How to Talk About Money, Raise Independent Kids, and Build Real Wealth — ft. Morgan Housel

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Speaker 2 Welcome to Prop G on Money, a special series where we're joined by one of our favorites, Morgan Hausel, best-selling author of The Psychology of Money, along with his latest, The Art of Spending Money.

Speaker 1 We're taking your questions on all things money, saving, spending, and everything in between.

Speaker 1 Anyways, if you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours at profitmedia.com. Again, that's officehours at profitmedia.com,

Speaker 1 or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit. Morgan, are we ready to bust into it?

Speaker 3 Let's do it. Ready to go.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Our first question comes from Libertas Vincent on Reddit, and they say, how do you handle income discrepancy in a relationship, especially one where the traditionally high-earning male partner makes significantly less than the female partner?

Speaker 2 How do you make sure this doesn't become a point of friction that hangs over other conversations?

Speaker 2 How do you avoid the female partner feeling like she's undercontributing in the household by focusing on her career? Morgan, thoughts?

Speaker 3 I think the first thing to point out is that this is not really a money question. It's a marriage question.
A little bit different, but a very important question nonetheless.

Speaker 3 There's a quote that I love, which is, to be in a good relationship, you need to be a very poor accountant. And

Speaker 3 the meaning of that was if you are constantly keeping score and saying, hey, I did the dishes. What did you do? Hey, I paid this bill.
What are you doing?

Speaker 3 If you constantly wake up every morning and look at your spouse and say, what have you done for me lately? That's a very difficult way to make it work. It's a transactional relationship.

Speaker 3 The problem with transactional relationships is that life is volatile.

Speaker 3 And so if you say, look, I pay the bills, I make the money, there's there's probably gonna come a time in the future when you lose your job or your bonus declines this year.

Speaker 3 And all of a sudden do you have no value anymore? And so one of the problems with money is that it is so quantifiable. And so you can say, look, I paid $500 of bills last month.
What did you do?

Speaker 3 Well, what you may have done is help put the kids to bed, read them stories, claim done this and that that are less quantifiable. You can't put a score on it.

Speaker 3 And so I think one of the issues with money discrepancy is that it's way too hard to quantify. There are a million things that my wife does so much better than I do.
She's more empathetic.

Speaker 3 She's better with the kids. She's better at bedtime stories.

Speaker 3 We could sit here for an hour and I could list the things that she's much better than I do. The thing that I do, one of the things that I do, is very quantifiable, which is earning money.

Speaker 3 And I think that's a problem in relationships.

Speaker 3 And so I think if you have that issue of a discrepancy that's causing a problem in your marriage, I would again challenge you that that's not actually a money issue.

Speaker 3 It's a marriage issue and it's a keeping score issue.

Speaker 2 I'm in agreement with you. There is one, what I'll call, I think, caveat or footnote.
And so I love what you're saying.

Speaker 2 And I preach all the time that the key to good relationships is put the scorecard away.

Speaker 2 Just decide what kind of husband, what kind of father, what kind of son you want to be and hold yourself to that standard. And

Speaker 2 keeping score is a losing game because you will typically or naturally inflate your own contributions and accidentally deflate theirs and always feel like you're coming up short.

Speaker 2 So I agree with you, Morgan.

Speaker 2 Just decide the kind of person you want to be and aspire to be on the plus side of the column always, whether it's money or affection or logistics or being nice to the other person's parents, whatever it might be.

Speaker 2 The only thing I would add to this is that there is research showing that when the woman's earnings surpass the man's, ED drug usage triples and the rate of divorce goes up.

Speaker 2 And distinct of the world that you and I fashion and hopefully try and study to, there's just a reality that there are certain expectations around roles.

Speaker 2 And when those expectations flip for whatever reasons, or the reality does not hit those expectations, there's less sex and connection sometimes because, one, I think the man feels worse about himself and that insecurity manifests in negative ways.

Speaker 2 And two, and let me say the quiet part out loud: women are less sexually interested in a man oftentimes when he loses his status as a provider.

Speaker 2 And I just think there's a lot of evidence supporting that, regardless of what we would like to think.

