Morgan Housel: Why You Spend Money (And How to Do It Better) SB1769

Here’s something nobody tells you: knowing how to make money is easy compared to knowing how to spend it well.

Morgan Housel, bestselling author and one of the sharpest minds in personal finance, is back in the basement with Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug to tackle the question most financial advice completely ignores: why do we spend the way we do, and how can we get better at it?

This isn’t about budgeting apps or cutting lattes. It’s about understanding the psychology underneath every swipe of your card. Morgan shares stories from his early days working valet for the ultra-wealthy—the spending patterns he observed, the misery he witnessed, and the lessons that changed how he thinks about money forever. Turns out, having more money doesn’t automatically make you better at spending it. In fact, it often makes you worse.

The conversation digs into what actually creates happiness (spoiler: it’s not more stuff), why contentment matters more than your net worth, and how true financial independence isn’t about the size of your portfolio—it’s about the freedom to make choices that align with your actual values. Morgan also breaks down what Warren Buffett’s retirement announcement reveals about staying grounded while building wealth, and why comedians might understand money better than most economists.

Plus: Doug takes a trivia detour to a surprisingly risqué national park (because of course), and the crew wraps with binge-worthy recommendations for your next couch night.

If you’re tired of chasing more and ready to figure out what enough actually looks like, this episode is required listening.

What You’ll Walk Away With:

• Why spending money well is a psychological skill, not a math problem—and how to develop it
• What Morgan learned about wealth and misery from parking cars for millionaires in their driveways
• The hidden drivers behind your financial decisions (and how to spot them before they derail you)
• Why contentment—not consumption—is the real key to long-term happiness
• What true financial independence actually means (hint: it’s not a number in your bank account)
• How Warren Buffett’s approach to retirement reveals timeless principles about money and legacy
• Simple guiding principles to help you spend smarter and live calmer

This Episode Is For You If:

• You’ve hit financial goals but still don’t feel satisfied
• You’re tired of spending money on things that don’t actually make you happier
• You want to understand why you make the money decisions you do (even the questionable ones)
• You’re curious what actually separates people who enjoy their money from people who just have it
• You believe there’s more to financial success than just accumulating more

Before You Hit Play, Think About This:

What’s one purchase you made that brought way more joy than its price tag would suggest—and can you figure out why? That’s the kind of spending Morgan’s talking about. Drop your answer in the comments—the basement wants to hear what actually brought you happiness.

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

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Our Headline

• Warren Buffett ‘going quiet,’ converts $1.35B in Berkshire shares in farewell as CEO (InvestmentNews)

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Doug’s Trivia

• This 244,000-acre national park on Santa’s naughty list is the home of one of the nation’s biggest treasure troves of fossils. But what park is it?

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Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?

• Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).

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Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when we’re talking spending less and living more with our roundtable group of money friends.

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: The Tax Basics You Should’ve Learned Years Ago (But Nobody Taught You) SB1768

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] trailer: Ignition sequence starts 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. All engine running lift off.

[00:00:18] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:32] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And how’s your spending plan in the Bendiest month of the year? Today, we welcome a mentor who’s gonna teach you the art of spending money. Morgan Hausel in our headline segment, Warren Buffet said, peace out homies. As he cleaned out his leftovers from the break room fridge at Berkshire Hathaway.

[00:00:50] Doug: That’s right, it’s Warren’s last month at the helm. What lessons can we glean from this historic transfer away from the world’s greatest investor? We’ll share, and of course I think this is a great time to reminisce about someone. Santa thinks is naughty. Having a birthday and now two guys who are hanging the investment stockings with care.

[00:01:12] Doug: It’s Joe. Oh and OG.

[00:01:21] Joe: Hey Stackers. Happy Wednesday and yeah, I can’t believe it. Og, we’ve never had Morgan Hausel on the show until today, like Christmas in December. It is, it’s crazy. It’s. It’s amazing. Uh, if you’re not familiar with Morgan Housel’s work, buckle up Buttercup, because Morgan always has phenomenal stuff to say.

[00:01:44] Joe: That cuts right hot to the chase. He does gotta use the lingo. Yes. All the kids are using it. Uh, speaking of that voice, uh, and I just said, Hey, og, people might not know who he is. If you’re new to the show, my partner in crime on this podcast, the one, the only, the og, how are you? This fine. Wednesday my friend.

[00:02:04] OG: Living the dream man. Dancing in my office. Of course, living the dream, feeling the flow. 

[00:02:10] Joe: I can’t believe how warm it is this late in the year down here in, uh, Texarkana. It just, 

[00:02:15] OG: it’s great. Perfect golf weather. 

[00:02:18] Joe: I know. Wearing shorts this time of year. Just so strange why I moved here. 

[00:02:24] Doug: This is, it is so wild.

[00:02:26] Doug: Meanwhile, I got the space heater on my side of the card table, just blasting heat up from underneath the desk right into my face. So it’s weird how different the weather patterns are in the basement. 

[00:02:37] Joe: Is that the only reason you have a space heater between your legs? Just curious. Asking for a friend.

[00:02:43] OG: Let’s just let ’em go. A space heater between your legs or are you just happy to see me? 

[00:02:47] Doug: Yeah. Have, have a blast guys, we have no idea. It’s blasting between, between my legs. I’ll tell you that. The old man 

[00:02:53] OG: wants his Afghan and his house shoes. That’s right. 

[00:02:57] Joe: It’s only 87 degrees it here. I’m 

[00:02:59] Doug: absolutely wearing house shoes right now.

[00:03:04] Joe: Morgan Howell. Coming up next, he is going to help you practice the art of thinking about how you spend your money. Morgan, of course, is not only a, uh, bestselling author, he’s a guy who has been the last several years, one of the prime voices, the personal finance community. You’re gonna hear Morgan. Today before we say hello to Morgan for the first time on Stacking Benjamins, we also have a few sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on and all the Morgan Hausel.

[00:03:35] Joe: Goodness, you don’t have to pay for any of that. So we’re gonna hear from them. And then the Morgan Hausel coming down to talk about the artist spending.

[00:03:53] Joe: I am super happy. This gentleman is coming down the stairs to mom’s basement. It’s Morgan Hausel. How are you man? I’m doing well. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. Well, good to see you. And you’re a guy who I’ve read and seen so much. I feel like I know you. It’s one of these parasocial relationships, Morgan.

[00:04:08] Joe: That we, we, we often have with our stackers. But I know enough about you and your work that you choose words very carefully and you called the book Your New Project, the Art of Spending Money. It’s not the science of spending money, it’s not the strategy, but the art. Why that 

[00:04:27] Morgan: word? Why is that word so important?

[00:04:29] Morgan: Well, I think there’s two ways to think about this. One is I easily could have called it. The psychology of spending money. It’s not the strategy of spending money. It’s not a lecture on how to spend money. It’s what is going through your head when you are thinking about these topics. The psychology of envy, the psychology of greed, the psychology of contentment and happiness is really what this book is about.

[00:04:48] Morgan: I don’t think there is a science of spending money because in a science there really has to be kind of a formula that works for me and you. At the same time. And the truth is we are different people and everyone is different from, from one another. Different generations, different cultures, different risk tolerances, different family situations, different.

