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The Moonshots Podcast goes behind the scenes of the world's greatest superstars, thinkers and entrepreneurs to discover the secrets to their success. We deconstruct their success from mindset to daily habits so that we can apply it to our lives. Join us as we 'learn out loud' from Elon Musk, Brene Brown to emerging talents like David Goggins.
ms220
[00:00:00] Mike Parsons: Hello and welcome to the Moonshots Podcast. It's episode 220. I'm your co-host, Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by Mark Pearson. Freeland. Good morning, Merck. Good
[00:00:13] Mark Pearson Freeland: morning, Mike. Good morning, members and subscribers. Boy do we have not only an action packed episode 220 ahead of us today, but Mike, we're also diving into a brand new series on Money.
[00:00:25] Mark Pearson Freeland: Ding ding, some big lessons, insights, as well as some good old topics that we're gonna start digging into in this brand new series. I
[00:00:34] Mike Parsons: would agree. I would also add to that Mark, I think we might be going deeper than we went in our first money series. In this one, I believe we're going even deeper into the mindsets, the thinking, the emotions behind money, and revealing how we might think and feel differently about money in order to achieve what I believe is the big North star around money.
[00:00:59] Mike Parsons: And that is not to acquire fancy fast cars. Not about having the best wristwatch, not about having the biggest house, but it's having the biggest amount of freedom, independence, and choice in life. I think that's absolutely how we think about wealth and money in the moonshots universe. And what's so exciting is we have got some heavyweights of money coming up in this series, but today, mark, I believe we are diving into the world of somebody who is, for me, one of the greatest new additions to the great wealth and money writers.
[00:01:39] Mike Parsons: Wouldn't you say.
[00:01:40] Mark Pearson Freeland: That's right Mike. And similarly in building upon the insights you were just sharing there, I think our author and topic today, he's really putting that into action. So today we're diving into Morgan Housel's, the Psychology of Money, timeless Lessons on Wealth, greed, and Happiness. Now Morgan is a former columnist at the Motley Fool, the Wall Street Journal.
[00:02:01] Mark Pearson Freeland: He's a partner at the Collaborative Fund. But I think what's really interesting and why I think he deserves a place in this brand new series on money is because he's putting into practice as well as RI raising a lot of awareness around some of those key things We do run into across the Moonshots library, particularly with regards to mindset as well as behavior.
[00:02:24] Mark Pearson Freeland: And one of the key perhaps surprises that we have in store for us today, Mike, is the application of finance and control of your money being something that we can all. Take control of as long as we are geared into actually wanting to go out and do it. If we can change our behaviors as well as our opinion around money away from something that it's a little bit scary, it's reserved for financial advisors or accountants, and instead it's something that I can take more interest and control over because it's down to me as a behavior.
[00:02:57] Mark Pearson Freeland: I don't have to be necessarily super smart or super money orientated to really get it. It's just about applying it in a very practical way. And I think that's where Morgan Hower really comes into his own. And I think he's the perfect way to kick off this brand new series, Mike, because of how approachable and interesting a lot of the insights that he has as well as relatable, the insights that he has that we can put into practice today.
[00:03:20] Mike Parsons: Yeah, and if you look at the data, it's crazy. Like a third of Americans get to retirement age with no wealth at all. The average American gets to retirement mark with only 200 grand worth of wealth, which is not enough for a 10, 15, 20 year retirement. That's not en, that won't yield enough return for you to live without a salary from a job.
[00:03:48] Mike Parsons: So there's some serious work to do, and I think all of us know that there are some tenants, and we discussed this a lot in the first series, to spend. Less than you earn, to live within your means. But this series we're gonna go deeper into the attitudes, the behaviors, and the motivations.
[00:04:06] Mike Parsons: Cuz I think if we attack things there, we can unlock a lot of new practices that come from a new mindset. So Mark, I think we are ready to dive into Morgan Housel's work. I think we're ready to learn about the money mindset. Where do you wanna start?
[00:04:22] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think we're gonna start with one of the key perhaps surprises, but also the levelers and the foundation that we're gonna build on in today's episode, as well as the rest of this series.
[00:04:32] Mark Pearson Freeland: And it's all about behavior versus intelligence.
[00:04:35] Morgan Housel: And this is to me is the premise of my book. This is that good investing is not about what you know, it's not about how smart you are or where you went to school or how sophisticated the Excel model you have is. Good Investing is overwhelmingly just about how you behave.
[00:04:49] Morgan Housel: It's about your relationship with greed and fear and your ability to take a long-term mindset. And who you trust, how gullible you are, those kind of things. And to me the most important part is that behavior is hard to teach. It's almost impossible to teach even to someone who's very smart. You can teach them calculus and you can ta teach them data analysis.
[00:05:10] Morgan Housel: You can teach 'em how to read a balance sheet, but you can't teach people how to be patient. It's just some people haven't and some people don't. That's, that could be disheartening to hear, but I think it's really true. And all the evidence that we have shows that is true, that I don't think there's any evidence unless we're talking about like the marshmallow test at a really basic level.
[00:05:27] Morgan Housel: I don't think there's much evidence that people who are extremely intelligent are also going to be patient investors, or the opposite. The people who don't have a lot of training and sophistication, they, those people can be patient, very successful investors. And I think it's just very easy to overlook that in this industry, the disconnect between behavior and intelligence.
[00:05:47] Morgan Housel: I think virtually every year there's a story in the news of Very humble person, a janitor, a secretary, whoever it might be, dies and leaves millions of dollars to charity. And no one knew that they had this money. Every year one of these stories comes about, there's a story about a woman named Grace Groner.
[00:06:04] Morgan Housel: I use the story in the book of a janitor who, who did the same thing. And what's interesting is that, so that happens in investing, that complete novices who come from humble backgrounds do very well. You are never gonna hear that story in heart surgery or fixing a root canal that a complete nobody novice janitor performed open heart surgery better than a Harvard trained doctor like that would never, ever happen, or, built a fully perfect iPhone in their garage.
[00:06:32] Morgan Housel: There's some things that just like an amateur novice could never do, but those stories do happen in investing. They happen a lot. I don't think they are really necessarily like crazy. One in a million anecdotes there are, if you look at the vast majority of investment dollars in the United States, the vast majority of dollars are for people who contribute from their 401k.