Speaker 2 So there is an issue here around, and I don't have a solve for it. And I'll put it back to you, Morgan, but

Speaker 2 there's definitely evidence showing

Speaker 2 that the asymmetry or when a woman begins to make more money than the man in the relationship, that issues do prop up, distinct of what should happen and we would like to see happen.

Speaker 2 Any thoughts?

Speaker 3 I disagree with none of that.

Speaker 3 And I don't think we can pretend that even given that we're in the year 2025 and have made so much progress in the world, that we can fight back against millions of years of evolution in which men

Speaker 3 have historically been the providers. It's a very difficult issue.
I do have empathy for people in that situation and how difficult it would be.

Speaker 3 And truth be told, my wife and I have not been in that position. So I don't want to say like, oh, here's how we dealt with it.

Speaker 3 So I think both those things can be true. If you are in a transactional relationship in which you are constantly keeping score, very difficult to make that work.

Speaker 3 But let's also true to that point that you just made.

Speaker 3 Let's not pretend that if you're going against what has been the traditional path for millions of years, that's going to be an easy thing to overcome.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a tough one. Thanks so much for the question.
We're going to move on. Question number two also comes from Reddit, user boner79.
That's going to be interesting.

Speaker 2 Asks, Scott, how much did you spent, right?

Speaker 1 Welcome to Prop G, Morgan. Scott, how much did you spend on college admissions consultants for your son, and do you feel it was worthwhile?

Speaker 2 Morgan, do you think investing in your child's future in that manner is worth it? I'll let you go first here, Morgan.

Speaker 3 You know, it's different for everyone. My parents did something very good for me around the age that I was ready to go to college, which is they did not help.
And that was amazing.

Speaker 3 I think what you really need in that transition and college being a transition from childhood into adulthood, which is really what it is, what you really need at that point is confidence.

Speaker 3 And I have seen so many people in today's era, it's very common today.

Speaker 3 It was less common 20 years ago, ago, but very common today that when the child is applying for a college, when they're 17, 18 years old, the parent is holding their hand and going line by line through that application, one line after another, and doing everything and hiring consultants to do it.

Speaker 3 Maybe adventatious.

Speaker 3 There's maybe data that shows that that is a good thing to do and your child is a better chance of getting it to Harvard, whatever that might be.

Speaker 3 But also what you did to your kid is you say, you can't do this yourself.

Speaker 3 You don't have the skills to fill out an application on your own.

Speaker 3 I've made this joke sometimes when dealing with those people in our own life who are applying for college: that if you cannot apply for college on your own, you're not ready for college.

Speaker 3 It's the first litmus test on whether you can do it or not. And so, I understand and feel the desire to use my money to help my kids and launch them into that world.
They're still young.

Speaker 3 They're not in college age yet. But I also feel like the greatest thing you can do for your 17 or 18-year-old is instill the confidence that they are able to do it on their own.

Speaker 2 I agree with everything you're saying theoretically.

Speaker 2 I would like to set a timer for us to have this conversation again when your kid is 17 and a half.

Speaker 3 I don't disagree with that. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And feeling, because here's,

Speaker 2 okay, so we have a consultant, and my son has just submitted his apps or his first two apps.

Speaker 2 And as someone in the marketplace,

Speaker 2 we all tell ourselves a lie now that college doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 And typically the person saying that is someone with graduate degrees from Stanford and MIT and has already made their money. I still think it matters a lot.

Speaker 2 And unfortunately, and this is terrible, it also matters where you go. I mean, the sort of the top, there's kind of 30 top 20 schools or 50 top 30, if you will.

Speaker 2 The difference between Tulane and Harvard actually isn't that great.

Speaker 2 UT Austin and MIT, Google and KKR

Speaker 2 recruited both those places. But the difference between kind of no-name no-name university and one of those schools is tangible.

Speaker 2 Different network, different earnings, different brand the rest of your life. And as someone who is in that industry, and by the way, thinks it's corrupt in a cartel,

Speaker 2 I see how important it is. And

Speaker 2 I'm not going to lie, I really want my son to get into an elite school. It's really, I hate to say it.
It's really,

Speaker 2 it's just too fucking important to me. I hate myself for it, but it's really important to me.