[00:05:06] Morgan: Emotional scars that we all bring with us from the past that shape our current desires and our current goals and whatnot. And so the idea that it is an art and not a science, I think this is a very imperfect analogy, but the best analogy that I can think of, of what it is like is your taste in food.

[00:05:22] Morgan: There is no science of the taste in food. You might like Mexican food and I might say no. Italian is much better. I absolutely despise. Seafood. Anything that’s been submerged in water will not go down, will not go down my throat. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you, and most people listening to this think that’s crazy.

[00:05:38] Morgan: But the truth is like, we’re all different. We’re all very different. There’s no science to this. Whatever works for you is what’s gonna work for you. And I think the idea of not just how we spend, but actually how we earn and save and invest our money fall into that category as well. It’s not a science, it’s an art, 

[00:05:51] Joe: which means it makes it hard to create a set of rules.

[00:05:53] Joe: I mean, they’re truly then. By definition then Morgan. I think there’d be no, no rules to follow as much as there’s kind of guidelines and markers and maybe a rainbow at the end of the horizon. We’re looking at. 

[00:06:05] Morgan: Yeah, I think that that tends to be true. And now look, there are some rules of being reasonable within it.

[00:06:11] Morgan: If you are investing, you need to understand the math behind compounding. You need to understand the risk of debt and liquidation. Sure, those are universal between you and I, but the idea of the psychology of your risk tolerance, you know that’s gonna be different from person to person. And so there are.

[00:06:28] Morgan: These guideposts that are universal that you need to understand. And that’s where financial education really comes into play and that kind of thing. But the idea that we are all different creatures within those guidelines is one of the most overlooked parts of finance, I think. 

[00:06:41] Joe: I’m so glad you’re here in December, maybe the bendiest month of the year.

[00:06:44] Joe: Right. So it’s a good time to get a little philosophical about this. You are right that you worked as a valet at a high-end hotel. I’m just, I’m very curious about that. Was that 

[00:06:54] Morgan: a good time? Did you like your time as a valet? Oh my gosh, I cannot. Exaggerate the extent to which that was the coolest job a 19-year-old could have.

[00:07:03] Morgan: I was a valet for all four years during college at a five star hotel in Los Angeles, and this was kind of just before the housing bubble burst in 2007, 2008. And so there was so much fake money flowing around Los Angeles, which. Already a fake city to begin with in terms of its material aspirations and showing off whatnot.

[00:07:22] Morgan: And so you take the fake performative culture of Los Angeles and then you dump a trillion dollars of subprime money onto this. It was a crazy time. So as a 19-year-old, I was driving all these Ferraris and Bentleys and Rolls Royces. That sounds tough. 90% of which I’m sure were just the least. And you know, we’re doing it in 80 degrees, sunny weather.

[00:07:41] Morgan: It was the coolest job ever. And this is where I truly learned about so much of this stuff. I got to observe in a very fine magnifying glass, the psychology of rich people or, and not not just rich people, but like performative rich people who were taking their dates out to dinner at this hotel and, you know, trying to show off their car in the front of the val area.

[00:08:01] Morgan: And so. I feel like I learned so much about it back then because in my little 19-year-old P Brain, I had these aspirations to be a rich person one day too, and in my naive thinking, I just kind of thought like, oh, one day I’ll have a Ferrari and, and therefore I’ll be happy. All my problems will go away, everything will be great.

[00:08:18] Morgan: Everybody will love me. That was the very naive leap that I took, and looking at so many of these people, not just some, but I would venture to say most, if not nearly all, they were not as happy or as successful as I thought they would be. Some of them would come in in a $300,000 Lamborghini, and you get to know these people and you’re like.

[00:08:38] Morgan: He’s actually not that successful. He just spends half of his, his income on a Lamborghini lease payment. You know, there were so many of those elements that I got to see during those years that I learned a lot from. It’s 

[00:08:48] Joe: interesting. I’m wondering, was there a correlation, like the more performative the car was, the more, you know, if it’s the bright red, shiny Ferrari and the guy is immaculately dressed, he seemed to be less happy.

[00:09:00] Joe: Less successful than the person that shows up in maybe a nice Buick, or was there just no correlation at all, like the Ferrari did not say anything to you about the person’s general level of happiness in your short interaction with them? 

[00:09:14] Morgan: I think people in flashy cars tend to separate into two groups.

[00:09:18] Morgan: One is the car driver who wants to be seen. And the reason they own the Ferrari is because they want to turn heads and they wanna show off in front of strangers. That’s one group. The second group is the one who truly loves the craft and the engineering of this beautiful machine, and they own it for the art.

[00:09:34] Morgan: I think the litmus test is saying if you lived on a deserted island and nobody could see you, nobody could see your cars, your your house, your clothes, how would you choose to live if nobody could see? Your, your cars that you were driving, the people who own the cars for the craft and the engineering and the beauty of it would still drive it and still love it.

[00:09:53] Morgan: And they just loved, like polishing them in their garage every Sunday morning, that kind of thing. And then, so I am not anti spending in the slightest. And I love nice stuff. I love nice homes. I love nice cars. I love all of it. I like spending money on nice things. Full stop. But you, you need to make sure you’re owning it for the right reason.

[00:10:08] Morgan: And it tends to be one of those two groups. Are you doing it because you truly love and enjoy this thing, whatever it might be? Or because you think usually in a fooling yourself way that you are fostering and instilling some kind of admiration from strangers. 

[00:10:22] Joe: It’s funny though, how addictive that admiration from strangers at first.

[00:10:28] Joe: Maybe not addictive, but seductive. It can be. I grew up in a auto family, but I’ve never been a car person. Morgan. But my roommate in college was really into Corvettes, and I was like, what a waste of time and what a waste of money. And then I wrote in his Corvette and then, and then everybody, everybody was looking at me all the time.

[00:10:46] Joe: Yeah, well, like even people that didn’t care like me would glance at the person driving by because it was a cool car. It’s very, very seductive. It was. But I would 

[00:10:54] Morgan: challenge you though, that they were not actually looking at you. They were looking at the car. Well, sure, right. And imagining themselves being in your position.

[00:11:02] Morgan: Good point. And that’s a very different thing. They weren’t saying, wow, look at Joe. Right. Joe sold me. He’s, he’s so great. What they did is they said, if I was sitting in Joe’s seat, people would be looking at me. Even when people are paying attention to your car, your close, your house, 90% of the time, they’re not actually paying attention to you.

[00:11:18] Morgan: They are imagining themselves having that thing and dreaming about the attention that others would therefore give to them. 

[00:11:24] Joe: You write that in this, uh, project about Ben Franklin saying something to that extent that people are envious of you. And if you can be a, um, I’m not gonna get the words right ’cause I don’t have it right in front of me, but if you can be, uh, I dunno what the phrase is like by people or honored by people without them feeling envious, that is truly a great place to be.