[00:06:54] Morgan Housel: Every other Friday they put 200 bucks or whatever in their 401k, and they invest invested in a next fund, and they never touch it for decades. That's the majority of investment dollars that happens. Most investors, to that extent, that they're just dollar cost averaging in their 401k are really good investors.
[00:07:11] Morgan Housel: What we hear about and what we see and what moves the market are the people who are fiddling with the knobs, the hedge fund managers, the traders, the day traders, the Robinhood investors, et cetera, that are constantly fiddling. But the vast majority of investors are actually doing great, and the vast majority of investors, even if they don't know it, are outperforming some of the best investors in the world.
[00:07:33] Morgan Housel: And that too just doesn't happen in any other field. What would it be like if. Your average golfer, your average just like plays twice a summer. People that goes and rents some clubs was consistently shooting a lower score than Tiger Woods. Or yeah. That's maybe not the best example but the best golfer in the world, like that's what investing is.
[00:07:51] Morgan Housel: And I, I think people don't even know it. They don't even realize it, that the person who has no idea what they're doing, their employer just auto enrolled them in a 401k and they dollar cost average in index funds, they're among like the top quartile of investors and they don't even know it.
[00:08:06] Mike Parsons: So Marques really revealing quite a secret to us of the financial industry.
[00:08:12] Mike Parsons: And don't forget, he writes for Wall Street Journal the Motley Fool, some pretty, well-respected financial publications. But for me it's a story of hope. It is. You don't have to be a Wall Street genius to create wealth. And I love this idea of what he's encouraging us to do is to build habits, which is so moonshots.
[00:08:39] Mike Parsons: He's get the right mindset. That's so moonshots. It's about being patient. He mentions a couple of practices like dollar cost averaging compound interest. We're gonna get into those more, but effectively he's build the habit of continuously putting your money to work and do this over time and good things are gonna happen.
[00:09:01] Mike Parsons: And what's also interesting is he mentions the people that kind of steal the limelight are those that are that day trading the institutional investors trying to make a quick buck. But actually the top investors, those that are really banking it are those that are patient. Those that have got the right habits.
[00:09:24] Mike Parsons: But the greatest irony is that they don't actually realize how much better they're doing than the average in the market when it comes to investing. To me, this is at the core of what we're trying to do is find these mindsets, mark, that those that have really cracked the problem. If you can get into this idea that you don't have to be a Wall Street guru, you just have to have the right financial habits and be patient, I think it's pretty exciting and I think it's just let's get started.
[00:09:58] Mike Parsons: Like where do I transfer my cash? Okay. Exactly.
[00:10:01] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think you're totally right, Mike. It is a story of hope that Morgan's calling out to us here. You don't necessarily have to be the smartest man in the room. You don't necessarily have to be born with the ability to see the wood through the trees when it comes to numbers and be able to predict what's gonna happen in the stock market and so on.
[00:10:19] Mark Pearson Freeland: But the thing that really stands out to me within this first clip that we got from Morgan, and where I see the connection perfectly with moonshots and the tips and advice that we keep on uncovering from different authors and different thinkers, is the fact that behavior can be hard to teach.
[00:10:36] Mark Pearson Freeland: And instead the behavior shift that has to take place is up to us. We have to be able to ourselves, be inspired by somebody like Morgan or any of the individuals on the Moonshot Show. We have to hear it and we have to be driven ourselves to then go out and put that into practice. And I think what we're really gonna find out today, as well as in the rest of the series are some of those tips.
[00:10:57] Mark Pearson Freeland: Not necessarily to turn, $1 into a hundred dollars, but instead how can we take the advice and the awareness from some of these individuals, particularly Morgan for today, and actually start to help it influence our approach as well as our opinion. About money and how we are interacting with it.
[00:11:17] Mark Pearson Freeland: What is our relationship with money? Yes. How are we taking advantage? How are we taking care of it? Because Morgan says, we can all do it no matter what our background is. And no matter who we are, we all have the capability of doing it as long as we are interested and have the desire and the mindset to go out and leave it ourselves.
[00:11:33] Mike Parsons: That's right. And that distinction, you don't have to be a rocket scientist who's got all these graphs and Bloomberg machines. You have to be the patient One
[00:11:41] Mark Pearson Freeland: patience, long-term view as Morgan says. Yeah. Yeah. It's no. Get rich quick
[00:11:45] Mike Parsons: here. And the crazy thing is historically when we talk about investing, if you look over time, let's just say make it really easy, do the last 200 years of the stock market in the US and look at it in decades, no single decade has ended lower than the previous one.
[00:12:10] Mike Parsons: But the thing is, you just gotta have the mindset to stay in the market and not do, what does everybody do? They sell low and they buy high. They buy high. Everyone's buying quick. We gotta buy the market. It's the end of the world. Everybody sells. And you're like, those that just bought and held their position.
[00:12:29] Mike Parsons: Very Warren Buffet, by the way. Those are the ones that actually do really well, and it's statistically proven. Mark, you've just gotta stay in the market long enough and not freak out when, events suggest that, maybe the, this time round the market won't go up over the next 10 years.
[00:12:49] Mike Parsons: So you are gonna sell so much in there. I love this idea of patience and resilience, building regular habits. And I'll tell you wh who else has regular habits and that is our fabulous
[00:13:00] Mark Pearson Freeland: members, mark. It goes without saying that the individuals who are here with us with a long-term mindset, putting new behaviors into practice and building those habits towards being a little bit better version of ourselves every day, just keeps on getting longer and longer.
[00:13:18] Mark Pearson Freeland: Mike, so please, without further ado, welcome our annual members. In fact, some of these Mike have been with us for well over 12 months now. Bob, John, Terry Maral and Ken Dimar, Marja and Connor, Lisa, Sid, Mr. Bondi, Paul Berg, cowman, and David, Joe, crystal, and Ivo, all of who have been with us for well over a year.
