Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 92% certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

Housel: Pillemer's study of 1,000 centenarians found zero regretted making less money

Morgan Housel · Could AI TAKE OVER by 2027? | Morgan Housel on TBPN April 4th · Apr 8, 2025 · at 32:27

Morgan Housel cites research on life regret from gerontologist Carl Pillemer.

0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.3s

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“It was a study from a gerontologist. His name is Carl Pillemer, and he studied 1000 elderly Americans. Most of them were 90 to a hundred years old. And he writes in his book that of the 1000 elderly people that he studied, not a single one of them, not one single person looked back and said, I wish I made more money.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

In gerontologist Carl Pillemer's study of 1,000 elderly Americans aged 90 to 100, not a single participant reported wishing they had made more money.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

In his 2011 book '30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans' based on the Cornell Legacy Project (which surveyed over 1,000 older Americans), Dr. Karl Pillemer explicitly reported that across the entire sample, 'No one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want' and 'No one—not a single person—said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power.' Furthermore, Dr. Pillemer's official Cornell Legacy Project blog featured and affirmed Morgan Housel's summary of this exact finding in January 2021.

Dr. Karl Pillemer's book '30 Lessons for Living' (2011) explicitly states: 'No one—not a single person out of a thousand—said that to be happy you should try to work as hard as you can to make money to buy the things you want.'
Pillemer also recorded: 'No one—not a single person—said you should choose your work based on your desired future earning power.'
On January 4, 2021, Dr. Pillemer's official Cornell Legacy Project blog affirmed Housel's description of the study's findings on money and life satisfaction.

Checked against

[1] bakadesuyo.com [2] inc.com [3] mutualofomaha.com [4] bakadesuyo.com [5] mutualofomaha.com [6] substack.com [7] cornell.edu [8] cornell.edu

"Cornell Legacy Project" "Karl Pillemer" OR "Carl Pillemer" "wish I had" "money" "30 Lessons for Living" "No one said" "rich" OR "money" OR "earn" OR "career" "30 Lessons for Living" "No one – not a single person out of a thousand" OR "No one -- not a single person out of a thousand" "10 Money Lessons from Elderly Americans Who Have Seen It All" "Morgan Housel"

assessed as of 2026-09-02

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

Carl Pillemer

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Housel: Pillemer's study of 1,000 centenarians found zero regretted making less money

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