase something that feels like a small luxury or to. Hire a house cleaner if I need to do that, and to be able to tip them 30%. There's so much flexibility that that offers, and I would argue that that is happiness.

But again, that's a narrative told to you that you have internalized in order to not have you pursue money. And one of the other ones is this misconception that like if you work hard, you will be financially successful. Plenty of people, I would argue most people work their fucking asses off. Yet have nothing to show it for it financially because of, again, of this system that constantly keeps them in poverty.

So there's so many things that we have ingrained or narratives we've started to believe, and they start from our parents. They start from society. They start from, again, how we're raised around money. And so the first step to start unpacking that is to figure out what sort of, again, misconceptions or narratives have I been believing and do I want to carry those with me?

Do I believe that talking about money is taboo? Do I believe that actually it's okay to talk about sex and death and politics and religion and anything else controversial before I'll talk about money? 'cause that's what the stats say right now. We're more likely to have any other uncomfortable conversation before we'll have a financial conversation.

Do I want to see people who have money as inherently evil? Is that something that I want to carry with me? You have to decide that for yourself. I. The other practice I do in my book, and we can even do this live if you'd like. Yeah. Is thinking about your first money memory.

[00:29:49] Hala Taha: I was gonna bring that up next. So let's do it.

[00:29:52] Tori Dunlap: What is the first time you remember thinking about money? Because that will have a huge impact on the way you are viewing money in general because it's, again, it's how your parents or how your caregivers were using money. So my first money memory is saving any penny or, you know, change I had in that Altoids tin to go see a musical.

The theater major runs deep. But like that was what I wanted to do. 'cause my mom told me, if you want a ticket to this, you need to save your money. So I internalized, okay, if I want something, I have to save my money. I have plenty of other people I've talked to who my first money memory is, my parents screaming at each other and arguing about how they didn't have enough money.

My money memory is having to get a separate line and a separate ticket to get like my school funded lunch because my parents couldn't afford my school lunch. There's plenty of money memories that have everything to do with how you're managing money now. So if you're willing to share what your first money memory is.

[00:30:46] Hala Taha: So I remember I have two cousins that live down the street that are my age, and we had a master plan that we were gonna save money to go to Disneyland. And so we had a big plastic crayon.

Piggy bank that we'd fill with quarters and I would put them to work. I would make them create little paintings and pictures and then sell it at Sunday school. And we'd have like slushy stands in the summer hustling. I'd be like massaging my parents' feet for $20. Like I was always hustling to try to make this money for Disneyland.

And then I think we did it for like two years and then we, we, I think we just like blew the money at the mall or something and like switched gears. But. It was actually making money as a little entrepreneur, putting my cousins to work so that we could fund this Disneyland trip. And so I always felt like, I guess anything was possible in terms of money and, and just making it happen.

So pretty interesting.

[00:31:44] Tori Dunlap: Yeah. And it's so crazy to think about how it connects, right? And how it ends up manifesting in our lives now. So if anybody at home can do that and can start digging into that, and then the follow up question is not just what is my money memory, but how does my first money memory again shape the way I'm managing money now?

What through lines are there? And sometimes it's the exact opposite. Like we were talking about before of, I see again a lot of first gen or people of color, they saw their parents not grow up with a lot. And so then their thought is, any dollar I get, I have to save. I have no flexibility with myself at all because I'm not sure when my next paycheck's coming.

Right? So even money memories that could be deemed positive of, okay, it's encouraging me to save, but at what cost? Right. Are you completely depriving yourself of all joy? Well, that's not great either. I had a client that I mentioned in the book who was saving 90% of her income and she wasn't, you know, making a million dollars.

It was like 90% of 75 k. And I was like, my God, you don't need to save that much. But when we dug into it, She didn't grow up with a lot and she was like, I need to save every single penny because I don't know what the future holds for me. And I'm like, you can ease off the gas. It's okay. It's okay to not to save all of this money.

[00:33:00] Hala Taha: Yeah. This reminds me of, I had Ramit, uh, Satie on the show and he talks about this concept of a rich life and basically rich life baby

[00:33:08] Tori Dunlap: . Yeah. He came on our show as well and talked about it, and then he's also featured in my book, financial Feminist, but yeah. Perfect. Perfect example of. What is your rich life?

What is the life you dream for yourself that money can afford you? Totally.

[00:33:21] Hala Taha: Yeah, totally. So just for context for my listeners, basically what he says is like, you should have these different categories or money dials. Figure out what you like to spend money on and go ahead and splurge in those areas, and then really pull back on the areas that you don't care about and don't.

Worry about feeling judged. So for example, I like to spend a lot of money on clothes and shoes and bags. certain people are like, you shouldn't do that, that's bad. But I've released myself from any of that guilt and I've set up my money dial. So for you, what does your rich life look like?

[00:33:56] Tori Dunlap: Yeah. Ramit has a, a, a huge impact on the way I manage money and the way I teach it. We call 'em value categories at her first center. K. So it's like three areas in your life that bring you the most joy that you wanna see your money going to. And then very similar to him, you spend most of your money there and then you don't spend a lot of your discretionary spend elsewhere.

So my three value categories are travel, food out. I am a huge foodie. I love going to restaurants and plants. Hmm. There's like probably 15 in this room. There's like one in the corner. I love them. They're my babies. I love spending money on them. I will buy their cute little pots. I will buy hangers for them.

Like I love my plants. Do I buy the occasional Starbucks? Yeah. Do I, you know, do sweater sale at TJ Maxx? Yeah, I'm in their like swimwear. However, I am not spending all of my money on those things because those are the things that are less important to me.

[00:34:49] Hala Taha: Yeah, and I think the big message here is don't feel guilt about what you love to spend money about.

Totally. Because it's your happiness, it's your life. Society tells you that you can spend money on travel, but you can't spend it on luxury and, and whatever. You know, society wants to kind of dictate, don't worry about that, and live your own happy, rich life. So speaking of another sort of tool that you talk about, you've got this concept of a money diary.

Can you explain to us what that is and the framework around that?

[00:35:17] Tori Dunlap: Yeah, it was a practice that I started doing when I would coach clients one-on-one, and it was this realization of, you know, I would ask people, okay, what money's coming in? And they could total that up for me usually, right? Like, okay, I'm getting paid this amount during this time and you know, maybe I have this side hustle.

Or if you're a business owner, right? I have, you know, these four clients and these are my revenue streams. And then I would say, okay, where is that money going? They would kind of be like, well, I think it's going to this. And then we would look at their credit card statements and they're like, uh, just kidding.

I have no idea where the hell my money went. I don't know. And if that feeling is your feeling of, I look at my bank account and I'm like, I don't know where my money went, then this is the practice for you. It's literally writing down every purchase you make, especially discretionary purchases for a period of time.

And it's not to shame you, it's more just to watch what behavior and what sort of mindset you have. So, Talk about this more in my book, but you do four things. You write down where you spent the money or what you spent it on. How much, so I went to Starbucks, I bought a $5 mocha. Right? And then why you made the purchase and how it made you feel.

I was meeting up with a friend and it made me feel great, 'cause I haven't seen her in a while. The why and how it made you feel is the transformational part because again, money's psychological. It's emotional. I need you to understand why you're making this purchase. Is it. I went out with my friends and I had a little too much to drink and I suddenly was buying shots for the entire bar.

Cool. Probably wasn't a great use of your money. Maybe it was. I don't know. For me, probably not a great use of my money. Now, am I shaming and judging myself? No, a hundred percent not. I'm just like, interesting. Okay. I did that because I maybe wanted this feeling of belonging or I wanted this feeling of. I am balling out and I can show people that I can buy an entire round.

Maybe it's okay. I bought this shade of pair of shoes I didn't need and didn't want because my boss made me feel like shit today. Right? And I was spending to emotionally cope. I think we could all, all, you know, find a place in our life where we did that. Especially like pandemic, right? I bought a $75 pregnancy pillow.

Am I pregnant? Am I planning on becoming pregnant? No. Did I need to feel something? Yes, yes. Was it a great purchase? Actually, yes, a hundred percent. I still use it all the time, but that's the thing is you have to start understanding my purchases. Even the ones that are minor are psychological and emotional, and what'll start happening is before you lay down that credit card or before you hit add to cart, you'll start going, okay, do I need this thing?

Do I actually want this thing? Because I want your hard earned money going to things that you actually love. It's your hard-earned money. It doesn't mean don't spend it like we were talking about before. It doesn't mean don't spend money. It just means spend your hard-earned money on things that light you on fire, and if it doesn't light you on fire.

We don't do lukewarm in 2023. We don't do lukewarm with spending with men. We don't do lukewarm, like we don't do lukewarm in 2023. We do things that light us on fire. So if that's something that you're like, I don't care, then don't worry about it.

[00:38:14] Hala Taha: Yeah, I really like that advice because what it does is it uncovers all these.

Things that you may have not realized in terms of what was actually driving your actions. And then it'll also uncover, this is genuine. I genuinely like doing this. This made me feel good. There was no like ulterior reason for why I did it. That's like in my subconscious mind So I really like this advice. Another piece of advice from your book Financial Feminist is this idea of a financial priority list and you give like a A one to I think four step. Outline of, of what you should tackle first. And I thought I could bring this up and kind of ask some follow up questions, make it more relevant to my audience.

So number one in this financial priority list is to start an emergency fund. So what are the details or recommendations around this fund and why do you think that's step number one?

[00:39:06] Tori Dunlap: Yeah, one of the misconceptions I hear a lot is I need to pay off my debt first before I save. I just so strongly disagree with that.

For a couple reasons. One, I don't want you going into more debt trying to pay for an emergency because one will come up, right? And the second is that we prioritize mental health at her first hundred K. And like we were talking about this before, of this feeling of stability or this feeling of choice.

There is something so soothing about your head, hitting the pillow at night and knowing that you're covered. You lose your job tomorrow, you get laid off, you're gonna be fine. A medical, unexpected medical cost comes up. You're gonna be fine or at least fine for a period of time, right? The emergency fund's there to tide you over.

So there's something so freeing about that, but also so comforting about that mentally, just knowing like, okay, I'm good. Your emergency fund should be at least three months of living expenses in a high yield savings account. It's a good starter emergency fund. That is our first step before we pay off any kind of debt, and that includes credit cards.

So that's priority number one, is that emergency fund in a high-yield savings account. Everybody listening, if you do not have a high yield savings account, you are losing amounts of money on interest. It's the easiest thing you can do to immediately better your life because it's just like a savings account except a higher yield.

It's just going to boost your savings. If your savings just gonna sit there, which is what we want, we may as well have it work harder for you. So that's priority number one. Priority number two is paying down debt. That is over 7% in interest. Why 7%? Well, that's the average amount we can expect in the stock market.

Seven to 8%. So if your debt is costing you more money than you could be earning somewhere else, that needs to be paid off First. Credit cards, every credit card is over 7% in interest, right? So we wanna start paying down our credit card debt next. Some student loans are, all credit cards are. So anything above 7%, start paying that down and making sure you're staying out of debt.

In the meantime, the third priority is kind of like a two-parter. Where you're saving for your retirement, you're starting to prioritize your retirement savings while also paying down your lower interest debt. Anything under that seven to 8%. So most student loans, car loans, mortgages. And then finally, as you're starting to save for retirement and as you're paying down your lower interest debt, start saving for what I call like the big life stuff, the new car, the house, the getting married, the having children, the starting a business, the retiring early, right?

The big things that you need to save for. The only thing that trumps this list, or that adjusts it a little bit is if you get a 4 0 1 K match at work, A match is, you know, if it's 3%, that means if you contribute 3% that your employer will match you at 3%, right? So we do a Lion King one and a half kind of situation, and it slides in right between one and two.

So one is that emergency fund, one and a half is getting that 4 0 1 K match because it's free money. And we're actually gonna do that before we start paying off our credit card debt.

[00:42:02] Hala Taha: Got it. Okay. Couple follow up questions here. A lot of my listeners are freelancers, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. If there's no 4 0 1 k is there another alternative that you suggest?

[00:42:15] Tori Dunlap: A hundred percent. So we have a section in the book that breaks down retirement accounts for various different kinds of income sources. So W two, right? If you're a nine to fiver, if you get that 4 0 1 k, great. I R a, either a Roth or traditional I R A are great options. That is an individual or retirement account.

That's what I R a stands for. You can also open up an I R A. If you're a self-employed person. I have a Roth I r a. It's actually a great option for you because it's not tied to an employer, even your business. It is something that is yours. I believe the maximum this year is 6,500, unless you're over 55, so that's a great option.

There's also a various different self-employed options. There's actually a solo 4 0 1 K that you can open that works just like a 4 0 1 K, except you're your own sponsor 'cause you're your own business owner. The other thing that's really cool that I took advantage of when I was side hustling is what's called a SEP I R A A.

Sep I R A can be for full-time business owners or for people who are making some sort of money in a side business. When I was at my nine to five, I had my 4 0 1 k through work. I had my Roth I r a, and then I actually had my SEP i r a through my business. So when you're a full-time business owner, a full-time freelancer, you gotta pick one or the other, either a solo 4 0 1 K or a SEP I r a.

But the SEP I R a contribution limits are something in the $60,000 range this year. So it's a really, really great opportunity for you to start saving for retirement. Very similar to your question. I think a lot of people who are self-employed or freelancers are like, there's no options for me. There's actually, I would argue better options for you.

I know that when I was working my nine to five, sometimes if my nine to five didn't offer a 4 0 1 k at all, and so I didn't have that option. When you are your own employer, you can open up whatever retirement plan makes sense for you, right? And for your business.

[00:43:56] Hala Taha: Hmm. This is all really, really great advice.

You're so knowledgeable. I mean, like, screw everyone who says like, oh, you, you only have a theater background.

[00:44:05] Tori Dunlap: Oh, I mean, I can show you bank statements. It's always men who you know are like user, it's anonymous users and they're literally, I got one last night that's like, how are you qualified? And I was like, does the New York Times bestselling author and millionaire business owner work?

And he was like, no. And I was like, okay. We can compare bank statements. I'm doing fine. Bless and block. Wish you the best.

[00:44:26] Hala Taha: Okay, so another question, and this is related to debt and I really want you to try to dig deep in explaining this 'cause I think this is really important. Sometimes it makes sense to pay off debt.

You did allude to this a bit. Sometimes it makes sense to pay off debt as soon as you can. Sometimes it makes sense to actually let that debt linger and leverage your cash differently and make more money on your money. Talk to us about that, because I think a lot of people get this wrong.

[00:44:53] Tori Dunlap: This word you just used, leverage.

So the word debt is associated in our society with shame. Even the very people we have sought out to teach us how to manage money. My, my nemesis Dave Ramsey, right, as he has told you that debt is wrong and bad and needs to be eradicated immediately. Debt is for poor people. But when you get to a certain level of financial standing, debt has a new name, it gets like fancy Gucci shoes and suddenly it's called leverage.

It's the same thing, but leverage is this idea of, you know, you'll see like Adele. Buy this $30 million house and take out a mortgage. We know Adele has $30 million. Right? She could buy that house cash. Why doesn't she? She doesn't, because she could be using the money that she would put towards buying that in cash towards a different investment that's going to make her more money.

So she's willing to take on the mortgage, which at the time, I think when she bought the house was like 4% interest because she's gonna make more money somewhere else. The question that I was alluding to before of like, do I pay off debt or do I invest? Depends on your interest rate. So if it's less than you could be making in the stock market, it actually makes sense to prioritize investing.

Now, if you're in credit card debt and that's 25% interest, nothing's offering you 25% interest, right? So you need to start paying that off first. I will also say one of the biggest things that I believe is personal finance is personal, and that's the math on this. If you are the kind of person where you're like, I know there would be a significant boost in my life if I didn't have to worry about this anymore.

Cool, pay it off, but don't neglect your retirement. This is, again, Dave Ramsey is like, all of your debt needs to be gone. But most people have mortgages that they will be paying off for decades. So, okay, cool. You buy a house hypothetically at 30, you pay it off when you're 50, then you start saving for retirement.

Like that doesn't work. Financially doesn't work. You're not gonna have enough time to be able to contribute for retirement. So don't ever feel like debt is this thing that needs to be eradicated at all costs. There are variations of debt, right? Some is debt is quote unquote like worse than others because of that interest rate.

It's okay to have student loans. It's okay to have a mortgage. I had a car loan for a long time because it was like 2% interest. I can make a lot of money investing that cash I would've put down. Towards paying that off faster or towards, you know, just not having a loan at all, and I can put that towards investing and make that a hundred K that I did

[00:47:31] Hala Taha: To me, this is such a great strategy that so many people are not thinking about.

Look at all your debt, see what your interest rates are, see where you can put that money differently and make more money and really plan it out. So I have another question for you, Tori,

So I'm an entrepreneur and I've got this mentality in terms of like, I don't care about retirement. I'm like a hustler. I always figure out how to make money.

I'm not inspired to save money for retirement. What inspires me is I'll buy whatever I want and then I'm like, all right, I'll just make more money, you know?

And I figured out how to make more money. And I invest a lot in my own business, right? And take a lot of risks because it's served me well. I take risks and then I make higher rewards typically, right? And I'm investing myself continually, whether that's my own company, starting new companies, investing in teammates, whatever it is.

And so I guess my question is, this whole idea of saving for retirement feels so passive to me and feels like very uninspiring, and I just love to hear your thoughts about that.

[00:48:34] Tori Dunlap: It's really interesting. Thank you for sharing two things. The average person like you will not be able to retire if you don't invest.

So to get the average person investing, and maybe this will connect with you. I try to have them picture what, 65 year old you looks like, because there is this arbitrary thing where you're just like, I'm saving for this thing that's so far away. Especially if you're in like your like twenties or thirties.

You're like, I am. What's the point? 65 year old Tori Nana. Tori is going to be drinking Savian Blanc with lunch. She's going to be flirting with her much younger Pilates instructor named Luca. She has a Tuscan villa where she adopts dogs. She's somehow more badass than I am right now and I can't wait to meet her, but she doesn't get all of that unless I do some heavy lifting right now.

So again, we were talking about this as a perfect, like roundabout we were talking about before at the very beginning of the interview about. How do I attach something emotional so that I am motivated to do it? I literally can picture 65 year old nator with her cute little handbag and her little wrinkles, but she's just so excited to be alive.

I have to save money in order to get her to that place. On the flip side, I'm 28. I will never have to work another day if I don't want to because I have saved enough. I have the option to. Burn all of H F K to the ground tomorrow if I wanted to, and never work again and still be fine because I have saved and invested enough money from all of the money I've made.

Now, I won't do that for many reasons. I love what I do. It continues to make a huge impact, right? Like I won't do that. I will continue to make a lot of money. The business will continue to make a lot of money, but I have the option as someone who isn't even 30 yet. To stop working work is now optional.

There is something so freeing about that. So in the same way that it sounds like it is freeing for you to be like, I can just make more money. I feel that way in some aspects where it's kind of cool to just be like, yeah, I could put something on sale and make 20 K in a day, that's great, but I also get so much stability and happiness and excitement out of the baller ass move that is like, yeah, I don't have to work.

So in terms of that mindset shift for me, I started reading about financial independence when I was in my early twenties, and it was less like, especially in the early days, that a hundred K, it was less about how much money can I make or how much money can I earn, and more like what can I put away so that I have options and I can save as much as possible, invest as much as possible while still traveling and going out to restaurants and having the experience that I want as somebody in their twenties.

So I think that that for me was the kind of shift. The ability to have this money saved that I, yeah. Work is optional.

[00:51:21] Hala Taha: Yeah. And I think that we should all take this, what do you call it, Nana Vision.

[00:51:25] Tori Dunlap: Nana, yeah. I literally call it in the book like grandparent you or like Nana, you like, what does that look like?

And again, like we were talking about, Ramit your rich life, like your Nana version of you is gonna look different, right. I've asked people in workshops before, like, what does Nana U look like? And for some people, yeah, it's very similar to mine. It's like adopting dogs and like not giving a fuck. And for other people it's just like, I feel content.

I have enough money, I feel content. I'm not stressed. And I'm like, great. That's amazing. That's amazing.

[00:51:53] Hala Taha: I think mine is living in Miami with like a pink Lamborghini or something. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

[00:51:58] Tori Dunlap: And it doesn't mean I sacrifice everything now, it just means that I am balancing that to make sure that she's not living in poverty, that she's not not having a good time because I didn't do a little bit of the heavy lifting now.

[00:52:10] Hala Taha: Okay, so let's close out this interview talking about earning potential since we just brought that up, and how it's not just about saving investing. We talk a lot about that on the podcast. You started your business as a side hustle, so I'd love to close out the interview getting your best side hustle advice.

Why do you think side hustles are something smart that people should consider, and what are your suggestions in terms of getting started with a side hustle?

[00:52:35] Tori Dunlap: Wanna acknowledge that sometimes a side hustle is just a fancy word for a second job, and it's not a choice, it's a necessity. And if you are the person who's working a second job because you cannot afford life, it might feel a little cringey to hear me talk about side hustles.

This nice fancy thing where you can diversify your income, where you're just like, no, I need a second job. So wanna acknowledge if that's you. I see you and I'm here to support you. And I know that fucking sucks. In terms of actual side hustle, if you're like, I wanna diversify my income, or maybe I wanna be an entrepreneur someday, or maybe I just wanna explore what this looks like.

I'll walk you through the exercise that I walk people through. In my book, I call it the three T's time, talent, treasure time. How much time do you realistically have for this thing? A lot of people are like, oh, I'll start a side hustle. I'll be a business owner. And then they look at their calendar and they're like, I have no time to do that.

How much time are you realistically able to give? Hmm. For talent. Do you have something that you have already cultivated, a skill or a talent that you've already cultivated that you wanna continue doing? Or do you wanna cultivate something else? Right. For me, I was a social media marketer. I was good at that.

I was good at storytelling. That lent itself very well to being an entrepreneur. I had already had experience as well, being an entrepreneur. For some people, they're like, I wanna do something completely different, or I want to be something that's more creative. 'cause my job isn't. It's gonna take longer to get off the ground, most likely, because you'll have to cultivate that skill.

And then finally, treasure is exactly what it sounds like of, is this a thing you want to make money doing? I wish somebody had told me when I was 22 that not every hobby needs to be monetized.

Not everything you do that brings you joy, needs to make you money. In fact, there should be things in your life that don't make you money. If this is a, I wanna make money off of this, or I need to make money off of this, becoming an entrepreneur is not immediately going to make you money. So if you want to be someone who is running their own business, but you need money right now, probably not the best option.

I didn't see money from her first a hundred K for a couple years, and I didn't see substantial money from it until like year four. It did not pay my bills until year four. So that's kind of what you have to balance. If you're like, I need money tomorrow, catering a couple days, right? Or becoming a part-time barista at Starbucks, there's things that you can do more immediately to start making you money versus these things that are like the long-term plays that you hope eventually will make you a ton of money.

You just won't see it on the front end. So that's the kind of questions to ask yourself to figure out what side hustle is right for you. Time, how much time do I have and how much time am I willing to spend? What kind of talents do I need in order to do the thing that I want to do? Can I just do freelance social media if I'm a graphic designer, okay, I'll just become, you know, a freelance graphic designer on the side.

And then finally, do you want this thing to make you money? And if so, how quickly does it have to make you money? Because that's gonna shift what you choose.

[00:55:28] Hala Taha: I think for me, when it comes to side hustle, something that I want my listeners to remember is that getting skills and experiences is so key before you go out and branch and start your own business and company.

And so don't underestimate working in corporate or working for another person or getting an internship and just really trying to get real life experience that you can then monetize. But you have to be good at something first. Typically when you're starting a side hustle. I definitely wanna call that out.

The other thing I wanna call out is that not all side hustles are sexy and not all side hustles need to be something that you're passionate about. Can you talk to us about that?

[00:56:05] Tori Dunlap: Yeah. I don't know if it's a lie that's fed to us that your work has to be your calling. No. There are many things that you can do outside of work that give you happiness and as long as you feel like you're compensated fairly and you have a general like of a thing.

That doesn't have to be your life's work. That is really like America. You go anywhere in Europe and they're like, yeah, I work and it's fine, but I work so I can live. Right? A lot of us here are just living to work, so your identity does not have to be your job, and I would argue shouldn't.

I can take that advice for myself because my identity has become my job and become what I do. So when you're thinking about making money, yeah, it definitely doesn't have to be sexy. It doesn't have to be the thing that looks good on Instagram. It can be something that's making you money and giving you more financial security.

And it doesn't have to be your life's work or your like capital P passion. It could just be something that makes you money. And again, as long as you feel like I am like motivated somewhat, right, and it aligns with my values, or it's something that I feel like I'm getting compensated fairly at. Cool. Go for it.

[00:57:12] Hala Taha: Hmm. Tori, I end my show with two questions. The first one is, what is one actionable thing are young and profits can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

[00:57:24] Tori Dunlap: Automate everything you possibly can. Automate your savings, automate your investments, automate your bills. If. Something has the ability to be automated, do it. I think we believe we get this gold star if we make things harder than they have to be. No, that's not true. Especially when it comes to personal finance.

If the option is available to you, automate it.

[00:57:43] Hala Taha: I love that. And what is your secret to profiting and life? And this can go beyond financial.

[00:57:49] Tori Dunlap: I have realized over the past couple years that confidence is a self-worth issue, but no one's talking about it like that. The biggest question, which is very flattering that I get asked other than a financial question, is like, how are you so confident?

Or like, how do you build your own confidence? I believe myself worthy of every opportunity, of every, every piece of love and belonging when I walk into a date, it is not, oh my God, is this person gonna like me? It is. How does this person fit in with my life? I'm not worried about how I'm presenting myself.

I'm just trying to figure out. Is this person worthy of me? Is this relationship worthy of my time? When I walk into a meeting with a client, I am wondering how is this person going to see the value and the worth that I offer? And if they're not, it's not of interest to me. So in terms of building confidence, financial confidence, career confidence, relationship confidence, it is a self worthiness issue.

If you believe you're self worthy of love and opportunity and belonging and of every good thing. You will not be shocked when all of that starts happening in your life. I have never once questioned if I'm worthy of those things. I joke when I walk into a new therapist's office. There are many other things we're gonna have to talk about, but worthiness is not one of them.

So when you believe yourself worthy of those opportunities, you will show up differently in every aspect of your life.

[00:59:07] Hala Taha: That's a very beautiful attitude to have. Tori, where can our listeners learn more about you? Your new book, your podcast.

[00:59:16] Tori Dunlap: Thank you so much for having me. I am at her first hundred K on all the socials, H E R F I R S T 1 0 0 K.

You can also go to her first hundred k.com and I host the Financial Feminist podcast and I wrote the book, financial Feminist.

[00:59:28] Hala Taha: Amazing. We'll stick all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Tori. I really enjoyed this conversation.

[00:59:34] Tori Dunlap: Thank you. And you can come here on my show, which we're recording in like a half hour after this.

So you're coming on financial feminist, so if you want more of you and I together, that's where to go.

[00:59:44] Hala Taha: I love it. I can't wait. At the end of the day, young improfiters, most things are psychological, and that includes money. It especially includes money. That's one of the key takeaways I had from my conversation with Tori Dunlap today. You need to figure out your relationship with money, understand how to navigate the emotional and psychological sides of money

that's also why the narratives we're told about money, and especially that women are told about money, from the time that we're young can have such an impact on our future financial well being. As Torrey argues, money is a form of liberation. Having it means freeing yourself from the worries and unhealthy thoughts about having enough of it., from the guilt or the shame you might get from spending it.

Being financially confident also changes how you can show up in your relationships, in your career, and in your business. When you're no longer financially dependent upon anyone else, you're free to make better decisions for you to control your own fate. it sounds pretty good, right? Here are A few of the actionable strategies that Tori told us about, that can help you realize your money goals

First, stop worrying about whether it's impolite to talk about money.

Not talking about money only helps keep you underpaid or overworked. likewise, according to Tory, whoever said that money can't buy you happiness was dead wrong. Money can a hundred percent buy you safety and stability, and for most people, that's happiness.

Second, spend time thinking about your first money memory. It can be a formative moment for a lot of people. Ask yourself, how does my first money memory now shape the way I'm managing money today? Third, keep a money diary.

And don't just write down what you spend money on. Also put down how spending money made you feel. And don't be afraid to spend your hard earned money on things that truly light you on fire. Finally, start an emergency fund. That's at least three months of living expenses and put it in a high yield savings account.

. Thanks for listening to this episode of young and profiting podcast. If you listened, learned, and profited from my conversation with Tori Dunlap, then please share this episode with your friends and family.

Also, why not drop us a five star review on Apple podcast? We have over 4, 000 reviews because we have such incredible listeners like you. If you're looking for me, you can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name. it's Hala Taha. I also want to shout out my amazing production team, my executive producer, Jason, Amelia, our assistant producer, Furkan and Hesham for helping us with guest outreach, Greta and Sean for supporting us with research and Kriti, Garima and Ash for executing our ad operations.

You guys are awesome. I really appreciate all your hard work. This is your host, Hala a. k. a. the podcast princess And the LinkedIn queen, signing off.

Diego, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

[00:01:37] Yung Pueblo: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

[00:01:39] Hala Taha: I'm so pumped to be here. I've been waiting for this interview for a long time. Offline, I was just asking you, like, can I call you Diego? And you're like, yeah, of course. And I asked that because your pen name on social media is Young Pueblo, and that means young people in Spanish.

Why did you decide to move through the world with that pen name? What does it mean to you? And how does it relate to all the work that you do?

[00:02:01] Yung Pueblo: Yeah, it took on a lot of meaning over time. I initially put that name together just because it was like an honor to my Ecuadorian roots as I was born in Ecuador but grew up in the United States.

And as I started meditating, I started realizing that I'm really immature. I have a lot of growing to do, but I've also been a big fan of history. I've been studying history. Since I could read and I saw that humanity as a whole, like we don't know the basic fundamentals that we try to teach children when a child is like three or four years old.

We're trying to teach them how to clean up after themselves, how to share, to not hit each other, to tell the truth, to be generally kind to each other. And these are things that we're trying Individuals may have mastered, but as a human collective, we haven't mastered these things at all. So, the name Young Pueblo to me, it's more so a reminder to me personally to just remember that humanity is in this moment of maturing in a great transition.

[00:02:55] Hala Taha: It's so interesting when I read that, I was thinking, we think we're so tech savvy, we've got AI coming out, we're Driving in cars, going in the air in airplanes, but then we don't even have control over ourselves, and we have no idea how to control our minds. Yeah, exactly. So it's so interesting. So you're saying young people, like, humanity is young, and there's so much room for improvement.

[00:03:18] Yung Pueblo: think that it's interesting to me that there are so many people, literally millions of people out there who are meditating millions of people who are using different forms of therapy. And it almost feels like collectively we're just, you know, like misery has gone out of style.

We're exhausted by misery. And we're like, okay, I want to figure out how to feel better, whether that's in my mind or in my body.

[00:03:43] Hala Taha: Yeah, and I know that you're doing so much good work now, and you're so popular on social media. You've got so many best selling books. But before you were this famous young Pueblo, you were an activist.

And I'm actually very into activism. I'm Palestinian. So like, I really respect that that's how you came up. So talk to us about what kind of work that you did in the activism world.

[00:04:05] Yung Pueblo: I was really fortunate, you know, so I grew up in Boston and I grew up really poor. When I think about what my major trauma was, it was literally just struggling through poverty with my family.

My mom, she worked cleaning houses. My dad, he worked at a supermarket. So we were stuck in a very classic American poverty trap. And I was fortunate to get connected with this youth organizing group called BYOP. And that was based in Boston. And what we did was basically just learn how to organize ourselves, literally bring.

People together around a common cause. And then we would go to different schools and ask students, what do you want to change about your school? And they would either focus on changing different policies. One time we had a citywide campaign where we changed the guidance counselor policy. Another citywide campaign where we helped all the young people in the city get free passes so that they can go to school because there were so many young people who were impoverished in the city of Boston that it costs money to take the transit system, but it was really empowering to see if there's something that we.

want, we can organize around it and make it happen. And that was a great lesson to learn at 15, 16 years old.