[00:11:45] Morgan: Yeah, it’s very easy to mistake envy for admiration. Let’s say you are in a position where people are like, wow, look at, look at that house. Look at those clothes. You’re doing well for yourself. It’s easy to think they admire you for it, but very often what they do is they envy you for it. And envy is not something you, you wanna go through life minimizing the amount of people who are envious of you.

[00:12:04] Morgan: I’ll give you one other valet story from the period of time. One of the actually richest people that came into the hotel all the time. He was a regular there. Was a very successful clothing entrepreneur. I know because it was a public company, that he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars at the time, and he drove a modest Toyota pickup truck at the time.

[00:12:26] Morgan: I loved that. This was actually one of the most successful people. He was not one of the people faking it with the lease payment. This guy was actually filthy rich, but I think he was so confident in himself and so confident in who he was and gained his admiration from his entrepreneurial abilities, from his kindness.

[00:12:43] Morgan: He was the nicest, friendliest guy you could ever possibly meet, and that’s what I admired him for. I think my initial knee jerk reaction at the time was, dude, you have so much money. What are you driving this old pickup truck for? What, what, what is going on here? And as I gained a little bit more maturity, now I’m granted, I’m like 21 at this point, let’s say I kinda realized like, I actually like you the best.

[00:13:04] Morgan: I actually like you more than any of these people because I think part of the reason was. The people in the Rolls Royces and the Bentley, I probably did envy them. Now, that’s not a brag, that’s a character flaw of mine, but I think I did envy them. I think it was, oh, you think you’re better than me? Like, I don’t think you’re better than me.

[00:13:19] Morgan: You think you’re better than my dad. I don’t think you’re better than my dad. And it was a sense of envy. But this other entrepreneur who drove the pickup who was actually so successful, I was like, it’s the opposite of envy. I’m like, I love this guy. He’s so great. I have so much genuine admiration for him.

[00:13:33] Morgan: I, I think usually envy happens not when somebody has nicer things than you or more money than you. It’s when they have nicer things or more money. And rightly or wrongly, you tell yourself they didn’t deserve it. You think you’re working harder than me. I’m working hard too, but I can’t afford that.

[00:13:49] Morgan: That’s where envy comes from. It’s this feeling of, uh, unearned inferiority that you have towards others. 

[00:13:55] Joe: You wrote something else that really hit me, which was never make fun of how someone mispronounces a word, because they learned it from reading. Yeah, you had read that somewhere, but the corollary that you bring up then is never make fun of how someone spends money because they learned it from living.

[00:14:10] Joe: Can you unpack that? Because I think a lot of our stackers, you know, we all judge ourselves kind of harshly sometimes around 

[00:14:17] Morgan: the way we spend money. Yeah, I think it’s true that the way that you spend your money and save your money and invest your money tends to be a reflection of some deeply rooted personality characteristics that you have.

[00:14:29] Morgan: Maybe there are scars from earlier in your life, scars where you’re trying to, that you’re trying to make up for scars that gave you a very high or very low risk tolerance, whatever it might be. You learned it from living. I, I think that that tends to be the case now, and that’s not to say that people can’t make terrible decisions.

[00:14:43] Morgan: It’s not to say that people should not be told they’re making terrible decisions that they’re going to regret, but when they are making those decisions of Here’s how much money I’m gonna spend, here’s how much money I’m gonna save, or the lack thereof, it makes sense to them in that moment. It’s checking the boxes that they need in that moment.

[00:15:00] Morgan: I think that tends to be the case, that it’s very common to look at somebody who is spending money differently than you are, or saving or investing differently than you are. They’re either spending and saving way more, way less than you, and look at that and say, you’re doing it wrong. I’m doing it right.

[00:15:15] Morgan: You’re doing it wrong. You’re not spending enough, you’re too fr you’re, you’re not saving enough, whatever it might be. And I, I think a lot of where those feelings come from is that when you see people doing it differently than you, you can interpret that as a threat to your own decision making. Because if you’re saving half your income and you see someone living a paycheck to paycheck, when you look at them and say you’re doing it wrong, I think it’s not uncommon that actually what you’re feeling is like, maybe I’m doing it wrong, maybe they’re living a great life that I’m missing out on.

[00:15:40] Morgan: And you can respond to that with a lot of criticism and cynicism. And so look, I know a lot of people make very bad financial decisions that they will end up regretting. I think I have a pretty good radar at at spotting those, but I still have to remind myself that that person is not me, and maybe in their mind at that moment, it’s the right thing for them to do, even if it would be the wrong thing for myself to do.

[00:16:02] Morgan: I’ll tell you a very quick little story here. It was actually before I was a valet. My very first job, I think I was 17, I was working at a ski resort in Lake Tahoe and I had a coworker, he was probably 25, maybe 28, something like that, and he had $25,000 of credit card debt that he had racked up from going on these ski trips around the world.

[00:16:19] Morgan: He had skied in France and Italy and and Antarctica, and he had been everywhere on these like exotic ski trips, $25,000 in credit card debt. And I gave him so much grief for how stupid, how much of an imbecile he was for having all this debt. On a daily basis, I would. I would criticize him and ridicule him.

[00:16:38] Morgan: The tragic punchline here is. About a decade later. So let’s say he’s maybe mid thirties. He died in a ski accident. I remember how quickly my feelings, what shifted towards, I’m so glad he took those ski trips while he could. I’m so glad he got to live this amazing life that it, and now the takeaway has not that you and I should have.

[00:16:59] Morgan: A YOLO mentality and live like, we’re gonna die tomorrow ’cause hopefully we’re not going to. But I think it’s never as simple as live for today or save for tomorrow. The only thing you should think about is what are you going to regret at some point in the future and trying to minimize the number of regrets that you have.

[00:17:16] Morgan: I think about that a lot because I’ve been a big saver since I was earned my first dollar when I was 17 at that ski resort. I’ve been a huge saver ever since, and I, I think a lot about the balance between. I, I hope I live for another 50 years. And B, I might not. You might not. No. Nobody knows what this is gonna, so how do you balance regrets in a morbid kind of idea of if you are on your deathbed tomorrow, looking back at your life, what would you regret?

[00:17:42] Morgan: And a good philosophy foundation for life is trying to minimize those numbers of regrets. To bring that back to the point that you started with. Yeah. When you see somebody spending more or less money than you, it actually might be wrong for you, but make perfect sense in their head at that moment. 

[00:17:57] Joe: It strikes me as you’re telling that story, you know, there’s a lot of consternation in 2025 around the Bill Bangin new book, and the idea that the 4% rule, it doesn’t roll off the tongue anymore.

[00:18:09] Joe: Morgan like it used to, the 5.25% rule or whatever. Whatever it’s gonna be. Yeah. As I’m looking. Through your book, and I’m reading your book and I’m contemplating your words, this idea of even starting with the 4% rule or the 5% rule might be a mistake that if we begin with happiness and then see if that lodge is inside a 4% or 5% of whatever we’ve done, might be a better, better way to even attack how we think about spending money during our retirement or 

[00:18:43] Morgan: our fire years.