[00:13:39] Mark Pearson Freeland: As always, though, Christian, Sam, Barbara, and Andre, Eric, Chris, Deborah, lase, Steve, Craig, Daniel, and Andrew. Ravi Yvette, Karen Rowel, PJ Niko. Ingram, Dirk, Emily, Harry Karthik, Vanatta, Marco, jet Roger, Steph Gaia, Anna Raw, Nien James, Eric, and Diana are hot in their heels, soon to be our annual members as well.
[00:14:03] Mark Pearson Freeland: But also, please welcome our brand new members, Wade and Amanda, who have joined us of the past week. Thank you so much for joining us, joining our moonshot's rocket ship into the world of education, mindsets, behavior, and good practices. We're so pleased to have your support as well as your interest in digging into all of our lessons even deeper with the Moonshot's Master Series.
[00:14:28] Mike Parsons: Special. Welcome to Amanda and Wade. We are super grateful for your contribution and hopefully in return for your contribution, we can give you something that inspires you, perhaps to learn out loud together with us, something that might push you towards being the best version of yourself. And there's a key thought when it comes to money and it comes to wealth and it's something that actually goes beyond that as well.
[00:14:53] Mike Parsons: And this is comparing yourself to others. It is a dangerous path. In the end. You need to hold yourself accountable to who you wanna be, not compared to everybody else, but compared to where you were yesterday. That should power how you think today. And when we get to money, there's a key thought that we can take from Morgan Housel and his book, the Psychology of Money, and that is never enough.
[00:15:19] Mike Parsons: It's a very interesting phenomenon that that you can hand somebody a $2 million bonus and they're fine until they find out that the person next to 'em got 2,000,001, and then they're, they're sick for the next year.
[00:15:31] Sweedish Investor: Capitalism is great at doing two things, generating wealth and generating envy.
[00:15:38] Sweedish Investor: The urge to surpass your neighbors, peers and friends can help energize your hard work and strive to really make it. And of course, being motivated into becoming more productive and doing meaningful work is a good thing. But social comparison can also cause us to feel like we are never enough. Let's look at some statistics to belong to the top 1% highest income earners in the us you'd have to earn somewhere around $500,000 a year.
[00:16:09] Sweedish Investor: That's what a highly specialized doctor, let's call him Bill Earns, and by almost any standard bill would be considered rich. He can afford to drive nice cars, go on long vacations to exotic countries, perhaps hire someone to do work, which he thinks is tedious, et cetera. Bill has been feeling good about himself and what he has achieved financially in his life.
[00:16:32] Sweedish Investor: That was only until he bought a vacation home in the Hamptons and realized that he had Stan as his neighbor. Stan belongs to the top 1% of the 1%. He is a c e O of quite a large public company, and a staggering 10 million per. Now, you'd hope that at least Stan would be satisfied with his financial achievements.
[00:16:57] Sweedish Investor: But nope. This guy was a childhood friend of Michael Jordan and this all-time great basketball player is someone who belongs to the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. And compared to Michael's fortune of about 2 billion Stan's yearly salary of 10 million suddenly seems like peanuts. Does it end here? No it doesn't because Michael occasionally attends parties with celebrities where a guy named Def Bezos shows up.
[00:17:26] Sweedish Investor: Bezos is the top 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1%, and he increased his net worth by about 75 billion in 2020. Now, saving at something like 200 billion, there's always a bigger fish. The type of envy which has emerged from comparisons of this kind, has caused a lot of people to do foolish things throughout history.
[00:17:52] Sweedish Investor: Some have leveraged their portfolios to the teeth in order to move up to a higher pyramid, just to lose it all and then commit suicide. Some have acted on insider information and lost both personal reputation and then later their freedom when they've gone to jail. Many have forsaken their families and then had their partners leaving them or cheating on them, or both as a result.
[00:18:15] Mark Pearson Freeland: Mike, I think the great story that we're hearing from Swedish investor there, who's doing a great breakdown with the help of Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett's lessons are always so valuable to us, aren't they? This idea of comparison is true not only within the money space, which is obviously our focus here, but it's so tricky sometimes to actually stay away from comparing yourself day to day with anything in life, isn't it?
[00:18:40] Mark Pearson Freeland: How am I tracking at work? Am I hitting my targets? How am I from a fitness perspective, maybe a parenting perspective? This idea of comparing yourself to others is something that we all do day in, day out, and really. As we've learned from, Daniel Pink with the Power of Regret, as well as the work of Warren Buffet and Morgan Houser, is the fact that we shouldn't compare ourselves to people that we aren't comparable to because everybody has a different background, different experience, different ways of working, different priorities and so on.
[00:19:15] Mark Pearson Freeland: So it's always tricky, particularly when it comes to money, and it's probably why money is something that is still quite a touchy subject to talk about, with your friends or maybe even with your family. It's something that comparison brings out that as Swedish investor says, envy in us, doesn't it?
[00:19:33] Mark Pearson Freeland: And that envy can be the source of so many failures, mistakes, and shortsighted decisions that then impact us in
[00:19:40] Mike Parsons: the long run. It feels like such an empirical judgment of what we've achieved, doesn't it? It's dollars and cents. It's black and white it somehow feels like a, like an arbiter of, our contribution and our legacy, which is really quite ridiculous when you think about it because we've all had different background situations, challenges, and that comparison is also based on a big falsehood, which is when we look at others.
[00:20:11] Mike Parsons: Let's take social media for example. The only thing that people post socially for the vast amount of time is the best version of their day. Look at the orchestration that we see people going to get the shot, right? Look at the amount of controversy that we've seen happen with people manipulating those photos to present a false picture of where they are, who they are, and how they look.
[00:20:41] Mike Parsons: We are in this great challenge to ignore this media of all these people living these supposedly wildly successful lives, right? Because what I'm trying to say here is the reason why you shouldn't compare yourself is cuz you never know the real story. You never know what's really going on.
[00:21:02] Mike Parsons: Don't go on what on social. Don't go on the big house or the fancy car, cuz the truth is behind that fancy car is a lease. Yeah. And they're struggling to make that lease payment every single month. So you don't even want to, why would you cover that situation anyway? But here's where the most powerful thinking we've had on comparison comes, and that's from Elizabeth Gilbert.