[00:05:15] Hala Taha: And so you were doing all this work externally, trying to help other people, but inside you weren't having inner peace. You were broken inside and you had some self destructive habits. So talk to us about that.

[00:05:27] Yung Pueblo: Yeah, I think that was the interesting part. When I was in high school, growing up, the group that I was with, BYOP, we were constantly winning. We would win campaign after campaign, and I internally still did not feel good. And when I went to university, when I got there, it really came to a head where growing up and being a part of that constant struggle, it was so challenging that I was oblivious to the fact that it was placing such big imprints on my mind.

I was being so deeply imprinted with sadness, with anxiety, with a scarcity mindset, and I had no way of processing my emotions. You know, this is a very pre wellness world. When I got to university, it was 2006 to 2010. And what I ended up doing was I could feel the tension in my body, but what I would try to do was how can I avoid it as fast as possible?

And the best way was to drink and to smoke and to do different drugs and just try to numb myself so that I wouldn't have to be aware of my own pain.

[00:06:23] Hala Taha: And at a certain point you felt burnout and you found meditation. So talk to us about your first retreat and how that changed your approach to life.

[00:06:32] Yung Pueblo: I was really fortunate that one of my best friends who I used to be crazy with, we were crazy together in college, he was traveling through India and did a silent 10 day meditation course.

And he ended up writing an email to me and a few other friends all about love, compassion, and goodwill. And I was like shocked, you know, because this is the same person I used to party with all the time. And now he's trying to talk to me about the importance of love and goodwill. But it was at such a good moment because I knew that I was done with the drugs.

I wanted to build a new life for myself. I wanted to just reset my life and really focus on growing and. When I got to that silent 10 day course, it was very challenging. I found it quite difficult. It was the summer of 2012. It was hard to like always be there, because you're there, you're silent, and you're feeling whatever's coming up.

And I could feel the tension, the anxiety, all those things that I used to run away from. But I noticed that when the retreat was over, My mind felt lighter, undeniably lighter, and I was shocked by it. I was just like, is this real? Like, is this really, do I really feel better? I just kept going back and it's been wonderful.

So I started with 10 day retreats and now I'll go away still to 10 day courses, but also 20, 30, 45 days long. And I've put a lot of energy into really investing in my mind.

[00:07:52] Hala Taha: And this is specifically called Vipassana meditation. Can you explain how it's different from other types of meditation?

[00:07:59] Yung Pueblo: This is one of the many different types of Vipassana.

This one is taught by S. N. Goenka. He's, uh, an Indian man of Burmese descent. And he basically was given this technique by another man, Oba Khin. And it basically originates from the Buddhist teaching. And what's really powerful about it is that Vipassana teaches you how to see reality as it is. And one thing that became really clear when I started meditating was that I'm not actually looking at reality clearly.

What's happening is that all the things that I felt in the past, they're really clogging up my perception. They're making me see the present through the lens of the past. And that makes it really hard to make good decisions. Be able to really connect with people. And I think that's one of the powerful things is that if you can train the mind, cause when I go to these retreats, it feels like I'm going to the mental gym.

We're literally cultivating the qualities of awareness, cultivating non reaction, cultivating compassion. And then when you make these qualities that. are within everyone's minds, but they're not necessarily strong. You have to make them stronger. Life changes dramatically after that.

[00:09:04] Hala Taha: So if I understand it correctly, a lot of it is based on detaching yourself from your own emotions so that you can see the world clearly.

[00:09:14] Yung Pueblo: I would say even a little more subtle. You are feeling your emotions without reacting to them. It's almost like you're creating space to just observe them as opposed to suppressing it or letting the emotions swallow you up. So there's a very subtle middle ground. It teaches you that things aren't just black and white.

There's a gray area.

[00:09:33] Hala Taha: So you talk a lot about internal liberation, inner peace. Can you first explain to us, what do you mean by that? Having inner peace, liberating.

[00:09:45] Yung Pueblo: It's cool to talking with you about it because you have the context from the activist background. So there's always this idea of liberation, right?

Constantly where so many groups of people have come together to either make certain values true or to break the chains of oppressors and whatnot and just. recreate their history. I was always fascinated by that idea, and when I started meditating, there was this idea of internal liberation. Literally the freedom from suffering, the freedom from misery, and the misery that we cause ourselves.

And a lot of that, that's what shocked me, because it's true, when you're moving through life, sometimes there are people who hurt you, and that affects you deeply, but ultimately, the person who hurt you is not going to heal you, and what's really causing a lot of tension in your mind is your own perception and your own reaction to that heaviness that's inside you, so I'm grateful that I've been walking on this path because it really ultimately helps you stop all that craving, all that aversion, and just helps you observe and act as opposed to react.

[00:10:51] Hala Taha: And how do you feel that helping other people get this inner peace, liberating themselves, how do you feel that's going to help transform the world so that there's more peace and people are less harmful to each other and we have a thriving society that's not so violent?

[00:11:08] Yung Pueblo: What I'm really hoping, and I think what I've seen in myself and in others is that if you really focus on the internal dynamic, because this happens often to a lot of people who are activists and are out there trying to change the world for the better, is that it quickly leads to burnout because You're not healing the tension and the rough parts of your own ego.

And I like the historical example of the French Revolution where there were people who had really powerful ideals, wanted to create a republic, give people power, and then once they killed the king, a massacre happened. And it's interesting where There is always a chance that if you're working towards something that is good, but if you don't heal yourself, you end up recreating the thing that you were once fighting against.

And power has this ability to, it almost functions like a magnet, and it just pulls out the rough parts of the ego. And you see this historically. People are trying to change the world for the better. And then they get power and it's like, whoa, what happened to that person? And I think that's why these two things need to move side by side where you're dealing with your issues.

You're cultivating your self love because if your self love is real, if it's actually real, it's not just about you. It opens the door to unconditional love for all beings. It's not perfect unconditional love, but it opens that door. And I think that's really important for people to realize. Once you start really observing yourself and you see that struggle, you know, wow, other people are struggling just like me and you start having more compassion for them.

[00:12:42] Hala Taha: Somebody told me a quote yesterday. I don't know why it's reminding me of this, but I was talking about getting wealthy and I was like, you know, people who get a lot of power, get a lot of wealth. I feel like they end up making bad decisions, becoming worse people. And then that person told me.

Well, when you get wealthy, you just become more of who you are. It's like an amplifier. So it's just interesting to think people who get power, if they aren't self aware and they don't have compassion, that can just compound into something really negative.

[00:13:14] Yung Pueblo: It's really true because then you can make anything you want happen.

And then that could just bring out all the evils.

[00:13:20] Hala Taha: talk to us about your journey on Instagram. So you have 3 million followers. You weren't a marketer before you started Instagram. Talk to us about how you first got the idea to start sharing what you were learning on Instagram.

[00:13:36] Yung Pueblo: It's a really interesting journey. And I've been following your page for a while and I love the way you mark it. So before I get into all of this, cause I want to hear your insights as well. My journey with Instagram, I felt intuitively like after I had meditated a few courses, I knew that I wasn't perfectly wise or perfectly healed.

Nothing like that. Right. But I knew that stuff was changing inside me and I felt better. So I thought, okay, let me Cause I could feel my intuition pushing me. You should write, even though you don't know everything, just reflect, reflect openly. And I was really inspired by the first generation Instagram poets, because the first generation Instagram, they weren't long form writers.

They were poets. And it was. R. M. Drake and Rupi Kaur, and they were sharing their stuff in simple black and white images. So I thought to myself, I'm like, oh, let me just go out there and reflect. And I knew that I had a very different message from them, because they all, they each have their own unique message, but let me also adopt that format of that simple black and white imagery.

And it was really powerful. I think once I started sharing, it was awesome. Like sharing little poems or main themes from what I was writing about and people would write in the captions. And that was back in a day where it almost felt like the Instagram conversation was healthier. People were just really kind to each other.

And it took time. It took time for, I think, between 2014 to 2017. That's when I got up to 100, 000 followers. It took three years. And then something happened in 2017 where it just really started picking up. And it was a big jump, I think from 2017 to 20, I would say like 2019 where it got up to like 500, 000 and then it just.

Kept growing from there.

[00:15:22] Hala Taha: What do you think that turning point was? Do you think it was people were ready to receive that type of information and it was just becoming more in trend to talk about self healing and things like that?

[00:15:31] Yung Pueblo: I think it was definitely a lot of right place, right time. I was also interested in the topics of self love.

I was also interested in letting go. I wanted to add my part to the conversation and. I noticed that right off the bat, people are looking for things to share. So, if you ever want to grow a page, the main thing that you have to do is just create shareable content. And that's very different from just taking a picture of your face.

People aren't going to share that. Or taking a picture of your trip to Paris. People aren't going to share that. But if you bring forward Whatever knowledge you have, whatever thing that you're reflecting on, and you put it together, then there's a chance for people to share it in their story or share it on their grid, and that's where things really grow.

And I think what really kept things growing was The consistency of it, you know, I would post every day, once a day for years, and I think the only day that I skip is Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, because everyone's posting, so, you know, no one's going to see anything.

[00:16:36] Hala Taha: Yeah, I feel like consistency is so huge for you, so consistency in terms of the frequency, in terms of what people can expect from your page with your topics, in terms of the format that you typically post.

And I love that you're not just chasing trends and the algorithm. And something that I always teach, I'm a big influencer on LinkedIn, and I teach LinkedIn a lot. I always say, it's not about the algorithm, it's about human behavior. Human behavior always beats the algorithm. And like you said, being highly shareable.

And when you're talking about things like self love and writing poetry, Uh, and posting things that make people reflect, they want to share it with their own thoughts. They want to share it with their own stories. It triggers their emotions. It triggers them to comment. It triggers them to write their two cents, right?

So, it's like these universal emotions that you're tapping into that's really triggering people to engage. So, I just think what you've done is absolutely incredible.

[00:17:30] Yung Pueblo: That's when you know that you've created a good piece of content. Because I write poetry a lot less now. Now I just put together whatever my main ideas are or any thoughts that come to mind.

I've noticed something that's really interesting is when I release something on Substack, I'll write an essay, somewhere between like 500 or 800 words, but very quickly I'll share it and then people will take that essay and turn it into content. They'll quote you but then they'll just take pieces of it and then they'll expand on it from their own perspective.

And it's like, if you put something out there that inspires someone else to create content, it's good.

[00:18:07] Hala Taha: And I feel like having a signature style can be a really great advantage because people almost take it like it's like a habit, like, Oh, I'm getting young Pueblos. Quote of the day, and this is what I share every day, and this is my favorite creator, and I know exactly what to expect.

People think they need to like, change it up all the time, and while there is some sensory adaptation in social media, if you have really good, meaningful content, sometimes just doing the same thing over and over again will make you become a habit for people.

[00:18:37] Yung Pueblo: Yeah, it even comes down to like, changing fonts is a big deal.

Like, you gotta be really careful, cause it's part of your brand, and that's how people recognize you, because they're recognizing you. Almost subconsciously, because there's literally what every one of us experiences on a daily basis is that there's a war on our attention. Everyone is battling for your attention.

So, as someone's scrolling, they'll almost like subconsciously quickly recognize, even before they even see your name, they'll like, oh, the font and everything, they're like, oh, this is something that I normally would give five seconds to. And then they. Give you their time. I even got to the point where I was with a particular font for, I think from 2017 to like 2020 and then that phone was falling apart.

The app that I got the font from, you know, I couldn't get the actual font and I was like, dang, I just need to let it go. And I had to make the jump and it took a little while for people to get used to it, but there are always going to be dips. It's fine. It's totally natural. Your algorithm is not going to be perfect all the time.

It's going to have highs and lows, so you just deal with it and then over time, if you're still giving value to the audience, they'll respond to that.

What other tips do you have for entrepreneurs that are trying to become creators on Instagram or any platform?

[00:20:05] Yung Pueblo: Tip number one is that you have to be ready to be consistent at a relentless level.

There's just no way around it. No one gets big from one post. That's just totally an illusion. It's like a bunch of tiny little victories. And even when You have a massive celebrity who shares your stuff, that's great, but what's much more valuable is someone who shares your stuff who has 200 people who follow them.

And having a lot of people who have smaller accounts who support you, that feels really key. So I think sometimes we have this idea where if this one giant celebrity shares my stuff, it'll change everything. It really won't. It helps, but it's not everything. So you have to be ready for consistency, and then you have to learn what 15 20 percent of your knowledge base that you feel really good about sharing, that connects with an audience and makes that audience excited.

Because for each one of us, right, like I mentioned earlier, like I really love history. I don't write about history. That's not going to excite anybody. I'm also not like a professional at it. My strength is putting out self reflective material. And I think finding what is your 15, 20 percent that you want to share and then see if you can turn that into a product.

[00:21:21] Hala Taha: I feel like you're touching on something really important. It's like lasering in on key topics. Because we were talking about algorithms. That's actually how you train the algorithm. So, for example, my show is really broad. It's all about entrepreneurship, which doesn't work in my favor on Instagram.

Because I'm talking about finance, then I'm talking about entrepreneurship, then I'm talking about marketing, then I'm talking about If I only talked about sales Instagram would know exactly who to send my content to all the time. So picking a focus and being really strategic, you don't need just one, but picking things that you focus on on social media.

Yeah, three. Yeah, is really important. How do you think about monetizing your audience? You know, you come across as somebody so authentic, you don't even want to make money off your audience, right? So how do you think about it?

[00:22:04] Yung Pueblo: I'm trying to be really careful about it. You know, I monetize through selling books.

That's how I make my money through the year. And I also, like, I'm in the process of building businesses as well, which is like a different thing. It's almost like separate to the Instagram. Like I can help promote these things, but I'm not directly monetizing through them. So I've never been big on selling courses or anything like that simply because.

I understand why some people get a bad rep where they sell a course for like 6, 000. Like, no, you know, very few people have 6, 000. And then are you really giving them enough value for something that's that expensive? So to me, I'd rather reach more people and make sure that if I'm ever asking them to pay for anything.

That it's the minimum amount because I just rather have more people come. So like, if I have an event, I make sure that to buy the ticket, it's the minimum amount and some cities are more expensive than others in Boston. The tickets are 39 in New York city. They're 60 cause that's the market, but I'm not charging 200 a ticket or anything like that.

I think to me, just, especially coming from my background, accessibility has always been really important. Economics is almost the first trend of accessibility where it's like. Can you even pay to get in? And same thing with the Substack, you know, if you want to sign up for my paid Substack, it's 5 a month.

And I just rather have more people. And I think what I've learned is that if I give away a lot of good quality things for free, people will be interested in buying the book. I'm getting closer to selling almost 2 million books. And a lot of that is because I give so much away for free on Instagram.

[00:23:41] Hala Taha: And when it comes to monetizing, you have so many different levers for you.

You're like, okay, I'm going to go with volume. I want to increase my impressions and charge really little. And I can make the same amount of money if I just reach more people. So I love that approach. So let's talk about self healing for entrepreneurs. Like I told you, we've got a lot of entrepreneurs listening.

What are some initial signs that you need to work on your inner healing?

[00:24:08] Yung Pueblo: I think if you're always It's responding to people with tension in your voice, different levels of stress, where you're going from really stressed to like, a little bit stressed. And if you're finding difficulty and the joy of creating, like if you're not really connecting with that joy of creating, because I think that's why a lot of entrepreneurs build businesses.

You see a gap in the market and then you think to yourself, Oh, how fun would it be to build this thing? It's not just for the paycheck at the end or the moment when you sell your company. I think the actual process of creation, it can be so fun. If you look at really high performers. There's just so many people like Sam Altman.

He meditates like so many others, you know, who are People who are VPs at Google that created all the products that we use today a bunch of them meditate you know, so there's a lot of people are finding different ways of taking care of themselves because there's a big relationship between Tension and creativity.

So if your mind is really really tense You're not going to be as creative as you can be. But if you are able to process that tension, then your creativity is going to go up.

[00:25:17] Hala Taha: Another thing that you talk about is emotional maturity. And I think being an emotional mature leader is really important. So talk to us about what qualities make up an emotionally mature leader.

[00:25:29] Yung Pueblo: I think the immediate quality is to not be impulsively reactive. If you hear someone say something you don't like. You're not like, no, that's wrong. You take a moment and you actually can step outside of your perspective to be able to see more of why are they seeing things in that way? And also if you're a good leader, you're hiring people who are smarter than you in specific areas.

So if they're coming at you with a specific view that you don't agree with, then you should. Be able to lean on the fact that, Oh, actually, maybe I'm not understanding something to be able to really check in. But I think that quality of not being immediately impulsive, reactive and being able to step outside of your perspective to see the perspective of another that's real emotional maturity in business.

[00:26:16] Hala Taha: I feel like entrepreneurs. A lot of us have a lot of success, and it builds an ego, right? We feel like we're so smart, we've always made good decisions, we've made millions of dollars, or whatever it is. It's really hard to put our ego aside. What are your recommendations to realize we have an ego, and when we feel like, oh damn, like my ego is out of whack right now, to step out of it?

[00:26:40] Yung Pueblo: I think especially if you're an entrepreneur, you have to be really careful because the ego just makes the mind so cloudy and just because you've had a few wins doesn't mean everything else that you're going to have is going to be a win and I think one of the ways to combat that is by honestly hiring really smart young people because I As you get older, being able to build a really successful business in your 20s or your 30s, are you still understanding that the world, like the way that you saw it back then, it's going to change radically when you're 50 and you're trying to build another company.

So I think tapping into people that you can trust. It feels really important, but I think the ego, it just makes things rougher and it can push you through hard moments, but it's not going to make the best product possible.

[00:27:29] Hala Taha: Another thing that entrepreneurs have to do is make good decisions, right? Every day we're faced with decisions.

We've got to make fast decisions. Can you talk to us about how trauma can actually impact the way that we make decisions past trauma?

[00:27:43] Yung Pueblo: Yeah, it's funny. I was talking to one of my mentors the other day and he was going through all these different Famous entrepreneurs, and he was like, everybody is trauma based, everybody is attacking a problem because there's some lack of safety, you know, something happened when they were younger.

And then as we were talking, I was listening and I was like, Oh, wow. And I realized to myself, I'm like, my greatest trauma was growing up in poverty. I'm glad that my mom and dad had a good relationship, but my relationship with them was often seeing them fight. Because they were arguing about how to pay the rent.

And there was a moment when I was about 13, 14 years old, where it hit me that I have my backup against the wall. No one's ever going to come save me because my family just doesn't have money. So I need to figure this out. And that's when I felt this impulse to just get more savvy, put more effort into the jobs that I was working in back then.

And. Even when I think about writing, I write to help people, but I also write to help my family because I know that my mom and dad are counting on me. I'm fortunate enough that I have this ability to speak to a lot of people, to have a big audience. But that's also a responsibility to take care of my family.

[00:29:01] Hala Taha: That's beautiful. I love that. And I have a quote that I want to read. So you say, when chaos is all around you, the wisest choice is to create peace within you. So as you know, entrepreneurship. is so uncertain. It's so stressful. It's so chaotic. If we're feeling like, man, this is a bad day, I have all these fires.

What is some way to just bring us some instant peace? Or what are some practices we should do every day to bring some inner peace?

[00:29:29] Yung Pueblo: Yeah, there's two things that are really important. Even if you don't have a therapy practice, or even if you don't meditate, it's still really important to understand how short the walk is from gratitude to happiness.

Or from gratitude to peace. So reminding yourself that even if you're in a dark moment, even if your company feels like it's going to fail, there's still a few things to be grateful for. There's still so much that's been accomplished. The other aspect too, that's valuable outside of gratitude is. Even intellectually embracing the truth of impermanence.

A lot of what I do when I meditate is, I'm learning how to literally feel impermanence in the body. But even at the mental level, you can understand, this hard moment, it's gonna pass. It's gonna change. We've already gotten over so many hard moments before. This is another one that we can face and overcome.

But I think reminding yourself, because when we get caught in a storm, our logic goes out the window, and we're like, oh my god, this storm is going to last forever, like, it's going to be terrible, it's going to end everything. But no, you're probably going to be fine.

[00:30:30] Hala Taha: And impermanence means that it's just temporary, like, just realizing things are temporary?

Temporary.

[00:30:35] Yung Pueblo: Temporary, changing.

[00:30:38] Hala Taha: That's really, really good advice. Just remembering that this is a storm that's going to end just like the weather.

[00:30:44] Yung Pueblo: Exactly.

[00:30:45] Hala Taha: So, another thing that entrepreneurs specifically struggle with is people that are high achievers, they've got emotional attachment to success. They might even describe themselves if somebody's like, who are you?

Like, Oh, I'm the CEO of XYZ company. Oh, I know. And this is my identity. And then when the company fails, they fail. If it's successful, then they're successful. So how can we detach ourselves? And why is that healthier?

[00:31:11] Yung Pueblo: It's hard because a lot of times when people go into, and you see this a lot in Silicon Valley, where it's like, We create companies, we go into it with a love to create, but then it becomes like a social status game and it's like, who knows who, who has accomplished this, who sold at a higher valuation and.

Those are important facts, but that doesn't define if you're a good person or not. That doesn't define if I want to talk to you or not. There's so many people who have negative assets and they're amazing human beings. So I think it's really important to understand that your value and your happiness as a human being is just not fully connected to what you've accomplished.

And I think it's dangerous territory to walk on. It's almost like walking on a pond that's frozen over. When you're walking around with that mentality, it's so easy for you to just fall into the water because it's an illusion, you know, it's fake.

[00:32:08] Hala Taha: And it's really important to have things outside of your business like relationships and really healthy, strong relationships, which is a great segue to your new book, How to Love Better.

So what was your goal with writing that book?

[00:32:21] Yung Pueblo: This one's been really special because I've sort of forced myself to hold off on writing it because I wanted to spend some more time cultivating my craft as a writer and just becoming clearer, developing better chapters, just really honing the message. But the inspiration from the book really came from when I went to those first few meditation retreats.

I went because I needed to save myself. I felt like I needed to overcome the sadness. I needed to. just deal with myself and start a new life. But I was shocked to see how the moment that I went in to go and save myself, I was cultivating these qualities of patience, of better understanding, of compassion, of listening to myself.

And then when I got home and I'm talking to my wife, These are the exact skills that were missing in my relationship. And because I would spend time cultivating them, I was then able to offer them and almost started a new chapter of harmony that wasn't there before. And to me, it was shocking because I went into meditating to save myself and then I did help myself, but I also almost like reignited my relationship with her.

[00:33:28] Hala Taha: What I'm hearing is step one, you've got to heal yourself. And once you heal yourself, you can show up better as a partner and potentially heal your relationship. So let's dig on those qualities that you were just talking about. You actually list in your book three overarching qualities, kindness, growth, and compassion.

Can you talk to us about those qualities and how they help us in relationships?

[00:33:50] Yung Pueblo: those are three really big, important green flags because kindness, it's really valuable to understand that whoever you're in proximity to, whoever you're closest to, That could be your roommate, your partner, family members.

They're going to see the best of you, and they're also going to see the worst of you. And part of that is because we feel vulnerable with them. We can actually open up with them and that's really good. But sometimes when the relationship is long lasting, there come points where. You're not bringing that same gentleness.

You're not bringing that same kindness as you did when the relationship first started. So it's important to know that when someone approaches you, they are honest with you and they can tell you that they're feeling down, but they're not taking it out on you. The other element of that is the compassion and similar to what we were talking about for entrepreneurs.

It's a very specific type of compassion where you can step outside of your perspective and see the perspective of another, because in all, Whenever you want to solve an argument, it's that specific compassion that helps you see each other, because you can actually take a moment to see your partner's perspective, and then they can see yours, and then you understand where you each are coming from.

And the last element is growth. If you're in a relationship, it's going to show you the best of you, and it's also going to show Where you need to put energy into and I think that's one thing that I saw right off the bat when I was first with my wife was like, I needed to improve my ability to listen and over time putting energy into that and then all these other qualities that I have had to develop to be able to bring more harmony into the relationship.

I think growth is just yes. Something that we don't really have a choice, but to embrace if we want to have a happy relationship.

[00:35:39] Hala Taha: And I know that when it comes to getting along with others, some of the biggest obstacles to that is attachment and control. So can you talk to us about what attachment does to us and how that actually leads us to want to control things that we can't control and how that can spiral into something that we don't want?

[00:35:58] Yung Pueblo: You know, it's really hard too, because It sometimes feel like attachment is love, but it's not. Attachment is literally the craving for things to exist in a very particular way. Having the people that you love act in these ways, have these beliefs, they agree with you on these critical things, but life is not always going to be like that.

And when you have these big attachments, all these cravings for things to exist in particular ways, they will manifest as control in daily life. And that's when you get things like parents demanding children. This is what you need to study in school and you don't really have another option or partners trying to control another partner and that's when you get selfishness, that's when you get manipulation and these types of behaviors that squeeze the life out of a relationship.

[00:36:43] Hala Taha: Talk to us about how you think of alignment because let's say you're a couple and one wants to have kids and one doesn't. Is that control or trying to control or attach? I feel like you need to have similar values, right? So talk to us about that.

[00:36:59] Yung Pueblo: Yeah, that alignment's really important, and honestly, that alignment should hopefully come earlier on.

And I think I've seen this struggle happen in Relationships of friends that I've seen where they would literally break up because they just waited too long to have the conversation about whether they wanted to have kids or not. And then they found out that they're actually on very different pages. I think the alignment has to come from honesty, and it has to come from the beginning where it's like you start dating.

And then once you feel the reality of the magnetic connection, you let them know, Hey, I'm interested in setting up something serious with you, having a serious partnership. And then as you go along, you keep revealing more and more of your values and seeing where they match and where they differ. And if they differ, Is it tolerable?

Is that okay with you? Because I think that's one of the nice things is that my wife and I, we don't agree on everything. And that's part of the good part of our relationship is that we have different views. But on the key, important things, there is a ton of alignment and that helps us have a value system because just the same way as an individual, right, you have these three different guides that you have inside of you where you have your values You have your intuition, and you have your nervous system.

And they've really helped clarify what direction to take when you're moving forward. But this, you have the same thing in a relationship where, you know, your nervous system should be very relaxed around your partner. Your intuition should feel like it wants to be next to your partner, and your values have that alignment.

[00:38:29] Hala Taha: If you feel like you are in a relationship and you feel like you are trying to control things because there maybe is no alignment with the things that you want and so you're trying to like control the way things are going, what do you recommend people do? How can they? Let go of wanting to have so much control.

[00:38:47] Yung Pueblo: I think instead of trying to have control, and instead of just coming from a place of expectations and attachments, you want to double down on commitments. And commitments are very different. It's you clearly lining out how you would like your happiness to be supported. What your needs are and what your wants are.

And then your partner is then taking a look at What you've laid out and then they're telling you actually this sounds pretty good to me I voluntarily commit to trying to do X Y Z for you. I'm not gonna be perfect at it I'm going to make mistakes, but this is something that I can to do my part in this relationship and vice versa So being honest and communicating how you would like to be supported and also checking in with that, you know, not just expecting that what we Talked about two years ago is going to be the same now that's also going to change But I think you want to double down on commitments because then there's no coercion.

There's no manipulation. There's no control You're just telling your truth. They share your truth and you're like, oh I can do this for you This sounds really good to me.

[00:39:54] Hala Taha: So you're basically saying tell people how to love you, right?

[00:39:57] Yung Pueblo: Yeah

[00:39:58] Hala Taha: So give us some examples of what you could say to your partner.

[00:40:01] Yung Pueblo: One clear thing is My partner made it really clear that she loves when I'm in charge of the dishwasher.

She loves when I'm helping with the compost. There's something about me taking care of the compost, which feels like the biggest thing that I could do for her. I would have been oblivious to that. If she had not told me, and then when she tells me, like, this is important for me, I'm like, great, I can do that for you.

If that makes you happy, I don't want to do it, but if that makes you happy, I'm down, you know, because that feels sweeter to me. So being able to communicate with that, I would have never been able to read her mind, but she just made it clear. And it can be simple as something like that, or something like One of my favorite stories is from my wife's mom and dad, where when they were having an argument pretty soon after they got married, this was back when they were younger, they're in their seventies now.

My wife's mom was saying how they were arguing about something, but his tone became really loud and to her, it felt like he was screaming. So she told him, she was like, I want to have so many arguments with you. I want to be married to you for decades, and I know that marriage comes with arguments, but please just talk to me.

Don't raise your voice, because then I feel threatened. I feel scared. And he was like, great, but you know, in that moment, she said, this is how I want to be supported. Can you do this for me? And he was like, of course. For him, it didn't even feel like screaming. He just was a little louder. But that's how he grew up in his house, so you can't make those things clear without communicating about them.

[00:41:45] Hala Taha: I love this topic of arguing because like you said, every relationship is going to have arguments. So, my first question is reacting emotionally? How can we avoid blowing up? Especially to your point, some people just grow up in households where you're fighting with your brothers, you're fighting with your sisters, your parents have blow up.

It's just like generational kind of. So talk to us about that.

[00:42:09] Yung Pueblo: I think there's a very practical thing that you can do and you can do this whether you're in a relationship with someone or you just have roommates. My wife and I, we started noticing when we were meditating that our minds just did not want to take any accountability.

I think for the first part of our relationship, whenever one of us would feel tension, we would just try to put the blame on the other person, even if it was illogical, even if it made no sense. It was like, how do I make this tension in my mind your fault? And, and this happened over and over and over. And then we realized we were like, wait, actually me feeling down in this moment has nothing to do with you.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes we say something and we need to apologize. But we were noticing like 70 percent of the time I'm like just looking for reasons to fight And what we found to counteract that was when we wake up, let's just tell each other how we feel in a very passive way. Just tell each other, I feel good right now, or I feel heavy or I didn't get a lot of rest.

I woke up really tired or I feel a little angry. And just knowing these bits of information, because you're naming it, the person who's feeling it is naming it, and your partner's hearing it, for you, that makes you aware of where your mind is at. And then your mind doesn't jump into just creating more narratives to make it worse.

And then your partner also knows, Oh, let me give them their space. Let me treat them a little more gently. Is there anything I can do to make your day easier? But that gives the both of you the information you need to work with the situation. And we do that one time in the morning and then one time in the early afternoon.

And honestly, that's been so helpful because then I know if I hear stress in her voice, it's not really about me because she already told me that she was feeling stress. And vice versa, yeah.

[00:43:57] Hala Taha: So you do that whether or not you're arguing, you just,

[00:44:00] Yung Pueblo: you just check

[00:44:00] Hala Taha: in. That's so interesting. Just daily. And

[00:44:02] Yung Pueblo: it's not formal.

It's not like, oh, let's sit down and check in. It's not like that. It's just like, it's easy. It's just. You just say it without someone even asking you and whenever she tells me when there's a big shift in her mood I'm like amazing. Thank you for giving me the information. I need to be successful

[00:44:19] Hala Taha: What about if your partner is always bringing up stuff from the past?

[00:44:23] Yung Pueblo: You got to learn how to forgive I think especially when you see someone because if this happens, right you have a very difficult moment You resolve it. The person genuinely apologizes. And they start showing changed behavior. Where they change the thing that was a problem before.

But then your mind will keep, this is the problem with heavy emotions is that when you're feeling anger The mind wants to make it bigger It wants to invite other people into the anger by either saying something mean to them or by Telling them the reason that why you're angry so that they can be angry with you but then other times if there's no one around us the mind will just go back and back and back in time to Pull something out and it'll grab the last biggest argument, even though it's resolved It just comes back, and I think you have to repeatedly learn how to let go, especially if the other person is like I haven't done that in years.

I'm not trying to live my life like that anymore, but it's quite challenging.

[00:45:26] Hala Taha: So I know you've been with your wife, sounds like, for a long time. How many years have you been together?

