How To Create & Manage Your Personal Wealth | Morgan Housel | Modern Wisdom Podcast 142

And I think at the highest level, what I've thought about in terms of wealth, and that I really believe in terms of wealth and- and studying this stuff for so many years, and studying other wealthy people and thinking about money myself, is I think what wealth can really do for you that will legitimately make most people happy is to the extent that you can use wealth to control your time. To give yourself options, to let you do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to. That is wealth's great power.

Mr. Morgan Housel in the building. How are you, man?

I'm- I'm good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Chris.

Yeah. Me too. Me too. We're talking wealth today, right? Everyone- everyone wants it, but I don't know how to get it.

It's- it's very elusive.

(laughs)

And it's not even that people don't know how t- to get it. I think it's a lot of people don't even think about defining what it is or what it's gonna mean to them, or what it could do for them, or why they want it. I think a lo- there's just a natural urge to want more of it, but answering the question why, it seems like a funny question to a lot of people. Like, of course I wanna be wealthy. Why- why would you even ask? But you start getting these like more philosophical questions of like, why do you wanna be wealthy? Is it a status thing? Is it because you want more stuff? Is it because you want more control over your time? Is it because you think it's gonna erase problems that, you know, that you currently have in your life? If you had more money, those problems would go away? And I think there's a lot of different elements to that. And I think at the highest level, what I've thought about in terms of wealth, and that I really believe in terms of wealth and- and studying this stuff for so many years, and studying other wealthy people and thinking about money myself, is I think what wealth can really do for you that will legitimately make most people happy, is to the extent that you can use wealth to control your time. To give yourself options, to let you do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to. That is wealth's great power that it can do for us. But that's usually not what people think about wealth wanting to do for them. Usually what they think about it is, more stuff. Bigger house, nicer car, better clothes, maybe some travel whatnot. And there's nothing wrong with that. I like fancy cars, I like big homes, I like it all. Um, but we just have so much evidence. It's almost- it's- it's- it's almost cliché at this point to say, you know, buying the bigger house and the fancier car will make people happy. We have a lot of evidence on that. That there's this hedonic treadmill that people, when they're anticipating getting the Ferrari, that's really exciting. But then they actually get it and they say, "Eh, it's just a car. It's just got a steering wheel and whatnot." And there's a- a lot of different elements to that. I think what's really ... This is something I learned when I used to be a valet at a- at a fancy hotel in Los Angeles when I was in college. These people would come in driving their Ferraris, and I would look at the- I would look at the car and be like, "Wow, that's ... Wouldn't it be cool if I had that car? Wouldn't it be cool if I was driving that Ferrari?" And it took me a while to realize the irony of that thought, which was that those people drove in and I never said, "Wow, that driver, the guy driving the Ferrari, he is really cool. He must be impressive." As an observer, I just said, "I wanna be in that car." I didn't care about the driver.