[00:21:26] Mike Parsons: She's don't care, don't worry that what you are trying to achieve. Has been done by others, it's never been done by you. And this to me is this real empowerment that we are getting from Morgan Housel, which is do not fall into the trap of comparing yourself with others. Focus on what he talked a lot about in the first clip, which is in the rituals and the habits, and do the hard work and let the magic of compounding happen and don't fall in the trap of trying to race with others.
[00:22:00] Mike Parsons: Just run your own race, which is what ironically any running coach will tell you when you do a marathon. Don't chase the guy in front of you. Run your own race because so many runners try and chase a runner that's in front of them who perhaps has, is a professional or had two weeks off of for preparation, which you didn't have, so you can't keep up with them.
[00:22:25] Mike Parsons: Yeah. So why would you try? Because when you try, you bomb out. Or in the case of money, you make bad decisions, you overextend yourself. Maybe you make some dubious moral decisions with your money, right? So we've seen that time and time again. Don't compare yourself with others, run your own race. Is this just not the most powerful advice, already?
[00:22:48] Mike Parsons: I think we could probably stop the show now. There's all the money, wisdom you need in life, right? Yeah. Behavior versus intelligence. Don't compare yourself with others. Such great wisdom from Morgan household, right? Yeah,
[00:23:01] Mark Pearson Freeland: I totally agree. We're really hearing from Morgan the idea of empowerment being something that we all need to take control of, particularly when it comes to money, or maybe not particularly when it comes to money, but including when it comes to money.
[00:23:14] Mark Pearson Freeland: If we're putting into practice the element of not comparing ourselves, we're on the race track, we're just running our own marathons. Do the same with your money, don't necessarily can turn, $1 into a million overnight. It just takes time. So stop trying to race to the finish line because as we know from the Moonshot show, Mike as well, sometimes you've just gotta enjoy the journey.
[00:23:36] Mark Pearson Freeland: Learn along the way. Yes, get inspired by others. Yes, take control of your own behavior as well as your own mindset.
[00:23:43] Mike Parsons: Some might even say become a member of the moonshots podcast. In order to enjoy that journey, get free access. This is so crazy. If you're a member of the Moonshots podcast, it's only one cup of coffee a month.
[00:23:55] Mike Parsons: All right? So it's a small ask, but you also get a whole unique podcast, which is separate to the Moonshot's podcast. It's the Moonshot's Master series mark. We actually did a moonshot master series on money didn. We
[00:24:09] Mark Pearson Freeland: did, we've done topics ranging from designing your life, which was one of our most recent episodes.
[00:24:15] Mark Pearson Freeland: So really digging into how you structure the plans of your days, but also the productivity and positivity. Wealth creation was a huge master series episode, Mike, where we dug into a lot of different mindsets and a lot of different practical pieces that I think gonna complement this new series very well.
[00:24:34] Mark Pearson Freeland: But we've even dug into areas such as creativity, health, wisdom of the stoics. All of these topics, all of these frameworks are available for our moonshots master members simply for the cost of a cup of coffee a week, once a month. That's a lot of bang for your buck. I'd say, Mike, that's a good in.
[00:24:53] Mike Parsons: It is, and you'll learn, a lot of things. Some things might feel familiar and it's like a good reminder and some things might be totally new or even surprising. I think we could say that For this next clip, mark, we are gonna hear from Morgan Housel on he's talked a lot about how others manage money.
[00:25:11] Mike Parsons: Let's have a listen to this. Quite surprising disruptive idea for Morgan House on how he manages his money in
[00:25:19] Morgan Housel: terms of rules for my own personal finances, I mean I dollar cost average into index funds. I've been doing that as long as I've been investing. I will probably continue doing that as long as I invest.
[00:25:29] Morgan Housel: So to the extent that's a rule, that's how I invest. My wife and I have never had a household budget. We've never sat down and said, we're gonna spend X dollars on this and X dollars on that. We have a high savings rate just because the things that we desire don't cost a lot of money, but we spend money on whatever we want to.
[00:25:45] Morgan Housel: It's just we don't necessarily want that much. So we've never really had stringent rules like that. I do think in general, when you accept what we were talking about earlier, how everyone is different and has different goals and desires, not just from person to person, but among their own life, I think what becomes important are not necessarily rules, hard, firm rules that you never break.
[00:26:06] Morgan Housel: Just guidelines, things that push you in one direction and say, look, this is the direction that I'm going. This is the direction that I'm pointing. But at some point I might need to take a break. I might need to shift in a slightly different direction. It's not just it's not just a computer where it's this is the code and you always follow the code.
[00:26:22] Morgan Housel: You never break the rules. That, to me, I think just isn't a very realistic view of how most people's finances work. Cause most people's finance. Are gonna go up and down. They might get laid off, they might get a huge bonus, they might get an inheritance, they might have kids who need to go to college and like their finances are gonna be very lumpy throughout their life.
[00:26:40] Morgan Housel: So I think just being a little bit more flexible in what you do tends to be a better strategy and philosophy than having firm rules. Or you can have rules at periods of time in your life, but with an understanding that those rules will need to change over time. So rather than 100% set into this, so I, I have my financial strategies and philosophies, but I know I'm 36 and I know with certainty that if you were to interview me 20 years from now, I could tell you a dozen things that I do differently from when I'm 36 today.
[00:27:09] Morgan Housel: I know that's gonna happen. I don't know what it's gonna be, but I know that's gonna be true because the opposite, the only alternative to that is saying is telling you that I know everything about finance and I've learned everything and I've created a system that is always gonna be true. Of course, that's false.
[00:27:24] Morgan Housel: Of course, there's more that I have to learn. Not just about finance, but about life and who I am and what my family's goals are. So it's just being open to change, like affirming your beliefs, but open to change over time.
[00:27:36] Mark Pearson Freeland: Mike, I think this is where Morgan Hower really comes through as a very unique voice in the space, and I quite like, and similar how you set it up.
[00:27:45] Mark Pearson Freeland: It is a surprising admission because traditionally perhaps we are all of the, or at least I am, When I was growing up and when I started taking more control over my money as well, is how diligent and restricted and I suppose strict you need to be and you need to, put aside perhaps your own view of what you wanna buy how you wanna spend money and so on.