[00:45:30] Yung Pueblo: We've been together for, it's hard because it changes every year, but we've been together for, we'll be 10 years married this summer.

And I think that means we've been together for 17 years.

[00:45:41] Hala Taha: Wow. So you really weren't involved in this online dating world. Nah,

[00:45:46] Yung Pueblo: nah. Missed it.

[00:45:48] Hala Taha: You missed it. I was in a really long relationship and then we broke up and getting on the apps was so strange to me and I didn't even know how to swipe right or swipe left.

Like I kept doing it wrong. So talk to me about your perspective of how the world is dating today. I don't know if you have single friends or what you've witnessed.

[00:46:07] Yung Pueblo: It's challenging out there because I feel like a lot of people are playing coy. There's a few things happening that I see often where one is sometimes people are spoiled for choice and this happens in a lot of major cities where it's just like you're dating like eight people but you're not really giving any of them a really serious focus and that makes it really challenging to see.

You can like have a very superficial interaction with somebody and never realize how amazing they actually are. I think the other thing too, that happens is that people look for incremental improvements in their partners. So you'll be dating someone for two, three months, and then you end up dropping them because you're looking for someone who's 2 percent more attractive or 2 percent more peaceful, just because you don't necessarily want to deal with.

An argument that comes up, you just kind of toss the relationship away and I hear this all the time from friends, but it's challenging because our society, the way all the apps are with, you know, either dating apps or just all apps in general, right? They're all set up to just make your life easier. Like we live in a door dash Uber society and we expect that from our personal growth and from our relationships.

For it to just be fixed and easy, it's just not going to be like that. So we need to be really careful about wanting things to be slightly better. And then we end up dumping something great for the chance of something better. That is just like an illusion in our minds.

[00:47:33] Hala Taha: I feel like a lot of single people are in this, like you said, there's just too much choice.

So, if we're dating, and we're going on all these dates, how do you think we should choose the person when there's so many options and so many good options, too? What do you think are the criteria that we should be looking at?

[00:47:52] Yung Pueblo: I think one of the main things is, it's not so much about the other person, but it's about how you feel when you're with them.

I feel like it's really important to know, because I think when I look back to my wife and I. When we got together, if we both had checklists of what we wanted in a partner, neither of us would have checked anything off. We were just the opposite of what, you know, we were both looking for. But what we did both feel was this deep, magnetic pull towards each other, where it was easy to text each other.

We wanted to be in contact. We wanted to find times to hang out. And life wasn't really getting in the way. But I think having that mutual Connectiveness with a person is very important. I think also clarity is really important. Just being honest, like if you're really feeling someone, let them know because they might have no idea.

You might have gone on a few dates and not know that you're actually really hoping to build something with them. But it's, I think it's really tough out there and you have to really trust your intuition and your nervous system and then see more than just what's on the face and the body. Do they have emotional qualities?

Like do they have an emotional skill set like How do they treat other people besides you when you're out together? Like, how is their kindness there? Are they reactive? How do they deal with a difficult moment? I think that's always a very telling time when you see someone handle a challenge that's unexpected.

How do they do it? Are they calm through it or are they super chaotic?

[00:49:22] Hala Taha: I also feel like we need to make sure that the person is ready for love, right? And I think you talk about that in your book. How can we tell if somebody is actually ready to be in a loving relationship?

[00:49:33] Yung Pueblo: I think a lot of that is just simply being growth oriented.

I think that's one thing that's really nice about the time period that we live in. The wellness world has developed so much, but we have seen the value of putting energy into our personal growth, but then we need to take a look at finding a partner who also values growing, but doesn't necessarily have to grow in the same way.

And I think once you can understand, even though myself and this other person don't necessarily use the same tools, like maybe they meditate and maybe you use therapy, but if there's still that inclination to grow, then you're gonna be able to overcome tough moments together.

[00:50:14] Hala Taha: Since you brought up growth, there's this concept you talk about the paradox of growth in your book.

Can you tell us about that?

[00:50:20] Yung Pueblo: It's challenging that you need to simultaneously accept your imperfections And you need to accept yourself for who you are and then also understand that you know I have a lot of growing to do I can be an imperfect person, but I can simultaneously say, okay I'm not gonna expect perfection for myself, but it would be valuable for me to slow down instead of making decisions really fast for me to not jump to conclusions and just understanding where your pain points are because often our pain points are self created, we're causing our own tension, but where are you causing yourself tension and how can you relieve that?

[00:50:58] Hala Taha: What's your advice to anybody out there right now that's single, that's dating, they're looking for their right partner, what's your best advice to them to find the love of their life?

[00:51:08] Yung Pueblo: No matter what, if you find someone, you really are going to find them through proximity. So you do have to put yourself out there, whether that's online or whether that's in person.

You're not going to build a connection without proximity. So put yourself out there and then just be the realist. version of yourself. Don't worry about trying to build a facade or trying to create a version of yourself that's more likable. That's going to create superficial interactions. Instead, just be you.

Go out there. When you do find someone that you're connecting with, focus on them, tell them that you're interested, and then see if there's enough there to build a relationship.

[00:51:46] Hala Taha: Diego, I love this conversation. I loved learning about all of your work and your new book. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests.

And this can be anything that you want to talk about. Doesn't have to be about the topic today. Whatever just comes from your heart. So what is one actionable thing our young and profiteers can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

[00:52:06] Yung Pueblo: Oh, that's a really good one. I think if you're an entrepreneur or you're Working on building businesses, it's really important to know that you need really good partners.

And when you're starting a business with someone, these days, I think it's less about working for an exact amount of time. It's less about, okay, I'm going to put in 40 hours or this is what I can, you know, how many hours I can put in for this project. It's not so much like that anymore. It's more, what can you deliver to the project?

So. I do my young Pueblo work, but I also have a venture capital company that I'm a partner in and I co founded, but I don't so much say like, Oh, I can work 10 hours a week or 20 hours a week or 30. It changes, you know, sometimes when we're fundraising, there's tons of work when we're just, just assessing companies and making investments, it's slightly less work and it's more so like, what can I deliver to the group and if that feels valuable to them, then they accept.

Your partnership without saying, Oh, I'm going to work X amount of time. You just make sure that you over deliver and everyone's going to be happy. So like that, cause I've noticed something about, you know, a lot of my friends and mentors in Silicon Valley where they're building like three companies at a time and they're doing a fantastic job, but it's not like they're working 120 hour weeks.

They're just like, this is what they deliver to each situation.

[00:53:30] Hala Taha: That's really smart. So it's a kind of like leaning in what comes natural to you, what you know you could do effectively and contribute and has nothing to do with trading time for money. That's not true. Yeah, no. You

[00:53:41] Yung Pueblo: never want to trade time for money.

That's the worst. You want to deliver and make sure you get your equity and then build it as big as you can.

[00:53:49] Hala Taha: Love that advice. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And this can go beyond financially profiting.

[00:53:56] Yung Pueblo: No matter what, I make my growth come first and that really is. So, for last year, I started the year off from January to February meditating for 45 days.

It was a totally silent meditation course, and even though my agents were upset and people who I'm working with, they wanted more of my time. It was actually much more beneficial for me to take that time, meditate, and then when I came out, everything was better. I was able to be productive at a whole nother level, and similarly, after this book launches, I'm going to go away to meditate for 20 days in April to May, and I'm thrilled for that.

And I think when I look at a lot of people who are really, really highly productive, they take time to cultivate themselves, and that's really important if you're going to keep producing.

[00:54:45] Hala Taha: You're inspiring me to go on a silent retreat. My business partner does it all the time and I'm, I've been inspired by him, but I feel like it could be such a great way to kind of just dive in and take like a 10 day retreat.

Is that what you recommend for people who've never done it before? Like maybe just go, go do a retreat. I think,

[00:55:01] Yung Pueblo: I think if you're listening and you're interested, definitely go check it out. And I think if it sounds like too much or too long for you, there's other. Styles, you know, there's a lot of different meditation styles out there, so you kind of just have to find the thing that connects with your intuition and it's challenging but not overwhelming.

And I'd say for you, you're a very creative person. Imagine when your mind is even lighter, because I was not introduced to my creativity until I started meditating. And I see that all the time. I know people who meditate who are like McKinsey consultants or like people who are artists and they paint and no matter what field you're in, you just start producing at a whole nother level.

I had one friend who she's a producer and creates TV shows. And after she finished her retreat, she was crushing it. Really? Yeah.

[00:55:47] Hala Taha: I'm excited. I feel like I'd love to like unlock a whole new layer of productivity and creativity. Diego, this has been such an awesome conversation. I feel like I personally learned so much.

I feel like everybody who tuned in got so much value. Where can everybody follow you, learn more about what you do, get your books and all that?

[00:56:04] Yung Pueblo: You can follow me on Instagram at Young Pueblo, Y U N G underscore P U E B L O. And my new book, How to Love Better, it's in bookstores. You can also find it online on Amazon and I'm also on Stopstack.

You can follow my newsletter if you want to read my longer articles and yeah, thank you so much. This has been so much fun.

[00:56:23] Hala Taha: Amazing. I'll put all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

[00:56:28] Yung Pueblo: Awesome.

[00:56:33] Hala Taha: Wow, what an incredibly moving conversation with Diego. His wisdom on healing, compassion, and love is something that we can all take with us as we move forward in our personal lives and our entrepreneurial journeys. I think one of the biggest takeaways from today is that healing isn't just about looking back.

It's about creating space for a more peaceful present and a more authentic future. Like Diego said, the person who hurt you in the past is not going to heal you. Only you can do that. But once you learn to accept and love yourself better, it also opens the door for being more compassionate and loving towards others.

One of the keys to this is avoiding attachment. Attachment is often rooted in control, clinging to specific outcomes, or seeking validation from external sources, which can lead to suffering. But as Diego suggests, if you focus on commitments instead of attachments, then you can develop more meaningful relationships that avoid manipulative or controlling behaviors.

I know that learning to relinquish control and setting aside ego can be especially challenging for us entrepreneurs. That's why it's so important to hire well and surround yourself with good people who aren't afraid to push back on you. It's also critical to find quiet moments of peace and reflection in your daily routine.

Meditation may or may not be for you. I know for myself it's really hard for me to pick up a meditation practice, but at least take some time every day to find that inner calm within the storm that's blowing around you. I love to take bubble baths and it helps me think, be quiet, and have some peace. Well, thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting. If this conversation resonated with you today, be sure to share it with somebody who could use a little extra light in their day.

And if you did enjoy this show, make sure you subscribe. And if you learn something new, drop us a five star review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. In fact, I read our podcast reviews every day and we got a recent one that I really, really loved and I want to read it to you guys.

So She says, by far my favorite podcast. As a female entrepreneur, it seems increasingly more difficult to surround myself with mentors because of this.

Hala has become my mentor without even knowing it. I'm obsessed with listening to this show and taking tidbits of every podcast that can apply towards my needs from business insider tips of what's worked and what hasn't worked mindset shifts and beneficial tools in business. It's been an all over game changer for me.

I listen while getting ready in the morning, while driving to work, driving home from work, and before bed. Hala and her guests are that voice in my head that continues to propel me forward. Thanks, Hala. Love everything that you're doing and appreciate it so much. Wow, that really made my day. And she goes by LaCar Aesthetics.

So L E H C A R Aesthetics. I guess that's the name of her company. So good luck to you. If you guys want to go search her company, go do it. And I love to hear that a female entrepreneur is tuning into my show. If you guys are longtime listeners, you know that historically my show is mostly male listeners.

It's sometimes as much as 80 percent male, but more and more female entrepreneurs are listening to the show. And that makes me so happy. So thanks for tuning in, guys. I hope other people follow suit and write a review like she did. I love to hear from you guys. When I do this podcast, I see thousands and thousands of downloads every day.

So there's thousands and thousands of you that listen to this podcast every day, but only one or two reviews every couple of days. So I love to hear from you guys. Take that time to write a review. Let me know your feedback, good and bad. It helps me with the show and it keeps me going, honestly, you know, I've been doing this podcast for years now and still these reviews.

really mean so much to me. I do this show for you guys. So write that review. If you haven't yet, let us know that you're tuning into the show, whether it's Apple, Spotify, CastBox, Player FM.

Wherever you're listening, I read these reviews every day, and I want to hear from you. And if you guys like to watch your podcast as videos, I've been doing a lot more in person content, and I'm going to continue doing that. I'm actually out in Austin now, and we're going to be building an in person studio here, and I'm so excited about that.

We've got more videos on YouTube than ever. You can find all of our videos on Young and Profiting on YouTube. Just search it. You'll find it. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Of course, I gotta shout out my Yap team. I've got the best production team.

It is a whole village that produces this show. You guys have no idea how many people work on this show. Like, it is A dozen of us just working on this podcast. So shout out to you guys for making this happen. Thank you for dealing with my hectic schedule. And I know even with this episode, I got some team members working on the weekend because I missed my recording schedule.

Sorry, guys. I appreciate your hard work. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast princess.

[00:00:00] Hala Taha:Morgan, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

Thanks

[00:01:58] Morgan Housel: so much for having me. Happy to be here.

[00:02:00] Hala Taha: I am very excited for today's episode. We've been trying to get on this conversation for like a year now. So I'm going to cut straight to the chase. You are a master of many trades. You're a best selling author, investor, you're even a podcaster.

So how do you define what you do

[00:02:16] Morgan Housel: today? It's such a good question. I would say I don't, I've never tried to put myself in a box and I think I've, I've moved around over the years. I think if you asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said, I'm an investor who writes and maybe if you asked me today, I would say I'm a writer who invests, like I've just switched around what I enjoy doing.

And it used to be that all of my emphasis and research and enjoyment was investing. I want to scour the world and study investing history and whatnot. And I still love that. I'll always do that. The art of storytelling really bit me 10 or 15 years ago, and that's what I really find joy in doing now. And that's the craft that I want to hone.

And I think jumping around like that has been really important. If you just put yourself in a box and say, I am a blank, you're cutting off so much of the world that you might find enjoyment in and have some talent in doing.

[00:03:09] Hala Taha: Yeah, and

When did you first get interested in finances as a young man?

[00:03:14] Morgan Housel: I think I was 19 when I, uh, first stumbled across investing. I've told this story before, but it'll, it'll always stick with me. When I was 18, my grandparents gave me 1, 000 and I put it in a CD at the bank, Certificate of Deposit, where it earned interest.

And I think I intuitively knew what interest was, but I didn't, I didn't really

get it. And I remember I logged into my account the next day and the balance had grown from 1, 000 to 1, 000. 03. I earned three cents of interest and I remember jaw hitting the floor being completely stunned that I just earned money for doing nothing.

Just for waking up in the morning, somebody paid me. I knew at that moment, I was like, this is the thing. This is what I love doing. And so all throughout college, I wanted to be a hedge fund manager or an investment banker. I think in that era, like the mid 2000s, that's what everybody wanted to do in that field.

And then I kind of stumbled haphazardly across writing. It was never part of the plan. I never wanted to become a writer. And even when I started doing it, I was a senior in college when I got a job at the Motley Fool writing about stocks and I didn't want to do it. I just needed a job, but I fell in love with it.

So I think that in itself is a lesson, particularly for people in college. You might think you know what you want to do and you have a goal and you have a path in front of you. But so many people, including myself, probably you, stumble into what they actually love and want to do serendipitously. So I think it was great that I did not follow the path that I thought I had paved for myself and just stumbled into something else.

Yeah.

[00:04:46] Hala Taha: And it sounds like you had an open mind to explore different skills and see what you were good at. And then. Then you were able to merge finance and writing, which you didn't expect to actually do, into a career as an author, a best selling author at that.

[00:05:00] Morgan Housel: Well, here's what's really interesting. I would not say I had an open mind about it.

I graduated college in 2008 when the world was on fire and everything was burning down. The economy, like no one in finance was hiring. Everybody was laying people off. So I found a job at The Motley Fool as a writer. And I took it because I had to, I had, I had rent to pay. That was why I took it. I didn't do it because I was like, Oh, maybe I like writing.

That'll be fun. I took it because I was like, I need a paycheck today. And they were like the only people in finance who were hiring. And so for the first six months, not only did I not really like it, I was kind of ashamed of it. I was like, I want to be a hedge fund manager. And now I'm a blogger. What is this?

After about a year, I started to really enjoy it and just love the craft of writing.

[00:05:40] Hala Taha: Yeah, and that makes sense because usually if you don't have experience, you're bad at that thing. And then you feel demotivated because you're not that good at it. But over time, if you get better, you can enjoy it and find motivation, I'm sure, in what you're doing.

[00:05:52] Morgan Housel: I think if there's one thing that has really helped me in my career, it's a combination of For the first two or three years, I had to do that job because nobody else was hiring. And then after that, I think I've just been stubborn. I don't know if it's patience or stubbornness or a mix of the two, but I've been writing about behavioral finance every day for 17 years.

And if you do anything for that long, you'll gain some proficiency, no matter what it is. Anybody in any field, if they do it every day for 20 years, will get good at it. And so I think that's been just like sticking with it has been what's helped me the most. Yeah. And I think

[00:06:25] Hala Taha: something that also changed the way that you think about the world is actually an accident that happened when you were younger on ski slopes.

It severely impacted you. It's really, really traumatic and tragic what happened. Can you tell us about that and how it shaped the way that you view the world?

[00:06:40] Morgan Housel: Yeah. So I grew up as a competitive ski racer in Lake Tahoe, California. I was on the Squad Valley Ski Team and that was my life from my childhood and my teenage years.

Skied six days a week, 10 months a year, all over the world racing. It was great. It was like such a cool experience. And there were about 12 of us on the Squaw Valley ski team. We were all best friends. We had been together since we were children, skiing six days a week all over the world. And so one day in, uh, February of 2001, I was 17 years old, and I was skiing with my two best friends.

We had grown up together. They were 17 as well. And we would ski down the backside of Squaw Valley, which is out of bounds, which you're not supposed to do. You duck under the ropes that say, do not cross. But we did this because we were young and rebellious and that's where the best skiing is. It's untracked, you have the place to yourself.

Now when you ski out of bounds like that, when you get to the bottom, there's no chairlift because you went out of bounds. So it would spit us out on this backcountry road and we would hitchhike back. We loved doing this, it was kind of a thrill, like we got to hitchhike, it was all very rebellious, something that 17 year olds do.

So the three of us ski this run. And as we're skiing down, I very vividly remember we triggered a small avalanche. And it's like, it's a feeling that you will never forget because rather than pushing on the ground with your skis to gain traction and control, all of a sudden the ground is pushing you. And avalanches are very powerful.

you'll be skiing down and then all of a sudden you have no control and it'll push you 20 feet this way and then jolt you 30 feet that way. But it was pretty small and it ended pretty quickly and three of us ski down and we like high fived about it at the bottom. We were like, Whoa, did you see that avalanche?

It was so cool. We hitchhike back and Brendan and Brian, my two friends were with me. They said, Hey, let's do it again. That was great. Let's go ski that run again. For whatever reason, I don't really know. I said, I don't want to do it again, but how about this? How about you guys go do it again? And rather than hitchhiking back, I'll drive around to the side of the mountain and I'll pick you up in my truck so you don't have to hitchhike.

They said, great, let's do it. We made that plan. We went our separate ways. They went skiing. I went back to get my truck to go get them. 20 minutes later, I drive around to meet them at the pickup spot where I was going to meet them and they weren't there. And I really didn't think anything of it. I thought that they had priority hitchhiked back and maybe I was late.

It didn't really bother me. And I went back to our locker room where I expected to find them, and they were not there either. And nobody had seen them. At that point, I started to wonder what happened, but I really wasn't worried at that point. Several hours later, Brian's mom called me at home, and she said, Hey, Brian didn't show up for work today.

Do you know where he is? And I told her the truth. I said, Yeah, we skied down the backside out of bounds, and I was going to pick them up, but they never showed up. And I think at that moment, she and I pieced together what probably happened here. Later that day, several hours later, we got the police involved, missing persons report.

eventually turned into, we got search and rescue involved. Search and rescue went on the hill at about midnight to start looking for them. They had these giant portable floodlights and a team of search dogs, search and rescue dogs. And then later the next morning, after about nine hours of searching, when the search and rescue workers got to the area, the out of bounds area where I told them we'd skied, they said it looked like half the mountain had been torn away from what was clearly a very fresh, just massive, enormous avalanche.

And avalanches can be the equivalent of like a tsunami, just unbelievable amount of power. They can snap giant trees with their force. And it had clearly just been a massive avalanche here. The search dogs eventually homed in on a spot in the avalanche field where rescuers who had these giant probe poles found Brendan and Brian dead in the avalanche.

They were buried about six feet under. So of course, I always have to say when I tell this story, I think you and everyone else listening has, has lost somebody dear to them. It's not unique in that sense. I don't want to pretend like it was unique that I had a friend who died. Most people have experienced some version of that.

Of course, it had a really profound impact on me. And one of the reasons why And it took me a while to really piece this together was if I had gone with them on that second run, 100 percent chance I would be dead. It was such a massive, it took out everything in its path. And so then I look back on it and it's like the most important decision that I ever made in my life, by far, was not going on the second run.

And I didn't put any thought into that decision. I didn't weigh the pros and cons. I didn't do a risk analysis. It was just a brainless, dumb decision. Why don't you guys go do it? I'll do something else. And nothing in my life has mattered more. And I think a lot of things in life are like that, where in hindsight, and only in hindsight, do you look back and you're like, the worst or the best thing that ever happened to me came about because of this dumb, brainless decision.

And maybe people listening to this today, If you left your house for work at 8. 53 instead of 8. 54, you may have died in a car accident. You know, I'm making this up, but there's all these just random, like, you understand how the world hangs by a thread of these decisions. And when you come to terms with that, I think it makes you much more humble in your ability and willingness to predict what's going to happen in the future.

When you see how fragile it is, you just realize you have no idea what's coming next.

[00:11:50] Hala Taha: Yeah, and so you accomplished a lot at a young age. Like I said, I hopped on the call and was like, most people I interview are like 50, 60 years old or whatever. You're definitely not that old, right? So you accomplished a lot in your life.

Do you feel like it's because you had this experience at 17 years old, losing your two best friends and realizing how fragile life is, like you better get at it?

[00:12:11] Morgan Housel: I think that would be a small part of it. I think in a broader sense, ski racing was so important because We were independent and treated as adults since we were like 14 and we would travel around with the coaches skiing But the coaches god bless them would just go to bars and then like we were out being adults for better or worse But I think that created an incredible sense of independence and like forced you to grow up very fast That had a big impact on me, but certainly losing my friends at that age Made me realize how fragile life can be.

And I think my perception of risk changed dramatically after that. And after that, I would not take risks that I would have before that, because you see the consequences of your actions.

[00:12:54] Hala Taha: Well, yeah, when you're that young, it's inevitable. A lot of people at like 18, 19, 20, that's when you're doing the most drugs and like all this kind of stuff.

Cause you just think you're invincible. So I have a feeling you probably didn't really do much of that at

[00:13:07] Morgan Housel: all. I think even before that happened, I was always kind of, I had friends who were doing it more than I, I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and say I, I did none of it, but okay, I'll give you a specific example.

I was telling my wife the other day, I remember when I was 18, one of my friends had cocaine and I was like, absolutely not, like not even in the slightest in a million years would I touch that stuff, never. But all my other friends are like, yeah, let's give it a whirl. Let's, let's see how this works. So even at that age, I think just naturally, I had a risk assessment that was different from my friends.

[00:13:37] Hala Taha: So you worked at Motley Fool, like you were saying, you got a job right out of college at Motley Fool, and you actually thought you were going to stay there and work there forever. You bought a house near the headquarters and you thought you'd never leave. So what actually changed your mind to pivot your career a bit?

[00:13:52] Morgan Housel: Yeah, it was one of the hardest decisions of my career because I was really happy and comfortable at the Motley Fool. It's a great place to work, still is, filled with great people. I was happy there. Yeah. Guy named Craig Shapiro, who runs a private equity firm called The Collaborative Fund, reached out to me in 2015.

And he just said, Hey, I like your work. Why don't you come to Collaborative Fund and just keep doing it? Keep doing exactly what you're doing, but just do it here. And I said, Hey, I'm flattered, but I'm really happy here. No, thanks. My wife and I had just had our first kid who was two months old at the time.

I was not prepared to just throw my career upside down, but he kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing. And I think what the decision for me eventually became was If I stay at The Motley Fool forever, from the time I was in college until I retire in my 60s, will I regret never trying something different?

And I think after a while I realized that the answer was, was, yeah, I think I might wonder what else was out there. So I, I finally joined Collaborative Fund in 2016. And it's been amazing. You know, that was before I had written books or done anything like that. And Craig was one of the only people, I think, in the world who would say, Morgan, just go do your thing.

I'm not going to tell you what to write or when to write. And I don't write about what Collaborative Fund does. I just, I feel like it's just my own canvas to write about anything that I'm interested in. And so that was a really rare opportunity. Almost every professional writer at an organization, if you write for the Wall Street Journal or Reuters or CNN or something, You have an editor telling you what to write, how to write it, when to turn it in.

And I think that just strips away the art of writing. It just turns it into a job instead of an art. So I really enjoy the artistic side of it. At

[00:15:27] Hala Taha: what point did you decide, hey, I want to write actual books, not just for a blog? Was that a conscious decision? Or was that when you went to this new fund, they told you, hey, we want you to write books?

[00:15:39] Morgan Housel: No, definitely not the latter. And it was a conscious decision for a long time to not write books. I never saw the point in it. And I would always say, look, I blog twice a week. Why does it matter if it's stuffed in between two pieces of cardboard? It's the same thing. It's the same words. Like I'm not, I'm still writing.

So who cares? So that was why I pushed off writing books for years. A publisher came to me in 2014, maybe 2013 and said, hey, like we want you to write a book. And I was absolutely not. I'm not ready. Like I don't want to do it. Sounds hard. And so in hindsight, I'm so glad that I waited because I became a better writer.

I had more content to use for the books. So the fact that I was so stubborn about doing it, it was so beneficial to me. In 2018, I wrote a very long blog post called the psychology of money. It was a 10, 000 word blog post, which is very, very long. Most books are about 50, 000 words. So it was one fifth of a book in a blog.

It was the biggest blog post that I have ever written. It did really well. It was well received. And so that was when I was like, oh, people like this style and format and this substance. And it's not going to take me that much effort to expand what I already have into a book. And so that was when it was like, okay, like I'm finally going to do this.

My wife had convinced me. I don't think I've ever told this story before, but I'll, I'll tell it here. Yeah. Tell me. An author named James Clear, who wrote a book called Atomic Habits. It's the best selling and one of the best books of the last generation. It's just an absolute gem of a book.

And he published his book in 2018. And I think it was seeing the success of Atomic Habits that I was like, I want that. It was not jealousy, it was not envy, it was motivation. What James has, I want to chase it. And James, as you will see when he comes on, is the nicest, most humble. politest guy you'll ever meet.

So the fact that not only had James had success in a book, but I was like, I want to be James. I'm not like, not just a success. I want to be him was like a big motivator for me to be like, okay, like I really want to write a book now. And James and I have become friends since then. It's actually interesting in the summer of 2018, I was in Omaha, Nebraska for the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting.

And we rented a house with like 10 friends and this random guy came over to have dinner. I don't know who invited him. No idea who he was. And he introduced himself. He said, hi, I'm James clear. I'm writing a book called Atomic Habits. It's going to come out in a couple months. And so we had no idea, but like in hindsight, looking back, it's so funny to piece all that together.

[00:18:04] Hala Taha: Yeah, that book is huge. I think to this day, it's still like on all the bestseller lists. So, like you were saying, you wanted to become an author because you saw the opportunity and you were like, I want what James Clear has. How has being an author actually transformed your career? Like, what opportunities have come about?

I'm sure you, like, weren't doing podcasts before you had a book, is that right? I'd

[00:18:26] Morgan Housel: say, in some ways, nothing has changed and in some ways, everything has changed. Nothing has changed because I still write about the same topics. I still read the same topics.

I still sit in the same chair and think the same way. My wife and kids don't treat me any differently. In most ways, nothing has changed. What the book did to me, and it's a very real thing, is it gave me independence, which is a big topic in psychology of money. What you want to use money and wealth for is to gain control over your time.

And if I'm being honest with you, I feel like I'm really opening myself up in this podcast here. Before the book, I was always filled with career anxiety. What happens if I get laid off? What happens if this doesn't work? And it really scared me, particularly as I became a father. I got mouths to feed. What happens if this doesn't work?

That's the one thing that's changed post books. A greater sense of financial independence that means the world to me. And I also, my wife has pointed this out too. I think I've been in a better mental state post books that I have in my life. It didn't make me happier, but I think it removed anxiety from my life.

It's interesting that in a way that was what the book was about. But then because of writing the book, I got to experience it myself, which has been the cool thing. And

[00:19:38] Hala Taha: why do you think that freedom has come about? Is it because you're getting speaking engagements that you're like pulling in extra revenue streams?

Obviously book sales has some revenue streams, but book sales these days. Don't really move the needle, right? Maybe your books do. But what do you think changed in terms of you feeling like you have more freedom?

[00:19:55] Morgan Housel: It's all of the above. It's book royalties. It's speaking. It's all of the above. And we haven't really changed our lifestyle to any meaningful degree.

We live in the same house and drive the same car and whatnot. A lot of that is just accrued to net worth. This is what I write about in Psychology of Money too. Wealth is what you don't see. It's not the cars that you buy. It's not the house that you buy. Wealth is the money that you've saved that gives you independence, that allows you to do whatever the heck you want to do.

And so that's what it's been for us. It's like we've saved the vast, vast majority of it. And because of that, the anxiety that I had of what if back then has largely been stripped away. Now, you will never get rid of what if because what if you get hit by a car, you're never going to remove risk. But a lot of the tangible career risks that I had five years ago has dissipated.

Okay. So your book, Psychology of Money, came out in 2020. It was a huge hit. And you say in the book that money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. So let's start there. I think it's a good foundation of the book. Can you shed some more color on that and give us examples of how behavior can actually trump smarts?

[00:21:09] Morgan Housel: Well, here's how I always define it. If you are the smartest financial mind in the world. You have a PhD in finance from Harvard. You know, all the numbers, you won the Nobel prize in economics, but you don't have control over your behavior. You don't have a control over your greed and fear or patience or temper.

You can, and very likely will go broke. And the flip side of that is if you have no financial education, you don't know anything, you didn't graduate high school. You're a country bumpkin who knows nothing. You do have control over your greed and fear and patience and temper. You have everything you need to become wealthy.

Just yesterday, there was a news story that came out about this guy who lived in the middle of West Virginia or something like that and lived in a trailer. I heard this. He recently died and he left four million dollars to his town. Yeah. That's the perfect example. He does not have the pedigree. He does not have the degree from Harvard.

He did not work at Goldman Sachs, but he was clearly patient. Not greedy, et cetera, et cetera. And because of that, he became very wealthy. So there are very few fields in which that's the case. If you did not go to medical school, you do not know how to perform open heart surgery, full stop, but it's not like that in finance, you don't need the education to do well, as long as you have the behaviors because it's one of the few fields that's like that.

It's easy to overlook what you need. And most people, if they're like, I want to become a good investor, I'm going to go get a degree in finance. I'm going to memorize all the formulas and by and large, that's not what you need. What you need is the behavior. Now, for a lot of people, that behavior is nature instead of nurture.

They're born understanding their brain is wired in a way that lets them do it. And some people are the opposite of that. But just understanding what you need and what you don't is I think the most important thing of doing well with money. And just to

[00:23:01] Hala Taha: dig in on what you said, you also say in your book that We learn traditionally about finance, like it's physics, right?

It's rules, there's laws, but you say we should look at it more like psychology with emotion and nuance. Can you dig deeper

[00:23:15] Morgan Housel: on that? In math and in physics, there's one right answer for everybody. So if I say, what is two plus two? It's four, no matter who you are or where you're from or where you live or how old you are.

