Morgan Housel
94 statements across 4 episodes · 28 bullish · 11 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Oct 24, 2016 by Morgan Housel · said 4 times in 3 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Morgan Housel's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Tom Gaynor (2), Justin Su'a (1), Christopher Davis (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Morgan Housel, oldest first
Oct 24, 2016
Housel: He tests his writing by whether his mother would understand it
“And the litmus test that I always try to think about is, would my mom understand this? And my mom, my mom's a smart lady, but she has no interest in finance whatsoever. So it's, I always ask myself, like, after I write a paragraph, would my mom get that? And t…”
Oct 24, 2016
Oct 24, 2016 positive
Oct 24, 2016 negative
Housel: Writing on a single subject gets harder over time as ideas deplete
“I think there's a paradox in that most fields, the more you do it, the better you get and the easier it gets. I think writing, especially writing about a single topic like investing, It's the other way around in that. So I've written 3600 articles now. So the …”
Oct 24, 2016
Housel: Unprompted reader feedback skews toward extreme love or hate
“You get huge skews between people who really like the article or people who really hate the article. Not a lot in between. I think feedback is only relevant if like a reader is forced to give it. So you get the biggest, The widest swath of opinions, but most f…”
Oct 24, 2016
Oct 24, 2016
Housel: Financial writing consists of facts, opinions, or mental frameworks
“There are three types of writing especially financial writing. There is just providing information, which is, I guess what like Reuters and Bloomberg would do just breaking news and Just putting out the objective facts, end of story. And then, so that's one ty…”
Oct 24, 2016
Oct 24, 2016 negative
Housel: Forcing deliberate idea generation does not work for writers
“What's definitely true, and I've heard this from other writers too, is that when you sit down and try to force yourself to think about a topic, you're never gonna get it. If you sit down and say, okay, I need to think about something What am I going to write? …”
Oct 24, 2016
Morgan Housel invests primarily in index funds alongside occasional individual stocks
“How I invest is basically every month I dollar cost average into index funds. So that's my, that's the core of it. And then on top of that rarely, but it is a portion of my portfolio when I come across an individual stock that is attractive to me for whatever …”
Jan 23, 2024
May 28, 2024
Housel: Readers are most impatient in the opening two sentences
“It's almost like an inverted pyramid where it's like people are most impatient in the first two sentences. And so you would think it'd be the other way around. They would get impatient after they've worked their way through your article and they're getting bor…”
May 28, 2024
Housel: Children learn financial habits by observing parents, not from lectures
“You don't need to sit your kids down and say, let me teach you about money. And in fact, if you do that, most kids are going to yawn and say, I'm not interested in this, but they are definitely paying attention to every time you say we can't afford this, they'…”
May 28, 2024
Housel: The True Value of Money Is Gaining Autonomy Over Daily Life
“Money is, is kind of the oxygen of independence. And if you can use your money to spend more time with your friends and family, you and I went out to a lovely dinner last night with each other. That cost money. Thank you for buying, by the way. And we had a gr…”
May 28, 2024 bullish
Housel: Long-term index fund investing yields top-decile compounding results
“My investing strategy is To own index funds for as long as I possibly can. To be average for an above average period of time. And I think that will actually lead to an incredible outcome. Not only will it achieve the financial goals that I have for my family, …”
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024
Housel: Rejecting material spending for pure experiences goes too far
“So if it's not to say that the things will make you happy are not material that you should just use this for experiences. That I think is a step too far. I think a lot of people have hobbies that cost a lot of money that are material that really make them happ…”
May 28, 2024
Housel: Test ideas on Twitter before expanding into blog posts and books
“I think in some ways you test ideas in Twitter and if they work, you can turn those ideas into a blog post. And if the blog post works, you can turn it into a book idea or a book chapter. That's kind of the natural progression for a lot of these things.”
May 28, 2024 positive
Housel: Forcing oneself to finish every book makes reading miserable
“A lot of the reason that people don't like reading, why people don't read as much as they should, or if they say, ah, I'm not a big reader. A lot of the reason is because they feel like morally that they need to finish every book that they start. And we realiz…”
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024
Housel: You learn more about money studying history and biology than finance
“I think you can learn more about money by reading about politics, military history, biology, sociology than you will by reading a finance book. Because you're just trying to figure out how do people make decisions? How do you make decisions and how do other pe…”
May 28, 2024 neutral
May 28, 2024 negative
Morgan Housel: Writing for an audience leads to pandering, not great stories
“I think once you start thinking about who is my audience and what are they going to like, you start to pander and you start to like perform for them in a way that is very hard to like
Create a good emotional story about.
Just write for yourself.”