[00:28:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: And instead have a very fortresslike approach to your money, whereby every time it's 20% of this goes into over here and it's very fixed. What I like about where Morgan's is going from is a little bit more personal. He's got that unique view, which I think comes across in the psychology of money, but it also calls out for me how you need a, an element of flexibility that I think is then an admission to yourself to say, okay, there is this one-off cost that's come up.
[00:28:42] Mark Pearson Freeland: Okay, we need to dig in a little bit more into that saving. That's right. Yeah. Rather than just saying no to it. I think that's quite refreshing. It allows us to, keep an element of enjoyable, an enjoyable hobby list, I suppose you could say. Yes. And that admission that you can spend outside of those black and white budgeting that you have in store, I think is quite reassuring, don't you think?
[00:29:06] Mike Parsons: Yeah. So I would've expected, he would've said have a monthly budget. I was expecting him to remind me of where my wife and I had both started with cash envelopes for the month. That was, back in the age before the internet, all will shut Jim. The It makes me wonder, mark, like what are the best practices that you and I have come up with to what are our guidelines for personal finance and managing money?
[00:29:37] Mike Parsons: And I'll kick it off with an easy one. Inspired very much by Morgan Housel and our other episodes on money. I think the fundamental theme mark is to live within your means. So twice in our life. So we've owned four houses in our life twice in particular. We deliberately. Under purchased.
[00:30:07] Mike Parsons: So even the house I'm in now, we deliberately bought a smaller house than what we could afford. We could have gone bigger for a larger house. A more expensive house. But here's the interesting thing, my wife and I really enjoy the freedom that comes when you haven't pushed the limits on getting a big house, which has big cost obligations, which means you gotta, you're under the, under a lot of pressure to make sure those dollars keep on rocking in because the margin for error is so low.
[00:30:46] Mike Parsons: And that's what in a market when interest rates go up and people are like oh, we were on the edge and now we're over. Yeah. So we bought a small house. And that is like one of our guidelines living within your means and not overextending. We did the same in London. We bought actually a smaller place.
[00:31:08] Mike Parsons: And what was so fascinating is that was a really wise decision at the time. In fact, when I look at our most recent house purchase mark, we bought a house and this is where you start to feel really old. There could be a forever house. So it was a house that was easy to maintain. The most of the property is on one floor only.
[00:31:31] Mike Parsons: So when you get old and geriatric, getting up the stairs and all that stuff can be a hassle. So we've got a place where we're not dependent on the living. Key living spaces in the house are upstairs, so we have the studio upstairs. Sort of non-essential so we can be in our eighties and just potter downstairs.
[00:31:51] Mike Parsons: That kind of decision is just what comes with that. What for you is some of the decisions you have or guidelines, if you will, about money that you think really make life easier for you?
[00:32:03] Mark Pearson Freeland: You know what I, I think the flexibility angle that Morgan is calling out in this book, I think really speaks to me.
[00:32:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think like anything in life, you've gotta have your rainy day fund. Yes. As maybe traditionally it was called. So you'd have your savings that you would try and leave to one side and let it vest perhaps. Otherwise, you always have a little bit of pot of money that you can call. Or you can crawl out of, if you have some kind of, emergency or a wedding that you have to buy presents from, or whatever it is.
[00:32:34] Mark Pearson Freeland: So I think straight away from Morgan, this idea of having the guidelines rather than strict rules speaks to me quite a lot for me and my wife. We have monthly spreadsheets. I actually review my fi I'm quite highly attuned, I suppose you could say to the finances. I would like to check maybe once every couple of days just to make sure we know what's coming out as well as coming in.
[00:32:58] Mike Parsons: That's a great guideline, right? Knowing what is actually happening, because I think a lot of us, mark, have had mistakes in life where we're. Oh, there's only that much in the bank account. What happened? Oh, there was a deduction. Yeah. And you're like, man, I was just, wasn't checking enough.
[00:33:17] Mike Parsons: And then you're like, what am I gonna do? Because it's so important to know your balance.
[00:33:21] Mark Pearson Freeland: And I think it was something that really stood out to me in our first wealth management and money series as well. If I'm not the one taking a look at it and my wife's not the one taking a look at it, nobody else's.
[00:33:33] Mark Pearson Freeland: So that's for sure. And I've gone through this before where, you might have a busy few weeks and therefore not review the income and outgoings as much as you probably should. What then happens is you have more work to do in the next month because you're trying to figure out, okay do I have enough?
[00:33:48] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yes. Have I accounted for this correctly? So I think having a lot of ownership as well as a diligence to take a look quite regularly is certainly something that, that I try and do several times a week. Do
[00:33:59] Mike Parsons: you know what I do to build on. Yeah, I have a, to-do every single workday to check our bank accounts.
[00:34:08] Mark Pearson Freeland: Oh that's interesting. That's good.
[00:34:10] Mike Parsons: And what happens? Bring in the habits as well. Yeah. Yeah. I literally in my Todoist app, check the bank accounts happens every single workday. And it's just sometimes it's the most boring thing. You're like, oh did anything, I don't even know if that number changed, but the point is, odd moves and you're like, huh.
[00:34:30] Mike Parsons: Yeah. And you obviously mention checking your credit card every month reviewing the transactions. But also there are times when I'm like, huh, that number's a little different to what I expected. Like I learned subconsciously just the pattern to the balances. And then you're like, huh, I'm gonna check that.
[00:34:47] Mike Parsons: And it's so much better when you proactively check than when you get this. Oh, hang on a second. That sick feeling. Oh my gosh. What happened? I, there would be more, what else do you guys do there?
[00:34:59] Mark Pearson Freeland: There's two other big tips that I have noticed, particularly over the past, probably a couple of years maybe.
[00:35:05] Mark Pearson Freeland: The first one of which is related to purchases. Obviously if we have control and diligence over our income and outgoings, we have a little bit more of a runway and awareness of what we can or can't afford when we have a big purchase to make such as let's say a car, or it could go down to something like a phone or a tv or even your clothes.
[00:35:28] Mark Pearson Freeland: We try nowadays to invest more in the long term. So rather than buying items that may. Maybe 50% less, but will last 50% shorter in duration because of, less build quality, less good resilience and dur durability and so on. We'll tend to err on the side of more long-term purchases now with the intention of making them last for longer.