But in finance, it's not like that. Because if I say, how should you invest your money? Well, what works for me might not work for you and vice versa, everyone listening, we're all going to come to a different conclusion because our risk tolerance is different. Our social aspirations are different. Our time horizons are different.

Everything is different. So it's much closer to like taste in music. And if I said, what's the best music, there's no one answer for that. It just depends who you are and what you like and how old you are. Music that I liked when I was 15 would be atrocious to me now. So you're going to change throughout time.

That's most of the nuance in finance is just realizing that there is not one right answer. And I think the majority of the time in finance, when people are arguing with each other about how should you spend your money? How should you invest your money? They're not actually arguing. They're not actually debating.

It's just people with different experiences and different risk tolerances talking over each other. And it's the equivalent. If I think X and X is good for me, you might think X is terrible because it would be bad for you. That's the biggest issue with financial debates.

[00:24:29] Hala Taha: So this reminds me of something that you were just mentioning.

The fact that you and your wife have basically stayed at the same goalposts all these years, you know, you drive the same car, you live in the same house. You haven't really increased the amount of money that it costs to live your life, but you've both increased your income. So you're able to save more.

Talk to us about this importance of knowing what your own goalposts is and why that matters.

[00:24:54] Morgan Housel: The first thing I think is important is like we live a great life. We live in a great house in a great neighborhood and we take great vacations. We are not the kind of people Like the guy who's living in the trailer and is like leaving all this money.

There is obviously some balance to it. I think the idea that if your expectations grow faster than your income, you will never ever be happy with your money is one of the most important and powerful realizations in finance. That there are hedge fund managers who make 100 million a year and feel like they're falling behind because their buddies make 200 million a year.

There is no cap to that. Elon Musk displaced Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world. I don't know this to be the case, but maybe that bothered Jeff Bezos because now he's only worth a quarter of a trillion dollars while Musk was worth a third of a trillion dollars. There's no end to financial comparison.

And so, yes, it's important if you want to do well with money to grow your income, invest your money, grow your net worth. But it is equally important and very easy to overlook that you also need to go out of your way to manage your expectations. And just be happy with what you have knowing that if you get the bigger house or the nicer car It's going to feel cool for like four minutes and then you're going to get used to it And it's not going to feel any different And so look we live in a nice house in a safe neighborhood all of that checks all the boxes But there is this thing of Yeah, but if we got a bigger house, we wouldn't be any happier and we might actually spoil the expectations of our kids who think that that bigger house is now the norm.

So this is something that like we always battle with because even for us who believe this and live it, the expectation of, ah, maybe we should get a Range Rover. It's always there. That feeling, that drive is always there. But then just taking a step back and be like, well, is there something else we could do with our money?

Would the vacation make us happier? Would donating it make us happier? That battle is always there, but whenever we've experienced it, and when you go out of your way to keep your expectations low too, then your drive for a better life moves away from what's the next car, what's the next house. Actually, what makes us happier is spending more time with our kids, going for walks with my wife.

So like, hey, can we use our money to do that? Use our money to free up our time so that we can spend more time with our kids and with each other? Because that's definitely going to make us happier, but the Range Rover probably won't. That's the debate that we always have in our heads.

[00:27:15] Hala Taha: Yeah, and as I get older and make more money, I feel like I'm actually becoming smarter about the way that I spend my money because I realized how much I have to work for a certain amount of things.

This reminds me, it was Thanksgiving yesterday, so I saw my family and my sister in law has never worked a day in her life just carrying a 6, 000 bag. Meanwhile, my company made 5 million last year and my most expensive bag is like 3, 000. It made me realize how much different people's priorities are and how people, like, spend their money and, and manage their money is so varied in terms of what people believe success looks like, in terms of how much they want to save, and it's so, so varied across the spectrum.

[00:28:01] Morgan Housel: It's so varied. And this is one thing that I've kind of tweaked my views on in the last couple of years is that the 6, 000 bag for your sister in law, maybe that is the best use of her money. Maybe it's not. But for some people it would be, even if for my wife and I, or maybe you, it would not be to each their own.

And there are a lot of people who will look at how my wife and I spend our money, particularly the few of our friends who would know our income and then look at how we spend would be like, what are you guys doing? Like you are missing out on so much. And I don't think we are. I think we're pretty cognizant of what we're doing and how we spend it and we're doing the best thing for us, which to me, all that matters.

I've never wanted to become the mansion Lamborghini guy. I've always wanted to become the independent guy who can just do whatever he wants any day and no one's going to tell me what to do or when to do it. I'm not like a, I reject all authority kind of guy. I'm not like a hardcore libertarian, but for money stuff, for work stuff, I'm going to have the most fun and do the best work if it's on my own terms.

So the fact that I can write what I want, when I want, and the reason I can do that is because I have some sense of financial independence. I don't need to work for the salaried company. That is the best use of money for me by far. I want to

[00:29:14] Hala Taha: talk a little bit more about the purpose of money. You've been alluding to it.

But talk to us about why independence and autonomy is really the purpose of gaining wealth.

[00:29:24] Morgan Housel: I think back to what we said of everyone's different and maybe the 6, 000 handbag is right for you but not for me. But if there is one common denominator of which almost everybody from every culture and every age is going to get benefit from, it's independence.

People, by and large, do not enjoy being told when to work, how to work, and what work to do. They do that because they have to. They need the paycheck, and that's the way to do it. But when most people, the first taste of independence they have, they're like, Oh, that's good. That's the one I like. And even if you are working for a salaried company, if you have a boss and in a position that gives you independence and autonomy, not only is it more enjoyable, you're going to do better work.

The quality of your work is going to go up if you're doing it on your own terms. It's such a universal driver of happiness. And maybe that's actually the wrong word because independence doesn't necessarily make you happy, but it removes unhappiness. That's an important nuance, but it's really important.

People who are wealthier by and large do not wake up happier. Happy in the sense that they wake up smiling every morning. It's not that, but I think they have fewer bad days. And that is a huge life advantage to remove uncertainty and misery from your life is massive. It's one of the few things in money that tends to be universal.

And it's also very easy to overlook because particularly for young people and particularly young men, the knee jerk reaction of why do you want to become rich is so I can have nice stuff. So I can have a big house and a fancy car. And it's easy to overlook what's actually going to bring you the most joy is using it to give yourself independence.

I

[00:30:59] Hala Taha: love that. So let's talk about emotions and money. What are some of the common emotional pitfalls that a lot of us fall under when it comes to handling our finances?

[00:31:09] Morgan Housel: The two biggest that come to mind, one from personal finance and one from investing. In personal finance, it's social comparison. And there is no such thing as an objective measure of wealth.

Everything is just relative to what other people have. You look at your house, your car, your bank account, and you say, what do I have compared to that person? That person is usually your friends, your neighbors, your co workers, but also just people on social media. That is the fuel to move the goalpost.

Because even if you are doing well, you're going to start looking at people who are doing better than you, and you're always going to feel inadequate. And it's very hard to break that cycle. Social media makes this so ridiculously difficult because now the people who you are comparing yourself to is like the curated algorithmic reel on TikTok and Instagram that knows exactly what's going to make you anxious.

They know exactly which posts are going to make you feel inadequate because that's what's going to get you to stare at it the longest and be like, why don't I have what he or she has? That's like a really difficult trap to break. In investing, the pitfall is FOMO, it's fear of missing out. It's similar to social comparison.

That person is getting richer than me, and therefore I need to take more risks or try to copy that person in order to catch up to him. And the danger in that is that just like in gambling, everyone on social media talks about their wins, never their losses. So the people who look like they are getting so much richer than you, A, probably are not.

Like it's probably some sort of mirage. But because you don't know that you're going to start taking risks that you shouldn't and can't afford to take in 2021, when there was like the Robin Hood explosion in investing, it went supernova at that point, because you had all these 19 year old people who are like, I just made 20, 000 on Robin Hood, and you should be able to double your money every week.

A most of that was bullshit. And B, the people who looked at that said I need to go start trading options too. And you know how that ended for the vast majority of them. It ended in tears and losses And so all of that is driven by FOMO. The idea that someone else is getting richer than you and you need to catch up.

And so if you can break away from that and realize that there are always people who are either look like or actually are getting richer than you. And that's fine. That's totally fine. It's unavoidable. You don't need to catch them. You just need to play your own game and do what works for you is really important.

Yeah.

[00:33:32] Hala Taha: I feel like everything you're saying is reminding me of this bag story from yesterday. That's kind of why I brought it up is because At first I felt bad. I was like, man, she's got a 6, 000 bag. I work so hard. I don't have a 6, 000 bag. And then I realized, well, I could have a 6, 000 bag. These are just not my priorities.

So to your point, everybody has different goalposts. And just because somebody looks like they have a lot of money doesn't mean like behind the curtain that they actually have much going on at

[00:33:57] Morgan Housel: all. I would actually take it a step further with nothing to do with your sister in law. Yeah, nothing.

[00:34:02] Hala Taha: I love my sister in law.

I'm sure she's wonderful. Yeah. It's just the example. Yeah.

[00:34:07] Morgan Housel: When you see somebody driving a 100, 000 car, the only thing you know about their finances is that they have 100, 000 less than they did before they bought the car. You have no idea how much money they have. And I learned about this when I was in college.

I was a valet at a nice hotel in Los Angeles. And these people would come in driving Porsches and Ferraris and Lamborghinis. And then if you get to know them and talk to them, you realize they're actually not that successful. They just spent half of their salary on a Lamborghini lease payment. The vision that they had, the identity of, Oh, this guy's driving a Lambo.

He's clearly super successful. No, you actually don't know that at all. And it's the classic millionaire next door of like, a lot of the people who are very successful are actually driving F 150s. They're actually driving Toyota 4Runners and you would never know it because that's why they're rich is because they actually invested their money.

Instead of spending it on a car they couldn't afford.

[00:34:58] Hala Taha: Yeah, I love it. So related to this, you say that keeping money and getting money are two very different skills. You actually say that if you could summarize money success in a single word, it would be survival. So talk to us about how we can actually keep our money and the main ways that people tend to lose their wealth.

[00:35:17] Morgan Housel: It's just this idea that getting rich and staying rich are two different skills, and they're often conflicting skills, which means it's hard for people to do them at the same time. Getting rich requires. Taking a risk, being optimistic about yourself, being optimistic about the economy and the stock market.

That's what you need to get rich. And staying rich is almost like the exact opposite. You have to be a little bit paranoid, a little bit conservative, scared of risk, cognizant of risk in order to make sure that you're not taking enough risks to throw yourself over the edge. I think one way to summarize it is save your money like a pessimist and invest your money like an optimist.

Save your money with the idea that the world is risky and dangerous and fragile. And there are always recessions and bear markets and pandemics and terrorist attacks and wars and political mess ups that you need to be able to endure financially. But if you can, if you can keep your head on straight during those periods, the rewards for those who stick around are incredible.

I've been investing for 20 years. 2004 is about when I started investing. During that time, there has never been a single moment. In which you couldn't point to a dozen things going catastrophically wrong in the economy. Every single moment, stock market's overvalued. Companies aren't doing very well.

Unemployment's too high. Inflation's too high. Interest rates are too low. At any moment, you could have pointed to a dozen things. And during those 20 years, the stock market is up fourfold. That's how investing works. You have to save like a pessimist to endure all of those dozen things to point at. But if you can stick around, you look back over a 20 year period and you're like, man, I made four times my money during this period.

It's incredible. That's always how it works. Saving like a pessimist, investing like an optimist.

[00:36:59] Hala Taha: So Bill Gates started Microsoft and Bill Gates actually is more of a pessimist. Talk to us about how he's used his pessimism to set up Microsoft for success, because even in 2023, Microsoft is a huge company that's growing and leading the AI charge and everything

[00:37:13] Morgan Housel: like that.

Well, I think Bill Gates is the best example of someone who has gotten optimism and pessimism to coexist. Because when he started Microsoft in the 70s, he took the most optimistic swing that any entrepreneur has ever taken. When in the seventies, he said, every desk in the world needs a computer on it.

That was the craziest idea in the world. Crazy optimism at the same time, from the day he started Microsoft to the day he left in 2000, he ran it as conservatively as you possibly could. He said he always wanted enough cash in the bank so that he could run Microsoft for one year with no revenue, like the most pessimistic way to run a business.

I think that's why they've done so well. It's not that they're always optimistic or they're always pessimistic. They realize that if you can survive all the uncertainty and all the upheaval, then you have a fighting chance to actually compound for 50 years as they have. And very few businesses are actually like that.

If you have a very optimistic CEO, they're like, let's bury ourselves in debt and invest every penny that we have and swing for the fences. And nine out of 10 of those businesses are eventually going to go bankrupt, probably pretty soon. But also, if you're too pessimistic, then those businesses become obsolete.

So, it's getting both of those at the same time that is so rare, but that's really the key to doing well over your entire career, over an entire lifetime, is getting optimism and pessimism to coexist.

[00:38:41] Hala Taha: And I know that you are a strong proponent of having patience and in your book you've got a chapter called Tales You Win and you talk about how sometimes it's that one Picasso painting that an art investor acquires that makes up for all the ones that they don't.

So can you give us some examples of long tail strategy and why

[00:38:58] Morgan Housel: that's important? The painting example is one that I love. It's There were all these art collectors in the last 50 years and a very small number of families ended up with these ridiculous art portfolios. They had Picassos and Monets and like Renoir, like the top paintings ended up in the hands of very few number of people.

How did those art collectors know what was going to become valuable? Because when Picasso was alive and painting, he was not the Picasso who he is today. Most artists become famous after they die. How did these people know what was going to be big? And they looked at their art portfolio and the explanation was those collectors did not know who was going to be big.

What they did is you had a couple of collectors would go out and buy every painting they could possibly get their hands off of. If any painting was for sale, they scooped it up and they ended up with thousands or tens of thousands of paintings. And within that portfolio ended up by chance some Picasso's and some Monet's and some Renoir's, but they didn't know in hindsight what it was going to be or in with foresight, they didn't know.

It was only in hindsight that because they collected so many, a couple of them ended up being worth a zillion dollars. And investing is exactly the same. You have no idea which companies are going to be the next Tesla, the next Apple, the next Amazon. Nobody knows. And people who say they do know are fooling you.

If you own an index fund that owns 3, 000 companies in it, then you know that whatever is going to be the next Tesla is in there, whatever it might be. Always in investing, if you own an index of a hundred companies. Over a 10 year period, you're going to earn most of your returns from five of them. A very small portion is going to return most of them.

And since you don't know what those five are going to be with foresight, the best idea is just own all of them, knowing full well that whatever is going to be the winner is going to be in your portfolio. And that's why you have the statistics about what percentage of active stock pickers outperform index funds.

It's very, very low, particularly if you adjust it for fees and for taxes. Over a 10 or 20 year period, it rounds to zero. Warren Buffett recently said that in his life, he's met 10 people who he thinks can consistently outperform the stock market, consistently pick the right stocks, 10 people that he's ever met in his entire life.

And everyone listening to this podcast, you are not one of them. I'm sorry to say good luck. And so that I think that's the only anecdote to that. And it's the easiest, cheapest anecdote to that. It's just own all of them knowing that you're going to have the winners in there. And speaking

[00:41:30] Hala Taha: of Warren Buffett in your book, you say if he had retired at 60 years old, he might not be the Warren Buffett that we know today.

That's like such like everybody thinks of him as like the most successful investors because he's been investing for 60 years or whatever

[00:41:44] Morgan Housel: it's been. Yeah. If you look at his net worth, 99 percent of his net worth, Was accumulated after his 60th birthday. So he's 93, I think he is now. And 99 percent of that money came after he was 60, which means that if he had retired when he was 60, like a normal person may have, he was a billionaire when he was 60, you would have never heard of him.

The whole reason he's so successful and the whole reason he's now a household name is because he's been, yes, he is a good investor, but the secret is that he's been a good investor for 80 years. And it's just the amount of time he's been doing it for that generates all of that money. He also started investing when he was 11 years old.

That's why he's so successful, because he's been doing it nonstop from 11 to 93. That's actually the biggest takeaway that ordinary people can take from him. Because I and you and anyone else cannot pick stocks like Warren Buffett. But can we try to emulate his patience? Is that something that we could maybe copy from him?

You have a fighting chance of replicating his patience than you do replicating his intelligence. Just understanding why he's wealthy and using that as a takeaway of what we can do and copy him at is, is really important.

[00:42:52] Hala Taha: So this is a concept that I think is from your next book that we're going to talk about.

But what we're talking about is reminding me of this. I know that you actually don't really pay attention to daily news when it comes to changing your stock strategy or picking your stocks. You don't just follow like here, something's hot and then buy it. Right. So talk to us about how you actually decide what stocks you're going to invest in for the

[00:43:14] Morgan Housel: longterm.

So your last point, I keep it as simple as I can. I own Vanguard index funds. I've owned for a long time. It's probably all I will own for a long time. I'm not recommending other people exactly do that. You have to figure out what works for you. And as we talked about earlier, they're definitely people for whom picking stocks is the right strategy for them.

Even if it's not the best for my wife and I, one little quirk I would say is I actually do follow financial news every day, every day. I know what the market did. I read the wall street journal every day because I think it's intellectually interesting. I think it's a fascinating window into how people behave.

But the important thing is that I don't read the Wall Street Journal and then say, I need to go out and buy and sell these specific stocks. It doesn't influence my behavior. I just think it's a fascinating window into how people behave. My personal investing strategy is as, simple and basic as you could possibly be.

My entire net worth is this house, a checking account, Vanguard funds, and shares of Markel where I'm on the board of directors. And that's pretty much it.

[00:44:15] Hala Taha: And where do you park your cash? What's your strategy for cash?

[00:44:18] Morgan Housel: It's spread out over many different Accounts and actually quite a bit of it is now in treasuries because you can earn a great return there spread out over different bank accounts, different brokerages accounts.

Yeah. You know, and the money that I have in short term treasuries, I consider that cash. That's cash like to me. Mmm,

[00:44:35] Hala Taha: got it. Okay, let's move on to your new book. It's called Same as Ever. It covers a lot of the ideas that we've been discussing and much more. So talk to us about why you wrote this book and how it expands on your first book, The Psychology

[00:44:47] Morgan Housel: of Money.

So Same as Ever is about what never changes over time. I think in many ways, Psychology of Money is about the behavior of you, the individual. And same as ever is about the behavior of us, the collective, like what do we, the collective society keep doing over and over and over again? And I've always been a student of, I think, two things.

One is investing and the other is history. I like the intersection of that, like investing history and economic history. I've always been so fascinated in. And one of the things that will really stick out when you're studying any kind of history is. It's really interesting to see what has changed over time.

What do people used to do that they don't anymore? That's interesting. But to me, way more interesting and way more common is when you see what has not changed at all. And when you're studying the history of Americans 100 years ago, or Europeans 1000 years ago, or Chinese 5000 years ago, you see all these kinds of behaviors that would fit in perfectly today.

That have not changed whatsoever. So how people respond to greed and fear and uncertainty and opportunity, that is the same today in the United States as it was in any culture, a thousand years ago, and it hasn't changed at all. And because of that, we know that it's going to be part of our future for the rest of our lives.

And a lot of why I wrote this book was because I kind of got disgruntled at how bad we were as an industry at predicting what's going to happen next. Predicting the next recession, the next bear market, nobody can do it. Nobody has any ability to do it. And so with that, you can either say, nobody knows anything.

Don't even try to predict. No one has a clue. Just kind of become a cynic about it. Or you can say, okay, we don't know what's going to change, but we do know what's not going to change. We do know what behaviors are going to be part of our future, regardless of where the future goes. So let's put all of our emphasis on that.

And so same as ever is 23, very short little stories. About little facets of human behavior that I think have always been with us and always will be and no matter where your future goes or where society's future goes, you know that these little bits that I write about are going to be part of the story.

I

[00:46:54] Hala Taha: love you have it in your book that you say if you travel 500 years back or 500 years forward, the world will look much different in terms of technology and medicine and even language, but human behavior doesn't change much over time. It's so fascinating. It's so true. It takes time. I think thousands and thousands of years for us to like our brain biologically to actually change or evolve.

So we're the same human that we were thousands of years ago, even though so much has changed. And one of the things that doesn't go away for humans is risk, right? This is something that we're going to enjoy to the end of time is this concept of risk. And we touched about risk a little bit earlier, but in your book, you write, the biggest risk is always what nobody sees coming.

So talk to us about these blind risks.

[00:47:40] Morgan Housel: There's a great financial advisor named Carl Richards who has this quote, one of those quotes that just knocked me off my feet. The quote is, risk is what is left over when you think you've thought of everything. So you can spend all day trying to predict the next risk in your personal life or in the economy and for society.

And that's great. You should do that. But then when you are done with that exercise, the thing that is not on the list is what's actually the biggest risk that you're going to face. Think about what the biggest risks we've dealt with in the United States over the past couple generations, Pearl Harbor, September 11th and COVID are probably the three biggest societal shocks that we've dealt with in America.

And the common denominator of all three of those is that nobody, certainly no ordinary Americans saw those coming until the day that they happened. In all those situations, there was no economic outlook, there was no analyst forecast, there's nobody on the news warning you about these things. That in one day utterly transformed the world that you lived in.

And so the biggest risk is what you didn't see coming. And the fact that people didn't see coming is what made it dangerous because they were not prepared emotionally, financially, logistically, they were not prepared for these things to happen. So when they hit, it was like red alert, what do we do now?

And it's always like that. I think in any given year, it is like that. What is the biggest worldwide news story in 2023? It's probably, I hope it's going to end up, hopefully nothing bigger than it happens, will be Israel and Hamas, will be the biggest story of 2023. Of course, there has been tensions, to say the least, in that region for literally thousands of years, but how many people in January of 2023 predicted that that would be the biggest news story?

Maybe there were some people who were on the ground and had a greater sense, but by and large, ordinary people watching the news, it was not on their radar whatsoever. Same with in 2019, if you were looking at the biggest risk for 2020, nobody said a viral pandemic, that's going to close down the schools.

Nobody said that 2001, nobody sees nine 11 coming. You can play that game all day long. And so because of that, you can stay with. A lot of confidence that the biggest risk over the next year and over the next 10 years is something that you and I and none of us are even thinking about because it's always been like that.

To your

[00:49:51] Hala Taha: point, I'm Palestinian and I didn't even see it coming. I was just like, wait, what happened? These big stories, they blow you away. By surprise, how can we prepare for these risks if we don't know what they're going to be? How can we prepare accordingly?

[00:50:06] Morgan Housel: By definition, you can't. That in itself, that realization and that mindset is really powerful in itself because you stop pretending that you can predict.

There's a great quote from Nassim Taleb where he says, invest in preparedness and not in prediction. So one way that I think about that is Think about earthquakes in California. California knows that there is going to be a major earthquake in the future. But everybody also knows that you can't predict when it's going to come.

It's impossible to predict what day it's going to happen or what year it's going to happen. So because of that, you're just always prepared. They build buildings that can withstand it no matter when it comes. They don't like, you know, oh, an earthquake is going to come in December. So let's retrofit the buildings then.

You're always prepared for it. And I think that's how you should think about economic risks, recessions and bear markets and job losses. You have no idea when it's going to come. So don't try to think, Oh, once you see a recession coming, then you'll start to save money. No, it could happen tomorrow. So always be prepared for it.

I think that idea of having expectations instead of forecasts. It's the only way to really survive in that world where risk is what you don't see.

[00:51:11] Hala Taha: Yeah. That makes sense. And another key concept that you talk about in terms of human behavior is pushing too far too fast. Now you say that this is something people do in investing.

You say it's also something people do with their companies. So can you talk to us about that?

[00:51:25] Morgan Housel: Yeah. Whenever you have something good, you have an investing strategy that works or a company that's going well. The very normal knee jerk reaction is Great. Let's make it go faster. Let's make it bigger. Let's milk it.

Let's push it as hard as you can. You do it with noble intentions. You're like, I don't want to leave money on the table. If I have this golden goose, let's keep milking the goose. It happens all the time. Like in investing people who are doing well, start using leverage where they start making bigger bets, more concentrated bets in businesses.

When it's going well, it's like, let's raise more money and grow faster, faster, faster, faster. And it is such a common story that those investors, those entrepreneurs, or even in your own individual career. You eventually realize that there was a natural speed limit to what you're doing. And if you go over the speed limit, you're going to get in trouble.

And you only know where that speed limit is in hindsight when you've gone past it and you get a speeding ticket, so to speak. And so you see this with every successful business. The example I use in the book was Starbucks 15 years ago. And maybe most people don't remember this now, but there was a period in the early and mid 2000s where Starbucks was opening a new store on every street corner, like every couple of hours.

It was just like this absolute proliferation of Starbucks stores. And because of it, the quality of the coffee and of the food plunged. The company's only goal was to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And the quality of the stores just disintegrated. And Starbucks had a really rough period because of that. And in hindsight, they talked about, they're like, look, the natural growth rate.

That we could sustain the quality of the product. We way exceeded. We pushed it way too hard. And because of that the business broke for a period of time. There's so many examples of that of like you have a good legitimate business That is working and customers love you and they will pay you But if you try to take that and just say let's try to make it go twice as fast It's probably going to break so understanding the natural speed limit and size of whatever you're doing Is a really critical aspect of what you are doing any

[00:53:22] Hala Taha: guidance for us to understand like hey This is a red flag that I'm pushing too hard and that I should just calm down a bit with what I'm

[00:53:30] Morgan Housel: doing.

Let's use the Starbucks example. The reason people love Starbucks was not necessarily because it was on every corner. It was because they liked the quality, the food, they liked the taste. And once your ability to scale takes precedence over that, then you know exactly what's going to happen. So understanding, I think this is such a basic comment, but it's so easy to overlook.

Understanding why you are successful is the key to doing this. And a lot of people. They don't actually understand why consumers like them or why their boss appreciates them. And because of that, they overlook what is actually needed to keep this going. And once you have an honest assessment of customers like me because of X, then you realize any deviation away from that.

And of course, you're going to lose what made you special to begin with. I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

[00:54:16] Hala Taha: Yeah, I think that's great advice for all the entrepreneurs tuning in. So something else that you talk about in the book is stress. You say that stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can't.

Talk to us about why stress sometimes can be a good thing.

[00:54:30] Morgan Housel: We look back historically, the biggest periods of innovation and new technology and productivity growth without exception happened during periods when the world was. On fire, so to speak. Like the most productive economic decade that's ever occurred is the 1930s during the Great Depression, when the economy was the biggest train wreck it had ever been.

Because every business in America woke up and they're like, if we don't find ways to get more productive and get our act together, we're going to go out of business tomorrow. And that as a motivator, that fear as a motivator creates the biggest productivity boom we've ever had. The other was World War II and the Cold War.

The incentive to figure things out was so extreme because if we didn't figure things out, Adolf Hitler was going to control the world next year. And that kind of incentive created this technology boom of the likes the world has never seen. What do we get out of world war II? We got nuclear energy, rockets, jets, penicillin, microwaves, radar, eventually with the cold war satellites, all of these things that benefit you and I today that happens specifically because of the stress and anxiety of the war, and you can maybe able to say this with COVID in hindsight too, like it's tragic and deadly as it is.

If it unleashes the scientific boom as it has, that maybe 20 years from now is going to benefit us in ways that we can't even fathom today. Using the phrase silver lining, To COVID is a step too far because it's killed like 10 million people, not say like, Oh, that's a great thing, but it's always the case that you look back and you're like, Hey, despite that tragedy, we got this incredible new innovation because of it.

That's making life so much better today. So everybody wants a world in which everything goes great and there's no uncertainty. There's no bad times. Of course, that that sounds like a great world, but in that world, the incentive to improve would diminish greatly, and it's always the stress that creates the biggest improvements.

I

[00:56:33] Hala Taha: love this concept because it's so true. Constraints, deadlines, even if you think about your own self, if you know that you have a deadline tomorrow. your procrastination releases and you can just get your shit done because you know the deadline is tomorrow. It really helps you become more creative, helps you step on the gas in terms of completing whatever you need to complete.

So what you're saying totally makes sense in terms of big disasters in the world and how it can actually foster lots of innovation and creativity because our backs are against the wall. We basically have no choice but to get it done now.

[00:57:05] Morgan Housel: Yeah, I think for writing books, one of the biggest benefits that a publisher provides is a deadline.

It's not necessarily that they're going to help you write the book, so to speak, but they're going to tell you, you have to turn in your manuscript on this date and that, that'll get your ass in gear.

[00:57:19] Hala Taha: Okay, so one of the last ones I'm going to ask you about this book is incentives. So you've got a chapter in it, in your book, where you quote Benjamin Franklin, who once said if you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.

So talk to us about incentives, what we need to watch out for in terms of how incentives can trick us into doing things that we already know are wrong.

[00:57:40] Morgan Housel: I think there are, it's very often the case, not always, this is not black and white, but it's often the case that if you see somebody doing something that you find morally wrong, Or just something that you disagree with.

You are probably underestimating the odds that you would do that exact same thing if you had their incentives. And I saw this first hand during the financial crisis of 2008 when a lot of Americans rightly pointed at Wall Street bankers and said those greedy bastard bankers will ruin the economy. And maybe like that was not necessarily the wrong criticism, but I think what people overlooked is that if you worked at Bear Stearns in 2006 And they said, Hey, package these subprime bonds and we'll give you a 6 million bonus.

You would have done it too. You would have done the exact same thing if you had that incentive dangled in front of your face. And so I think we underestimate the boundaries of our morality when we don't understand the power of our incentives. Everyone thinks, Oh, my moral boundaries are right here. But if you had different incentives, you'd be like, Oh, maybe I can shift them out a little bit.

And you don't even know you're doing it. It's subconscious. Everyone is so influenced by these incentives. And at every level. When you're looking at World War II, how could the Germans possibly have acted like this? I think when you look into what the 1930s were like for them, the incentives, the incentives to go along with it, the incentives to not want to be an outsider, the incentives to do what you're told, it's not to justify anything in the slightest.

But if you're looking for an answer of how can people do that thing, whatever that thing would be, in business, in wars, whatever it'd be, the answer is usually some sort of incentives. And it's not even a financial incentive. There are social incentives. There are tribal incentives. There are political incentives to do things that you would otherwise find repugnant, but you do it because the incentives push you to do it.

That's

[00:59:24] Hala Taha: super insightful. The last question I'm going to ask you about your book in terms of a concept is you talk about permanent and expiring information. And I love the distinction that you draw between these two. And I hope today's interview is going to be permanent information for our listeners, but can you explain what you mean between the difference of the two?

I

[00:59:42] Morgan Housel: mean, one, one way as someone who writes books and say, one of the best advice that I've ever heard is if you want to write a book that people will read 20 years from now, write a book that people would have read 20 years ago. Make sure that what you're writing about is timeless. And I think we can say that about this podcast.

I think if we had a time machine and someone listened to this podcast in 2003. 99 percent of what we said would be relevant. So you have to understand what kind of information is expiring if you're watching the stock market Oh microsoft missed quarterly earnings by one penny per share like that's a expiring information I'm, not going to say it's irrelevant, but it's expiring as a shelf life But if you're talking about how people respond to greed and fear that's permanent that never changes and that will be as relevant 20 years from now as it is today.

So you should put more of your emphasis in learning permanent skills Knowing that they're going to stick around rather than drowning yourself in expiring information that might be relevant for a week or maybe even a year, but it has the shelf life of something that's going to expire.

[01:00:43] Hala Taha: I totally agree with that. Well, Morgan, thank you so much for your time today. I feel like this podcast was filled with so much timeless wisdom about finances.

So I end my show with two questions that we ask all of our guests. The first one is what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to be more profitable tomorrow.

[01:01:01] Morgan Housel: Go out of your way to define your game and realizing that your game might be very different from your co workers game, even your co founders game, your siblings game, everyone is different.