[00:18:44] Morgan: Yeah, I do think there’s something to be said that a lot of people will view those rules as. Guardrails around their happiness that I wanna spend as much money as I possibly can out of these assets. So it’d be great if it’s 4%, but if you tell me it’s 5%, that’s gonna be so much better. ’cause I’m gonna be able to live a much better life.

[00:18:59] Morgan: Yeah. Right. I think there’s some extent that can be true. Everybody can spend more money in a way that’s gonna give them a better life. I think that tends to be universal. And if you can’t, that’s, that’s a personal flaw. You just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. Right. I’ll help you. But I do think there’s Right.

[00:19:11] Morgan: But yeah, exactly. But I do think there is something to be said that. If you view your entire happiness as being constrained by how much money you’re spending, that’s a flaw as well. My late grandmother-in-law for 30 years, she lived off of nothing but 1800 bucks a month in social security. Nothing else.

[00:19:26] Morgan: She had no assets, no pension, no, just 1800 bucks a month, nothing else. Happiest woman you will ever meet. Totally content, totally happy playing in her garden and going for walks and like birdwatching. She always had a smile on her face. She’s always laughing. She was always telling jokes. The takeaway there is not like, oh, you should do that too.

[00:19:46] Morgan: But to me, the takeaway was it’s absolutely possible to live an amazing life on very little money. It is within your control, and the idea that wealth is what you have, minus what you want, it’s what you have, minus what you want. And she had nothing and she wanted nothing else, and so that equation penciled out perfectly.

[00:20:03] Morgan: There are also so many people that make $10 million a year, but they want 11. Those people are, are deficit in what they have. They wake up every morning feeling inadequate, and so I think there’s no level to that. Everybody can spend more money in a way that’s gonna give them a better life, but if you start out with, I can only have a good life if I can spend more money, that my happiness is constrained by how much money that I can spend, that’s a problem as well.

[00:20:27] Joe: Did you look into the research that a lot of people say is, is outdated, that you know there’s a certain amount of money that you can spend up to that makes you happy and then there’s no happiness after that number. I know that’s outdated. Have you seen any newer research on that? 

[00:20:42] Morgan: Yeah. There’s a study that I think kind of solves a lot of this problem of the decades long debate of does money bring happiness?

[00:20:49] Morgan: Some studies would show late. Yes, some studies would show no. I think some of the nuance behind it that’s very important are the studies that say and show that if you are already a depressed, miserable, despondent, anxious person. Earning more money is not gonna do very much for you. Even earning lots of more money is not gonna do much for you.

[00:21:09] Morgan: But if you are already a happy, joyful, funny content person, then earning more money will give you a much better life. It’s like earning more or less money is just leverage in either direction for who you already were. And so a lot of that is. It’s too easy for us to assume that the solution for our anxiety and worry and self-doubt is more money.

[00:21:30] Morgan: It’s too easy that if you wake up every morning feeling like there’s a little bit of a hole in your life, it’s too easy to tell yourself, if only I had more money, then my problems would go away. That’s what a lot of the research on that area would show is that yes, there are studies that show people who earn more money are happier, but that’s not necessarily causation.

[00:21:48] Morgan: There’s a correlation there for people who are already pretty content and happy with their life. My late grandmother-in-law on 1800 bucks a month, if she won the lottery, I think she would’ve been the happiest person to ever exist to happiest person who had ever lived. But without naming names, we know some world famous billionaires.

[00:22:07] Morgan: Who, if you dig into their life, are not happy people. Elon Musk talked about this in an interview a couple years ago. He said, you might think you want to be me, as in the richest man in the world, but he pointed to his temple and he said, it’s a storm up here. It’s a mess up here. Like you do not wanna be inside this head.

[00:22:22] Morgan: And so I think it’s too easy for us to assume that there is such a, a strong correlation between net worth and happiness, even if at the actual level, like it’s much more uncertain than that. 

[00:22:32] Joe: It’s funny taking Elon Musk or even the people whose cars would show up when you were a valet Morgan and countering that to your grandmother.

[00:22:40] Joe: It makes me think of another great, uh, line that you found from somebody that’s in your book, which was about, you know, when you’re showing off your house to somebody, show them the inside versus showing them the outside, the inside of your house being who you are. So if you start with being a, trying to be a happier person versus more money, this is much more of a.

[00:23:00] Joe: Great place to start, I think, than starting with me trying to impress you. 

[00:23:04] Morgan: And the inside of your house is showing off for the people that you let into your house, which is gonna be your friends, your family. Mm-hmm. You know, the people who you actually the outside of your house. And we’re just using this as a broad idea.

[00:23:15] Morgan: The outside of your house is showing off to strangers who are gonna drive past it and say, wow, I wonder who lives there. And so I think that’s a pretty powerful idea. I desperately want and need the love and attention and admiration from about six people, my wife, my kids, my parents, one or two of my friends, and that’s pretty much it.

[00:23:33] Morgan: The people who come into my house, I want them to be proud of me and I wanna use my money to spend quality time with them. Absolutely. You know, like almost in a desperate way. But outside of those six people, it drops off very dramatically. And the vast majority of people who are strangers, I couldn’t care less.

[00:23:52] Morgan: And the reason I couldn’t care less is because they’re not paying any attention to me to begin with. Yeah, there’s a great phrase from the, uh, comic Jimmy Carr where he says. In your twenties, people worry about what other people think of you. In your thirties, you say, I don’t care what anybody thinks of me.

[00:24:06] Morgan: And in your forties, you finally realize the truth, which was that nobody was thinking about you to begin with. There’s a lot of truth to that, that the vast majority of people are just not paying any attention to you whatsoever. So make sure that if you are trying to use money to impress people, you’re doing it for the very small number of people in your life whose love and attention and admiration you actually desire.

[00:24:25] Joe: I love Jimmy Carr, and it just, oh, 

[00:24:27] Morgan: he’s so good. 

[00:24:28] Joe: I was talking to a friend of mine about this earlier this week, so it’s funny you bring him up. When did this dude become such a philosopher? Because I feel like in the last couple years he went from just being a comedian to a guy who’s just, his life philosophy speaks so much to me.

[00:24:42] Morgan: Well, I think that’s true for the vast majority of comedians. There’s a really good podcast called Blocks with Neil, Brendan. He’s also a, a famous comedian. Yeah. He mostly has other comedians on, and what’s great about it is it’s almost like an unspoken rule that like, Hey, Jimmy Carr or Chris Rock, whoever’s on the show, let’s not be funny for the next hour.

[00:25:01] Morgan: Let’s talk philosophically about life and, and what you see in there is that the best comedians in the world are absolutely brilliant philosophers. I think there’s no exception to that. George Carlin was a brilliant philosopher. Chris Rock is a brilliant philosopher, Jerry Seinfeld. They’re all brilliant philosophers.

[00:25:16] Morgan: They spend their day thinking about life and the quirks of psychology, and then they deliver that in the best, funniest, most entertaining way possible. 

[00:25:24] Joe: I think about George Carlin. You know, going back to something you and I were talking about earlier, and you actually include this in your new book, but it’s a line that I’ve loved for a long time, which is anybody driving faster than you is a maniac?