Speaker 2 And this is what happens. Your kid's a good kid, or this is what's happened to me.
Your kid's a good kid. They do well in school.
They're not freakishly remarkable.

Speaker 2 They're not building wells or have patents and pharmaceuticals. They're not captain of the lacrosse team.
They play on the junior varsity lacrosse team and are just okay.

Speaker 2 And they do well on tests, but not crazy well. They get good grades, but not freakish grades.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's different now. I could do that.
I could do worse than that and get into UCLA when it had a 74% admissions rate. The admissions rate this year is 9%.

Speaker 2 And all of us are begin thinking, I'm not going to get the consultants. I'm not going to put a lot of pressure on them.
I'm not going to have tutoring for these tests.

Speaker 2 And then what you realize is that you don't want to disarm unilaterally. And that is your kid is competing for a small number of spots against other people who may not be as noble as you,

Speaker 2 may not be as good of parents as you long term, but their kid gets into fucking Duke and yours doesn't.

Speaker 2 And so it's like, I remember, so I'm going through this right now. We got pitched.
There's a company that should remain nameless.

Speaker 2 It's backed by a PE firm that basically says, I'll get your kid into an elite school. And I did a call with them and my son.
The guy reached out to me because I heard my kid was applying to college.

Speaker 2 And the guy reached out to me and said, we'll do this for you.

Speaker 2 And they had specialists for the testing, specialists for helping around essays, specialists for crafting your narrative, different people,

Speaker 2 part of your calendar from the age of like the end of 10th grade, beginning of 11th grade, they just start optimizing the kid to get into an elite school. $80,000.

Speaker 2 And to my son's credit, who was on the phone with me, he's like, dad, there's no way I'm doing this. No, I'm totally uncomfortable with this.
And I said, I respect that. We have hired a consultant.

Speaker 2 He teaches at a boys' boarding school. We paid him $8,000.
And basically once every month, he helps review the timelines

Speaker 2 and kind of the requirements and makes sure that my kid is tracking and says, do you want me to read your personal essay? Yes, no.

Speaker 2 Okay, this is where I think directionally you're correct or not correct. Do you want me to read your supplemental essays? My son has actually been more independent.

Speaker 2 It's almost frustrating for me because I want him to get into a good school. And he is very independent.
He just submitted another app last night. I never saw it.
I didn't know about it.

Speaker 2 And while I respect that, it's frustrating because I'm like, well, couldn't you have just at least told me what you were saying? And maybe I could coach you. I'm really good at this.

Speaker 2 But he's decided, no, I want to do this, you know, almost entirely on my own.

Speaker 2 And the reality is

Speaker 2 when you get there,

Speaker 2 you kind of end up hating yourself and being part of the problem.

Speaker 2 What I would love is for all parents to say, we're all signing a PAC, no consultants, no help,

Speaker 2 but nobody can do it because this is yet again another transfer of wealth from lower and middle income homes. When I applied, I don't know what your household was like.

Speaker 2 My mom was a secretary. The first time she found out I applied to UCLA was when I told her I didn't get in.

Speaker 2 She wasn't helping me or, you know, providing tutors or calling someone on the board that was a friend of her boss's or something. She had no idea.

Speaker 2 But there are people, unfortunately, you're competing against people who have all of those things. And so it's become a keep up with the Joneses because it still matters.

Speaker 2 I don't have moral clarity around this. What I would say is,

Speaker 2 you know, talk to your kid about it, see what they feel comfortable with. But there's just no getting around it.

Speaker 2 The application process between the testing, the essays, the logistics, it's a massive amount of work.

Speaker 2 And also the kid at the same time is taking their APs, their IB tests, their O levels here, their A levels, trying to have some semblance of a social life and figure out their pecking order and the social hierarchy, the cafeteria.

Speaker 2 And then they're supposed to be applying to 12 elite colleges. And oh, you need to demonstrate your interest by coming to the college and sending emails to your local.