And don't assume that because society tells you that you should have X, that that's actually what you should be chasing. Mm.

[01:01:18] Hala Taha: Back to the goalposts we were talking about before. What is your goalpost, Young and Profiters? And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business and finance.

[01:01:28] Morgan Housel: Realizing that there are probably 10 people in life who I want to love me. My wife, my kids, my parents, maybe three friends. And it's not that I don't care about the opinions of anyone else, but I think it's really helpful to have people in your life who you don't want to disappoint just a few people who are, it's like, it's, that's, that's your North star.

I'm like, am I doing this for the benefit of those 10 people? would they be proud of me? Is this going to help my relationship with them? I think it's just a very strong guiding light. What really matters. And if you're on your deathbed, are you going to care about your net worth or the square footage of your house, or are you going to be proud that?

You are a good spouse. You were a good parent. You were a good friend. You helped your community. Like it's obvious what's going to be more important to you. So like, let's keep that as the focus.

[01:02:15] Hala Taha: I love that. That's great advice. Well, Morgan, thank you so much for joining us on young and profiting podcast.

[01:02:20] Morgan Housel: Thanks so much for having me. You know, young improfiters, this conversation got me thinking about how our finances are so much more about our emotions than we like to think that they are. Understanding how our own psychology impacts our approach to money can keep us from making some huge mistakes down the line. And there's nobody better at showing us how to do this than Morgan Housel.

[01:02:47] Hala Taha: Morgan argues that finance is a lot more like psychology than physics. There's not a single right answer for everybody and every problem, and a strategy that works for somebody else might not work for you at all. We each have our own unique risk tolerances, ambitions, and time horizons. But there are some common emotional pitfalls that a lot of us fall under when it comes to handling our finances.

One huge one, according to Morgan, is social comparison. Even if we're doing well, we just can't help but look over our shoulder at other people who are doing better than us. And if you do that, it's hard not to feel inadequate. A related trap in investing is FOMO, fear of missing out. If you see somebody else getting richer from what they're doing with their investments, you're going to think that you need to start taking similar risks to try to catch up.

But there will always be others doing better than you. You don't need to catch them. You just need to play your own game, like Morgan says, and do what works for you. That's what worked for Warren Buffett, for example. He accumulated 99 percent of his net worth after his 60th birthday. Slow and steady can win the race.

And even if we can't pick investments like Buffett, we can try to copy his patience. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting podcast. If you would like to keep your friends and family from a little FOMO, be sure to share this episode with them. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something new, then drop us a five star review on Apple podcast.

And if you like to watch your podcast episodes, you can find all of our episodes on YouTube. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Before we go, I want to thank my production team, Jason, Amelia, Hashim, Furkan, Ambika, Kriti, Aaron, everybody on the team.

You guys are amazing. Thank you for all that you do. This is your host, Halataha, signing off.

[00:00:00] Hala Taha:Morgan, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

Thanks

[00:01:58] Morgan Housel: so much for having me. Happy to be here.

[00:02:00] Hala Taha: I am very excited for today's episode. We've been trying to get on this conversation for like a year now. So I'm going to cut straight to the chase. You are a master of many trades. You're a best selling author, investor, you're even a podcaster.

So how do you define what you do

[00:02:16] Morgan Housel: today? It's such a good question. I would say I don't, I've never tried to put myself in a box and I think I've, I've moved around over the years. I think if you asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have said, I'm an investor who writes and maybe if you asked me today, I would say I'm a writer who invests, like I've just switched around what I enjoy doing.

And it used to be that all of my emphasis and research and enjoyment was investing. I want to scour the world and study investing history and whatnot. And I still love that. I'll always do that. The art of storytelling really bit me 10 or 15 years ago, and that's what I really find joy in doing now. And that's the craft that I want to hone.

And I think jumping around like that has been really important. If you just put yourself in a box and say, I am a blank, you're cutting off so much of the world that you might find enjoyment in and have some talent in doing.

[00:03:09] Hala Taha: Yeah, and

When did you first get interested in finances as a young man?

[00:03:14] Morgan Housel: I think I was 19 when I, uh, first stumbled across investing. I've told this story before, but it'll, it'll always stick with me. When I was 18, my grandparents gave me 1, 000 and I put it in a CD at the bank, Certificate of Deposit, where it earned interest.

And I think I intuitively knew what interest was, but I didn't, I didn't really

get it. And I remember I logged into my account the next day and the balance had grown from 1, 000 to 1, 000. 03. I earned three cents of interest and I remember jaw hitting the floor being completely stunned that I just earned money for doing nothing.

Just for waking up in the morning, somebody paid me. I knew at that moment, I was like, this is the thing. This is what I love doing. And so all throughout college, I wanted to be a hedge fund manager or an investment banker. I think in that era, like the mid 2000s, that's what everybody wanted to do in that field.

And then I kind of stumbled haphazardly across writing. It was never part of the plan. I never wanted to become a writer. And even when I started doing it, I was a senior in college when I got a job at the Motley Fool writing about stocks and I didn't want to do it. I just needed a job, but I fell in love with it.

So I think that in itself is a lesson, particularly for people in college. You might think you know what you want to do and you have a goal and you have a path in front of you. But so many people, including myself, probably you, stumble into what they actually love and want to do serendipitously. So I think it was great that I did not follow the path that I thought I had paved for myself and just stumbled into something else.

Yeah.

[00:04:46] Hala Taha: And it sounds like you had an open mind to explore different skills and see what you were good at. And then. Then you were able to merge finance and writing, which you didn't expect to actually do, into a career as an author, a best selling author at that.

[00:05:00] Morgan Housel: Well, here's what's really interesting. I would not say I had an open mind about it.

I graduated college in 2008 when the world was on fire and everything was burning down. The economy, like no one in finance was hiring. Everybody was laying people off. So I found a job at The Motley Fool as a writer. And I took it because I had to, I had, I had rent to pay. That was why I took it. I didn't do it because I was like, Oh, maybe I like writing.

That'll be fun. I took it because I was like, I need a paycheck today. And they were like the only people in finance who were hiring. And so for the first six months, not only did I not really like it, I was kind of ashamed of it. I was like, I want to be a hedge fund manager. And now I'm a blogger. What is this?

After about a year, I started to really enjoy it and just love the craft of writing.

[00:05:40] Hala Taha: Yeah, and that makes sense because usually if you don't have experience, you're bad at that thing. And then you feel demotivated because you're not that good at it. But over time, if you get better, you can enjoy it and find motivation, I'm sure, in what you're doing.

[00:05:52] Morgan Housel: I think if there's one thing that has really helped me in my career, it's a combination of For the first two or three years, I had to do that job because nobody else was hiring. And then after that, I think I've just been stubborn. I don't know if it's patience or stubbornness or a mix of the two, but I've been writing about behavioral finance every day for 17 years.

And if you do anything for that long, you'll gain some proficiency, no matter what it is. Anybody in any field, if they do it every day for 20 years, will get good at it. And so I think that's been just like sticking with it has been what's helped me the most. Yeah. And I think

[00:06:25] Hala Taha: something that also changed the way that you think about the world is actually an accident that happened when you were younger on ski slopes.

It severely impacted you. It's really, really traumatic and tragic what happened. Can you tell us about that and how it shaped the way that you view the world?

[00:06:40] Morgan Housel: Yeah. So I grew up as a competitive ski racer in Lake Tahoe, California. I was on the Squad Valley Ski Team and that was my life from my childhood and my teenage years.

Skied six days a week, 10 months a year, all over the world racing. It was great. It was like such a cool experience. And there were about 12 of us on the Squaw Valley ski team. We were all best friends. We had been together since we were children, skiing six days a week all over the world. And so one day in, uh, February of 2001, I was 17 years old, and I was skiing with my two best friends.

We had grown up together. They were 17 as well. And we would ski down the backside of Squaw Valley, which is out of bounds, which you're not supposed to do. You duck under the ropes that say, do not cross. But we did this because we were young and rebellious and that's where the best skiing is. It's untracked, you have the place to yourself.

Now when you ski out of bounds like that, when you get to the bottom, there's no chairlift because you went out of bounds. So it would spit us out on this backcountry road and we would hitchhike back. We loved doing this, it was kind of a thrill, like we got to hitchhike, it was all very rebellious, something that 17 year olds do.

So the three of us ski this run. And as we're skiing down, I very vividly remember we triggered a small avalanche. And it's like, it's a feeling that you will never forget because rather than pushing on the ground with your skis to gain traction and control, all of a sudden the ground is pushing you. And avalanches are very powerful.

you'll be skiing down and then all of a sudden you have no control and it'll push you 20 feet this way and then jolt you 30 feet that way. But it was pretty small and it ended pretty quickly and three of us ski down and we like high fived about it at the bottom. We were like, Whoa, did you see that avalanche?

It was so cool. We hitchhike back and Brendan and Brian, my two friends were with me. They said, Hey, let's do it again. That was great. Let's go ski that run again. For whatever reason, I don't really know. I said, I don't want to do it again, but how about this? How about you guys go do it again? And rather than hitchhiking back, I'll drive around to the side of the mountain and I'll pick you up in my truck so you don't have to hitchhike.

They said, great, let's do it. We made that plan. We went our separate ways. They went skiing. I went back to get my truck to go get them. 20 minutes later, I drive around to meet them at the pickup spot where I was going to meet them and they weren't there. And I really didn't think anything of it. I thought that they had priority hitchhiked back and maybe I was late.

It didn't really bother me. And I went back to our locker room where I expected to find them, and they were not there either. And nobody had seen them. At that point, I started to wonder what happened, but I really wasn't worried at that point. Several hours later, Brian's mom called me at home, and she said, Hey, Brian didn't show up for work today.

Do you know where he is? And I told her the truth. I said, Yeah, we skied down the backside out of bounds, and I was going to pick them up, but they never showed up. And I think at that moment, she and I pieced together what probably happened here. Later that day, several hours later, we got the police involved, missing persons report.

eventually turned into, we got search and rescue involved. Search and rescue went on the hill at about midnight to start looking for them. They had these giant portable floodlights and a team of search dogs, search and rescue dogs. And then later the next morning, after about nine hours of searching, when the search and rescue workers got to the area, the out of bounds area where I told them we'd skied, they said it looked like half the mountain had been torn away from what was clearly a very fresh, just massive, enormous avalanche.

And avalanches can be the equivalent of like a tsunami, just unbelievable amount of power. They can snap giant trees with their force. And it had clearly just been a massive avalanche here. The search dogs eventually homed in on a spot in the avalanche field where rescuers who had these giant probe poles found Brendan and Brian dead in the avalanche.

They were buried about six feet under. So of course, I always have to say when I tell this story, I think you and everyone else listening has, has lost somebody dear to them. It's not unique in that sense. I don't want to pretend like it was unique that I had a friend who died. Most people have experienced some version of that.

Of course, it had a really profound impact on me. And one of the reasons why And it took me a while to really piece this together was if I had gone with them on that second run, 100 percent chance I would be dead. It was such a massive, it took out everything in its path. And so then I look back on it and it's like the most important decision that I ever made in my life, by far, was not going on the second run.

And I didn't put any thought into that decision. I didn't weigh the pros and cons. I didn't do a risk analysis. It was just a brainless, dumb decision. Why don't you guys go do it? I'll do something else. And nothing in my life has mattered more. And I think a lot of things in life are like that, where in hindsight, and only in hindsight, do you look back and you're like, the worst or the best thing that ever happened to me came about because of this dumb, brainless decision.

And maybe people listening to this today, If you left your house for work at 8. 53 instead of 8. 54, you may have died in a car accident. You know, I'm making this up, but there's all these just random, like, you understand how the world hangs by a thread of these decisions. And when you come to terms with that, I think it makes you much more humble in your ability and willingness to predict what's going to happen in the future.

When you see how fragile it is, you just realize you have no idea what's coming next.

[00:11:50] Hala Taha: Yeah, and so you accomplished a lot at a young age. Like I said, I hopped on the call and was like, most people I interview are like 50, 60 years old or whatever. You're definitely not that old, right? So you accomplished a lot in your life.

Do you feel like it's because you had this experience at 17 years old, losing your two best friends and realizing how fragile life is, like you better get at it?

[00:12:11] Morgan Housel: I think that would be a small part of it. I think in a broader sense, ski racing was so important because We were independent and treated as adults since we were like 14 and we would travel around with the coaches skiing But the coaches god bless them would just go to bars and then like we were out being adults for better or worse But I think that created an incredible sense of independence and like forced you to grow up very fast That had a big impact on me, but certainly losing my friends at that age Made me realize how fragile life can be.

And I think my perception of risk changed dramatically after that. And after that, I would not take risks that I would have before that, because you see the consequences of your actions.

[00:12:54] Hala Taha: Well, yeah, when you're that young, it's inevitable. A lot of people at like 18, 19, 20, that's when you're doing the most drugs and like all this kind of stuff.

Cause you just think you're invincible. So I have a feeling you probably didn't really do much of that at

[00:13:07] Morgan Housel: all. I think even before that happened, I was always kind of, I had friends who were doing it more than I, I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and say I, I did none of it, but okay, I'll give you a specific example.

I was telling my wife the other day, I remember when I was 18, one of my friends had cocaine and I was like, absolutely not, like not even in the slightest in a million years would I touch that stuff, never. But all my other friends are like, yeah, let's give it a whirl. Let's, let's see how this works. So even at that age, I think just naturally, I had a risk assessment that was different from my friends.

[00:13:37] Hala Taha: So you worked at Motley Fool, like you were saying, you got a job right out of college at Motley Fool, and you actually thought you were going to stay there and work there forever. You bought a house near the headquarters and you thought you'd never leave. So what actually changed your mind to pivot your career a bit?

[00:13:52] Morgan Housel: Yeah, it was one of the hardest decisions of my career because I was really happy and comfortable at the Motley Fool. It's a great place to work, still is, filled with great people. I was happy there. Yeah. Guy named Craig Shapiro, who runs a private equity firm called The Collaborative Fund, reached out to me in 2015.

And he just said, Hey, I like your work. Why don't you come to Collaborative Fund and just keep doing it? Keep doing exactly what you're doing, but just do it here. And I said, Hey, I'm flattered, but I'm really happy here. No, thanks. My wife and I had just had our first kid who was two months old at the time.

I was not prepared to just throw my career upside down, but he kept pushing and kept pushing and kept pushing. And I think what the decision for me eventually became was If I stay at The Motley Fool forever, from the time I was in college until I retire in my 60s, will I regret never trying something different?

And I think after a while I realized that the answer was, was, yeah, I think I might wonder what else was out there. So I, I finally joined Collaborative Fund in 2016. And it's been amazing. You know, that was before I had written books or done anything like that. And Craig was one of the only people, I think, in the world who would say, Morgan, just go do your thing.

I'm not going to tell you what to write or when to write. And I don't write about what Collaborative Fund does. I just, I feel like it's just my own canvas to write about anything that I'm interested in. And so that was a really rare opportunity. Almost every professional writer at an organization, if you write for the Wall Street Journal or Reuters or CNN or something, You have an editor telling you what to write, how to write it, when to turn it in.

And I think that just strips away the art of writing. It just turns it into a job instead of an art. So I really enjoy the artistic side of it. At

[00:15:27] Hala Taha: what point did you decide, hey, I want to write actual books, not just for a blog? Was that a conscious decision? Or was that when you went to this new fund, they told you, hey, we want you to write books?

[00:15:39] Morgan Housel: No, definitely not the latter. And it was a conscious decision for a long time to not write books. I never saw the point in it. And I would always say, look, I blog twice a week. Why does it matter if it's stuffed in between two pieces of cardboard? It's the same thing. It's the same words. Like I'm not, I'm still writing.

So who cares? So that was why I pushed off writing books for years. A publisher came to me in 2014, maybe 2013 and said, hey, like we want you to write a book. And I was absolutely not. I'm not ready. Like I don't want to do it. Sounds hard. And so in hindsight, I'm so glad that I waited because I became a better writer.

I had more content to use for the books. So the fact that I was so stubborn about doing it, it was so beneficial to me. In 2018, I wrote a very long blog post called the psychology of money. It was a 10, 000 word blog post, which is very, very long. Most books are about 50, 000 words. So it was one fifth of a book in a blog.

It was the biggest blog post that I have ever written. It did really well. It was well received. And so that was when I was like, oh, people like this style and format and this substance. And it's not going to take me that much effort to expand what I already have into a book. And so that was when it was like, okay, like I'm finally going to do this.

My wife had convinced me. I don't think I've ever told this story before, but I'll, I'll tell it here. Yeah. Tell me. An author named James Clear, who wrote a book called Atomic Habits. It's the best selling and one of the best books of the last generation. It's just an absolute gem of a book.

And he published his book in 2018. And I think it was seeing the success of Atomic Habits that I was like, I want that. It was not jealousy, it was not envy, it was motivation. What James has, I want to chase it. And James, as you will see when he comes on, is the nicest, most humble. politest guy you'll ever meet.

So the fact that not only had James had success in a book, but I was like, I want to be James. I'm not like, not just a success. I want to be him was like a big motivator for me to be like, okay, like I really want to write a book now. And James and I have become friends since then. It's actually interesting in the summer of 2018, I was in Omaha, Nebraska for the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting.

And we rented a house with like 10 friends and this random guy came over to have dinner. I don't know who invited him. No idea who he was. And he introduced himself. He said, hi, I'm James clear. I'm writing a book called Atomic Habits. It's going to come out in a couple months. And so we had no idea, but like in hindsight, looking back, it's so funny to piece all that together.

[00:18:04] Hala Taha: Yeah, that book is huge. I think to this day, it's still like on all the bestseller lists. So, like you were saying, you wanted to become an author because you saw the opportunity and you were like, I want what James Clear has. How has being an author actually transformed your career? Like, what opportunities have come about?

I'm sure you, like, weren't doing podcasts before you had a book, is that right? I'd

[00:18:26] Morgan Housel: say, in some ways, nothing has changed and in some ways, everything has changed. Nothing has changed because I still write about the same topics. I still read the same topics.

I still sit in the same chair and think the same way. My wife and kids don't treat me any differently. In most ways, nothing has changed. What the book did to me, and it's a very real thing, is it gave me independence, which is a big topic in psychology of money. What you want to use money and wealth for is to gain control over your time.

And if I'm being honest with you, I feel like I'm really opening myself up in this podcast here. Before the book, I was always filled with career anxiety. What happens if I get laid off? What happens if this doesn't work? And it really scared me, particularly as I became a father. I got mouths to feed. What happens if this doesn't work?

That's the one thing that's changed post books. A greater sense of financial independence that means the world to me. And I also, my wife has pointed this out too. I think I've been in a better mental state post books that I have in my life. It didn't make me happier, but I think it removed anxiety from my life.

It's interesting that in a way that was what the book was about. But then because of writing the book, I got to experience it myself, which has been the cool thing. And

[00:19:38] Hala Taha: why do you think that freedom has come about? Is it because you're getting speaking engagements that you're like pulling in extra revenue streams?

Obviously book sales has some revenue streams, but book sales these days. Don't really move the needle, right? Maybe your books do. But what do you think changed in terms of you feeling like you have more freedom?

[00:19:55] Morgan Housel: It's all of the above. It's book royalties. It's speaking. It's all of the above. And we haven't really changed our lifestyle to any meaningful degree.

We live in the same house and drive the same car and whatnot. A lot of that is just accrued to net worth. This is what I write about in Psychology of Money too. Wealth is what you don't see. It's not the cars that you buy. It's not the house that you buy. Wealth is the money that you've saved that gives you independence, that allows you to do whatever the heck you want to do.

And so that's what it's been for us. It's like we've saved the vast, vast majority of it. And because of that, the anxiety that I had of what if back then has largely been stripped away. Now, you will never get rid of what if because what if you get hit by a car, you're never going to remove risk. But a lot of the tangible career risks that I had five years ago has dissipated.

Okay. So your book, Psychology of Money, came out in 2020. It was a huge hit. And you say in the book that money has little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave. So let's start there. I think it's a good foundation of the book. Can you shed some more color on that and give us examples of how behavior can actually trump smarts?

[00:21:09] Morgan Housel: Well, here's how I always define it. If you are the smartest financial mind in the world. You have a PhD in finance from Harvard. You know, all the numbers, you won the Nobel prize in economics, but you don't have control over your behavior. You don't have a control over your greed and fear or patience or temper.

You can, and very likely will go broke. And the flip side of that is if you have no financial education, you don't know anything, you didn't graduate high school. You're a country bumpkin who knows nothing. You do have control over your greed and fear and patience and temper. You have everything you need to become wealthy.

Just yesterday, there was a news story that came out about this guy who lived in the middle of West Virginia or something like that and lived in a trailer. I heard this. He recently died and he left four million dollars to his town. Yeah. That's the perfect example. He does not have the pedigree. He does not have the degree from Harvard.

He did not work at Goldman Sachs, but he was clearly patient. Not greedy, et cetera, et cetera. And because of that, he became very wealthy. So there are very few fields in which that's the case. If you did not go to medical school, you do not know how to perform open heart surgery, full stop, but it's not like that in finance, you don't need the education to do well, as long as you have the behaviors because it's one of the few fields that's like that.

It's easy to overlook what you need. And most people, if they're like, I want to become a good investor, I'm going to go get a degree in finance. I'm going to memorize all the formulas and by and large, that's not what you need. What you need is the behavior. Now, for a lot of people, that behavior is nature instead of nurture.

They're born understanding their brain is wired in a way that lets them do it. And some people are the opposite of that. But just understanding what you need and what you don't is I think the most important thing of doing well with money. And just to

[00:23:01] Hala Taha: dig in on what you said, you also say in your book that We learn traditionally about finance, like it's physics, right?

It's rules, there's laws, but you say we should look at it more like psychology with emotion and nuance. Can you dig deeper

[00:23:15] Morgan Housel: on that? In math and in physics, there's one right answer for everybody. So if I say, what is two plus two? It's four, no matter who you are or where you're from or where you live or how old you are.

But in finance, it's not like that. Because if I say, how should you invest your money? Well, what works for me might not work for you and vice versa, everyone listening, we're all going to come to a different conclusion because our risk tolerance is different. Our social aspirations are different. Our time horizons are different.

Everything is different. So it's much closer to like taste in music. And if I said, what's the best music, there's no one answer for that. It just depends who you are and what you like and how old you are. Music that I liked when I was 15 would be atrocious to me now. So you're going to change throughout time.

That's most of the nuance in finance is just realizing that there is not one right answer. And I think the majority of the time in finance, when people are arguing with each other about how should you spend your money? How should you invest your money? They're not actually arguing. They're not actually debating.

It's just people with different experiences and different risk tolerances talking over each other. And it's the equivalent. If I think X and X is good for me, you might think X is terrible because it would be bad for you. That's the biggest issue with financial debates.

[00:24:29] Hala Taha: So this reminds me of something that you were just mentioning.

The fact that you and your wife have basically stayed at the same goalposts all these years, you know, you drive the same car, you live in the same house. You haven't really increased the amount of money that it costs to live your life, but you've both increased your income. So you're able to save more.

Talk to us about this importance of knowing what your own goalposts is and why that matters.

[00:24:54] Morgan Housel: The first thing I think is important is like we live a great life. We live in a great house in a great neighborhood and we take great vacations. We are not the kind of people Like the guy who's living in the trailer and is like leaving all this money.

There is obviously some balance to it. I think the idea that if your expectations grow faster than your income, you will never ever be happy with your money is one of the most important and powerful realizations in finance. That there are hedge fund managers who make 100 million a year and feel like they're falling behind because their buddies make 200 million a year.

There is no cap to that. Elon Musk displaced Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world. I don't know this to be the case, but maybe that bothered Jeff Bezos because now he's only worth a quarter of a trillion dollars while Musk was worth a third of a trillion dollars. There's no end to financial comparison.

And so, yes, it's important if you want to do well with money to grow your income, invest your money, grow your net worth. But it is equally important and very easy to overlook that you also need to go out of your way to manage your expectations. And just be happy with what you have knowing that if you get the bigger house or the nicer car It's going to feel cool for like four minutes and then you're going to get used to it And it's not going to feel any different And so look we live in a nice house in a safe neighborhood all of that checks all the boxes But there is this thing of Yeah, but if we got a bigger house, we wouldn't be any happier and we might actually spoil the expectations of our kids who think that that bigger house is now the norm.

So this is something that like we always battle with because even for us who believe this and live it, the expectation of, ah, maybe we should get a Range Rover. It's always there. That feeling, that drive is always there. But then just taking a step back and be like, well, is there something else we could do with our money?

Would the vacation make us happier? Would donating it make us happier? That battle is always there, but whenever we've experienced it, and when you go out of your way to keep your expectations low too, then your drive for a better life moves away from what's the next car, what's the next house. Actually, what makes us happier is spending more time with our kids, going for walks with my wife.

So like, hey, can we use our money to do that? Use our money to free up our time so that we can spend more time with our kids and with each other? Because that's definitely going to make us happier, but the Range Rover probably won't. That's the debate that we always have in our heads.

[00:27:15] Hala Taha: Yeah, and as I get older and make more money, I feel like I'm actually becoming smarter about the way that I spend my money because I realized how much I have to work for a certain amount of things.

This reminds me, it was Thanksgiving yesterday, so I saw my family and my sister in law has never worked a day in her life just carrying a 6, 000 bag. Meanwhile, my company made 5 million last year and my most expensive bag is like 3, 000. It made me realize how much different people's priorities are and how people, like, spend their money and, and manage their money is so varied in terms of what people believe success looks like, in terms of how much they want to save, and it's so, so varied across the spectrum.

[00:28:01] Morgan Housel: It's so varied. And this is one thing that I've kind of tweaked my views on in the last couple of years is that the 6, 000 bag for your sister in law, maybe that is the best use of her money. Maybe it's not. But for some people it would be, even if for my wife and I, or maybe you, it would not be to each their own.

And there are a lot of people who will look at how my wife and I spend our money, particularly the few of our friends who would know our income and then look at how we spend would be like, what are you guys doing? Like you are missing out on so much. And I don't think we are. I think we're pretty cognizant of what we're doing and how we spend it and we're doing the best thing for us, which to me, all that matters.

I've never wanted to become the mansion Lamborghini guy. I've always wanted to become the independent guy who can just do whatever he wants any day and no one's going to tell me what to do or when to do it. I'm not like a, I reject all authority kind of guy. I'm not like a hardcore libertarian, but for money stuff, for work stuff, I'm going to have the most fun and do the best work if it's on my own terms.

So the fact that I can write what I want, when I want, and the reason I can do that is because I have some sense of financial independence. I don't need to work for the salaried company. That is the best use of money for me by far. I want to

[00:29:14] Hala Taha: talk a little bit more about the purpose of money. You've been alluding to it.

But talk to us about why independence and autonomy is really the purpose of gaining wealth.

[00:29:24] Morgan Housel: I think back to what we said of everyone's different and maybe the 6, 000 handbag is right for you but not for me. But if there is one common denominator of which almost everybody from every culture and every age is going to get benefit from, it's independence.

People, by and large, do not enjoy being told when to work, how to work, and what work to do. They do that because they have to. They need the paycheck, and that's the way to do it. But when most people, the first taste of independence they have, they're like, Oh, that's good. That's the one I like. And even if you are working for a salaried company, if you have a boss and in a position that gives you independence and autonomy, not only is it more enjoyable, you're going to do better work.

The quality of your work is going to go up if you're doing it on your own terms. It's such a universal driver of happiness. And maybe that's actually the wrong word because independence doesn't necessarily make you happy, but it removes unhappiness. That's an important nuance, but it's really important.

People who are wealthier by and large do not wake up happier. Happy in the sense that they wake up smiling every morning. It's not that, but I think they have fewer bad days. And that is a huge life advantage to remove uncertainty and misery from your life is massive. It's one of the few things in money that tends to be universal.

And it's also very easy to overlook because particularly for young people and particularly young men, the knee jerk reaction of why do you want to become rich is so I can have nice stuff. So I can have a big house and a fancy car. And it's easy to overlook what's actually going to bring you the most joy is using it to give yourself independence.

I

[00:30:59] Hala Taha: love that. So let's talk about emotions and money. What are some of the common emotional pitfalls that a lot of us fall under when it comes to handling our finances?

[00:31:09] Morgan Housel: The two biggest that come to mind, one from personal finance and one from investing. In personal finance, it's social comparison. And there is no such thing as an objective measure of wealth.

Everything is just relative to what other people have. You look at your house, your car, your bank account, and you say, what do I have compared to that person? That person is usually your friends, your neighbors, your co workers, but also just people on social media. That is the fuel to move the goalpost.

Because even if you are doing well, you're going to start looking at people who are doing better than you, and you're always going to feel inadequate. And it's very hard to break that cycle. Social media makes this so ridiculously difficult because now the people who you are comparing yourself to is like the curated algorithmic reel on TikTok and Instagram that knows exactly what's going to make you anxious.

They know exactly which posts are going to make you feel inadequate because that's what's going to get you to stare at it the longest and be like, why don't I have what he or she has? That's like a really difficult trap to break. In investing, the pitfall is FOMO, it's fear of missing out. It's similar to social comparison.

That person is getting richer than me, and therefore I need to take more risks or try to copy that person in order to catch up to him. And the danger in that is that just like in gambling, everyone on social media talks about their wins, never their losses. So the people who look like they are getting so much richer than you, A, probably are not.

Like it's probably some sort of mirage. But because you don't know that you're going to start taking risks that you shouldn't and can't afford to take in 2021, when there was like the Robin Hood explosion in investing, it went supernova at that point, because you had all these 19 year old people who are like, I just made 20, 000 on Robin Hood, and you should be able to double your money every week.

A most of that was bullshit. And B, the people who looked at that said I need to go start trading options too. And you know how that ended for the vast majority of them. It ended in tears and losses And so all of that is driven by FOMO. The idea that someone else is getting richer than you and you need to catch up.

And so if you can break away from that and realize that there are always people who are either look like or actually are getting richer than you. And that's fine. That's totally fine. It's unavoidable. You don't need to catch them. You just need to play your own game and do what works for you is really important.

Yeah.

[00:33:32] Hala Taha: I feel like everything you're saying is reminding me of this bag story from yesterday. That's kind of why I brought it up is because At first I felt bad. I was like, man, she's got a 6, 000 bag. I work so hard. I don't have a 6, 000 bag. And then I realized, well, I could have a 6, 000 bag. These are just not my priorities.

So to your point, everybody has different goalposts. And just because somebody looks like they have a lot of money doesn't mean like behind the curtain that they actually have much going on at

[00:33:57] Morgan Housel: all. I would actually take it a step further with nothing to do with your sister in law. Yeah, nothing.

[00:34:02] Hala Taha: I love my sister in law.

I'm sure she's wonderful. Yeah. It's just the example. Yeah.

[00:34:07] Morgan Housel: When you see somebody driving a 100, 000 car, the only thing you know about their finances is that they have 100, 000 less than they did before they bought the car. You have no idea how much money they have. And I learned about this when I was in college.

I was a valet at a nice hotel in Los Angeles. And these people would come in driving Porsches and Ferraris and Lamborghinis. And then if you get to know them and talk to them, you realize they're actually not that successful. They just spent half of their salary on a Lamborghini lease payment. The vision that they had, the identity of, Oh, this guy's driving a Lambo.

He's clearly super successful. No, you actually don't know that at all. And it's the classic millionaire next door of like, a lot of the people who are very successful are actually driving F 150s. They're actually driving Toyota 4Runners and you would never know it because that's why they're rich is because they actually invested their money.

Instead of spending it on a car they couldn't afford.

[00:34:58] Hala Taha: Yeah, I love it. So related to this, you say that keeping money and getting money are two very different skills. You actually say that if you could summarize money success in a single word, it would be survival. So talk to us about how we can actually keep our money and the main ways that people tend to lose their wealth.