[00:35:55] Mark Pearson Freeland: Because I think, again, if we think about things coming in, going out, if we have a fixed amount going out once every five years, let's say on a new tv let's call it that, something tangible. Then we know that's accounted for and we won't have to think about it again within the next two to three or five years.
[00:36:12] Mark Pearson Freeland: Oh, cause you've invested it upfront.
[00:36:14] Mike Parsons: We've got a couch, which you've sat on Mark at our place, which we have owned for 23 years.
[00:36:21] Mark Pearson Freeland: There you go. But wait for, this isn't amazing. Cost us
[00:36:24] Mike Parsons: like over $20,000 when we bought it, but it's been worth every single cent. Because it was a quality purchase. And that's the thing.
[00:36:35] Mike Parsons: The more you are considered in your purchasing. For example, we have a rule in our house that I actually don't press purchase in the Amazon app. I just add things to the cart and then over a couple of days my wife will review the purchases. We often will discuss them before they're done. So that's just a really good way of doing it.
[00:36:58] Mike Parsons: That's nice. Another thing you can do is you can say all closed purchases should be really seen as a reward. So when you ha have thought about, okay, if I do X I'll buy Y, then it, the shopping becomes a real joy. But also that deferred gratification in both those examples sometimes leads you go, actually I don't need it.
[00:37:20] Mike Parsons: Like you, you actually don't buy it. And that's really good. The one last quick one I want to throw in there from my side mark, is financial goals around. Net or people talk about wealth, but it's really important to distinguish what is your net wealth like after you pay out all your bills, mortgages, credit card debt, what is left, right?
[00:37:42] Mike Parsons: And having goals about what your personal wealth, net wealth target is really crucial because this can be a great guide to your financial decisions. So I have a pretty aggressive target for net wealth, our net worth, and so therefore we bought a smaller house. You see how I'm doing this?
[00:38:07] Mike Parsons: And another one is that you should always have six months salary at hand in a rainy day fund at any time. This one's a really good one because that means you can sleep easy knowing that if anything unforeseen happens or it is an illness, lose your job, whatever, you've got the capacity to cover it.
[00:38:26] Mike Parsons: I think it's when you are riding too close to the edge, like we've talked about, I think this causes enormous stress and I think that's at the heart of just, take control of your finances because if you don't, ain't nobody else going to.
[00:38:40] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think that builds lastly onto my final point, which I think we've discussed in the show before, and that's if you are nowadays, it's so much easier to get into share trading commodities, cryptocurrencies, all sorts of different avenues.
[00:38:55] Mark Pearson Freeland: In areas where you can invest your money or your wealth in order to maybe get a return. I think it's, it goes without saying. The trend is to only be diligent with yourself and only invest what you can afford to lose. The way that I like to think about it as well is the experiences that I am doing when it comes to share trading commodities or crypto is I'll only invest a small amount with the intention of treating it like an education.
[00:39:22] Mark Pearson Freeland: So what might happen if I put in this small amount and let's actually go on the journey to educate myself. To become more confident. So therefore, rather than taking a big risk and saying I really need to make money quickly. Let's throw it all at shares or all at crypto. Get rich quick and so on.
[00:39:38] Mark Pearson Freeland: Instead, thinking about it in a long-term view, starting with, okay, I'm gonna educate myself for the first couple of months, I'm gonna get comfortable and then maybe slowly ramp up from there. It's all about that journey to becoming comfortable having that behavior, or let's say the psychology yes, around what I'm going to invest, when I'm gonna do it, how I'm gonna do it.
[00:39:59] Mark Pearson Freeland: It all is, to somebody like me, it's brand new information. I wasn't trained, but as Morgan's already pointing out, it's something that we can all take ownership of. As long as you are you are that way inclined. You want to go out and learn, you want to go out and be perhaps strict or you want to go out and just have guidelines and goals in place to then, like you, Mike, Make a better decision around the house because you know what the foundation is that you want to try and build, and therefore that helps you make that financial decision because you know ultimately what you're trying to ladder up towards.
[00:40:31] Mike Parsons: Yeah, and I think like one of those key guides, key principles, key mindsets that not only have we heard from Darren Hardy, the Compound effect we've heard from David Gogans and a lot of those athletes who talk about the ritual of practice and training every single day, building that inner strength.
[00:40:56] Mike Parsons: The great news is Morgan Housel has got some thoughts on this total moonshots theme, which is compounding, so let's have a listen to productivity game as they break down. How compounding should start Now, if I
[00:41:10] Productivity Game: give you a dollar on January 1st, And double it every day after that. $2 on January 2nd, $4 on January 3rd, $8 on January 4th.
[00:41:19] Productivity Game: How much money would I have to give you on January 31st? A thousand dollars. $10,000? If you understand the power of compounding, you know that you stand to make much, much more than $10,000 on January 31st by compounding $1 at a hundred percent for 31 days, you would receive $1,073,742,000 on January 31st.
[00:41:44] Productivity Game: Congratulations. You just become a billionaire in a month. But if you delayed that game for a week and didn't start compounding that first dollar until January 8th, how much would you receive on January 31st? 250 million. A hundred million? Nope. You would take home just 8 million on January 31st. By waiting a week, you brought home 99% less money.
[00:42:09] Productivity Game: This doesn't seem intuitive. Don't worry. The human mind does not easily grasp the power of compounding. Warren Buffett is regarded as the best investor of all time today. He's worth approximately 86 billion, but did you know that nearly 82 billion of his 86 billion was generated after his 65th birthday?
[00:42:30] Productivity Game: Here's a chart of Buffett's wealth. Over the years, since Buffett was 11 years old, he has achieved an annual average return of 22%, which is twice as good as the average stock market return. But this 22% average annual return is nothing compared to other investors. Take Jim Simons a mathematician who runs the firm Renaissance Technologies.
[00:42:51] Productivity Game: Simon's has achieved 66% returns for the last 33 years, but Simon's has just a quarter of the wealth that Buffett has because Simon's like other investors, have not consistently compounded their wealth for as long as Buffett has. Buffet has more money than other investors because of one primary reason.
[00:43:11] Productivity Game: He's maximized his time in the market to leverage the power of compounding. The first key to building independence level wealth is to start investing now with whatever you can afford. May it be a hundred dollars or $10,000 and keep that money invested so you give compounding enough time to work its magic.
