Assertion Supported
Housel: Historical Dow components outperformed rebalanced index over 100 years
“If you were to look at the Dow, I think one of the studies showed over the last hundred years, if rather than adding a new company, when one of the original components went out of business or merged, if you just left it alone, don't add anything else. Don't ta…”
Disclosure
Housel: Paying off 3.2% mortgage was worst financial, best personal decision
“Like, our mortgage rate was 3.2% fixed for 30 years, and we paid it off. Which I say is, it's very true, is the worst financial decision we've ever made. But, it's the best money decision we've ever made.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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…”
Opinion
Housel: Elon Musk spends over half his day doing unwanted tasks
“I would venture that more than half of Elon Musk's day is doing things that he doesn't want to do.”
Insight
Housel: Increasing happiness is the sole purpose of money
“Like what can money do to make you happier? Because there's no other purpose. There's nothing else that you should even think about other than that.”
Insight
Housel: Moderate inequality is ideal, but extreme inequality threatens capitalism
“It is inevitable and it is actually ideal that there are some level of inequality. In the world. It's not only inevitable, it's ideal. The opposite of that is, is a nightmare, but it's also the case that you do not want a third of society waking up every morni…”
Assertion Supported
Housel: Lower income brackets experienced the fastest wage growth recently
“Now, just in the last three or four years, there's been a huge growth. The segment of society whose incomes have grown the most tends to be the lower. Incomes. We're still kind of attached to this narrative of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But i…”
Opinion
Housel: Ken Burns is the best storyteller in history
“I always use the example of Ken Burns, who makes the best documentaries about U.S. History. And the vast majority of what is in his documentaries are already known. A documentary about the Civil War or World War II. You know how it ends. You know what happened…”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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…”
Opinion
Housel: Twitter has made people better writers through succinctness
“I also think Twitter has made people better writers because the character count limitation has forced people to be like, you have two sentences to tell me your idea. And that's all you get. That's actually, I think that's been a great thing overall for making …”
Insight
Housel: Professional money managers cannot objectively assess their own industry
“It is impossible to think objectively about a field that you reap, that you get your paycheck from. And I think that's really true for a lot of money, professional money managers, mutual fund managers, hedge fund managers, that no matter how hard they try, it'…”
Insight
Housel: Articles relevant only today are not truly relevant at all
“If an article is relevant today, but not relevant tomorrow, then it's not relevant at all.”
Opinion
Housel: Jason Zweig is history's best financial journalist at explaining markets
“I think someone else who has done that incredibly well in the world of finances, Jason Zweig in the wall street journal, who has, Better than I think any financial journalist in history taken the complexities and the volatility of financial markets and explain…”
Opinion
Housel: American life changed more from 1900–1950 than 1950–2000
“And I think the difference in how life in America changed from 1900 to 1950 was an order of magnitude greater than how it changed from 1950 to 2000.”
Insight
Housel: Having Few People You Cannot Disappoint Is Life's Greatest Motivator
“Nothing is a bigger motivator in life than having a couple people
Rarely more than that, that you really don't want to disappoint.”
Insight
Housel: Pure Ego Causes Ruin While Pure Humility Stifles Progress
“If you only have the ego side, you're going to run yourself off a cliff, and if you only have the humble slash depressed side, you're never going to get anywhere”
Insight
Housel: Wealth Reduces Bad Days but Does Not Create Better Days
“What I think is true. Is that on average, people who have more money tend to have fewer bad days, but I don't know if they have more better days.”
Insight
Housel: Happiness Is a Fleeting Emotion Lasting Minutes, Much Like Humor
“Happiness is always a fleeting emotion. Like most people are rarely happy for more than a couple minutes at a time. And I think it's very similar to humor, where if I tell you a very funny joke, you don't laugh for 10 years. You laugh for a couple minutes. Hum…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Housel: Future Generations Will Treat Cancer Diagnoses as Manageable Inconveniences
“I mean, the most, what I think is like the highest odds is that Our kids, maybe our grandkids will live in an era which being diagnosed with cancer is not, not that big a deal.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
Housel: Doing Well Financially Comes Down Entirely to Survival and Endurance
“If you have to serve like sum up doing well financially in one word, I think it's survival. That's true in your career. That's true for savings. That's true for investing. Absolutely. It's just survival.”
Insight
Housel: Pleasure and Wealth Are Driven by Contrast, Not Absolute Amounts
“This is true for a lot of things, you get pleasure out of contrast. It's just how much, what do you have now and what are you doing now relative to what you were doing before?”