[00:35:17] Morgan Housel: It's just this idea that getting rich and staying rich are two different skills, and they're often conflicting skills, which means it's hard for people to do them at the same time. Getting rich requires. Taking a risk, being optimistic about yourself, being optimistic about the economy and the stock market.

That's what you need to get rich. And staying rich is almost like the exact opposite. You have to be a little bit paranoid, a little bit conservative, scared of risk, cognizant of risk in order to make sure that you're not taking enough risks to throw yourself over the edge. I think one way to summarize it is save your money like a pessimist and invest your money like an optimist.

Save your money with the idea that the world is risky and dangerous and fragile. And there are always recessions and bear markets and pandemics and terrorist attacks and wars and political mess ups that you need to be able to endure financially. But if you can, if you can keep your head on straight during those periods, the rewards for those who stick around are incredible.

I've been investing for 20 years. 2004 is about when I started investing. During that time, there has never been a single moment. In which you couldn't point to a dozen things going catastrophically wrong in the economy. Every single moment, stock market's overvalued. Companies aren't doing very well.

Unemployment's too high. Inflation's too high. Interest rates are too low. At any moment, you could have pointed to a dozen things. And during those 20 years, the stock market is up fourfold. That's how investing works. You have to save like a pessimist to endure all of those dozen things to point at. But if you can stick around, you look back over a 20 year period and you're like, man, I made four times my money during this period.

It's incredible. That's always how it works. Saving like a pessimist, investing like an optimist.

[00:36:59] Hala Taha: So Bill Gates started Microsoft and Bill Gates actually is more of a pessimist. Talk to us about how he's used his pessimism to set up Microsoft for success, because even in 2023, Microsoft is a huge company that's growing and leading the AI charge and everything

[00:37:13] Morgan Housel: like that.

Well, I think Bill Gates is the best example of someone who has gotten optimism and pessimism to coexist. Because when he started Microsoft in the 70s, he took the most optimistic swing that any entrepreneur has ever taken. When in the seventies, he said, every desk in the world needs a computer on it.

That was the craziest idea in the world. Crazy optimism at the same time, from the day he started Microsoft to the day he left in 2000, he ran it as conservatively as you possibly could. He said he always wanted enough cash in the bank so that he could run Microsoft for one year with no revenue, like the most pessimistic way to run a business.

I think that's why they've done so well. It's not that they're always optimistic or they're always pessimistic. They realize that if you can survive all the uncertainty and all the upheaval, then you have a fighting chance to actually compound for 50 years as they have. And very few businesses are actually like that.

If you have a very optimistic CEO, they're like, let's bury ourselves in debt and invest every penny that we have and swing for the fences. And nine out of 10 of those businesses are eventually going to go bankrupt, probably pretty soon. But also, if you're too pessimistic, then those businesses become obsolete.

So, it's getting both of those at the same time that is so rare, but that's really the key to doing well over your entire career, over an entire lifetime, is getting optimism and pessimism to coexist.

[00:38:41] Hala Taha: And I know that you are a strong proponent of having patience and in your book you've got a chapter called Tales You Win and you talk about how sometimes it's that one Picasso painting that an art investor acquires that makes up for all the ones that they don't.

So can you give us some examples of long tail strategy and why

[00:38:58] Morgan Housel: that's important? The painting example is one that I love. It's There were all these art collectors in the last 50 years and a very small number of families ended up with these ridiculous art portfolios. They had Picassos and Monets and like Renoir, like the top paintings ended up in the hands of very few number of people.

How did those art collectors know what was going to become valuable? Because when Picasso was alive and painting, he was not the Picasso who he is today. Most artists become famous after they die. How did these people know what was going to be big? And they looked at their art portfolio and the explanation was those collectors did not know who was going to be big.

What they did is you had a couple of collectors would go out and buy every painting they could possibly get their hands off of. If any painting was for sale, they scooped it up and they ended up with thousands or tens of thousands of paintings. And within that portfolio ended up by chance some Picasso's and some Monet's and some Renoir's, but they didn't know in hindsight what it was going to be or in with foresight, they didn't know.

It was only in hindsight that because they collected so many, a couple of them ended up being worth a zillion dollars. And investing is exactly the same. You have no idea which companies are going to be the next Tesla, the next Apple, the next Amazon. Nobody knows. And people who say they do know are fooling you.

If you own an index fund that owns 3, 000 companies in it, then you know that whatever is going to be the next Tesla is in there, whatever it might be. Always in investing, if you own an index of a hundred companies. Over a 10 year period, you're going to earn most of your returns from five of them. A very small portion is going to return most of them.

And since you don't know what those five are going to be with foresight, the best idea is just own all of them, knowing full well that whatever is going to be the winner is going to be in your portfolio. And that's why you have the statistics about what percentage of active stock pickers outperform index funds.

It's very, very low, particularly if you adjust it for fees and for taxes. Over a 10 or 20 year period, it rounds to zero. Warren Buffett recently said that in his life, he's met 10 people who he thinks can consistently outperform the stock market, consistently pick the right stocks, 10 people that he's ever met in his entire life.

And everyone listening to this podcast, you are not one of them. I'm sorry to say good luck. And so that I think that's the only anecdote to that. And it's the easiest, cheapest anecdote to that. It's just own all of them knowing that you're going to have the winners in there. And speaking

[00:41:30] Hala Taha: of Warren Buffett in your book, you say if he had retired at 60 years old, he might not be the Warren Buffett that we know today.

That's like such like everybody thinks of him as like the most successful investors because he's been investing for 60 years or whatever

[00:41:44] Morgan Housel: it's been. Yeah. If you look at his net worth, 99 percent of his net worth, Was accumulated after his 60th birthday. So he's 93, I think he is now. And 99 percent of that money came after he was 60, which means that if he had retired when he was 60, like a normal person may have, he was a billionaire when he was 60, you would have never heard of him.

The whole reason he's so successful and the whole reason he's now a household name is because he's been, yes, he is a good investor, but the secret is that he's been a good investor for 80 years. And it's just the amount of time he's been doing it for that generates all of that money. He also started investing when he was 11 years old.

That's why he's so successful, because he's been doing it nonstop from 11 to 93. That's actually the biggest takeaway that ordinary people can take from him. Because I and you and anyone else cannot pick stocks like Warren Buffett. But can we try to emulate his patience? Is that something that we could maybe copy from him?

You have a fighting chance of replicating his patience than you do replicating his intelligence. Just understanding why he's wealthy and using that as a takeaway of what we can do and copy him at is, is really important.

[00:42:52] Hala Taha: So this is a concept that I think is from your next book that we're going to talk about.

But what we're talking about is reminding me of this. I know that you actually don't really pay attention to daily news when it comes to changing your stock strategy or picking your stocks. You don't just follow like here, something's hot and then buy it. Right. So talk to us about how you actually decide what stocks you're going to invest in for the

[00:43:14] Morgan Housel: longterm.

So your last point, I keep it as simple as I can. I own Vanguard index funds. I've owned for a long time. It's probably all I will own for a long time. I'm not recommending other people exactly do that. You have to figure out what works for you. And as we talked about earlier, they're definitely people for whom picking stocks is the right strategy for them.

Even if it's not the best for my wife and I, one little quirk I would say is I actually do follow financial news every day, every day. I know what the market did. I read the wall street journal every day because I think it's intellectually interesting. I think it's a fascinating window into how people behave.

But the important thing is that I don't read the Wall Street Journal and then say, I need to go out and buy and sell these specific stocks. It doesn't influence my behavior. I just think it's a fascinating window into how people behave. My personal investing strategy is as, simple and basic as you could possibly be.

My entire net worth is this house, a checking account, Vanguard funds, and shares of Markel where I'm on the board of directors. And that's pretty much it.

[00:44:15] Hala Taha: And where do you park your cash? What's your strategy for cash?

[00:44:18] Morgan Housel: It's spread out over many different Accounts and actually quite a bit of it is now in treasuries because you can earn a great return there spread out over different bank accounts, different brokerages accounts.

Yeah. You know, and the money that I have in short term treasuries, I consider that cash. That's cash like to me. Mmm,

[00:44:35] Hala Taha: got it. Okay, let's move on to your new book. It's called Same as Ever. It covers a lot of the ideas that we've been discussing and much more. So talk to us about why you wrote this book and how it expands on your first book, The Psychology

[00:44:47] Morgan Housel: of Money.

So Same as Ever is about what never changes over time. I think in many ways, Psychology of Money is about the behavior of you, the individual. And same as ever is about the behavior of us, the collective, like what do we, the collective society keep doing over and over and over again? And I've always been a student of, I think, two things.

One is investing and the other is history. I like the intersection of that, like investing history and economic history. I've always been so fascinated in. And one of the things that will really stick out when you're studying any kind of history is. It's really interesting to see what has changed over time.

What do people used to do that they don't anymore? That's interesting. But to me, way more interesting and way more common is when you see what has not changed at all. And when you're studying the history of Americans 100 years ago, or Europeans 1000 years ago, or Chinese 5000 years ago, you see all these kinds of behaviors that would fit in perfectly today.

That have not changed whatsoever. So how people respond to greed and fear and uncertainty and opportunity, that is the same today in the United States as it was in any culture, a thousand years ago, and it hasn't changed at all. And because of that, we know that it's going to be part of our future for the rest of our lives.

And a lot of why I wrote this book was because I kind of got disgruntled at how bad we were as an industry at predicting what's going to happen next. Predicting the next recession, the next bear market, nobody can do it. Nobody has any ability to do it. And so with that, you can either say, nobody knows anything.

Don't even try to predict. No one has a clue. Just kind of become a cynic about it. Or you can say, okay, we don't know what's going to change, but we do know what's not going to change. We do know what behaviors are going to be part of our future, regardless of where the future goes. So let's put all of our emphasis on that.

And so same as ever is 23, very short little stories. About little facets of human behavior that I think have always been with us and always will be and no matter where your future goes or where society's future goes, you know that these little bits that I write about are going to be part of the story.

I

[00:46:54] Hala Taha: love you have it in your book that you say if you travel 500 years back or 500 years forward, the world will look much different in terms of technology and medicine and even language, but human behavior doesn't change much over time. It's so fascinating. It's so true. It takes time. I think thousands and thousands of years for us to like our brain biologically to actually change or evolve.

So we're the same human that we were thousands of years ago, even though so much has changed. And one of the things that doesn't go away for humans is risk, right? This is something that we're going to enjoy to the end of time is this concept of risk. And we touched about risk a little bit earlier, but in your book, you write, the biggest risk is always what nobody sees coming.

So talk to us about these blind risks.

[00:47:40] Morgan Housel: There's a great financial advisor named Carl Richards who has this quote, one of those quotes that just knocked me off my feet. The quote is, risk is what is left over when you think you've thought of everything. So you can spend all day trying to predict the next risk in your personal life or in the economy and for society.

And that's great. You should do that. But then when you are done with that exercise, the thing that is not on the list is what's actually the biggest risk that you're going to face. Think about what the biggest risks we've dealt with in the United States over the past couple generations, Pearl Harbor, September 11th and COVID are probably the three biggest societal shocks that we've dealt with in America.

And the common denominator of all three of those is that nobody, certainly no ordinary Americans saw those coming until the day that they happened. In all those situations, there was no economic outlook, there was no analyst forecast, there's nobody on the news warning you about these things. That in one day utterly transformed the world that you lived in.

And so the biggest risk is what you didn't see coming. And the fact that people didn't see coming is what made it dangerous because they were not prepared emotionally, financially, logistically, they were not prepared for these things to happen. So when they hit, it was like red alert, what do we do now?

And it's always like that. I think in any given year, it is like that. What is the biggest worldwide news story in 2023? It's probably, I hope it's going to end up, hopefully nothing bigger than it happens, will be Israel and Hamas, will be the biggest story of 2023. Of course, there has been tensions, to say the least, in that region for literally thousands of years, but how many people in January of 2023 predicted that that would be the biggest news story?

Maybe there were some people who were on the ground and had a greater sense, but by and large, ordinary people watching the news, it was not on their radar whatsoever. Same with in 2019, if you were looking at the biggest risk for 2020, nobody said a viral pandemic, that's going to close down the schools.

Nobody said that 2001, nobody sees nine 11 coming. You can play that game all day long. And so because of that, you can stay with. A lot of confidence that the biggest risk over the next year and over the next 10 years is something that you and I and none of us are even thinking about because it's always been like that.

To your

[00:49:51] Hala Taha: point, I'm Palestinian and I didn't even see it coming. I was just like, wait, what happened? These big stories, they blow you away. By surprise, how can we prepare for these risks if we don't know what they're going to be? How can we prepare accordingly?

[00:50:06] Morgan Housel: By definition, you can't. That in itself, that realization and that mindset is really powerful in itself because you stop pretending that you can predict.

There's a great quote from Nassim Taleb where he says, invest in preparedness and not in prediction. So one way that I think about that is Think about earthquakes in California. California knows that there is going to be a major earthquake in the future. But everybody also knows that you can't predict when it's going to come.

It's impossible to predict what day it's going to happen or what year it's going to happen. So because of that, you're just always prepared. They build buildings that can withstand it no matter when it comes. They don't like, you know, oh, an earthquake is going to come in December. So let's retrofit the buildings then.

You're always prepared for it. And I think that's how you should think about economic risks, recessions and bear markets and job losses. You have no idea when it's going to come. So don't try to think, Oh, once you see a recession coming, then you'll start to save money. No, it could happen tomorrow. So always be prepared for it.

I think that idea of having expectations instead of forecasts. It's the only way to really survive in that world where risk is what you don't see.

[00:51:11] Hala Taha: Yeah. That makes sense. And another key concept that you talk about in terms of human behavior is pushing too far too fast. Now you say that this is something people do in investing.

You say it's also something people do with their companies. So can you talk to us about that?

[00:51:25] Morgan Housel: Yeah. Whenever you have something good, you have an investing strategy that works or a company that's going well. The very normal knee jerk reaction is Great. Let's make it go faster. Let's make it bigger. Let's milk it.

Let's push it as hard as you can. You do it with noble intentions. You're like, I don't want to leave money on the table. If I have this golden goose, let's keep milking the goose. It happens all the time. Like in investing people who are doing well, start using leverage where they start making bigger bets, more concentrated bets in businesses.

When it's going well, it's like, let's raise more money and grow faster, faster, faster, faster. And it is such a common story that those investors, those entrepreneurs, or even in your own individual career. You eventually realize that there was a natural speed limit to what you're doing. And if you go over the speed limit, you're going to get in trouble.

And you only know where that speed limit is in hindsight when you've gone past it and you get a speeding ticket, so to speak. And so you see this with every successful business. The example I use in the book was Starbucks 15 years ago. And maybe most people don't remember this now, but there was a period in the early and mid 2000s where Starbucks was opening a new store on every street corner, like every couple of hours.

It was just like this absolute proliferation of Starbucks stores. And because of it, the quality of the coffee and of the food plunged. The company's only goal was to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And the quality of the stores just disintegrated. And Starbucks had a really rough period because of that. And in hindsight, they talked about, they're like, look, the natural growth rate.

That we could sustain the quality of the product. We way exceeded. We pushed it way too hard. And because of that the business broke for a period of time. There's so many examples of that of like you have a good legitimate business That is working and customers love you and they will pay you But if you try to take that and just say let's try to make it go twice as fast It's probably going to break so understanding the natural speed limit and size of whatever you're doing Is a really critical aspect of what you are doing any

[00:53:22] Hala Taha: guidance for us to understand like hey This is a red flag that I'm pushing too hard and that I should just calm down a bit with what I'm

[00:53:30] Morgan Housel: doing.

Let's use the Starbucks example. The reason people love Starbucks was not necessarily because it was on every corner. It was because they liked the quality, the food, they liked the taste. And once your ability to scale takes precedence over that, then you know exactly what's going to happen. So understanding, I think this is such a basic comment, but it's so easy to overlook.

Understanding why you are successful is the key to doing this. And a lot of people. They don't actually understand why consumers like them or why their boss appreciates them. And because of that, they overlook what is actually needed to keep this going. And once you have an honest assessment of customers like me because of X, then you realize any deviation away from that.

And of course, you're going to lose what made you special to begin with. I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

[00:54:16] Hala Taha: Yeah, I think that's great advice for all the entrepreneurs tuning in. So something else that you talk about in the book is stress. You say that stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can't.

Talk to us about why stress sometimes can be a good thing.

[00:54:30] Morgan Housel: We look back historically, the biggest periods of innovation and new technology and productivity growth without exception happened during periods when the world was. On fire, so to speak. Like the most productive economic decade that's ever occurred is the 1930s during the Great Depression, when the economy was the biggest train wreck it had ever been.

Because every business in America woke up and they're like, if we don't find ways to get more productive and get our act together, we're going to go out of business tomorrow. And that as a motivator, that fear as a motivator creates the biggest productivity boom we've ever had. The other was World War II and the Cold War.

The incentive to figure things out was so extreme because if we didn't figure things out, Adolf Hitler was going to control the world next year. And that kind of incentive created this technology boom of the likes the world has never seen. What do we get out of world war II? We got nuclear energy, rockets, jets, penicillin, microwaves, radar, eventually with the cold war satellites, all of these things that benefit you and I today that happens specifically because of the stress and anxiety of the war, and you can maybe able to say this with COVID in hindsight too, like it's tragic and deadly as it is.

If it unleashes the scientific boom as it has, that maybe 20 years from now is going to benefit us in ways that we can't even fathom today. Using the phrase silver lining, To COVID is a step too far because it's killed like 10 million people, not say like, Oh, that's a great thing, but it's always the case that you look back and you're like, Hey, despite that tragedy, we got this incredible new innovation because of it.

That's making life so much better today. So everybody wants a world in which everything goes great and there's no uncertainty. There's no bad times. Of course, that that sounds like a great world, but in that world, the incentive to improve would diminish greatly, and it's always the stress that creates the biggest improvements.

I

[00:56:33] Hala Taha: love this concept because it's so true. Constraints, deadlines, even if you think about your own self, if you know that you have a deadline tomorrow. your procrastination releases and you can just get your shit done because you know the deadline is tomorrow. It really helps you become more creative, helps you step on the gas in terms of completing whatever you need to complete.

So what you're saying totally makes sense in terms of big disasters in the world and how it can actually foster lots of innovation and creativity because our backs are against the wall. We basically have no choice but to get it done now.

[00:57:05] Morgan Housel: Yeah, I think for writing books, one of the biggest benefits that a publisher provides is a deadline.

It's not necessarily that they're going to help you write the book, so to speak, but they're going to tell you, you have to turn in your manuscript on this date and that, that'll get your ass in gear.

[00:57:19] Hala Taha: Okay, so one of the last ones I'm going to ask you about this book is incentives. So you've got a chapter in it, in your book, where you quote Benjamin Franklin, who once said if you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.

So talk to us about incentives, what we need to watch out for in terms of how incentives can trick us into doing things that we already know are wrong.

[00:57:40] Morgan Housel: I think there are, it's very often the case, not always, this is not black and white, but it's often the case that if you see somebody doing something that you find morally wrong, Or just something that you disagree with.

You are probably underestimating the odds that you would do that exact same thing if you had their incentives. And I saw this first hand during the financial crisis of 2008 when a lot of Americans rightly pointed at Wall Street bankers and said those greedy bastard bankers will ruin the economy. And maybe like that was not necessarily the wrong criticism, but I think what people overlooked is that if you worked at Bear Stearns in 2006 And they said, Hey, package these subprime bonds and we'll give you a 6 million bonus.

You would have done it too. You would have done the exact same thing if you had that incentive dangled in front of your face. And so I think we underestimate the boundaries of our morality when we don't understand the power of our incentives. Everyone thinks, Oh, my moral boundaries are right here. But if you had different incentives, you'd be like, Oh, maybe I can shift them out a little bit.

And you don't even know you're doing it. It's subconscious. Everyone is so influenced by these incentives. And at every level. When you're looking at World War II, how could the Germans possibly have acted like this? I think when you look into what the 1930s were like for them, the incentives, the incentives to go along with it, the incentives to not want to be an outsider, the incentives to do what you're told, it's not to justify anything in the slightest.

But if you're looking for an answer of how can people do that thing, whatever that thing would be, in business, in wars, whatever it'd be, the answer is usually some sort of incentives. And it's not even a financial incentive. There are social incentives. There are tribal incentives. There are political incentives to do things that you would otherwise find repugnant, but you do it because the incentives push you to do it.

That's

[00:59:24] Hala Taha: super insightful. The last question I'm going to ask you about your book in terms of a concept is you talk about permanent and expiring information. And I love the distinction that you draw between these two. And I hope today's interview is going to be permanent information for our listeners, but can you explain what you mean between the difference of the two?

I

[00:59:42] Morgan Housel: mean, one, one way as someone who writes books and say, one of the best advice that I've ever heard is if you want to write a book that people will read 20 years from now, write a book that people would have read 20 years ago. Make sure that what you're writing about is timeless. And I think we can say that about this podcast.

I think if we had a time machine and someone listened to this podcast in 2003. 99 percent of what we said would be relevant. So you have to understand what kind of information is expiring if you're watching the stock market Oh microsoft missed quarterly earnings by one penny per share like that's a expiring information I'm, not going to say it's irrelevant, but it's expiring as a shelf life But if you're talking about how people respond to greed and fear that's permanent that never changes and that will be as relevant 20 years from now as it is today.

So you should put more of your emphasis in learning permanent skills Knowing that they're going to stick around rather than drowning yourself in expiring information that might be relevant for a week or maybe even a year, but it has the shelf life of something that's going to expire.

[01:00:43] Hala Taha: I totally agree with that. Well, Morgan, thank you so much for your time today. I feel like this podcast was filled with so much timeless wisdom about finances.

So I end my show with two questions that we ask all of our guests. The first one is what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to be more profitable tomorrow.

[01:01:01] Morgan Housel: Go out of your way to define your game and realizing that your game might be very different from your co workers game, even your co founders game, your siblings game, everyone is different.

And don't assume that because society tells you that you should have X, that that's actually what you should be chasing. Mm.

[01:01:18] Hala Taha: Back to the goalposts we were talking about before. What is your goalpost, Young and Profiters? And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business and finance.

[01:01:28] Morgan Housel: Realizing that there are probably 10 people in life who I want to love me. My wife, my kids, my parents, maybe three friends. And it's not that I don't care about the opinions of anyone else, but I think it's really helpful to have people in your life who you don't want to disappoint just a few people who are, it's like, it's, that's, that's your North star.

I'm like, am I doing this for the benefit of those 10 people? would they be proud of me? Is this going to help my relationship with them? I think it's just a very strong guiding light. What really matters. And if you're on your deathbed, are you going to care about your net worth or the square footage of your house, or are you going to be proud that?

You are a good spouse. You were a good parent. You were a good friend. You helped your community. Like it's obvious what's going to be more important to you. So like, let's keep that as the focus.

[01:02:15] Hala Taha: I love that. That's great advice. Well, Morgan, thank you so much for joining us on young and profiting podcast.

[01:02:20] Morgan Housel: Thanks so much for having me. You know, young improfiters, this conversation got me thinking about how our finances are so much more about our emotions than we like to think that they are. Understanding how our own psychology impacts our approach to money can keep us from making some huge mistakes down the line. And there's nobody better at showing us how to do this than Morgan Housel.

[01:02:47] Hala Taha: Morgan argues that finance is a lot more like psychology than physics. There's not a single right answer for everybody and every problem, and a strategy that works for somebody else might not work for you at all. We each have our own unique risk tolerances, ambitions, and time horizons. But there are some common emotional pitfalls that a lot of us fall under when it comes to handling our finances.

One huge one, according to Morgan, is social comparison. Even if we're doing well, we just can't help but look over our shoulder at other people who are doing better than us. And if you do that, it's hard not to feel inadequate. A related trap in investing is FOMO, fear of missing out. If you see somebody else getting richer from what they're doing with their investments, you're going to think that you need to start taking similar risks to try to catch up.

But there will always be others doing better than you. You don't need to catch them. You just need to play your own game, like Morgan says, and do what works for you. That's what worked for Warren Buffett, for example. He accumulated 99 percent of his net worth after his 60th birthday. Slow and steady can win the race.

And even if we can't pick investments like Buffett, we can try to copy his patience. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting podcast. If you would like to keep your friends and family from a little FOMO, be sure to share this episode with them. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something new, then drop us a five star review on Apple podcast.

And if you like to watch your podcast episodes, you can find all of our episodes on YouTube. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Before we go, I want to thank my production team, Jason, Amelia, Hashim, Furkan, Ambika, Kriti, Aaron, everybody on the team.

You guys are amazing. Thank you for all that you do. This is your host, Halataha, signing off.

Hala: Yeah. Haley, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

Haley: I'm so excited to be here.

Hala: I'm so happy that you're here and that we get to hang out in person. And before we get into finance, budgeting, investing, you say that a lot of people are getting financial advice for an America that, like, doesn't really exist anymore.

You say that the American dream is dead, and you also say that long live the new American dream. So let's start there. What is the new American dream to you? Paint that picture for us.

Haley: The new American dream is owning your time and having freedom.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: For our parents' generation, it was so much about being locked into these corporate jobs for, you know, 30 to 40 years.

Mm-hmm. You get your pension, and then there's sort of this- Yeah ... light at the end of the tunnel where you're gonna have that retirement and your life's really gonna start when you're, like, [00:01:00] 65 or whatever. But what I think is that with Gen Z and millennials, we want to enjoy our time now.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: We don't wanna be beholden to a corporation because we know that they're not loyal to us.

Mm-hmm. Um, and we want freedom.

Hala: Yes. Yeah, you talk about something called a freedom fund- Yes ... which I think is, like, a really cool. It's the ability to have money so that you can say no to things.

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: Talk to us about the freedom fund. Why is it so important to you as, like, a principle?

Haley: Well, I actually call it an, a freedom fund, but also F-you money.

Hala: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Haley: Yeah. Which is, and I'm sure you feel like that too- Mm-hmm ... 'cause it's, you know, like, you're rich, where, you know, the more money that you have, the more power you have, which is why I'm also so passionate about financial literacy- Mm-hmm ... and, uh, you know, empowerment for women- Yeah

because for our, for women, like, for, we couldn't have our own credit cards till 1974.

Hala: I know. I- that's crazy. [00:02:00] Like, it really wasn't that long ago.

Haley: It really wasn't. When the Knicks... I'm a New Yorker, so- Mm-hmm ... when the Knicks won the championship, uh, this past year, the last time that they had won an NBA championship, women couldn't have credit cards- Wow

which is so crazy. I was like, that was, like, a weird marker for me.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, but yeah, the, I think it's so important to have money because it allows you to walk away from things that aren't serving you, whether that is a job that you absolutely hate, or a partner that you, you know, can't stand- Mm ... but you feel trapped by.

Yeah. I have a story in my book, Future Rich Person. I asked her if I could include this. Yeah. One of my best friends, Elizabeth, was in a relationship with this guy, Charlie, who's horrible. Mm. And he, but they lived together and- He's, like,

Hala: a horrible boyf- like-

Haley: Horrible boyfriend. Okay. Like, actually physically pushed her around a bit.

Like- Oh my

Hala: God ...

Haley: just, like, bad news. Kept her really down. Like, she just, she lost her sparkle 100%, but- Mm ... [00:03:00] they lived together, and they had a dog, and he was tall, which I feel for women- Yeah ... can really get you where you're like- Yeah ... "Okay, on paper, though, he's got a lot of these things that I want- Mm-hmm ... and also, like, what do I do if I leave?"

Like, I can't afford a new mattress. Yeah. I can't afford a down payment. But she realized, like, the urgency of the situation, and then started to put money away in that freedom fund, and got what she calls her freedom apartment- Mm ... which she is still in to this day. And it- Good

Hala: for her.

Haley: Yeah. It's above a gas station.

It's so small, but it's the best because it's hers, and she left and, you know, that was, like, a huge moment in her life where she was able to choose herself- Yeah ... and to me, a moment of such financial empowerment that shows you that, like, when you have money, it really does give you the ability to choose.

Hala: Yeah, and I feel like it's important to say, it's important to have that even if you're in a healthy relationship. Even if things are going amazing, you should also have your own money. How do you think about, like, finances within relationships?

Haley: Well, I mean, it's [00:04:00] interesting 'cause I'm in a relationship, and we live together.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, and but, you know, what's interesting about our situation is that we actually make similar amounts- Mm-hmm ... which I feel is very uncommon.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: You never really make the same amount as your spouse, so because we make the same amount of money, we split rent 50/50.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, and I always say you should always split rent based on income versus just a s- you know, percentage- Yeah

50/50 because one person might be crying into their ramen on the first of the month, and the other- Mm-hmm ... feels rich just because money is so relative to how much you have coming in.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: So for us, it works well, but I think the biggest thing is, A, to make money non-emotional in the relationship. Mm-hmm. So it's something that you can bring up in the same way where it's like, "Did you take out the trash?"

Yeah. "What, what are you doing tomorrow?" Mm-hmm. "Should we go to that wedding we just got an invite to? Did you pay your half of the rent?" Like, it shouldn't be this thing that we're so scared of and emotional to talk [00:05:00] about.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: That, I think, gives it this weird power to control us, and that's a bad thing.

Hala: Is he your boyfriend?

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: So do you guys already have, like, a shared bank account or anything like that? Bless you. Bless you.

Haley: So sorry. Um, no, we don't have a shared bank account. Um, but I think when we... You know, the moment that we are legally tied-

Hala: Yeah ...

Haley: where it is marriage-

Hala: Mm-hmm ...

Haley: then we'll get one, and that's what I believe in, is having a shared account for shared expenses and then having separate accounts for your expenses because I will never, you'll never catch me dead- Yeah

sharing money 100% with someone. I always have to have money that allows me to leave-

Hala: Yep ...

Haley: that allows me to do whatever I want. I don't wanna ask for permission. I love my financial freedom- Mm-hmm ... and that's something that I guard with my life, and I think he does too.

Hala: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So my boyfriend's [00:06:00] actually six years younger than me, so I make more money than him right now, but I, he's gonna be really rich.

Yeah. So he's an entrepreneur as well. And so, um- Uh, it's funny to me because when I think about, uh, finances, it's like I also want to have, like, financial freedom. But I have friends where, for me, like, we're about to move in and we're gonna split rent 50/50, and like, that's okay for me. I have a lot of girlfriends that, like, they'll be like, "That is crazy.

I would never split the rent. Like, the man has to pay rent." I know. But they're not making, those women are not making as much money as me. Yeah. So I just feel like they don't understand that it's like, well, like, when, when you're a woman who's, like, m- the breadwinner making a lot of money, I'm okay to split the rent 50/50.

Haley: It's interesting 'cause there's all of these articles coming out and data coming out about Gen Z women who are making so much more money than their partners and pulling them along.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And [00:07:00] I actually have an adverse reaction to when women take care of men versus when a man takes care- I know ... of a woman.

Hala: It was hard for me, like, to, like, be like, well, like, a part of me was like, "Well, I worked so hard. I wanna, like, stock up my money. I don't want to pay rent." But at the same time, it's like that's not really fair.

Haley: Well, I always... The way that I look at it is people get into relationships for a lot of different reasons.

Like, I have friends who really are solving for a rich guy, and I don't shame them for it because that's what they need to feel safe. You know? A lot of them have come from a lot of financial instability. They're not in careers where they are going to make a lot of money, and in order for them to actually be in a healthy relationship, for them, healthy looks like the g- guy really taking care of them.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: And even though that maybe is uncouth and, you know, every... I believe, you know, every woman should have their own money, all these things, I also know that there are exceptions to that rule.

Hala: [00:08:00] Yeah.

Haley: Be- when you have financial freedom in the way that I have or you have, we're not solving for anyone to take care of us.

We're solving for one thing, and that's love. Yeah. And that is a privilege.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And it's something that I take really seriously and I talk about a lot with my partner, and it's really cool that it's like- Mm-hmm ... we're not looking for anything from the other person except for just to be that emotionally supportive- Mm-hmm

partner, my best friend, person I wanna build a life with, but I'm not looking for them to take care of me.