[00:43:32] Productivity Game: This advice is simple, but many smart investors failed to follow this advice because they get greedy. Many years ago, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet had another business partner named Rick Garrin. Garrin was an investing genius like Monger and Buffet, but few people know about Garron because when the stock market was soaring in the late 1960s, Garron leveraged his money and used debt to maximize his returns.
[00:43:59] Productivity Game: But when the stock market dropped by 70% in the early 1970s, Garron got margin calls and was forced to sell his stock. Whenever I'm tempted to take on risk and chase a big return in any given year, I just remember that if I'm wrong and lose 50% in one year, I'll need to achieve a hundred percent return the following year.
[00:44:19] Productivity Game: Just to break even now, if greed doesn't interrupt your compounding curve, fear probably will. When you watch your stock market portfolio drop by 30% in a market downturn, fear will likely consume you and make you believe that you're going to lose all your money. So you better sell and wait for the market to recover.
[00:44:38] Productivity Game: But know this, in any 20 year period, 100% of people who bought and held the s and p 500 stock market index made money. We all must develop the mental fortitude to weather short-term downturns in order to benefit from long-term uptrends and leverage the power of compounding.
[00:44:58] Mark Pearson Freeland: Mike, I think what we're hearing from productivity game there is one of the key insights, lessons, takeaways, that any of us could have.
[00:45:08] Mark Pearson Freeland: The idea of short term benefiting the long term and having patience, as you've caught out Darren Hardley with the Compound Effect, in fact, we only covered him a few weeks ago, so he's recent within our listener catalog, listeners and members. But even going all the way back to Jim Collins with Good To Great and the work that he was bringing towards us around the flywheel effect.
[00:45:31] Mark Pearson Freeland: The idea of having those small initiatives leading up to something of great effect at the end. It's such a life lesson as well as a financial one. And I think it, again, to use a word that you said earlier, hope, it's reassuring to me that even at the age of 35, it's something that you can start doing.
[00:45:51] Mark Pearson Freeland: Now it's exactly it's something that we can't delay because even if you do obviously in the case that productivity game was showing us there, you delay it by a week and you get 99% less return than you would on the first one. I think that's a pretty compelling reason to just start today, isn't it?
[00:46:09] Mike Parsons: Totally. But isn't it crazy, Matt, like if you're working on. A great business idea. It takes time and resilience. If you're working on being fit and healthy, it takes time and resilience. Hey, wealth time resilience. Let things compound away. Build those positive habits. It is really crazy how there is a model to all of these practices, either within money you start to see the pattern.
[00:46:37] Mike Parsons: But actually if you look at life overall, some of those patterns remain the same as well. And that's really what we're trying to crack here, is we learn out loud together. It's okay, what does success look like? What are the guys and gals who are doing it right? What are they doing and how might we do it ourselves?
[00:46:54] Mike Parsons: And for me the question is what are we fighting for? And I would say that if you wanna be the best version of yourself, then you need a degree of independence, right? If you don't have the time, The capacity and the tools to devote to the thing that is your calling, then you can't be the best version of yourself if you are trapped and constrained in a situation cuz you don't have financial options.
[00:47:22] Mike Parsons: Then you are not able to fulfill your potential. So we owe it to ourselves to manage our health, to manage our emotions, our mindfulness, to manage our money, cuz all of those give us independence. And it's through being independence. You have the greatest opportunity in life, which is to set your own goals.
[00:47:45] Mike Parsons: Nobody else sets them. And to go on the journey, on the adventure of achieving them. And I think that this is the challenge that, that Morgan brings 360. So Mike, do you reckon we're ready to hit ourselves with the. The last, the final, but perhaps the knockout clip from Morgan Housel. I think
[00:48:06] Mark Pearson Freeland: You've warmed up our listeners and members, Mike.
[00:48:09] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think that's only fair that we now reveal perhaps one of the key takeaways and as well as a key core to action that I think Morgan has within the psychology of money and setting us up for the rest of the series on money as well. Let's hear one more time from Morgan Housel and actually now hearing about how he sets and he focuses on goals.
[00:48:31] Morgan Housel: Charlie Munger, who's one of the greatest investors of our time once said, I did not intend to get rich. I just wanted to get independent. Now, that I think is such an important goal when dealing with our money. Everyone should start their financial journey by journey, by asking, what is my goal? What am I after?
[00:48:49] Morgan Housel: Do I want more money? Is it to buy more stuff, buy a car, a house, a nicer car, a nicer house, better clothes, education for my children? You might answer yes to all of those. I know I probably do. Money is great cuz it can buy you stuff. We all know that. But there's another thing that money does for us that Franklin Roosevelt showed when he was five years old.
[00:49:12] Morgan Housel: Money can, if we use it right, bring independence. It can bring a sense of autonomy in controlling your own time. And that I think is what I call the highest form of wealth. Waking up every morning and just saying, I can do whatever I want today. Even if what you want to do is going to work and working as hard as you can, like Roosevelt, if you're doing it on your own terms, you feel happier.
[00:49:39] Morgan Housel: So then the question is, how can you use money to gain independence and control over your time? There are a couple things to think about here. One thing that's obvious but really easy to overlook is that wealth is what you don't see. Wealth is the money that people have not spent. Wealth is the homes that people didn't buy.
[00:49:58] Morgan Housel: It's the cars that people didn't purchase. It's the jewelry that they didn't get. Wealth is money that you don't spend, that you've saved up, and it's sitting in your bank account. You haven't spent it yet. That's what wealth is. And then the question is, what good is money saved up if you're not gonna spend it?
[00:50:16] Morgan Housel: If you're fortunate enough to earn some money and save it, what good does it do to not spend it? What does it do for you if it's just sitting there on your bank account? And to me, the answer is actually pretty obvious here, which is that wealth that you've saved up and haven't spent, gives you control over your time.
[00:50:32] Morgan Housel: It gives you independence, wealth that you haven't spent is what lets you wake up and say, I can do whatever I want today. Because when you have savings, you have options. The option to choose maybe where you wanna live, maybe what kind of work you want to do, maybe how long you wanna work for, or when you can retire.