May 28, 2024 neutral
May 28, 2024
Housel: Using wealth as a scorecard to measure people creates spoiled children
“If you raise your kids, even if you have a lower income, but you raise them with an obsession with money, To like, that's the scorecard of measuring other people. It's like, well, what's your net worth? What's your salary? That's why I'm going to measure you b…”
May 28, 2024 positive
May 28, 2024 positive
Housel: True wealth is unspent money that remains hidden from view
“The weird thing here is that wealth is the money that you don't spend. That's what wealth is, like the homes you didn't buy and the car you didn't buy. It's money that you saved and invested. That is going to give you independence, and that's a hard thing for …”
May 28, 2024 positive
Housel: Personal assets consist exclusively of cash, home, index funds, and Markel
“I'm trying to think of what, like, the percentage-wise, it's probably something like, 15 to 20% cash, the house that I live in, and then the rest the rest index funds, and shares of Markel, where I'm on the board of directors. And that's it. Those are my only …”
May 28, 2024 positive
Housel: Leave children enough money for opportunity, not identity-burdening excess
“You don't want the wealth that you pass your kids to burden them into a lifestyle that they don't want for themselves. You just want to be like, here's enough money so that you can have the leverage and the tools to find out who you want to be and live the lif…”
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024 positive
Housel: Eliminating FOMO is the single most important financial skill
“Not having FOMO is the single most important financial skill. I think it's so important that you cannot ever imagine accumulating significant wealth over your lifetime if you are susceptible to FOMO. Like if there's literally one thing, like one trait that you…”
May 28, 2024
Housel: Vulnerability connects with audiences but risks crossing into ego
“When you are vulnerable and open, people love it because even if you don't stutter, you're like, oh, I have this similar, I have this issue, whatever it would be. And like, thank you for telling me that your life was not as, was not perfect. Thank you for bein…”
May 28, 2024 positive
May 28, 2024 positive
May 28, 2024
Housel: Financial debates are personality clashes rather than genuine factual disagreements
“So I think most financial debates, whether it's like an investing debate or a saving or spending debate, people are not actually disagreeing with each other. They're not actually debating. It's people with different personalities talking over each other. And o…”
May 28, 2024
Housel: Material progress will not make future generations happier due to peer comparison
“People are always going to be keeping up with the Joneses. And you can imagine a world in which our kids and our grandkids are living way better lives than you and I are. And living longer and have better material access you and I do, and they're no happier fo…”
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024 bullish
May 28, 2024
Housel: Measuring personal human worth by net worth is profoundly dangerous
“Don't think that all poverty is due to laziness and don't think that all wealth is due to hard work. It's not. If you are just ranking people by their net worth and ranking their value by the net worth, that's probably the most dangerous thing you can do with …”
May 28, 2024
Housel: Higher success stops people around you from giving honest criticism
“When you are lower, lower on the totem pole, it's very, it's easier for everyone around you to tell you what you're doing wrong. And the higher you gain, Particularly when you get up to the very high levels, no one wants to tell you doing wrong because you're …”
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024 positive
May 28, 2024 neutral
Housel: You cannot envy someone's success without accepting their full life's sacrifices
“You can't just pick and choose bits of someone's life and say, I want his physique and her net worth, and I want his house. And like, you have to take the whole package. And a lot of the great things in anyone's life, there, there's a cost that came with that.”
May 28, 2024
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Parents Should Use Wealth as a Safety Net, Not Fuel
“Now, I want my kids, I think, as a broad formula, I want to use the money that I have
To protect within limitations, my children's downsides.
I don't ever want them to just collapse on their face and they can't work their way out in life.
I want to be there to…”
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026
Housel: People's Internal Emotional Range Vastly Exceeds Their Curated Public Performances
“I think if you could see inside of everyone's head and see their thoughts you would see that people are a hundred times more anxious than you assumed. They're a hundred times funnier than you assumed. They're a hundred times more doubtful and depressed than yo…”
Jan 20, 2026 neutral
Housel: Homeowners Prioritize Exterior Landscaping Over Interior Quality to Impress Strangers
“And I would venture, we're talking first world problems here, of course, but I would venture that many more people have landscapers. Part of which is because they don't want to get dirty. But part of which is, like, I think whether you know it or not conscious…”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 bullish
Housel: Simple Index Investing Will Outperform Complex Strategies Over a Lifetime
“I bet over the course of a lifetime, not in any given year, but over a lifetime, if you compared it to someone whose finances were very complicated and had all kinds of transactions, not only would I be likely to match those, but probably exceed them.”
Jan 20, 2026
Housel: My High Savings Rate Originated From Low Self-Esteem and Fear
“I've always been a big saver. Not even maybe, I would say almost certainly, but part of that came from earlier periods of my life when I had a lower self-esteem, very low confidence in my ability to earn a lot of money, and that has led me to saving money with…”
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: Wealthy People Without Frugal Habits Are Merely Conforming to Society
“If you can look at particularly someone who is above average income and there isn't something in their life that they spend very little on, I think there's a high chance that they're just a sheep going along with society tells them they should want.”