Speaker 2 I mean, it is just crazy how much work there is for the undeveloped brain.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 I think that's right. I think it's a good litmus test for whether you're ready to go to college.
And I think the truth is a lot of 18-year-olds are not. And that is no fault against them.

Speaker 3 18-year-old is not that young. If you can take a couple of years off and start college when you're 20, I started when I was 20.
I got a late start. And the truth was I was not ready at 18.

Speaker 3 And I looked back at that. That's interesting.

Speaker 2 What did you do?

Speaker 3 I was a valet. I was a valet at a hotel in Lake Tahoe, but gap year is actually a misnomer too, because I really didn't have much of a high school education.

Speaker 3 That's a different different story as well um and so i was i was not ready at all i knew that i was i i had some level of intelligence and i wanted to do it and all of my other friends were doing it but at 18 i was lost and i had no idea and i look back at that and who knows what the alternative history would have been but if i had forced myself or if my parents had forced myself into that college gauntlet when i was 18 and wasn't ready it would have been a disaster and almost what i think would have happened is i would have got there i would have been so overwhelmed and not ready for it after a semester or two, I would have said, This isn't for me.

Speaker 3 I'm not smart enough. I'm out of here.
And I probably, I probably never would have gone back.

Speaker 3 And so the idea that I waited until I was ready and then I did it myself was very important for me, different for everyone.

Speaker 3 And I will absolutely grant you that when, uh, in seven years, when my oldest is applying for college, I might feel very different about this because there is a tragedy of the commons, whereas if I stand on my moral ground and say, I'm going to make him do it on his own, he's probably not going to get into a great school.

Speaker 3 I would say, though, that,

Speaker 3 and I don't know the answer to this.

Speaker 3 This is very,

Speaker 3 you know, not that clear to me, but who would you rather hire? Someone who got into UT Austin on their own, did everything on their own, or somebody who got them, or someone who went to Harvard, but

Speaker 3 their parents hired every consultant and every advisor to get them in.

Speaker 2 But the recruiter doesn't know that. The recruiter doesn't know that.

Speaker 3 Right. Yes.
You don't know that. But who would you bet on if you did know that? Who would you bet on is going to make a better adult?

Speaker 3 Is going to make a better employee, a better spouse, a better, someone who's doing it on their own? That's, that's who I would want to bet on.

Speaker 2 100%. I get it.
And a couple of things you said really resonated.

Speaker 2 One, I really do believe, especially for men whose prefrontal cortex is just more immature than a girl's, I think gap years are really valuable, especially for boys. You know, my son

Speaker 2 worked in a food truck this summer. And I think it was probably the best professional experience he's had.

Speaker 2 Just working with people who were English isn't their native language, showing up on time, having a boss, dealing with rude, expectant

Speaker 2 people who didn't get their lobster roll as quickly as they would have liked. I mean, it was just great for him.
And I would have liked to have seen him do another year.

Speaker 2 He decided that he wanted to go to college and he wanted to figure it out. And to your point about not being ready, I showed up.

Speaker 2 I was 17. I didn't know how to handle alcohol.
I didn't know how to handle the discipline of school at UCLA.

Speaker 2 I was on academic probation by the end of my first year.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 but

Speaker 2 I figured it out. I matured during those four years.

Speaker 2 And it ended up being, I think, a good thing. It worked out.
It could have easily not worked out.

Speaker 2 My second week in my fraternity, I got drunk and I had never, I had had very little experience with alcohol and I was not feeling well.

Speaker 2 And I stumbled outside, fell, banged my head against the wall and ended up in an emergency room. You know, that's not how you want to start college, right?

Speaker 2 And it's because I lacked the maturity and the experience to be at UCLA. To your point, I think I probably could have benefited from a gap year.

Speaker 2 But Morgan, I can't wait, Morgan. How old is your oldest?

Speaker 3 10.

Speaker 2 10. Okay.
In seven years, I am so all over your ass saying, no consultants, no ACT tutoring. You can't look at his or her app.