[00:25:35] Joe: Anybody driving slower? And we’re always comparing ourself to what other people are doing. I wanna make sure we cover this before we say goodbye. You outline these six principles very early. I think maybe even the in the introduction. To this project, but let me focus on a few that really resonate. You say there’s two ways to use money.

[00:25:53] Joe: Money’s a tool you can use, but if you’re not careful, it will use you. Can you unpack that for us? ’cause I, I felt like when you 

[00:26:01] Morgan: wrote that, like, a bomb dropped in my lap. Yeah. I think it’s not uncommon. It’s actually extremely common that money is not a tool that you are using. It is something that hijacks your personality and it’s controlling your desires.

[00:26:15] Morgan: It’s controlling your ambitions. It’s controlling where you live, how you live, who you socialize with. It’s like the puppet master controlling your life. I think that is a very common place to be in, and the people who I think use money most effectively are ones who reject that and they’re like, I’m just gonna be me.

[00:26:33] Morgan: I’m who I am, and I’m gonna use money as a tool to leverage who I am, but it’s never going to define who I am. 

[00:26:39] Joe: And then the second is, of course, we’ve been talking a lot about this, but you say enduring happiness is found in contentment. So the happiest people with money are those who found a way to stop thinking about it.

[00:26:49] Joe: Your badass grandma, it sounds like, found a way to just stop thinking about money Morgan. 

[00:26:55] Morgan: I don’t think she thought about it any more than you and I would think about air. If that air is the most important thing in the world, you don’t think about it ever. And you know, that’s actually an interesting analogy because there are so many tech bros these days who wanna maximize their breathing, and so they like put tape over their mouth at night and whatnot.

[00:27:10] Morgan: And so those people are like, they’re so unsatisfied with the air that that’s coming in and outta their body. They wanna maximize it more. What a miserable, miserable way to live. Just be happy. There’s plenty of air. You don’t need to maximize it. Just, just shut up and breathe. You can do it. And so I think, I think that exists for money as well.

[00:27:25] Morgan: The people who are constantly thinking about it and trying to maximize it are, are, are generally not the people who, who are. The most content, the most happy with what they have. It’s the people who are just like, oh, there’s plenty of it. And I, when, when I need it, I use it for things I love, but, but other than that, I spend my time thinking about my friends and my family and the sunset and the beautiful plants outside, like the things that actually make you happy and money is there when you need it, but it’s not a constant ever present thing.

[00:27:51] Joe: I take everything that we’ve talked about in the last 25 minutes and I also think about just you and I as people as money geeks our stackers as money geeks, right? We’re people who like to think about money, but it seems to me that based on everything we’ve talked about then, so I’m like, so where’s my win here?

[00:28:06] Joe: If I like talking about money, but it’s not chasing money, what am I chasing? Morgan? Am I chasing systems? Maybe I’m trying to set up better systems by listening to Stacky Benjamins or by listening to Morgan Housel so that I can think about it less and just do it more efficiently. 

[00:28:23] Morgan: Well, I’ll give you two that are important to me.

[00:28:25] Morgan: What I want out of money more than anything else is pretty much the only thing I want out of money is independence. I just wanna live life on my terms my way, not under anyone else’s system, not chasing anyone else’s goals. I wanna be independent. That’s the first thing. The second thing that I love outta money is I think money and finance and investing is a fascinating window into how people think and how people behave.

[00:28:48] Morgan: You can learn so much about. Psychology and behavior and competition and sociology by studying money across culture, how I spend, how you spend other people’s ambitions and their aspirations. You can learn so much about people by studying money. Yes, you can also learn about people by studying religion and politics and sport, like all these other things.

[00:29:09] Morgan: But money is like a, a shockingly clear window. Into people’s psyches. That I think is fascinating. I do too. That’s my fascination with this topic. I wanna be independent and I’m fascinated with the window in which I can learn about other people and learn about myself while studying this. 

[00:29:24] Joe: Yeah, the whole behavioral aspect of this whole pursuit is unbelievable.

[00:29:29] Joe: I’ll never get tired of it. The book is called The Art of Spending Money. It is available everywhere and just a personal question. This is a psychology of Money Morgan, which was more fun to write. 

[00:29:40] Morgan: Oh, that’s such a good question there. I think the psychology of money. It was a culmination of, at that point, had been about 15 years of heavy thinking about this topic.

[00:29:48] Morgan: I 

[00:29:48] Joe: couldn’t tell, it doesn’t read like you’d heavily thought about it at all. For anybody that doesn’t recognize the sarcasm there, that was very 

[00:29:55] Morgan: sarcastic. But what what’s also true is that the artist spending money is a book that I needed for myself. I needed to think about these topics in my own life because I felt like I was deficient in thinking about these.

[00:30:07] Morgan: I didn’t have a good, I could talk to you for hours about my investing philosophy, but five years ago, if you said, what is your spending philosophy, I would’ve drawn a blank. And so I needed this book for myself and so it’s meaningful for me for that reason. 

[00:30:19] Joe: Morgan, thank you so much in the bendiest month of the year for helping us get a little more philosophical about money.

[00:30:25] Joe: I appreciate the time so much. Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:30:29] headlines: We’re looking for the answer and correct spelling. Old McDonald had a what farm? E-I-E-I-O.

[00:30:40] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Doug and plenty of stackers have spent countless Benjamins visiting our national parks, and one national park was created back on today’s date in 1978. This park was definitely on Santa’s naughty list. Which park clearly not a good one. Am I talking about, I’ll be back right after I help edit Joe’s mom’s Christmas list.

[00:31:02] Doug: Uh, asking for a friend, do you spell busier with one T or two? It’s unclear.

[00:31:18] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Christmas list editor and guy who’s easily grossed out. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today, a very naughty national park was created back in 1978. This 244,000 acre park on Santa’s naughty list is the home of one of the nation’s biggest treasure trove of fossils. But what park is it?

[00:31:41] Doug: A park that Santa definitely frowns upon. Of course, if it’s on Santa’s naughty list, it would have to be none other than the Badlands. Happy Birthday Badlands. And now back to two guys who are fighting for last place on Santa’s naughty list, Joe, NO. 

[00:32:00] Joe: This is a fun thing to do at home. Cheryl and I did this for a while.

[00:32:04] Joe: Whenever the word bag comes up, we just replace it with the word naughty and it just changes. Changes everything. It’s a funny word that is so naughty. Yeah. Just, uh, it’s, it’s the little things in life. See, you don’t have to spend money thanks to Morgan Hausel. Mm-hmm. Uh, we can just change a couple words and life gets fun here in mom’s basement, OG you’ve got spending down.

[00:32:28] Joe: But Morgan clearly has a different view of the artist spending than you do, which is okay. To each their own. You’ve, you’ve got yours. Let’s do a headline. 

[00:32:39] headlines: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. 

[00:32:45] Joe: You know, everybody’s talking about ai, the topic that we were chatting about on Monday.

[00:32:50] Joe: There is something that is happening in the background that probably OG if you’re thinking about the basics and the fundamentals of money. Might be a bigger headline. This comes to us from investment news, Warren Buffet, quote, going quiet, converts 1.35 BBB billion dollars in Berkshire shares in farewell as CEO Buffet.

