Reasonably Happy with Paul Ollinger

Dr. Amy Bell is the author of London Was Ours, an examination of memoirs and diaries kept by ordinary Londoners during the Blitz. From Sept 1940-May 1941, Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed London almost every day or night. The city experienced massive death and destruction, yet citizens went on with their lives, albeit under modified routines. Amy and I discuss how the lessons of the Blitz might be releva...

Marshall Chiles is the owner of the Laughing Skull Lounge in midtown Atlanta. The 80 seat-club sells out almost every show, but has been closed for 3 weeks. Marshall discusses the financial and emotional toll of closing the doors and how he’s taking care of his team during this crisis. Visit  https://laughingskulllounge.com/  to pre-purchase tickets good for 12 months after the club re-opens. Down...

Steve Heimoff is a wine writer, author, and former West Coast editor at Wine Enthusiast. He has published three books about winemaking with the University of California Press. In 2008, Steve learned that his entire savings—almost $2mm—had vanished in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. The loss, Steve shares, drove him to despair, leaving him with suicidal thoughts and PTSD.  Learn more about Steve he...

Rory Scovel is a writer, actor, and comedian who plays to sold-out crowds all over the country.  He was the male lead in Amy Schumer’s hit movie, I Feel Pretty, and was a principal character in Demetri Martin’s 2016 film, Dean. He has appeared on many TV shows, including TBS’ Ground Floor, TruTV's Those Who Can’t, NBC’s Undateable, ABC’s Modern Family, and has performed on Conan nine times. His mo...

AJ Jain is a retired C-level insurance executive, former strategy consultant, and professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University. He holds a Ph. D. and MBA from SUNY Buffalo and two other degrees from prestigious universities in India. In other words, he’s a very accomplished guy.  Yet, for a few years in his early 40’s, AJ faced existential economic catastrophe and marital collapse. On t...

Danny Wuerffel won the Heisman Trophy and led University of Florida Gators to a national championship and four SEC titles. Today Danny is the Executive Director of Desire Street Ministries, an organization that helps reshape disadvantaged urban communities in the Southeastern U.S. Desire Street provides coaching, training, retreats and many other resources to the heroes leading change in the neigh...

Devin Singh is an Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth. His first book, Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West examines the ways early Christian thinkers made use of monetary and economic concepts as they created Christian doctrine. We talk about how financial language and metaphor of the early Church affects how we talk about money and God today.  Learn more about Dev...

Adam Minter is a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion where he writes about China, technology, and the environment. He is the author of Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, a critically-acclaimed, bestselling account of the hidden world of globalized recycling, and the forthcoming Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale. Adam has covered the global recycling industry for...

John Soforic is a chiropractor who earned financial freedom. He shares his life lessons for his son in his self-published The Wealth Gardener: Life Lessons on Prosperity Between Father and Son, which sold 30,000 copies (this is a lot!) in the first year, and is now being re-issued by PenguinRandomHouse. John achieved his financial dreams by thinking long-term, and working really, really hard for d...

Bruce Daisley has spent his career working in media and technology companies, like YouTube, Google and Emap. His last venture in corporate leadership was as VP EMEA (translated: King of Europe). Along the way he became obsessed with making our jobs better, and how often we get it wrong. Eat Sleep Work Repeat (called The Joy of Work in the UK) is his attempt to escape the bad opinions that leaders...

We are one year and 50 episodes into Crazy Money!!! This week, Paul and producer/editor extraordinaire, Mike Carano, discuss their favorite episodes, themes and guests they’ve had on the show. Those guests include rockstars, Nobel laureates, famous authors/broadcasters, and Paul’s wife and father. (Two different people.) As our one year birthday gift, please rate / review the show on your Podcast...

Kevin Salwen is a former reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal and co-author of two very different, yet equally compelling books. The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back, is the story of how — at the urging of their then 14 year-old daughter—the Salwen family sold their big house and contributed half the proceeds to help a village in Ghana.  The new b...