Speaker 2 Let's just let the die. Let's just let the chips fall.
So we're going to set that, we're We're going to set that clock. Deal?

Speaker 3 I don't doubt in the slightest, though, Scott, that I will fall for those pressures. You're right, that it's a tragedy of the commons.

Speaker 3 If you don't do this and stand on your moral ground, your son's going to fall behind. And that's, and it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a terrible thing.
I, I totally agree with that.

Speaker 3 Even if I went through the process of, I do this completely on my own. My parents didn't even know when I applied for college.
I didn't ask them. I didn't show them.
I just did it. I did it on my own.

Speaker 3 And that was so important for me.

Speaker 3 Even if I know that and experienced it, to do it to your own kids, knowing where it's going to set them on the spectrum, on the hierarchy of getting in, is a very difficult thing, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 This is a great conversation. And again, we don't have answers.
We just have life experiences here. But that's a great question.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back after a quick break.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back on to our final question from Debt it All 777.

Speaker 1 Hi, Scott and Morgan. Can you touch on how much your early investing and savings contributed to your success?

Speaker 2 For those in their mid-20s and early 30s, did investing early help you or do you think self-investment presents a higher return? For example, gym, clubs, education, travel. Thanks for all you do.

Speaker 2 This is so up your alley.

Speaker 3 Someone asked me about this personally because when I got my first job when I was 16, maybe 17, and I've been a huge saver since.

Speaker 3 I've been employed every day since then, and I've been, I've saved the majority of what I made since then.

Speaker 3 And I looked back at this when I was 17, when let's say when I was 17, I saved 100 bucks, which is heroic when you're 17.

Speaker 3 That's a fortune when you're 17 years old, making eight bucks an hour or whatever. And let's say I invested that money and today I invested in the S ⁇ P 500, it's worth $600.

Speaker 3 I don't know if that's true, but it's probably close to it. $600 means nothing to me today.
But it was heroic when I was 17. So was that a mistake?

Speaker 3 Because I could have used that $100 to take my friends out to dinner, gone on a road trip, whatever it may have been. The answer, and maybe this is just me trying to justify that decision.

Speaker 3 is it was not a mistake at all because the savings habits that I built when I was a teenager led me through today.

Speaker 3 And it's foolish to think that I could have had a YOLO mentality back then and then flip the switch and become a big saver when I was 30. It just, it probably doesn't work like that.

Speaker 3 So even if the money itself was so important back to me today and it's grew into something that's not that important to me today, it created a habit.

Speaker 3 that I think has given me an enormous benefit today and financial independence today.

Speaker 3 And so even if it's tempting to look back and say, I should have gone out to the bar with my friends back then and blew that $100 and had great memories and taken a road trip to Tijuana,

Speaker 3 it created a habit that has given me enormous benefit today. And therefore, I don't look back and regret it.
Now, it's always a sense of balance. I had amazing experiences during those years.

Speaker 3 I traveled a lot, met a million different people, lived in a dozen different cities, saw the world. There was no holding back.

Speaker 3 But I think the habits that were formed back then are so important to me today.

Speaker 2 So this is an example of.

Speaker 2 I say what you say. I didn't do what you say.
And that is

Speaker 2 both Morgan and I, I'm going to plug both our books, have have written financial literacy books. Morgan's book, The Psychology of Money, and my book, The Algebra of Wealth.

Speaker 2 My book was, I think, a bestseller for six months. Morgan's book has been a bestseller for like six years.

Speaker 2 The psychology of money is one of those iconic books that is sort of must-reading for, I think, young people around financial literacy or just your approach to money.

Speaker 2 Morgan is absolutely right. And I'm the cautionary tale of how things can go wrong.
I always made more money than my friends. I'm talented and I'm hardworking.

Speaker 2 My first job, Morgan Stanley, right out of UCLA, I was making double what all of my friends were making.

Speaker 2 When I was in the internet, you know, it took a company public millions of dollars, sometimes tens of millions, at least on paper. But I never really had a disciplined approach to saving.

Speaker 2 I wasn't stupid with money, but I spent a lot of it. I didn't think about it.
I was in my real sin was I was always way too concentrated.