[00:33:15] Joe: The legendary investor in, longtime leader of Berkshire Hathaway has announced he will step down from his role. As the company’s chief executive at the end of this year, marking the end of an era for one of America’s most closely watched conglomerates. Of course, we very sadly said goodbye to Charlie Munger last year, and, uh, Warren Buffett is retiring at 95 years old.

[00:33:38] Joe: Og. What a run for, um, the iconic investor, 

[00:33:44] OG: like he said. Um. Paraphrasing, you know, he couldn’t have been born at a better time. You know, like, it’s like the, literally the perfect time to be born and uh, and the perfect country to be born in. So 

[00:33:56] Joe: look at all the people that were born during this time. Sure.

[00:33:58] Joe: Yeah. Look at how many people messed up their investments. And Warren did exactly the opposite. And it’s funny, he did not 

[00:34:06] OG: mess up. I mean, he messed up, but he won more times than he lost. I think. 

[00:34:10] Doug: What a great inspiration for the fire community. I mean, checking out at 95, getting out early. Right. You know?

[00:34:17] Doug: Yeah. Just find, getting that financial independence and checking out and just doing what he wants to do. Early, early retire deal with 

[00:34:22] OG: $60 million. Yeah. 

[00:34:23] Joe: Right. Warren Buffet’s stopping at 95 ’cause now he’s Coast fi. He figured out that even though he could keep working, he uh, doesn’t have to save another diamond to his 401k lean fire.

[00:34:35] OG: Yep. 

[00:34:36] Joe: Got enough to last the last five years till till age, age 100. The plan says he’s over. Can you see his financial planner? Uh, Warren. I did a bunch of analysis and it appears as long as you spend 

[00:34:51] OG: less than 20 billion a month, you should be pretty good. 

[00:34:56] Joe: What are some of your favorite Warren Buffet lessons?

[00:34:58] Joe: Oji. 

[00:34:59] OG: Oh, lessons. I don’t know that there’s any lessons per se. I, I thought that he was a great communicator, like in terms of taking complex things and simplifying it, which is what I hope to kind of aspire to do here and in my, uh, real job. But I was like reading the letters. You can go online, you can get ’em all, they’re all available.

[00:35:22] OG: And I thought, I think it’s like kind of cool to pick a year and read what he wrote and, and it gives you a little bit of a little glimpse into what was going on in that period of time. I think it’s also kind of interesting, especially in the, on the heels of our conversation on Monday about market and bubble and that sort of thing.

[00:35:40] OG: Like go back and read some of the annual reports, the Berkshire Hathaway annual reports, they usually come out in February timeframe. Read those in the years following big market declines. If you think he’s the best investor of all time or top whatever, see what his commentary was while all that stuff was going on, when the housing market was crashing, when COVID went on, when, you know, 2022 happened, the debt, you know, situation in 2012 and even back further of 1998 and 1991 and 1988 and so on and so forth.

[00:36:15] OG: So it’s, um, I think it’s a good glimpse into how people were thinking. If you believe, as a lot of people do that, Warren Buffett is a pretty sane investor as time goes on. Like what was he doing during that time? You want the recipe card for success? I don’t know that you can, I dunno that you could have a better cake mix put together for you than, than this guy’s investing career.

[00:36:40] OG: Well, 

[00:36:40] Joe: other people were panicking. He was always bullish on the long-term state of the economy, so he stayed calm at the helm. Noted for staying super, not not just com dump, but But sometimes even buying into mm-hmm. Everybody else selling and he’s going in and buying and snatching up prices. Which also, the other thing that I like is his commitment to fundamentals.

[00:37:05] Joe: You know, I feel like. Especially when we talk about bubbles, that the average investor gets sucked into technical analysis even when they don’t think that they are. Oh, the market is high, right? That’s a technical indicator that only works because it’s voodoo. People believe it works. So when you look at these candlestick formations that all the technical traders use, it’s, it’s all voodoo.

[00:37:28] Joe: It’s a hundred percent voodoo because everybody thinks it’s going to work. Warren Buffet was much, much more about the fundamental, if a company is a good value, if it’s a good buy, if he thinks they have a great product, a good management team, he will go in there and buy that stock. He’s not looking at, oh, the market’s topped out or the, you know, the craziness that we see on a day-to-day basis.

[00:37:49] Joe: I saw a 

[00:37:49] OG: post the other day from a good friend of mine, somebody we need to get on the show as a matter of fact. It was about Bitcoin and I don’t know what it’s at today, but the last, I dunno, six weeks has been pretty crazy. And it was like, it was like all these charts and lines and arrows and graphs and everything, and it was just like this big spaghetti poster of like a Jackson Pollock painting and it’s like, here’s your technical analysis for Bitcoin.

[00:38:12] OG: What’s happening next? You know, it’s like, you know, I agree with you. That stuff works because you think it works because you can find some sort of. Correlation into, well, when the Saturn’s third moon was visible on the horizon, this one thing happened this one time, so therefore it must happen again. I dunno, Saturn half, three moons, I suppose they do, seems pretty logical.

[00:38:36] OG: Big planet, 

[00:38:37] Joe: uh, Saturn, uh, far more than than three moons. Doug’s gonna look up exactly how many, but I think it’s in the teens, isn’t it, Doug? I think, yeah. Yeah. Doug’s gonna go look that up for us. So at least three while we continue this, that’s why he said they’re third moon This, this discussion like Doug’s third nipple, of course there’s a third one.

[00:38:56] Joe: Let’s transition to Berkshire Hathaway and now Greg Abel is going to be the new CEO. Do you look at Berkshire Hathaway differently? OG with Greg at the helm versus having Warren Buffett at the helm? 

[00:39:13] OG: I have so little interest in anything about any individual company, even a behemoth like Berkshire Hathaway that I couldn’t care less.

[00:39:22] Joe: I just think that whenever you are investing in an active mutual fund, which I think Berkshire Hathaway would classify Yeah, sure. As an active mutual fund, the manager at the helm always matters. If you’ve got something that is an actively traded position versus a passive position, I think it does always matter.

[00:39:42] Joe: I, I don’t know if it’s gonna be well in that 

[00:39:44] OG: context. Yeah, it does, but I. Don’t have individual positions and don’t advocate for them. So Sure. His CEO ship is no different to me than the, when somebody takes over at Proctor and Gamble or you know, and what’s his name came back to Disney. It’s like, I recognize the name.

[00:40:03] OG: Oh yeah, I know. I’ve heard of that guy 

[00:40:05] Joe: that shows how much Doug, he truly pays. If somebody else takes over Proctor Gamble, that one guy takes over at that other one company. Yeah, he’s heard of him. 

[00:40:13] OG: Yeah. Yeah. I mean you, you know, you recognize the name or something. You just go, oh, okay. I’ve heard that per, you know.