Hala: Totally.

Haley: And that... But that's something that is unique to our situation.

Hala: Yeah. And it's an advantage 'cause we can kind of pick somebody who really matches our personality- Mm-hmm ... who we really enjoy their time.

Yeah. And not really have to worry about their bank accounts too much.

Haley: Yeah, which I'm telling you, like, not... That's not what everyone... But I also like, that's not what everyone looks for.

Hala: Yeah. It's not what everybody wants.

Haley: Yeah. And that's okay to, if you're looking for something else. Yeah. But in, you know, when you really prioritize your financial freedom, I think that that is an advantage.

Hala: Mm-hmm. Speaking of that, like, this tradwife trend-

Haley: Mm-hmm ...

Hala: [00:09:00] is so popular, and this, this trend of, like, being dependent on your husband and kind of glamorizing it. How do you feel about that?

Haley: I talk a lot about stay-at-home spouses.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: I think it's really interesting because- Being a mother obviously is such a big job.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And I, you know, it, y- a lot of women, I think they have so much on their plates when they're taking care of kids, that if they have a partner who then says, "I'll take care of the money," it feels like, "Great. One less thing off my plate." Yeah. I'm taking care of the groceries. I've gotta figure out the soccer practice.

Like, you know, little Sam is sick. Mm-hmm. You know, all these things that I have on my plate. He's gonna do the finances. What a gift. But that's the one thing that you should never give up control of. Um, and I think that with tradwives, it's really interesting because they make so much money. [00:10:00] Mm. So it's this glamorization of a lifestyle that actually is a business.

Hala: You're saying like the tradwife

Haley: influencers. The tradwife influencers.

Hala: Yeah. Yeah. It's like they're actually making money by- Mm-hmm ... being a housewife, but a normal person not filming their life-

Haley: Is

Hala: it- ... is not making money like that.

Haley: And I don't think that it's wrong to stay home with your kids, but I think that you need to have a spousal IRA, which allows you to put money away for your retirement even if you don't have taxable income, which is so- Mm

important. You need to make sure that your name is on all of the assets. Um, and you need to make sure that you're a part of the money situation and that you also have your own money even if you are, like, not the, the earner.

Hala: Yep.

Haley: That you still have money on the side that allows you to leave and to do what you want with no questions.

Hala: Totally.

Haley: Um, yeah.

Hala: I love that. Uh, another trend that I see online a lot, and it's been around for a long time, is girl math, right?

Haley: Like- Oh, I hate girl... I'm like the number-one hater.

Hala: Oh, you hate girl math?

Haley: Actually, like I've never bullied anyone online.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: But I did [00:11:00] come after girl math and then I felt bad 'cause the girl who started it was like, "I didn't mean to."

Like, in my DMs. And I was like, "Girl, like, love you to death, but also, like, this was bad. Like, we do have to talk about it."

Hala: Yeah, because it kind of makes, like, financial irresponsibility, like- Mm-hmm ... um, cute. Exactly. You know? And like, like, it's not a big deal to be dumb with your money, and also makes women look dumb.

Haley: Makes them look dumb, but it also is this feminization of being stupid.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Where it's, like, considered this feminine attribute- Mm-hmm ... to be stupid with your finances that really just keeps us so stuck.

Hala: Yep.

Haley: Um, and you, I see it a lot on Instagram- In reels, and I often will post them and be like, "What is this content?"

Yeah. Where it's like, you know, a woman pranking her husband by telling him that she's gonna pay the mortgage. Mm. Or, you know, going to Target and spending [00:12:00] $200 but meaning to have just bought toothpaste, and like making a reel about that 'cause it's, she thinks it's so funny and so relatable. Just like these moments where it's clear that the per- the woman is not in financial power-

Hala: Yeah

Haley: and that she doesn't want to be.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And that it's like cute to not be. Yeah. And I just really don't think that we should glamorize it.

Hala: Yeah. And also, it's like boys also make financial mistakes. There's boy math, too.

Haley: Yeah. I mean, even, and if you look at sports betting and prediction markets, people are getting into so much debt, specifically men from that, and it's never looked at the same way as when women spend.

You know, women, they, we tell, they tell us that we're so frivolous with money. Mm-hmm. That, you know, we can't hold onto a dollar, we're buying lattes, we're online shopping, and you know, we're so shamed. Yeah. But then men will go and, you know, spend $30,000 betting on a parlay.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And it's [00:13:00] just totally normalized.

Hala: It's so true. It's, it's like really unfair to think about it that like women can spend money and then for us it's like a waste. For men who spend money on their cars and whatever it is, it's like seen as like normal.

Haley: Well, it's just crazy how much we're socialized to stand in our own way with our finances.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: I think that definitely happened to me. Um, and it wasn't until what I call like my aha money moment- Mm ... that I really was like, "Oh, this isn't that hard. I can do it." Tell

Hala: us about that.

Haley: Well, I think that we all ha- you either have it or you can really manufacture it, and that's why I love money books and why I wrote Future Rich Person because I really believe in the power of re- I really believe in the power of reading.

Wow. Brilliant, Haley. But it's like I read so much and it's changed my whole life.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Um, and you know, it's like a way to really shift your mindset. So if you're someone who feels stuck in your finances and you can't really find that oomph and that motivation- Yeah ... read a money book. Try Future Rich Person.

If it doesn't work for you, there's so many other great ones out [00:14:00] there. Um, but mine's like really personable and funny. I'm a comedian. Yeah. And so I, you know, it's definitely a page-turner. Like, people always message me like they read it in one day. So it's... I don't think there is like another money book like that where you would- Mm-hmm

binge read it. Um, but I really think that it's important... So what it leads to is having that money a- that aha money moment.

Hala: Okay.

Haley: And for me, that happened when I had my first full-time job and I was working for Lorne Michaels, who started SNL. Mm. And the first day, they asked me about 401s and health insurance, and up until that point, I had been sort of like Girl Mathy, not taking my finances so seriously, assuming that, you know, my dad or- Mm-hmm

a boyfriend was gonna take care of it and it wasn't for me. And then, but I took my career seriously. Mm. And so when I realized that there was a tie between how I would be perceived at work and my lack of financial literacy, it gave me the motivation to then actually [00:15:00] understand these topics-

Hala: Yeah ...

Haley: which then led to me realizing that I could totally understand them, they weren't hard at all- Mm-hmm

that I had been 100% catfished by the whole thing, and that, you know, financial literacy really just requires like sixth or seventh grade math and some automation, you could be a millionaire.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And I became Mrs. Dow Jones, which I- Yeah ... obviously took it really far. But you know, it can come from- You know, when you lose your job and you have to, and you run through your savings and you realize that you have to figure things out.

Or a lot of people have their money, their aha money moment when they're at a big life s- moment. Mm-hmm. So like maybe you're having a baby. Yeah. I see that a lot, where it's like it suddenly snaps you into gear and you're like, "I'm an adult. There's gonna be another kid, another person relying on me. I need to get it together."

Yeah. Just that moment where you sort of face yourself in the mirror and you realize you can't run from it anymore.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Um, and even if, like I said, even if you don't have that mo- motivation, you can manufacture it just by taking in good financial content.

Hala: Mm. I wanna double tap on something that you just mentioned.

Mm-hmm. You felt like you were being [00:16:00] catfished. Yeah. Like what are the ways that you feel like the financial system doesn't set us up for success?

Haley: Oh my gosh. I mean, well, first of all- The financial system is profits off of your ignorance. Mm. So they're not motivated for you to understand things.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: There's no incentive for a bank- Mm-hmm ... or for a credit card company to teach you. Because the less that you know, the more that you're gonna pay in fees, and fees are what keep the whole financial system going.

Hala: Yep.

Haley: Be- and fees really come from a lack of understanding. Mm-hmm. So it's like you're paying, uh, you know, financial manager fees to manage your finances.

Yeah. 'Cause you- Late

Hala: fees for credit card

Haley: debt. Late fees for credit card debt, fees for banks, fees for this, fees for that, and they really add up.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, and that all just comes from, you know, a lack of understanding that, of [00:17:00] course, the financial services industry could work on. Yeah. But instead, they mask everything in so much jargon and, you know, vests and, you know, this allure of Wall Street, and it just feels, you feel so othered from the system-

Hala: Yeah

Haley: that you assume you couldn't possibly be trusted to take control, and so then you hand over the reins to someone else, or you ignore it.

Hala: Mm. You've got this structural barrier quiz- Mm-hmm ... in your book. What are some of the questions that you ask people to kind of unpack whether there's, like, a real barrier?

Haley: Um, well, you know, I start the book going through your money mindset. Mm-hmm. Because I've worked with tens of thousands of people on their finances, and what I've realized is, you know, I can tell you anything about emergency funds- Mm-hmm ... and how to invest in the stock market, and it all sounds great, but you're never actually going to make a change unless you unpack your why.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And what's holding you back, and what are the stories that you're [00:18:00] telling yourself about money that are keeping you stuck.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And it's funny, because I really look at financial wellness, emotional wellness, and physical wellness sort of in the same way.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: Where I think that you need all three to really live a balanced, good life.

But when it comes to emotional wellness, it's so normalized to have a therapist, right? Yeah. You go to lunch. Your girlfriend's like, "Oh, my therapist said this." Mm-hmm. I know all my friends' therapist names. It's like Barbara, Hillary, this, that. I'm like, okay, that was a good take that she had this week. Then when it comes to physical wellness, you know, we have trainers.

Yeah. You go on YouTube, you watch videos, you hire someone, you go to a class, whatever it is. Mm-hmm. You have people who are, you know, teaching you.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: But when it comes to money, we don't have any of that. Yeah,

Hala: nobody wants to talk about it.

Haley: No one wants to talk about it, and we are all so stuck with our own shame from not knowing.

But what I like to remind people is every person that you admire financially- Oprah, Warren Buffett, Rihanna, any of these people. Mm-hmm. First of all, they've definitely made money [00:19:00] mistakes.

Hala: Yep.

Haley: And I could name so many from celebrities. You know I'm like an encyclopedia of that. So we can get into that. But they also started the same place that you did, which was at zero.

Mm. And the only difference between you and them is that they took the time and they believed in themselves enough to learn.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And isn't that sort of cool?

Hala: It is cool. It's cool that, like, you can actually make a change- Mm-hmm ... and, like, make a difference. Um, so one of the things that I'm noticing online is that a lot of people are, like, showing off, of course, right?

Yeah, of course. Peacocking. Like, social media's a place where people are showing their new bag, their new watch, their new car. Everybody looks a lot richer than they really are. Mm-hmm. And you've got this really great story in your book. I think the girl's name is, like, Vera?

Haley: Vera, yeah.

Hala: Vera. Uh, tell us the story of Vera and how, you know, she looked really rich but, you know, her bank account said another story.

Haley: Yeah, so I was speaking [00:20:00] at Harvard, and after I did a meetup with some followers, and this girl showed up and I remember noticing her because she just... Well, I totally fell for it, by the way, all of her peacocking. Really? I was like, I loved her outfit. She had, like, a Row bag. She had a stack of Cartier bracelets.

Mm. You know, she had a fabulous, like, matching set on. She had designer sneakers. I was like, damn, who is this baddie? Yeah. Like, this is crazy. And then after the, you know, meetup ended, she was like, "Can I steal you for a second? Can we just get a drink? I, like, really need to talk to you." So I was like, "Okay." So then we sat down and she proceeded to tell me all about her debt and how she had just been laid off- Mm

and her student loans, and how she was just basically staring down the bottom of the barrel. And it was, like, this really dark moment in her life financially. And I looked at her, and I was, like, so confused because on, you know, if you'd seen her on the street, you would have thought, [00:21:00] "That's someone who has so much money."

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: But it was all a disguise to distract you from what was actually going on with her finances, which I think is sort of the whole theme on social media, is this needing of more to look like you have m- like, to basically compete with others instead of focusing on actually winning your own game.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: And the only way that you grow wealth is to spend less than you make, and to invest that difference.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And I call that in the book action money. Mm-hmm. And so if you d- take action with your money and put it in the stock market, you're gonna grow a lot of money. Yeah. But if you take action with that money and go on Revolve or, you know go- That's

Hala: my guilty pleasure.

Haley: go on Mytheresa or whatever it is, and just buy stuff that makes it look like you have money, you're never gonna actually grow wealth.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: Um, uh, but it's really hard because- When you are online, you see 5,000 ads a day. 20% of what you see on Instagram is an ad. Our parents saw 500 ads a day, which is also [00:22:00] why I talk about the American dream being dead.

Yeah. Because we're also in this hyper-competitive- Yeah ... capitalist environment where we're constantly being fought over for our dollars. Mm-hmm. And then you add in this, like, Apple Pay, like Apple Be Paying, and it's never been easier to buy something. And I fall victim to it too. I, um, bought a dress on Poshmark.

I... Like, a Roberta Cavalli dress- Mm-hmm ... for $200 last night at, like, 11:30 PM. And Poshmark is so... You can't return, so I'm screwed. Yeah. And it's like, I hope it's cute, but it's like, did I need the dress? No.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: Why did I buy it? But it was within two... I- I usually can stop myself, but it was late at night.

Hala: I'm the

Haley: worst late at night.

I was just... Yeah, it's so... And then I- I'm really good at printing the label, sending it back, and I always say to people, like, it's not, you're not gonna ever be perfect with the purchasing. Yeah. But it really, you just have to be on top of, you know, getting the money back. And don't be girl math about it, though.

Mm. When you got the money back, then you're like, "Oh, that's free money." Yeah. [00:23:00] Like, just take the money. Um, but yeah, it's so difficult to hold onto your dollars.

Hala: It is. There's so much to unpack there. Why don't we-

Haley: And by the way, as women too, when you look better, you make more money. Yeah. So there's also this incentive as...

Like, both of us are on camera all the time. We're in media. Exactly. You need to have nice hair. You need to have nice nails. You need to have cute outfits. And like, it's part of the gig, but in the same way, it's so expensive- It is ... and time-consuming and addictive. I find it really addictive.

Hala: It's super addictive, especially for people like us that are, like, influencers- Mm

in this space that always have to be on camera. I don't wanna have... Like, I've so much clothes, and yet I feel like it always looks like I'm wearing the same thing- I know ... 'cause it's like something goes viral, and then you're in the same outfit. Yeah. So it's, it is really hard, but pretty privilege is a thing.

So do we have to spend a lot of money to take advantage of pretty privilege?

Haley: I think there's obviously ways around it. Like, I have a friend, Anna Laura, who's so good at doing her own nails. She has the gel kit at home. She does her own microneedling. She's, like, [00:24:00] just so on top of her at-home beauty. But I think that you don't have to spend on it necessarily.

Hala: It doesn't have to be designer. It

Haley: doesn't have to be designer. I think it... But I think it is important to look put together.

Hala: Yes.

Haley: Uh, you know, my publicist, Katie, is here, and I always use her as an example. She's definitely listening and rolling her eyes. But she always looks really put together, but she does it in a way where it is very discreet.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: So you would never be able to say, "Oh, Katie was wearing this thing." You're just with Katie, and, like, she looks like she's polished.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: So I think that's really, if you have a lower budget, the way to do it, is to go to the stores like Zara or Mingo or these, like, Marshalls has great stuff- Mm-hmm ... like lower priced stores, and find things that aren't trendy, and then build a wardrobe around that-

Hala: Mm-hmm

Haley: is really the key.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: But you can't really get around the power of being well-groomed.

Hala: It's true. [00:25:00] But s- people like us, I think it's more of a problem of, like, this, like, for me, and this is, like, horrible, but, like, sometimes, like, I'd rather go on Revolve and buy stuff instead of looking in my closet and seeing like, "What do I have?"

No, I agree. But like

Haley: Well, the new tab

Hala: feeling ... it's like I'd rather just look on my computer and be like, "I want this new thing," instead of realizing that, like, I've got a big closet of all this stuff that I could just, like, be creative and put together an outfit.

Haley: Oh, I would like to wear something new every day.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: That would be the dream. I think about that, like, I have all these fantasies about if I was uber, uber wealthy, like if I was Lauren Sanchez rich- Mm-hmm ... like, who would my stylist be? Yeah. What would I be wearing? What beauty treatments would I get if there was no- Mm-hmm ... ceiling, you know? And it's, like, sorta blows your mind when you let your mind go there.

Yeah.

Hala: Well, the good news is that you could buy what you want when you work hard, and- Yeah ... you're an entrepreneur, to be honest. Like, I just feel like for me it's not about saving or not spending on what I love. I just think about, like, how do I [00:26:00] make more sales, how do I get more clients, how to grow my network bigger.

Haley: Well, that's really the key. I love that you bring that up, because I talk- I have a whole chapter dedicated to that in the book called Secure the Damn Bag.

Hala: Mm-hmm. '

Haley: Cause I'm so sick of the advice, especially for women, being how to save more.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: I hate saving. Like, I love sa- I ha- I love having savings- Yeah

but I feel really oppressed by the couponing culture. Mm-hmm. I remember when I first started my financial journey, when I had that aha money moment, and I didn't really know where to look, finding myself on a blog that was talking about rewashing paper towels. And there's- Oh my

Hala: God.

Haley: Yeah. There's, like, this intense- form of deprivation that was so not glamorous.

And that's sort of why I started Mrs. Dow Jones, because I wanted it to feel aspirational- Mm-hmm ... to grow wealth. Mm-hmm. But I really think that for women especially, we need to focus on making more versus cutting down less. Of course, you can't outwork a bad diet, you can't- Yeah ... [00:27:00] outwork a bad budget. Like, there's limits to it.

But overall, I think women are severely underpaid. We don't ask for enough, and that focusing on having more money is so much better than putting all your energy into scrimping.

Hala: I totally agree, and I think it's for men, too. I think the key is, like, how do you actually release the ceiling that you have? In my opinion, I feel like if you have the personality for it, everyone should be an entrepreneur- Mm-hmm

and start their own business, and figure out how to make more money, and not just figure out how to, you know, penny pinch. Because I don't think it's gonna be $5 coffees or, like you said in your book, skipping the avocado toast that's gonna get us

Haley: rich. No. No, not at all. It really isn't. And even you know with your journey in media where it really came down to you owning, ownership.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Where it was owning your show, owning other people's shows. Like, that's really what put you in a position of financial [00:28:00] power.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And I think, Jen, that is part of the new American dream.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Is that it's not that people wanna not work. Of course there are people like that of cor- but it's really about being able to work from anywhere, having the flexibility- Yep

having your time back, and then also being in control.

Hala: Mm-hmm. And with AI, to be honest, the traditional job is gonna go away anyway. Yeah. So you better start getting used to selling your skills and figuring it out on your own.

Haley: Yeah. I agree with that. And I do think that there is this- intense moment that we're going through right now of self-reliance, where it used to be that you could sort of hide under the cloak of a company for all those years- Mm-hmm

and they would protect you. And I remember this from my own life. Yeah. That, so I was working for Lorne Michaels- Mm-hmm ... and I thought, sort of in that old American dream way, that, like, I was gonna be in this system, in this company forever.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: Um, and that I was safe. It was this huge sense of relief, because up until that point I had been grinding- Yeah

had been working for myself, and it felt like this, you know, quantum leap to have gotten this opportunity. [00:29:00] And I, you know, then six months in I got laid off.

Hala: Oh, wow. Um- I

Haley: didn't

Hala: know that.

Haley: Yeah. And before that I had been making a lot of content, but I'd been working at a Pilates studio. Mm-hmm. I was a babysitter for a kid named Winthrop.

Yeah. I was, you know, making videos for brands. Like, I was really doing anything that I could to just, like, put the dollars together. Yeah. But, like, nothing had really hit yet, but I was just, I was in my early 20s, I was grinding. And I remember after that moment thinking, "Okay, I can either..." I was working for, you know, in comedy, so I thought, I can, I can go and, you know, the, get on my knees and beg for a job at, like, a Comedy Central or something- Yeah

that's similar. And at that point I think I was making $40,000 a year. It would've been the same amount there. They would've owned all my IP.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: Um, and I would've had to work really hard for no guarantees so that someone else could give me permission to do what I wanted to do. Or I, let me take a [00:30:00] year and see what I can do on my own.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: And so I got a job- Where I was writing videos for the music, uh, company Fuse.

Hala: Okay.

Haley: Yeah. Like, and I-

Hala: I once got a job at Fuse too when

Haley: I was- They were giving them out, girl ... yeah, yeah. Like, they were the best. They were really... I'm like, God, like, thank gosh. Yeah, where'd they

Hala: go?

Haley: I know. Like, but they really had my back.

Like, it was the best. Yeah. And it was only like three days a week, and I'd go... And I didn't really know that much about music, but I'd be, like, writing for all these, like, rappers and, you know- Mm-hmm ... punk artists and whatever, and just, like, making viral videos for them, which, you know, was my bread and butter.

And then working religiously on Mrs. Dow Jones as well, every day posting, waking up. Like, I couldn't go to sleep every day, I remember, until, like, I had done my work for it. Like, I was so focused on the grind. And then by the end of that year, I was in The New York Times- Wow ... which then shifted everything.

Yeah. And then a few months after that, the pandemic started, which was this other boom time for digital media, and so then the career, you know, really started to take off. But [00:31:00] it was because I bet on myself- Yes ... instead of going back into that corporate structure. Mm. And it's not to say that everyone can be an entrepreneur, but I do think that part of the new American dream really is-

Hala: Yeah

Haley: working for yourself- And I feel like- ... 'cause there's no ceiling to how much you can make.

Hala: I was just interviewing... I have another series called How We Profit, where basically I, I interview, like, people who aren't famous but have big businesses- Mm ... and kind of unpack their business models. Cool. And I was interviewing this guy, Ramy, and he said something that was really interesting.

When he decided to be an entrepreneur, he was actually in med school, and he drops out of med school, and he was like, "All of my doctor friends are taking, like, low-paying, free fello- or like, I guess it's low-paying, but, like, fellowships."

Haley: Ooh, my sister's a surgeon, and everyone that... They're so broke.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: It's so crazy.

Hala: And so he's just like, "People are okay when they're, they're gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or, like, whatever to take, like, a free internship, uh, a low-paying fellowship. But nobody's okay with, like- Working for free for a year for yourself

Haley: Yeah, so true. So he- That's such a good point ...

Hala: yeah, so he made- I [00:32:00] love that

this reframe, "I'm gonna do a fellowship of entrepreneurship."

Haley: I love

Hala: that. And that I'm just gonna see what happens and give myself three years, 'cause fellowships in med school are three years. Yeah. I'm gonna give myself three years to figure it out, and if I don't figure out in three years- I'll

Haley: go back

I'll go back. That's so genius.

Hala: Right?

Haley: I love

Hala: that. Yeah, and so, like, having this reframe, especially if you're young, you know, 20s, even 30s, 35, like, you've got some time. Go-

Haley: Yeah ...

Hala: try to figure it out and see what you can sell- Girl, it's like it's not age-dependent ...

Haley: see

Hala: what you're good at. Yeah. Like it- It's not age-dependent

Haley: yeah, 'cause it's, you have one life.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: So if you're miserable, like, and you have that dog in you, go get it.

Hala: Yeah. So, um, I wanna s- go back to your story. I'm, I'm writing my first book.

Haley: Oh,

Hala: congratulations. And thank you.

Haley: It's hard, right?

Hala: It is so hard. It's hard to find the time. Oh my God, it's so hard to find ti- I'm actually hiring a lot so that I actually have time to just work on content.

I'm building offices and studios, writing this book. That's so exciting. It's so much. It's, it's exciting.

Haley: I was so bad with my time during it. Like, I had to do it all on the weekends.

Hala: I'm [00:33:00] already delay- like, I was supposed to have my proposal done this month. It's not gonna be till the end of the year. Like, I'm- It's

Haley: okay

Hala: I'm t- ta- I don't know, whatever. But hopefully it comes together, 'cause it's a long process.

Haley: It'll come together. You just, it's like a compounding thing where you have to do some every day- Yeah ... and it's like running a marathon or something like that- Mm-hmm ... where it's like, feels so great at the end- Yeah

but when you're in it, you're dying.

Hala: I'm excited, 'cause I feel like it'll be, like, so big for my brand. But one of the main things that I talk about and that I've talked about for years is this idea of skill stacking.

Haley: Oh, I love this.

Hala: So I, when I first started my career, I worked for, uh, I actually, I'm actually from this area too.

So I used to work at Hot 97.

Haley: Oh, I love that. And I- I love Hot 97. That's my freaking jam.

Hala: Really? Yeah. Yes, girl. So I was Angie Martinez's assistant- Oh, I love

Haley: Angie ... for three years.

Hala: Yeah. And so it's like I was her, like, right hand. I did all her research and, like, was, like, following her around for three years.

And then I went into marketing and corporate and I started my podcast eight years ago, like, as a side hustle. Oh, cool. And then, like, quit my job, started my business, all this stuff. And, um, I look back at, like, why am I top 100 podcaster? How am I [00:34:00] running a top network? And it's all the past experiences that, like, accumulated.

And I feel like y- when I was reading your story, I was like, "Oh my God, she's like the perfect s- another great skill-stacking example." 'Cause it's like you wanted to be in entertainment and comedy. Mm-hmm. And now, like, you're a social media personality, author, like, all these things, talking about finance. But still kind of doing what you always wanted to do, but just in a different way.

Haley: Well, I'm so glad you brought that up, Hal, because it, so many people, the first thing they ask me is, "Oh, did you work in finance?"

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And I would never have been able to build Mrs. Dow Jones had I left school and then gone into banking or something like that. I needed to have had, A, so much rejection, 'cause I was a comedian, and so you're doing stand-up, I'm doing improv.

You know, when you're an entrepreneur, when you're on social media, you get rejected every day. It's basically getting a report card-

Hala: Yeah ...

Haley: every time that you push out a video. Mm-hmm. [00:35:00] And it's like, "Did I do well? Did I not do well?" And you have to be okay with it and be able to put out another one tomorrow.

Um, and then I also think it's like the money part of it was actually the easiest part to learn- Mm-hmm ... and to, you know, grasp. The rest of it was, was, were the skills that I really had to build- Hmm ... which was, you know, digital media, learning how to package content, learning how to be on camera, learning about hooks and, you know, uh, the pacing of things- Yeah

and subtitles and all these. When you just watch videos, you don't see everything behind the scenes, but it's very sophisticated to make videos at the level that I do.

Hala: Hmm.

Haley: Um, and so, you know, that all came with skill stacking 100%.

Hala: Yeah, and- and how do you feel comedy has helped you? Oh, man,

Haley: so much.

Hala: Talk to me about that.

Haley: Well, I think that, okay, I think that I was- I had a natural born really deep interest in pop culture and money. And so that's like my secret sauce because, and [00:36:00] that's also what my audience loves the most from me.

Hala: Yeah. 'Cause you, so much has gone viral of like you talking about the Kardashians.

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: And it's just, okay, I love that.

Haley: Which is sort of cool when what people like from you is what you like to do.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, and so I'm really passionate about that too, so I love that that pops off and I'm like leaning more into it. Mm-hmm. 'Cause I think for a while I was like, "Oh, to be like a serious financial expert, I shouldn't talk so much about celebrities," even though I love celebrities.

Yeah. But then I was like, "Who cares? This is spinach in a brownie." Like I, you know, as we... When is this going out?

Hala: Six weeks or something like that.

Haley: Oh. Well, I mean, as we talk there's like breaking news that Harry and Meghan are moving back to the UK. Yeah, I heard about that. Yeah. Yes. And so, which will be like old by the time people listen to this- Yeah

but you know, there's always a financial angle to any of these big stories that then I can use to teach people. Mm-hmm. So you know, for them, people are wondering, "Oh, are they gonna keep their house in Montecito?" And with a little bit of research, I learn that they have this mortgage that's under 3%. And so then I can use that story that already has legs- Mm

where people are [00:37:00] interested in why they're moving back, and talk about, "Are they gonna sell their house? Here's why they shouldn't." Yeah. Because when you can borrow money at a lower interest rate than you can make investing it, then that's called good debt. Yeah. And like some debt is good, a lot of it is bad.

You know, and explain it through that lens. And so I'm still teaching you a really smart thing- Yeah ... but it's just I'm doing it in a way that I'm interested and you're interested.

Hala: Passion is contagious. Yeah. Like that is a great rule for social media. Mm-hmm. Being knowledgeable is super important. And I think the future of everything is gonna be like what is the intersection of your passions, and how do you- I love that

create something, sell something that is the intersection of all your different passions. So you're also really funny in your videos. Thank you.

Haley: I feel like I'm not being funny at all today. But like you're like serious, so I'm like being vibes with you, you know what I

Hala: mean? You feel like, "I am a little serious."

Haley: You are. You're like- ... "Okay, we're like being like real." And so I'm like, okay, I'm being... Uh, but it's like funny when I'm not being funny, and then I'm like, "I'm a comedian." 'Cause like I feel like, prove it. But yeah. But I was always so jokes, like so ham, whatever. Yeah. And, [00:38:00] uh, and yeah, it was really f- it's, that's like, I feel like the secret sauce of it is- Yeah

just being funny. And also, I learned so much from my comedy training. 'Cause I did do training of, I was in UCB, like writing so much, all, like I did so many years of understanding joke structure and, uh, how to write sketches and all these things, which I bring back to the videos now. Mm-hmm. So it was all full circle, and it was all those skills that came together to make this unique thing.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, which I feel so lucky for because, uh- It's so much work, but it is so fulfilling, and it's something that springs me out of bed. And I know the goal for everyone is retirement- Yeah ... but I'm like, I'm down to be Mrs. Dow Jones forever.

Hala: Yeah, I heard that you wanna be Mrs. Dow Jones forever.

Haley: Yeah. I know.

I'm like, well, we'll s- like, I really do. Like, I love doing it. I love my audience. Mm-hmm. And I feel like so much of financial advice is focused around where you're at in life. And so, like, even, you know, I'm in this really serious relationship. When I think about we're [00:39:00] gonna, you know, we're a- we're buying a car, we're, we're, we'll get married, we're gonna have kids.

Like, all these things where then it's taking the audience arou- you know- Mm-hmm ... on that ride.

Hala: Evolving with you.

Haley: Yeah. Although, I will never put my man on social media.

Hala: Why? I

Haley: mean, I just, it's not... Like, maybe for, like, my wedding if we're in Vogue or something that chic. Like, I'm, like, worth it for Vogue, but- You don't

Hala: ever wanna do couples content or anything?

Haley: No. I understand that people really like it, but I also think, like, I have a very private partner, and so, uh, it's not part of our relationship.

Hala: Yeah. That's understandable.

Haley: Yeah. That's understandable. Until, but if it was, if I was dating an influencer, it would definitely be a different story. Mm-hmm. But, uh, I think it's complicated to date.

Uh, my partner's not on social media.

Hala: Oh, wow.

Haley: Which is sort of amazing, too, 'cause, like, there's no perception of me.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: You know? Like, which I sort of like, where I've dated

Hala: people- Yeah, you get to just be, like, your real self.

Haley: Yeah. And I've dated people in the past where, you know, you're always looking, did they look at my Instagram story?

Mm-hmm. How do I look in that video? Da, da, da. Yeah. But I sort of, I feel like I create really without the male gaze. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm always just being like, bloop, like, my hair's [00:40:00] messy. Like, who cares? Yeah. Like, I'm gonna just, like, I gotta get this thing out, and it's a relief.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: You know?

Hala: Yeah. That's so good.

Yeah. I

Haley: love

Hala: that for you. I

Haley: mean, it's hard, of course. Like, I s- I always have eyebrow gel, but, like- ... you gotta do

Hala: something. Yeah, let me ask you that. Now, this is, I wasn't planning on asking you this, but so, so you like to hop on camera and not... Like, how do you get out

Haley: of your- No, like, a lot of times I do, like, I'd say, like, two, two days, two or three days a week I put a lot of effort into looking good.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: But then it's like, two days a week maybe. But then it's like the other two days, I can't, girl. Like, I'm tired. I'm like- And- ... I'm working, I'm writing. I'm like, but then it's like, if you gotta do something, you gotta do it.