[00:50:51] Morgan Housel: If you lose your job, maybe you don't have to take the first one that's available. With savings, you can wait until another better job comes around. It lets you handle the inevitable ups and downs and surprises and mishaps of life with so much more ease. And if you spent all the money that you've made, it gives you time to think and freedom to think for yourself.
[00:51:13] Morgan Housel: Just shifting your mindset from, I want more money so I can buy more stuff to, I want more money so that I can be independent, is such a powerful way to think. Now, here's one reason why I think there are two kinds of money thinkers. Two kinds of money mindsets. One is current thinkers and the other is future thinkers.
[00:51:33] Morgan Housel: That's really important. Current thinkers are all about what's happening at this moment. What can I do right now? What can I buy right now? And it's not that's bad, I do that too. But if all you think about is a present day, then everything you've worked for in the past can only benefit the present day.
[00:51:50] Morgan Housel: But if you're a future thinker, That flips because when you're a future thinker, work that you do today can benefit you for the rest of your life. The money you save today, the real wealth that you accumulate and don't spend gives you freedom and independence, not just today or this week, but potentially next year, five years from now for the rest of your life.
[00:52:10] Morgan Housel: Not spending the money that you make can feel wasteful, like it serves no purpose, but by giving you options in how you live your life, it's actually providing value every single day that you can hold onto.
[00:52:23] Mike Parsons: There you have it, mark. That is the stand and deliver. That's like he's Jerry McGuire's speech.
[00:52:28] Mike Parsons: He was getting pretty fired up, wasn't he?
[00:52:31] Mark Pearson Freeland: Show me the money. I know. It's so true. How, again, I, it's not something that necessarily stands out when you think about saving money or accumulating wealth, the idea of independence but Morgan's totally right. At the end of the day, it is whether you go out and live in a house that is your dream, or whether you go on the holidays or maybe you just find things that you wanna invest in that are external to you, perhaps giving it away, donating charities and so on.
[00:53:00] Mark Pearson Freeland: All of those choices are down to you as long as you've put in the work to actually accumulate that in the first place. Because again, and it's the call out Mike, that I think is gonna stay with me throughout this entire series unless I do it. Nothing's gonna change, right? The bank's not going to invest my money for me or help me budget or help me count the pennies.
[00:53:24] Mark Pearson Freeland: At the end of the day, it all comes down to me as well as the goals that I have in place. And I think one of the great callouts in that last clip that we just heard from Morgan is independence doesn't necessarily need to be buying a Tesla or going on a holiday or
[00:53:39] Mike Parsons: anything. Exactly. I think that's perhaps one of the things we're so tempted to think that as soon as you have some money, you need fancy things.
[00:53:49] Mike Parsons: I think actually what he's presenting is you should desire the freedom and the time rather than the of wealth. What do you say?
[00:54:02] Mark Pearson Freeland: What do you think? I agree that freedom of time is what we are all looking for, isn't it? We're all looking in some way to put our stamp on the world as well as our lives.
[00:54:12] Mark Pearson Freeland: Maybe it's legacy, maybe it's something more short term. Just go out and do something that makes you happy. Exactly. All of that though, is again, mindset. Decide that the thing that makes you happy is going to your job and doing the best you can. Making your bed in the morning, going for a short run, whatever it might be.
[00:54:29] Mark Pearson Freeland: It can be small. Just taking ownership of your money today is equally one of those moments of independence that you then feel good about yourself and you're setting yourself up for long-term success.
[00:54:40] Mike Parsons: So true. So many lessons as well. Mark, which of the lessons that we have learned from Morgan Housel has piqued your interest?
[00:54:49] Mark Pearson Freeland: I think the the call out that we heard with the help of Warren Buffet around enough is never enough. Is a a foundation that I think is always gonna ring true. You gotta stop comparing yourself to others because at the end of the day, your situation, the way that you spend money, the way that you need money, is gonna be different from others.
[00:55:09] Mark Pearson Freeland: That, for me is always gonna be a true lesson, I think. Mike. Yeah. What about you? We learned a lot of different stuff from Morgan today, haven't we?
[00:55:15] Mike Parsons: Oh, it's very hard. I lo, I actually love the insight that he started with. Behavior versus intelligence. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be wealthy, you have to have fortitude, resilience, and the right patience.
[00:55:31] Mike Parsons: In order to succeed. That was pretty good, wasn't
[00:55:33] Mark Pearson Freeland: it? Yeah. That idea of hope. Yes. The fact that it is something that we can all do today. Yeah. Yeah. It's not something that you have to rely on. An fa or an accountant to go out and do it is something that we can all do is pretty, pretty empowering.
[00:55:45] Mark Pearson Freeland: Mike I'm relieved.
[00:55:47] Mike Parsons: I'm relieved and excited all at the same time, so I would love to Thank you, Mike for joining me on the show today. It's been fantastic to kick off a new series and to kick off into a world of money and the psychology behind it. It was show 220 mark, if you can believe that. It's quite a few shows, isn.
[00:56:10] Mike Parsons: It just
[00:56:10] Mark Pearson Freeland: keeps on ticking Mike and with listener suggestions as well as a repertoire of books that we want to go out and cover. I think you and I will be playing the long game with Moonshots for many years.
[00:56:22] Mike Parsons: Once again, thank you to you, mark, and thank you to our members and to our listeners, because today on Show 220 we went.
[00:56:31] Mike Parsons: Right behind the scenes on Money and Wealth with Morgan House's book, and we learn many different lessons. The first of which is there's a great distinction between behavior and intelligence. We also got a very timely reminder that comparison is evil and you can fall into the trap of you never have enough, but you can get.
[00:56:51] Mike Parsons: There's a twist and a turn. Turn here. If you have guidelines and not rules, you can start accruing wealth so that you can actually enjoy the magic of compounding effect. That's right. And if you do that, it will not only give you time, it will give you independence and allow you to ask the question, what is your goal?
[00:57:10] Mike Parsons: What are you really fighting for? What is your purpose? And those are very much questions that we like to ask here at the Moonshots podcast. Those are questions that help us learn out loud together. They help us be the very best version of ourselves. That's a pretty exciting journey, I must say. So for now though, that's a wrap.