[00:40:18] OG: Yeah. Bob Iger. I 

[00:40:20] Joe: heard it 

[00:40:21] OG: before, 

[00:40:21] Joe: but I think it is the same. You know, when somebody comes into your, your company gets taken over by another company and the new management team comes in, what do they always say? Nothing’s going to change. Hmm. That’s a hundred percent not true. Something cha, every single time there’s a new manager.

[00:40:38] Joe: Yeah. Things change. The only constant is change. Doug, how many moons are there for Saturn? 

[00:40:44] Doug: Uh, there are 278 moons, uh, 274 confirmed moons, obviously making it the most, the planet with the most moons in our solar system. The moon is that number jumped significantly. Just this past March, they discovered another 128 moons in March of 2025, bringing the total of 2 74 unconfirmed about the size of the third moon.

[00:41:06] Joe: I thought that it was in the teens, so I was even, I think it’s in the teens. No, we were wrong 

[00:41:11] OG: before 

[00:41:12] Doug: March 

[00:41:12] Joe: H. How? How the heck? 

[00:41:14] OG: I mean, we’ve got satellites for God’s sake. The Hubble telescope just went by there not to, how are we 

[00:41:19] Doug: discovering them 

[00:41:20] OG: now? Like it’s like, oh wait, we’re off by a hundred, you know?

[00:41:24] OG: Come on. 

[00:41:24] Doug: 128 new moons. 

[00:41:26] OG: I don’t buy it. 

[00:41:28] Doug: I’ll show you a new moon. 

[00:41:30] OG: NASA people trying to stay relevant again. 

[00:41:33] Doug: Space 

[00:41:33] OG: Force. 

[00:41:34] Joe: Space Force, og. Back in the news. Uh, we need to discover new moons. Uh, uh, don’t, don’t, don’t release the latest 200 all at once. Let’s do it one at a time every other day. We’ll link to this.

[00:41:47] Joe: So 

[00:41:49] OG: finish this up ’cause I got a completely different thing that I just thought of. 

[00:41:52] Joe: We’ll link to this in that in our show notes. Stacky Benjamins dot com. Uh, things change at Berkshire Hathaway here in the month. Warren Buffet saying goodbye. Wow. Just wild day. 

[00:42:04] OG: Speaking of Warren Buffett, I was on YouTube the other day and I was watching this interview with an astrophysicist.

[00:42:10] OG: Uh, he was talking about traveling at the speed of light, or nearly at the speed of light. And there’s a, um, the thing in Switzerland, you know that they loop protons around. Yeah. What’s that called? Cern. Cern, yeah. 

[00:42:24] Joe: Yep. 

[00:42:24] OG: It’s 27 miles long or something. But because they’re traveling at, oh, nearly the speed of light.

[00:42:29] OG: It’s like a, it’s, it closes distances, so it’s like a four meter loop for them. That’s kind of the way that they think about it. Anyways. Uh, he was talking about if you could build a space shuttle that traveled nearly the speed of light, it would take, you know, 10 minutes to traverse the galaxy or the drama on Galaxy or something.

[00:42:49] OG: Turn around and come back. He’s, but the problem, 

[00:42:51] Doug: he just saying words now. What’s that? You’re just saying words now? Yeah. When you’ve heard in movies, but 

[00:42:56] OG: then, but then when you turn back, this is like basically the, the storyline of Interstellar. But then when you came back to tell everybody on earth what you saw, it would’ve been like 4 million years.

[00:43:06] Doug: Yeah. So what’s the point? Like why even bother? Yes. None of the people you graduated high school with are gonna be able to hear how cool you’re now. Can’t up. 

[00:43:16] OG: How cool. Yeah. My brain has a hard time with that. That’s all. That’s all I have to say there. ’cause I was thinking about Saturn and how long it would take to get there and I was like, oh, if I was in space shuttle, like this guy talked about, it’d be really quick.

[00:43:25] OG: But then 

[00:43:25] Doug: this is a worthwhile diversion. Let’s talk about this. 

[00:43:28] Joe: Well, uh, on that note, I saw the news recently that Voyager one is now approaching one light day. One light day away from the Earth. And I thought that’s 

[00:43:40] OG: the one that left in 78, right? Yes, I think so. 

[00:43:42] Joe: And I thought, why? Why the heck did it take it that long to go one Earth day?

[00:43:48] Joe: And then I looked and I saw it is now 25,369,836,867 miles away, right from that anymore. 

[00:43:59] OG: Now it’s further. 

[00:44:00] Joe: Yeah, 25 billion miles away from Earth that takes light one day. 

[00:44:04] Doug: That’s one. Yeah. One light day. I, I just keep, when I, we think about that, like how did we invent something in 1978 that can still communicate with us from that far away?

[00:44:15] OG: Well, didn’t they think it was only gonna last like a year or something? They’re like, yeah, if we can get past Mars, that would be incredible. Yeah, I’m pretty sure. 

[00:44:23] Doug: I 

[00:44:23] OG: just, 

[00:44:23] Doug: I don’t know if I believe any of it. It’s all, 

[00:44:26] OG: it’s all Hollywood, man. That’s not real. Everything’s a 

[00:44:28] Joe: hoax. Earth is flat. It’s not happening.

[00:44:32] Joe: What else is going on in the back porch, Doug?

[00:44:37] Doug: Joe, I think it’s time because of the giant stacks and stacks of books behind you, not including the one called Stacked With that nice subtle yellow cover. We gave away books to some of our listeners, our stackers for trivia not too long ago, but you’ve got a lot more to give away, right? 

[00:44:57] Joe: I do. Our wonderful intern, Deb, did a great job of creating the master list.

[00:45:02] Joe: There were far more books on the master list than I thought, so we love it when people review the show. If you give us a five, please don’t give us a glowing five star review because you want a book, but if you were gonna give us a review anyway, um, really if you were gonna give us a review then. Send that to me, Joe at stacky Benjamins dot com, and I will show you the master list of all of these books.

[00:45:25] Joe: Now, the reason I’ve got so many books to give away is because people send me their book to prep for the interview, and I just can’t over. Nearly 15 years. I can’t keep all of these books. So I have stacks and stacks and stacks of really good books that, uh, people have sent that have either been on the show, have wanted to be on the show, that are books that heck, there’s even a few of the fiction books I’ve read that I’m like, you know what?

[00:45:53] Joe: If somebody prefers just some fiction or, or some things about house remodeling, which we did recently, books on those topics, it is Joe’s giveaway. 

[00:46:02] Doug: Why not just put ’em on Facebook Marketplace? And have all the weirdos come to your house like normal people do. 

[00:46:07] Joe: Oh, that’s what I probably should do. I will, I prefer to keep the weirdos, our stacker weirdos.

[00:46:14] Joe: Okay. So yes, the cool weirdos that is, uh, people like us. So, uh, send me, if you leave us a review, send that to me, Joe at stacky Benjamins dot com and I will. Would love to then give you the master list, gimme your dress and we will get that out to you. So we’re gonna start up gifting during the holidays and imagine you could take one of these gently, these books and gift it to a friend.

[00:46:36] Joe: Perfect. Like the perfect holiday gift. You know, it’s another gift you can give yourself, Doug, the gift of financial literacy and doing a better job. Just say the gift of 

[00:46:47] OG: og, 

[00:46:48] Joe: the gift of og, all gift wrapped. Imagine under your tree. 