Dominic Houlder is the co-author of Mindfulness and Money and What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader. An Adjunct Professor at London Business School and former manager at Boston Consulting Group, Dominic has been a committed Buddhist practitioner for more than 30 years. Dominic has an MA in History from Cambridge University and an MBA from Stanford Business School. His home is i...

Jonathan Rauch is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributing editor of The Atlantic. In The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50, he discusses the decline in happiness that most people experience in middle age and what there is to do about it. Jonathan's writing spans the full spectrum of society, including politics, marijuana legalization, health care, gay marriage, a...

The way you spend your money can actually make you happier! So prove Mike Norton and co-author, Elizabeth Dunn, in the book, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending.  Michael I. Norton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and a member of Harvard’s Behavioral Insights Group. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and English from Williams Colleg...

Yoshee and Diana have been married 13 years and have three children. They recently down-sized their lifestyle to prioritize family and their respective passions and side hustles. Dr. Diana Sodiq is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an osteopathic physician, certified yoga teacher and founder of Rehab Medicine and Wellness. Yoshee, a first-generation Nigerian-American, is a touring comedian,...

Joe Saul-Sehy is the host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast, which uses humor to inspire people to think more seriously about money and financial well-being. Kiplinger named Stacking Benjamins"Best Finance Podcast” of the year and the Academy of Podcasters called it Best Business Podcast. You’ll also find SB on the “best of”  lists in Forbes, US News & World Report, and  TheStreet.com . Joe and hi...

Tess Vigeland is the author of Leap: Leaving a Job with No Plan B to Find the Career and Life You Really Want.  Tess spent twenty years in public radio, several of which she spent as an anchor of the national business show, Marketplace and as host of Marketplace Money. She is the recipient of both a Gracie Award for Best Host/Anchor, and a national Edward R. Murrow award. In addition to being a co...

Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University whom The New Yorker called “the world’s most influential living philosopher.”  The founder of The Life You Can Save, an organization named after his book of the same name, Peter believes it is our moral duty to give generously—way beyond what we are currently doing--to improve the lives of people living in extreme pov...

Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of award-winning social impact agency Women Online and its database of women influencers, The Mission List.   An extremely anxious introvert herself, Morra hosts The Anxious Achiever podcast for HBRPresents from Harvard Business Review. Her bestselling book Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There (When You'd Rather Stay Home) was published by HarperCollins and...

Richard Robb is an economics professor at Columbia University. And the CEO of Christofferson, Robb and Company, a New York and London based investment management firm. Robb holds a BA from Duke University (1981) and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago (1985).  His new book, Willful: How we Choose What We Do explores frameworks for decision making that run counter to traditional econo...

My wife, Stacey, and I talk about how we talk about money, budgeting, and household expenditures. And how we manage our careers and identities in a post-corporate job reality. I hereby acknowledge that the tradeoffs discussed herein are high-class, First World problems.   See Paul’s upcoming show dates here:  http://paulollinger.com Get full access to Reasonably Happy at words.paulollinger.com/sub...

Meik Wiking is the CEO of The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a New York Times best-selling author of The Little Book of Hygge,The Little Book of Lykke, and The Art of Making Memories. His books explore happiness, subjective well-being and quality of life. They offer simple tips to help the reader improve day-to-day happiness, and have sold over 1 million copies worldwid...

AJ Jain is a retired C-level insurance executive, former strategy consultant, and professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University. He holds a Ph. D. and MBA from SUNY Buffalo and two other degrees from prestigious universities in India. In other words, he’s a very accomplished guy.  Yet, for a few years in his early 40’s, AJ faced existential economic catastrophe and marital collapse. On t...

In his new book, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress, Chris Ryan, PhD. questions whether civilization has actually been a net benefit to our species. Ask yourself: would you rather spend your life fighting traffic and working every day in a cubicle, or foraging among the trees, falling asleep under the stars, warmed by a literal and communal fire? Chris’ first book, Sex at Dawn spent several...