Hala: Yeah. And I mean, like, your followers are following you because they love your personality.

Yeah. They love your advice. Do you feel like you have mostly female followers?

Haley: I have a mix. So I actually started, because I think I started, I started talking about crypto and stocks, and then it became more, like, personal finance, holistic advice. Mm. Um, it started, uh, it started with a more male audience, but now it's definitely more female skewing.

Hala: Yeah. How long ago did you start everything? Like, y-

Haley: [00:41:00] 27, 2017, 2018. A-

Hala: and what platform did you start on?

Haley: Instagram So 2017,

Hala: 20... Okay, we started around the... I also started- Yeah ... everything 2018. So- And I'm

Haley: like, it was not an overnight success, girl.

Hala: No. Like, no. Yours was not? When do you, when did you start getting traction?

How many, how

Haley: long- Well, it was steady.

Hala: Yeah. It's like you got some q- wins along the way.

Haley: Yeah, like it was clear that I was on the right track, and I loved doing it, which I still do. Like, I have such a thirst for financial knowl- which is like the same thirst that I have for pop culture-

Hala: Yeah ...

Haley: I have for financial knowledge and advice and, like, news.

Mm-hmm. And so it keeps... That's what it's like, what you were saying about passion being contagious. Yeah. I really am addicted to all of that. Yeah. And I read so much. I read every personal finance book that comes out. Like, I just like... I'm obsessed with teaching people about money and how people teach people about money and then like- Yeah

breaking down the form and, like, trying to do it better.

Hala: Now I realize that, like, you were the first one out of- I was ... all these girls- Yeah ... that came up. No, I was. So it's like you were before Tori Dunlap. Yeah. You were before Vivian Tu. Yeah, yeah. That [00:42:00] Erica girl. How does it feel? Because before that, the, the financial influencers were Dave Ramsey and, and- Mm

Suze Orman. Yeah. Been on

Haley: my show. But I was, but I was more social media first.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: So, like, when I started, no one was making videos. There were no, there were no... Influencer wasn't a job.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Financial influencer certain was, it certainly wasn't a thing. Yeah. So I was just, like, doing it because I wanted to learn about money, and I was like, "I don't like this financial advice that I'm getting, but I love pop culture.

If you can explain 401s versus IRAs to me using Kardashians, I'll listen."

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: So then I made that content thinking, "Okay, there's gotta be someone out there who also feels like that." Mm-hmm. And there was. Yeah. But it wasn't like, "Oh, I'm making a brand. I'm gonna be a mogul." Like, d- like, no. Mm-hmm. None of that.

Hala: Do you ever get a feeling of like, not jealousy, but like somebody like Vivian Tu, who feels like she blew up-

Haley: Mm ...

Hala: three years, like, just so fast. She was so fast. It was so quick. I

Haley: know.

Hala: And now she's just [00:43:00] everywhere. Mm-hmm. And it's like, do you ever feel like, "Damn," like, "I've been working so hard?" Like, do you ever feel, like, any sort of like- I don't know.

Like, how do you deal with feelings like that, I guess is my question?

Haley: I think it's really normal to compare yourself to other people, but I also... My goal, and the goal of anyone in my space I think who's doing it right, is to help people with money.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And so I look at it like if you are working out, say you're on the Peloton app- Mm-hmm

and you're choosing an instructor, one instructor might work really well for you, one instructor might work really well for me-

Hala: Mm ...

Haley: but we're both working out. Yeah. And so I'm so just happy that there are other people out there who are helping people- Mm-hmm ... and that are connecting to people. I think that's amazing.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: And I also just love seeing female wealth being built. Like, you know, seeing these women make so much money off of these platforms is thrilling. Yeah. I'm like, "Go girl, get that [00:44:00] bag, make that money." Mm-hmm. Like, let's build that business. Yeah. And you know, there's room for everyone at the top. I don't think that one person's success- Yeah

takes away from anyone else's success. Um, and I don't believe in blaming others for why you're, things aren't working for you.

Hala: Exactly.

Haley: So like, even like if a video flops, you'll never catch me being like, "The algorithm. What's going on?" Mm-hmm. Like, "There's a change." Yeah. I'm like, "No, the content sucked."

Hala: Accountability.

Haley: Yeah. Yep. Like, it's like, oh, like I did a bad job. Like, I need to like work harder. I need to find a better topic. Yeah. I need to change my hook, whatever it is. Like, I just, uh, it's always, impetus is always on me.

Hala: Yeah. And every journey has a different timeline.

Haley: Totally. And um, yeah, every journey has a different timeline, and I think it's like when people are really good at what they do, like I think Vivian's amazing at what she does.

She's so good

Hala: at content.

Haley: She's incredible, so it's like inspiring to see. Mm-hmm. And you know, I think that it pushes me to, you know, work harder.

Hala: Yeah. Um, okay. So I want to play a [00:45:00] game with you. Let me just scroll to it. And basically, we're talking about new influencers, financial advice, the, the new gurus.

But there's also a lot of legacy money rules out there. Mm-hmm. So I'm gonna say a legacy money rule, and you give me your take on it.

Haley: Okay.

Hala: Okay? All right. This one actually went viral. I asked it to Dave Ramsey, and it went viral so many times on my page, where he says, "No credit card debt ever."

Haley: Mm-hmm.

Hala: What are your thoughts?

Haley: I also agree, no credit card debt ever. I think that... But, I mean, that's sort of complicated because what if you have credit card debt? Like, it's like, you know. Yeah. Like, you shouldn't spend outside of your means if you can handle that.

Hala: What about no credit cards ever?

Haley: No, I love credit cards. You need to have credit cards because that builds your credit score, which is basically your financial GPA.

I also love using points to get [00:46:00] r- you know, free flights and things like that.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: But you should never spend money just to get points.

Hala: I'm gonna say that one again.

Haley: Okay.

Hala: And I'll do it, I'll just say no credits,

Haley: credit cards ever. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 'Cause no credit card, yeah, debt is like- It's more

Hala: confusing

obviously no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna give you one, uh, from Dave Ramsey. Mm-hmm. It actually went super viral. He said, "No credit card ever."

Haley: I completely disagree, and I disagree with a lot of his advice. You absolutely should have credit cards. Having a credit card and paying it off on time is how you build your credit score.

Mm. And that allows you to lease cars and, you know, get a good interest rate and, you know, get mortgages and, you know, open new credit cards that will give you rewards, and then you can use those rewards to, you know, get perks like free flights. Mm. I think it's so important to have a credit card. That being said, if you're someone who struggles to stay within the bounds of your credit limit, there are ones with lower credit limits that you can get to just sort of build [00:47:00] that skill set so that you don't overspend and accrue credit card debt- Mm-hmm

which of course is not something that I ever stand by.

Hala: Yeah. I actually fell into the trap of no credit cards ever. Um, I had credit cards when I was younger, and then when I started my company, I didn't have any personal credit cards. All my credit cards were in my company's name. And I remember I was already making, this was like y- five years ago, I was already making like $400,000 a year, $500,000 a year, and I remember I went to go get like a nice apartment in Manhattan, and they wouldn't give me the apartment- Give it, yeah

because I had no credit. I know. I know. And then that's when I was like, oh my God, I, like I need to open up credit cards. I thought I was being financially savvy and smart, and it was not smart at all.

Haley: 100%. Yeah, you definitely should have credit cards.

Hala: Okay. Buying a home is always smarter than renting.

Haley: Disagree. I'm a millionaire. I rent. I think that it's very dependent on your financial [00:48:00] situation and also where you're going to buy. So like in a place like Manhattan, if I rent an apartment-

Hala: Yeah ...

Haley: and I invest that down payment money in the stock market, I'm gonna make much more than if I buy an apartment and then try and resell it for profit, which by the way, what profit?

By the time that you take out the dishwasher that you had to replace, and the HVAC, and all the maintenance, and the r- decorating, and the renovation- Yeah ... and the this and the that, when you actually sell the place It's not much money left over. Mm-hmm. So I really, really believe in renting. I think you get amazing flexibility.

I don't think that it sacrifices this idea of home. I think a lot of people think that in order to be an adult, you have to own your home. That's not true. You're... Yeah.

Hala: What about the psychological safety of owning a home? Like, especially, like for me, like I feel like when I'm 65 or 70 or, I really wanna make sure that like I have a home that's paid for, so like if anything happens, like at least I have shelter.[00:49:00]

Haley: I- Something that I think about a lot with money is, you know, that's when I talk, in the book, I talk about like your money relationship from when you're a child. Mm-hmm. Like, that's the first part of it, and yes, you can heal that, but we're also all carrying things that make us feel safe or not safe. And so if owning a home really makes you feel safe, even if it's maybe not the right financial situation, you should do it.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: You do have to make sure that you're also investing in the stock market, because you can't look at your domicile as your ticket to financial freedom and retirement.

Hala: Yes.

Haley: You can own a home, but then you also need to be investing because that is what is actually going to pay for your retirement.

Hala: Yeah. It's like be ready to put down a down payment while you still have money- Yeah ... available for investing and saving. It's like maybe j- you don't need to buy a home at 30 years old. Maybe you could buy a home at 40 years old.

Haley: Yeah. And like there's this book called The Psychology of Money that I feel like a lot of people talk about, and the whole book is financial advice, and then in the last [00:50:00] chapter, he explains how he doesn't take all the advice.

Mm. Because actually what makes him feel safe is having a bit more money in savings and, you know, keeping more in cash than you're supposed to, and like that's what helps him sleep at night. And I think that's really important is to sort of take your own financial litmus test- Yep ... and say, "Okay, this is right and that's wrong, but what about for me?"

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Mm-hmm.

Hala: For me, uh, something I have never boughten a home yet, but I'm actually gonna be buying commercial real estate-

Haley: Oh,

Hala: awesome ... in Austin. That's awesome. So I'm buying like a building that's gonna have- Oh, cool ... tenants- Cool ... where I like rent out like the office downstairs to somebody else, build out my studios and office upstairs.

And it's like I could easily just lease a place, but I'm like, you know what? I can have my company pay me rent instead of me paying another company rent- Yeah ... and like build my wealth through my organization. Totally.

Haley: And like- And own an asset.

Hala: Yeah. And it's like I'm not really excited about buying a home 'cause I can't do the same thing.

Yeah. But with a c- with, with my business, I feel like it's [00:51:00] really interesting to me to buy commercial real estate.

Haley: I lo- and especially in a place like Austin where- Yeah ... that's what I'm saying, where it's all about where you're

Hala: at. Up and coming and everything like

Haley: that. Yeah. Like I couldn't do that in Brooklyn.

Hala: No.

Haley: But- Yeah ... you know, Au-

Hala: It's one of the reasons why I moved, to be

Haley: honest. Yeah, tota- and better taxes.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Yeah. For me, like there's so much opportunity in New York, so I stay here. But like I get it, like it's, you know, awesome to move to a no tax state.

Hala: Yeah. Speaking of- I'm jealous ... taxes. Um, how do you feel about, um...

Well, actually, I'll wait until the game's over. I really wanna ask you about that, but I'll wait until the game's over. Okay. College is always a good investment

Haley: I don't think this is true at all.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, I think that trade school is a great investment where you're, you know, going to learn something specific that's going to pay you money.

But we see these private colleges charging over $100,000 a year for tuition, and I just can't in my right mind tell someone to take out $400,000 in student [00:52:00] loans for a degree that you don't even know how useful it's going to be.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: That being said, I think that when you're a young adult, it's so amazing to be around other young adults- Yes

who are figuring things out. There's such an opportunity there in terms of your growth. There's a small percentage of people who maybe reach 17 or 18 and they're ready to go out in the world. Yeah. And they should. But otherwise, I think that it's great to look at a college that is less expensive.

Hala: Yep.

Haley: Um, go in state, do that for a few years, and then if you wanna get that fancy degree, try and get good grades and transfer to the college where then you're gonna graduate with that degree, but you didn't have to pay for all four years.

Yep,

Hala: that's so smart.

Haley: Yeah. And see if you can get, you know, scholarships and things like this. But, uh, you shoot yourself so in the foot by just automatically thinking that you need to pay that much for college.

Hala: Yeah. I think it's more about thinking about colleges as, like, the experience- [00:53:00] Mm-hmm ... of college, not necessarily, like, the degree that comes out of college.

'Cause that degree, for the most part, unless you're like, you know, gonna be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, it's not gonna really do anything- Mm-hmm ... for you. Like, that's not really how the real world works anymore.

Haley: Yeah, 100%.

Hala: Okay, so let's talk about taxes.

Haley: Yeah, I'm really good at them.

Hala: Are you really?

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: I'm so bad at ta- I, like, I hate... I, honestly, my podcast is called Young and Profiting, and, and some people who don't follow my work, they don't understand that it's like, it's really an entrepreneurship podcast. Mm-hmm. And, like, I hate finances actually. Mm-hmm. Um, and finances and taxes, like, to me are like one bucket.

Haley: They are. Well, 'cause, you know, making money is one thing, but preserving your wealth- Yeah ... is a whole other thing, and it's so important to focus on both.

Hala: So let's, like, do a deep dive on, like, you're an entrepreneur. Mm-hmm. Taxes. What are some of the things that you feel like every entrepreneur needs to know about taxes?

Haley: Well, one thing I will say is that you shouldn't be writing off clothing. I think there's this idea that, oh my God, I'm an entrepreneur, I can just write off everything. This is a [00:54:00] write-off, that's a write-off. Yeah. And there's certain write-offs that make you more susceptible to be audited. Mm-hmm. And clothing is one of them.

Um, I think it's really important to get a great CPA and to understand how your business is set up, you know? Like, I recently switched to being an S corp-

Hala: Yep ...

Haley: which is, has, you know, saved me a lot of money. But also what's really important too with taxes as an entrepreneur is understanding the tax advantage retirement accounts that you have at your disposal.

Because it's very expensive to run a business in this country. Yes. They take a lot from us. So

Hala: much.

Haley: It's crazy. But one thing that they do give us, it's not much but are these tax advantage retirement accounts that you can actually put more into than if you had a 401. Mm-hmm. So like the SEP IRA-

Hala: Yep ...

Haley: can put over $70,000 into it.

Hala: Every year or-

Haley: Yeah ...

Hala: every year?

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: And what does that mean? That means that like you don't get taxed on 70K a year.

Haley: That means that you're putting money [00:55:00] away that then you are able to take out tax-free.

Hala: Okay, so you put that money away and you can take it out tax-free whenever you ... Like, I don't get it. Let me

Haley: make sure that I'm right.

Okay. 'Cause I forget

Hala: if it's something you

Haley: put it in tax-free or not. I would wanna get it sure. I'm

Hala: so dumb at taxes.

Haley: My God. Sorry, I opened my phone and I got a picture of my nephew.

Hala: That's cute.

Haley: Um, okay. SEP IRA, taxes

To go Yeah, they're 100% tax deductible. Yeah. Okay,

Hala: so- So, okay, so what does that mean exactly?

Haley: So what that means is say you make $500,000. If you put in $70,000 to your SEP IRA, you are only going to have $430,000 of taxable income.

Hala: Got it. So basically it, it removes that taxable income. Mm-hmm. And then you can pull that money out whenever you want.

Haley: [00:56:00] When you're in retirement.

Hala: But you'd get a tax when you pull it out.

Haley: It'll be taxed as ordinary income, yeah. Okay. So it will be taxed then, but it's growing that whole time. And if you're smart, when you pull it out, hopefully you have a good CPA, again, who will help you get into a lower tax bracket-

Hala: Mm ...

Haley: in retirement- Yeah

so that you're not paying so much on it.

Hala: Yeah. I feel like I have that, but I don't th- I don't think I... I feel like I would know, 'cause I would know if I'm putting in 70K.

Haley: There's all these... I mean, I was looking at a tax hack yesterday that lets me put 156K in through the s- through the SEPA, through the, um, the new structure of the S corp.

Hala: Oh.

Haley: So, so there's all these. You just need a good CPA, I would say is what it's saying. Yeah. I have a,

Hala: I have a good... I actually was just literally was Slacking my team today, like, 'cause I haven't been meeting with my CPA on my team. I said, I'm like, "I need to meet with the CPA and ask some questions." I

Haley: know.

You try and o- but that's the thing is, like, you try- You can't ... an offhand thing. You

Hala: can't.

Haley: But with your finances, you always have to. And even if it's annoying, you still have to do it.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: [00:57:00] And just do it for f- and also get a CPA that you don't hate. Like, the first CPA that I had, I hated. Like, she- So you didn't

Hala: wanna ever take calls?

Haley: She was the worst. Like, it was, freaking hated her. I can't even tell you how. And so I just woke up one day and I was like, "This is my choice. Why am I working with someone that I don't like? Like, this- Yeah ... is holding me back." So find a CPA that you can actually vibe with. I know it sounds crazy 'cause accountants are dry, but-

Hala: Yeah

Haley: you know, they exist.

Hala: Yeah. So let's go back to write-offs. So as an influencer- Yeah ... what do you feel comfortable writing off? Like, can you write off clothes for being an influencer, or you're saying no, never?

Haley: You can to a certain extent, but I just, I think there's other write-offs that are better to focus on, like, uh, subscriptions and electronics and your rent- Mm-hmm

and things like that. Mm-hmm. Versus clothing is a bit harder to prove. There's this famous, um, tax story about this woman called Chesty Love, and she was a exotic dancer.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: And she [00:58:00] got implants to become, I think, like a 34FFF. Like, her- Oh my God ... boobs were huge. And when tax season came around, she was like, "Okay, yeah, I'm, wanna write these off."

And, you know, they r- I think accountants and everyone were like, "What? No, that's not a write-off." And it went all the way up in the courts, and they decided that it actually was a write-off because- Wow ... her implants were not usable in everyday li- life, right? Like they were a costume for her job. And so the same thing would be s- true if I was a pilot and I bought a pilot outfit.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: You know? 'Cause I'm not wearing that every day. That's- or I'm a, a clown. Yeah. And I buy a big red nose. That's a costume. That- Mm ... you know, that makes sense. But if you're an influencer and you're buying that dress, who's to say they-

Hala: That you won't wear it to dinner

Haley: or something You're definitely wearing [00:59:00] it to dinner.

Yeah. And so I think it's just a little bit more of a gray area.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, but again, it is dependent on your CPA. I prefer to focus on other write-offs besides clothing. Yeah. I, of course, write some clothing off, but-

Hala: Mm-hmm ...

Haley: I don't wanna be audited. And so, um, I would rather use those other deductions.

Hala: Yeah.

When you say that you can write off rent, do you mean, like, a portion of your house- Mm-hmm ... for, like, your home office? Or like-

Haley: Yeah, home office.

Hala: Okay. That's

Haley: what you

Hala: were referring. 100%.

Haley: Okay. So I have an actual office, and so that's obviously a write-off.

Hala: Okay.

Haley: And then-

Hala: Outside of your home.

Haley: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And next door.

And then I have my office at home, which then is also tax deductible.

Hala: What are other, what are some other things that people should think about regarding taxes? Like, and, and-

Haley: I think the biggest thing- Be smart ... with taxes really is- The tax advantage accounts. Like understanding how to put money aside so that it brings down your taxable income.

Mm-hmm. That's like the biggest hack. When it comes to the deductions, that's assuming, I'm assuming you have a lot of entrepreneurs, [01:00:00] so they're taking itemized deductions, so that's, you know, its own beast.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: But I, I would also say to be wary of spending money as a write-off.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Never let that influence your spending.

Spend in the way that's appropriate for your business, and then afterwards you let the chips fall where they may.

Hala: Yeah, you don't wanna spend $100,000 to save $25,000.

Haley: No, not at all. Which a lot of people do. I mean, when you look at, like, charity galas, you know, like the Met Gala is a- Mm-hmm ... charity gala, and people are like, "Oh my God, yeah, it's a tax write-off for people to do that."

But you are o- the only write-off is after the fair price of the ticket.

Hala: Mm.

Haley: So, you know, between renting the Met and the entertainment and the cost of your plate, maybe it's a, you know, $20,0000 ticket at fair market value, but then they just charge it for 30,000, so you're still spending 20K. Maybe you got a 10, for $10,000 write-off- Yeah

but you're still spending 20K.

Hala: Yeah. [01:01:00] As an entrepreneur, something that I think about, so, like, um, I take out a good salary. My, my business partner Kate takes out a salary. We've got employees. Mm-hmm. Um, and then, like, whatever cash that we have left over in the business at the end of the year gets massively taxed.

One of the reasons why I left New York is because I lost f- literally 50% of my money in 2024 after my b- and I, we had such a good year. We made so much money, and then I had to hand over so much money to the government- Mm-hmm ... and it made me sick.

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: And I was like, gosh, like, I should've spent that money.

Haley: Mm-hmm.

Hala: And so now I'm always thinking about before the end of the year, what can I spend in marketing-

Haley: Mm-hmm ...

Hala: to grow my business? Yeah. So for example, like I have a podcast network. I grow and monetize 50 other podcasts.

Haley: Great.

Hala: So I think about, like, well, for a long time I wasn't giving out, like, advances. Uh, now if I want a podcaster I'm like, "Fuck it, I'll give them an advance," because it just helps me, like, kind of like- Add value

spend money. Yeah. Add value. [01:02:00] I know I'm gonna make money off that- Mm-hmm ... podcaster and then I kind of, like, keep, like, delaying when I get that money- Mm-hmm ... but I know it's coming. Mm-hmm. And so I'll think about, like, what conferences can I sponsor, what, like, what marketing can I spend- Yeah ... so that I'm not left over with all this cash that just goes to the government at the end of the year.

Do you think that's a smart way to go about it? I

Haley: think that's so smart.

Hala: Okay. '

Haley: Cause you're adding value to your bottom line.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: I think the smartest thing that you did was moving.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Like, that's- Definitely ... genius

Hala: Do you ever think about moving?

Haley: I do, but it's hard now 'cause I, like I think I'll stay in New York.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, and it's a big cost to pay.

Hala: And Dow Jones is like in New York, right? Or-

Haley: Yeah, but I have not affiliated with them. But they are here. I have to stay close. I know,

Hala: but like I just feel like you're like s- your

Haley: brand- I have to be close ... is so New York.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: I know. But it's, um, it's a big cost to pay, and I- I hate it, but it's, uh, it is what makes sense for me right now.

Like I- Yeah ... pay a hefty price to be here. Yeah. But like I grew up here. I think [01:03:00] there's so much value in your social network.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And I have such a big network here. Yeah. And so that would be hard to give up. Um, but I think a lot about living like half-time in Miami, but I think it's just different now 'cause I have a partner.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: Um, I was single for so long. I probably should've done it then. Yeah. But now I'm like screwed because, uh, I- my partner wants to be here too.

Hala: Yeah, and s- so the same point we were talking about before, like just you gotta make, like you gotta make more money. Like, you know what I mean? Like you could just make more money to live the lifestyle that you want, no matter what city you live in.

Like there's plenty of really wealthy, successful people who live in New York and make it work.

Haley: Yeah, but it does suck. Like I- Whenever I look at my bank account- You're like, "It does suck" ... after they take out the quarterlies, oh my God, I'm like-

Hala: It does suck. It's been awesome. Like I've been able to... That's why I can buy an office now.

So cool. Like buy like a huge building.

Haley: So happy for you.

Hala: Thank you. Um, okay. This has been such an awesome interview. Um, before we go, something that I wanna ask you is like for everybody [01:04:00] tuning in, um, what do you want them to do in the next 24 hours to level up their finances?

Haley: I want you in the next 24 hours to drop an anchor and have a money date, 'cause I guarantee the majority of people listening to this, especially it will be six weeks from now, so summer will be over.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: And they probably have a summer spending hangover, and they don't really know where they're at. They haven't looked at their bank statements and their credit card statements for the last, you know, how kn- I don't know how long.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: So look at the last three months, and that will give you so much momentum.

It'll take, you know, 15, 20 minutes. Look at, you know, subscriptions you can cancel. What are your big spending categories? Where are you at? Where are you bleeding? And then that'll gives you the information to know where you wanna go.

Hala: Mm-hmm.

Haley: But what you measure will never grow.

Hala: Hmm.

Haley: So it's so important to drop an anchor and actually understand where you're at if you want to grow wealth.

Hala: Hmm. And what are the [01:05:00] ways that people can implement more friction in their lives so that they don't like... We're, it's so easy to just spend. Like we were just- Yeah ... talking about like-

Haley: Apple Pay.

Hala: Well, yeah, like one of the- Revolve ... one of the things that I do is like I'll be scrolling at night, and like I'm so susceptible to ads that I get at night.

I know.

Haley: Uh,

Hala: so- Night,

Haley: night is so bad ...

Hala: two clicks and I just buy what I want. Like I just buy whatever, or like I'll find myself like doom scrolling on Revolve.

Haley: Oh, yeah, I did, was doing

Hala: that last night. You know what I mean? Like so-

Haley: I'm like I've already looked at all the new in, and I'm not buying any of this.

What am I doing?

Hala: Yeah, and it's so funny that like if for some reason like it asks for my like CVC code and I don't know it, it's like fucking- You stop ... I'm not gonna buy

Haley: this. Then you forget it.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: I know. It's so crazy. Uh, well, so what I do a lot, I didn't do it obviously with the Poshmark dress, but- ... uh, they, they got me good.

Hala: Hopefully f- fits.

Haley: Hopefully it fits. I think it will. Um, but what I do is, A, remove my cards from Apple Pay. That helps a lot, [01:06:00] but I also wait, try and wait three days before I make a purchase. So-

Hala: Mm.

Haley: There's actually this app in Asia Where you can buy things, scroll, buy, add to cart, and then check out, and then it just, like, never charges you, and you never, uh, get sent anything.

And I'm like, I sort of get that because I love-

Hala: Wait, say that again.

Haley: Like, it's like, it, it simulates shopping.

Hala: Oh.

Haley: But it's not you're actually paying for anything. 'Cause I feel like- Oh, so you

Hala: can, like, pretend shop? '

Haley: Cause shopping is so fun. It is. I love shopping. Yeah. Like, I'm going to Greece tomorrow with my best friend, and we're going to Amorgos, which is a little, this little island, but we're going to Athens for a few days before.

Mm. And it's, like, what I'm most... Like, one of my favorite things in the world is, like, having a day where I'm off work and I'm with one of my best friends, and they have good style, and then we just, like, leisurely bop into stores. Mm. Yeah. You, like, hope for that special moment where you find that dress or that pair of sunglasses.

Yeah. And it's just like you've made your own money and you can buy that thing for yourself. Totally. It's the best freaking feeling. But then sometimes you get home and you're like, "Why did I buy a [01:07:00] hairbrush?" Like, I know it's, like, a cool hairbrush, but I have four other hairbrushes. Yeah. Like, but it's like, no, I just wanted that feeling.

So, um, I would say wait three days before you pay. Remove the Apple Pay. Um, I... Mute so many freaking influencers, and also try and train your algorithm. Like, that's a lot of what I do online with, like, my likes- Yeah ... is I'm sending them places where it's gonna send me more business content versus, like, shopping or food content.

Mm. And sometimes I actually go on Instagram and, like, customize it if it's too much because, A, I don't cook that much, so why- Yeah ... am I seeing so many food videos? And, B, like, I don't need to see, like, all these girls with insane style who, like, are as good at dressing as I am at, you know, being Mrs. Dow Jones, so you're seeing the best of the best.

Yeah. And it's like, makes me feel bad, and then I wanna dress and be like them, but I'm never gonna even get close to it.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: So I, yeah, unfollow a lot of people.

Hala: I feel like you can also, like, go into... I know for, like, especially my, like, business credit [01:08:00] cards, you can go in and, like, set a limit.

Haley: Yeah, setting

Hala: limits is good.

Like, 'cause, 'cause they might give you a really big limit, but you can set your own limit. And then if it declines, you're like, "Oh, shit, I spent way too much money this month."

Haley: Yeah, it's all about just having a goalie. And then you know what the best thing is?

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Buy a printer.

Hala: A printer.

Haley: Buy a printer and print the freaking label.

Print it the moment that it... Like, that's my secret- Oh,

Hala: like to return?

Haley: Yeah, return. I'm doing returns all the time- Me too ... because it's like-

Hala: That's, like, my assistant's number one job is to return

Haley: my stuff. Yeah. But it's like that, but that's okay. Like, as long as it's going back. Yeah, you're- Like, it's like obviously it would be better if you weren't buying in the first place- Yeah

you hear. But it's like get it out. If it's not perfect or whatever, get it out.

Hala: Yeah.

Haley: Um, yeah.

Hala: Love that. Okay, um, I end my show with two questions I ask all of my guests.

Haley: Okay, love that.

Hala: What is one actionable thing our Young and Profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Haley: I would say the best thing you can do to be more profitable tomorrow is ask for more.

Hala: Like, [01:09:00] tell me more.

Haley: Like, raise your prices.

Hala: Raise your prices,

Haley: yeah. Raise your prices. Uh, cut clients who are sucking you dry and not- Yeah ... paying you enough. Like, audit your time so you're actually being paid what you deserve for what you're putting in.

Hala: Yeah. I totally agree. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is?

This can go beyond finance. I know you're Miss Dow Jones. Mm. You love talking finance. But what is your secret to profiting in life? And it can, it could be finance related, actually.

Haley: I think it all comes down to my relationship with myself.

Hala: Ooh.

Haley: Like, it really is that I have a good relationship with myself, I bet on myself, and I, you know, work on improving myself and loving myself, and, like, that has built so much equity in who I am, and allow me to go out in the world and chase my dreams.

Mm. And nothing, for me, like we said, has happened overnight. Yeah. Not my business, not my book, not my relationship. Nothing has happened overnight. [01:10:00] Everything has taken me through so much darkness first. Yeah. And so I think that, you know, we always see those images of, like, the root of a tree, and it's, they go so deep, and then finally you see it spring up and be this beautiful thing.

Yeah. And when you're on social media or whatever, you just see the beautiful thing, but you don't see the root. So work on your root, and even if it doesn't feel like you're getting anywhere, just make little bits of progress, and bet on yourself, and nurture yourself.

Hala: That's so beautiful. And you are just such a great example of that, that, like, it wasn't a overnight success.

Yeah. It took 10 years to get to where you are.

Haley: Yeah, totally.

Hala: Help us understand, like, what-

Haley: And I'm still learning every day. Yeah. Like, it's like I'm not, like, it's not a, you know, like, all, I'm sure you feel like that, too. That's why entrepreneurship is so addicting and fun, because it just keeps you guessing, and you're always trying to turn a trick.

Hala: And it's so crazy, because it's like, I, I came across to you only recently.

Haley: Oh, wow.

Hala: Yeah, like, I, and, and, like, it's like, I, for, for me, I [01:11:00] thought you were, like, somebody new who popped up.

Haley: Oh, no.

Hala: Yeah, girl. You know? And it's- I've been

Haley: here ...

Hala: you've been here. Yeah. And it's like, so, it's just, it's, it just goes to show that it's, like, everybody has their own journey.

Haley: Yeah.

Hala: And it's like, you have, like, an incredible book that came out. Mm-hmm. You've got so many social media followers. Mm-hmm. What a, like, and do you have another business as well?

Haley: Yeah, I have my podcast as well, which is great. Very

Hala: cool.

Haley: And yeah, it's like-

Hala: Amazing. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

Haley: Um, go to missessaojones.com. Uh, everything is there, the book, you'll find my podcast, my social media. I post daily financial clips on social media where I use pop culture to teach you about money. Mm. So if you like pop culture, I'm your girl, and you wanna be rich. And yeah, my podcast is called Financial Tea, and it's out every Thursday.

Hala: Amazing. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Haley.

Haley: Have a good one.

Hala: You did so good. Thank you. Thank

Haley: you. I appreciate it. That was so fun.

Hala: Good.