[00:46:53] Doug: What could make somebody want to get that more than him saying, just give the gift of og.

[00:46:59] Doug: Oh, yay. 

[00:47:01] Joe: Martha, what the hell is this guy doing under our tree? Merry sba. Oh, I gave you the gift of passed 

[00:47:05] OG: out again. Bourbon and cigars like Billy Bob Thornton under your tree. Good. That’s a great image for basically my next four weeks of life. Pad Santa. I’m on, I’m on break. 

[00:47:20] Joe: OG body hugging a a half fifth of Woodford.

[00:47:24] Joe: Yep. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og and you can have a better year financially than you had in 2025. I know a lot of people are hoping. To do better next year than they did this year. And if that’s why you’re here and you’re looking for good help, well, OG Anna and the team are now meeting with potential new clients.

[00:47:44] Joe: So if you wanna see how their team will interface with you and your family to do better with your money, stacky Benjamins dot com slash og. All right, coming up on Friday, fantastic round table discussion. We’ve got the Andy Hill joining us. 

[00:47:58] Doug: Nicest guy in personal finance, 

[00:48:00] Joe: a hundred percent. Yep. Love it when Andy joins Second.

[00:48:03] Joe: Nice. The discussion. Second nicest. Oh, thank you, Doug. Take it from here, man. What should we have learned on today’s episode? 

[00:48:12] Doug: Well, Joe first take some advice from Morgan Howell spending money this month. Mindfulness can change the trajectory of any person’s financial outlook. Second, whenever someone retires, their workplace changes.

[00:48:26] Doug: Things will change for Berkshire Hathaway, but how? Only time will tell. But the big lesson. Don’t share with OG facts about the bad lens. He’ll counter your facts with his own about wicked, which is worse. Being bad or being wicked. Wicked sucks. He’s about to go into a fit of rage ’cause I said wicked sucks.

[00:48:49] Doug: Just let him go. Joe. Thanks to Morgan Housel for joining us today. You’ll find his art of spending money wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends.

[00:49:15] Doug: You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.

[00:49:33] Doug: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:50:37] Joe: Speaking of Wicked. I saw the first half of the movie and I thought it was really good. I thought it was fun. I thought that the music, the effects, the cast, everything was good. I don’t think I need to see the second one. 

[00:50:50] OG: You kind of know what 

[00:50:50] Joe: happens. Yeah. I just, I don’t know why, but I’m like, I, I don’t think so.

[00:50:54] OG: Well, I take a two hour I know. In a play and turn it into a five. Oh, second one. Yeah, they stopped it. The first movie was like the first half. 

[00:51:03] Joe: Huh? I don’t understand that creative decision. It just feels like a money grab. You think? 

[00:51:08] OG: Yeah. 

[00:51:09] Joe: Yeah. Wow. Why would anybody do that? But there are some money grabs out there that we have all been watching.

[00:51:15] trailer: Yeah, 

[00:51:15] Joe: because maybe they’ve done a good job. I’ve been watching. Nobody wants this Season two as much tension and FA as season one. Kristen Bell. Adrian Brody. Good series. 27 minutes at a time. If you like the first season, you’re gonna like the season two. What are you guys watching? 

[00:51:32] OG: Yeah, football is done for the kiddos.

[00:51:34] OG: Softball’s done for Caroline. It’s quiet time. So now I get some TV time. Really excited about finishing 1923, the second season. I, uh, I kind of like all that storyline. I think that’s pretty cool. I actually never saw the end of season five of Yellowstone, so maybe I’ll just, I mean, I’ve seen enough clips to know what happens, so probably just kind of bang that out too.

[00:51:57] OG: Landman season two is out on Paramount, so go get your subscription restarted. I think they’re releasing those weekly, which kind of sucks too. So you might wanna wait a few more weeks. And then I started this series and um, I’m not a huge thriller fan, but. So far so good. This is a series on Netflix called The Last Frontier.

[00:52:23] trailer: I need to know what happened up there.

[00:52:30] trailer: We diverted and made an unscheduled pickup. They said he was high priority. He was hooded, restrained. They called him Havelock. It was like he knew. He knew what?

[00:52:59] trailer: Good. Everyone circle up. We have a down plane. Two miles south from here is used to move inmates around the country. 11. A caption 18 is still missing. This is gonna be the one shot at freedom. Mr. Remnick, Sydney Schofield, CIA. Padlocks out there executing a plan. Do whatever it takes to secure the perimeter.

[00:53:20] trailer: Knock, knock. Let’s go through this is Alaska. There is no perimeter. 

[00:53:25] OG: Kind of an interesting start on this season, basically, I dunno how many seasons there’s gonna be, it just says season one on Apple TV called The Last Frontier Starts out there. It’s a plane full of inmates, including one person who is bound and gagged and hooded and you know, whatever.

[00:53:42] OG: This is like 

[00:53:42] Joe: present day. 

[00:53:44] OG: Yeah. Yep. Plane crash happens. Obviously it’s kind of suspicious. There’s, you know, inmates all over Fairbanks, Alaska, now there’s one. Marshall in town who’s, you know, basically like not mailing it in, but he’s, he likes the quiet life, hasn’t fired his service weapon in his whole life.

[00:54:03] OG: You know, he is just up there, finds out about this plane crash, goes to check it out, and, and it’s just pure chaos. And then all of a sudden now the CIA shows up and says, Hey, uh, by the way, one of those inmates we might have put on there without your permission. We’re need him and, uh, we kind of think he’s in charge of this whole thing.

[00:54:23] OG: We kind of think that he’s the mastermind of this whole crash. So ring leader. Yeah. And then all this stuff happens, right? Like, wives are abducted, people are killed, you know, just, it’s this whole thing. So I, I’m only two episodes in. My son likes this type of show. He really loved Dexter. Because of the thriller ness of it.

[00:54:43] OG: And so I stopped watching it to kind of get him caught back up so I can, so I can watch it with him. Only eight episodes, so we’ll probably get through it before the holidays are over. But, uh, you know, pretty suspenseful kind of fun says it’s created by the same people as the blacklist. Yeah. If, uh, that works, if you remember that show for me, 

[00:54:59] Joe: just everything I heard in that trailer would sound like something I’d like.

[00:55:03] OG: Yeah, it’s great. I mean, it’s definitely like. Every, again, I’ve only watched two episodes, but each ending scene was something of like cliffhanger, where you’re like, oh, what the heck? I know I gotta turn on the next one right now. Now, you know, it’s like, damnit, that’s the bad. I thought that was the bad guy.

[00:55:20] OG: Why? Why is she protecting him? Like, hold on. Oh, that’s the bad guy. Die. Like, wait, what? That’s not the who’s on the phone? Hello, Frank. Fade to black. And you’re like, oh my god. The, the bad guy. He’s on the phone. Cool start. 

[00:55:33] Joe: I do that every time. Yeah. Every time OG calls, oh God. Who’s on the phone? Who’s on the phone?