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 neutral
Housel: Wealth Cannot Increase Relationship Happiness Because Foundational Joys Are Free
“And so the things that make my wife and I happy, we like walking our dog, and we like that 10 years ago as much as we do today. And even before we had a dog, we like going for walks and doing this. We like laughing and talking about things in one. It's things …”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 neutral
Housel: Jeremy Grantham Would Be a Momentum Investor Without His Early Bear Market
“Everything we know about psychology is like early experiences leave scars. They stick around for a long time. So you can easily imagine an alternative history of where Jeremy Grantham started his career during a tech bubble and became a momentum investor, like…”
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: 'Just Be Yourself' Is Good Advice for Only 5% of People
“Just be yourself and Is good advice for like five percent of people. And I love that, that joke, that mean of like, most people should not be themselves. They should meter what they say and how they behave around other people in a signaling way in order to fit…”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Stock Investors Need at Least a 10-Year Horizon for High Probability Success
“Historically, when we talk about the stock market, a good definition of long-term of like really putting the odds of success in your favor is probably 10 years. Of putting, like, earning a real rate of return after inflation, even within the cyclicality of the…”
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Gut Feelings Are Usually Accurate Syntheses of Uncrystallized Knowledge
“Gut feelings tend to actually be pretty good. That's not just a gut feeling that it's just that you can't crystallize what the thought is, but you know, which way you should go, you know, which way to do it. I think that tends to be the case that gut feelings …”
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: Social Media Prevents Younger Generations From Appreciating Objective Material Progress
“I think by comparison, they won't appreciate it in greater degrees than we didn't appreciate our progress because of social media, because they have only known an era when, which not just there are some, but there are literally tens of hundreds of millions of …”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Professional Loyalty Is Only Rewarding When Directed at the Deserving Few
“Loyalty to people who deserve your loyalty is a very rewarding thing. The important thing is people who deserve your loyalty, which is a small list. A lot of people do not deserve your loyalty. But loyalty to someone who deserves your loyalty is unbelievably r…”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026
Housel: All Wealth Equals What You Have Minus What You Want
“One is that all wealth is what you have minus what you want. And it is so profoundly common and easy to ignore the second part of that equation that you have to minus what you want. And you are more in control of that by and large than what you have.”
Jan 20, 2026 neutral
Morgan Housel Discloses He Struggled With a Severe Stutter Until His Thirties
“I wrote 4000 blog posts over my career, and the one that meant the most to me by far was a post I wrote in 2017. It's called Overcoming Your Demons, where I wrote about, I grew up with a very severe stutter. I really struggled to speak until my, honestly, earl…”
Jan 20, 2026 neutral
Housel: Careers Progress From Skill-Building in Twenties to Monetization in Forties
“Probably age birth to 20, you're forming an identity. You're just trying to figure out Who you are. You're trying to make sense of how you're wired and whatnot. You're just figuring out your identity. 20 to 30, I think by and large, you are learning a skill. H…”
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: Status Signaling Becomes Dangerous When Aimed at Uninvolved Strangers
“I think it becomes dangerous when the purpose of your signaling is I want to get the attention of strangers who are not in this with me, who are not part of the group that I'm trying to gain the respect and admiration of. I'm trying to gain the attention and a…”
Jan 20, 2026
Housel: People Need Seemingly Excessive Cash to Protect Against Underestimated Risks
“So just focusing on the financial independence, a level of savings that seems like it's too much. That seems like, oh, this is completely excessive. Do I need this much savings and liquidity? The answer might be yes, because you're probably underestimating the…”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: Affordable Housing Is the Single Biggest Social Problem in America
“So housing, affordable housing, I think is the single biggest social problem, certainly in America, probably in Canada right now. Because so many other social problems that might seem bigger than that are downstream of housing. A lot of the drug problem, the d…”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: Rental Real Estate Is Active Labor, Not True Passive Income
“The vast majority of what people consider passive income, they're working their butts off for, particularly real estate. If you're a landlord and people are like, oh, it's passive income. No, it's not. Your toilet breaks, the roof leaks, the tenant doesn't pay…”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Jan 20, 2026
Housel: Flashy Sports Cars Are a New-Money Phenomenon Driven by Vindication
“The yellow sports car, so to speak, tends to be a new fun, a new money phenomenon. Not a lot of old money families with those, or fewer of them, because I think the new money, wealth, like, feels vindicated over what they overcame.”
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 negative
Housel: Buying a Home Due to Market FOMO Is Universally Terrible
“You should not do it because you have, even if you don't define it like this in your head, because you have some level of FOMO of man, housing prices have gone up a lot and like, ah, that house looks so nice and things would be, and we can't really afford it. …”
Jan 20, 2026
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Financial Independence Is a Continuous Spectrum, Not an End State
“Literally every dollar that you save is a little claim check on your future that you control that somebody else doesn't. I think it's an important mindset, like redefining independence like that, that it's on a spectrum and every single dollar is an independen…”
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Simplicity Maximizes Wealth by Increasing an Investor's Endurance
“The simpler it is, the easier it is. I think the higher the odds that I'll just, I can just stay with it. Whereas if it was very complicated, I might get to a point in the economy or my career or my cognitive capacity where like, I can't keep it going. And so …”
Jan 20, 2026 neutral
Jan 20, 2026 positive
Housel: Earning Average Market Returns for 50 Years Beats 97% of Investors
“And the idea that let's say if I can be average for 50 years, I'll end up in the top Three percent of investors. That's probably about where it'll be. Historically has been the case that I will outperform 97% of people who tried to beat the market. Maybe it's …”