Speaker 2 And would, I was that guy that I grew up in the, in the valley in the 90s, there came a professional age where you're supposed to put everything back into the company.

Speaker 2 And so when my company that went public went out of business, I lost everything and more. And it was about the time my oldest son had the poor judgment to come marching out of my partner.

Speaker 2 If I had taken, I'm not even saying 10%, if I had taken 3% of my income from an early age, from 22 when I got that first job and did what Morgan espouses and what I say in my book,

Speaker 2 my businesses could have gone out of business. And by the time I I was 40, 45, I would have had several million dollars in backup.

Speaker 2 But instead, I was broke because I bought into this notion that you go all in on the companies you start. You know, you're in it to win it.

Speaker 2 And by the way, the valley promotes that ethos, or at least it used to, that you weren't allowed to do secondary sales like entrepreneurs can do now.

Speaker 2 And so I ended up, I've been wealthy three times, which means I've lost it twice. I lost it in the dot-com implosion.
All of my money was my e-commerce startups. Boom, gone.

Speaker 2 I crawled my way back, 2007, doing well. 2008, great financial recession.
Again, all my money in tech stocks, boom, gone.

Speaker 2 And so the third time, I was really lucky and got financial security again, but I basically took Morgan's advice, started diversifying, investing, not swinging for the fence, making sure I was always living beneath my means and no matter how much money I thought I had.

Speaker 2 always saving a certain amount of money, saving and investing every month.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 assume, hope you're going to go double platinum, have a best-selling book, sell a company, go public, but assume you're not and you don't need to.

Speaker 2 If from an early age, you just start saving a little bit of money, don't let the money hit your hands, have forced savings, comes right out of your check.

Speaker 2 You don't need to be a hero, diversify, low-cost index funds.

Speaker 2 And when you're sitting here at my age or Morgan, who's younger, even if things, even if you don't hit it out of the park, you're just fine. And I didn't learn that.
And it almost cost me bigly.

Speaker 2 And the amount of stress I had at the age of 42 when I had my first kid and the great financial recession had just happened and I was broke, that amount of anxiety and self-loathing was much more emotionally damaging than it was financially damaging.

Speaker 2 And what I would say to anybody is don't ever set yourself up for that sort of emotional anxiety. And do what Morgan is suggesting.

Speaker 2 And that is from a very early age, just put a little bit of money away every month.

Speaker 3 It's always a balance, though, because I do know people who save too much and live too little. That absolutely exists.

Speaker 3 I think what's important, I've never viewed savings money as either idle cash or as delayed gratification.

Speaker 3 It's always given me pleasure today, right now, knowing that I have this independence and this backup. And I think a lot of people, the idea of saving money just feels too cautious.

Speaker 3 It feels like you're not taking it. It feels like you're not living enough.

Speaker 3 I always felt like it was one of my most prized possessions, how much I saved so much because I knew that I had freedom and independence and flexibility.

Speaker 3 If this job isn't working out, I can just, I can just quit. And even if I don't find another one for six months, it's fine.
It's not a big deal. I can live wherever I want.

Speaker 3 I can go on vacations whenever I want. That level of independence was so huge.
And I think we do a lot of damage to the extent, particularly for young people.

Speaker 3 when we associate savings with saving for a rainy day, when it's actually giving you something right now, like very tangible. The feeling of independence is one of the greatest feelings in the world.

Speaker 2 Morgan Hausel is the best-selling author of The Psychology of Money and a partner at the Collaborative Fund. MarketWatch named him one of the 50 most influential people in markets.

Speaker 2 His new book, The Art of Spending Money, is out now. I absolutely love Morgan and his stuff.
I can find a lot of his financial advice in a lot of places.

Speaker 2 What he's able to do is connect it to humanity and happiness.

Speaker 1 That's his superpower.

Speaker 2 Anyways, Morgan, very much enjoyed this.

Speaker 2 Thanks for being with us today.

Speaker 2 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Janaire.
Drew Burrows are technical director. Thank you for listening to the Propggy Pod from Propgy Media.

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