The Morgan Housel Podcast

You spend years trying to learn tons of new stuff, but then look back and realize that just a few big ideas truly changed how you think and influenced most of what you believe. Let me share a couple that had a big impact on me. 

Chris Rock joked that Bill Gates would jump out the window if he woke up with Oprah’s money. Like most comedy, it’s funny because it contains a nugget of truth. There is no objective level of wealth -- everything is just relative to something, or someone, else. That means a billionaire can feel poorer than someone with infinitely less money. This episode tries to create a spectrum of wealth based...

The knee-jerk way to set expectations is to anchor to what everyone else has right now. But imagine the tragedy of there being unbelievable progress throughout your life and you enjoy none of it because you expected all of it.   This episode is all about expectations, and how the key to happiness in so many things in life is to aim low. 

Sometimes the best you can do when learning about any topic is to memorize a few short stories -- quick, direct, and to the point, that you're likely to remember forever. This episode shares 15 short stories that have stuck with me, and helped me contextualize so many things in life, work, and investing. One other note: I have a new book coming out this November. It's called Same as Ever...

There are so many times in life where what you do is less important than how long you've been doing it for.  It's true in careers.  It's true in relationships.  It's true in sports.  And it's true with money.  This episode is about compounding -- and how staying put, uninterrupted, is often the most overlooked skill. 

If you can explain something important in just a few words, it's a double win: You've probably found something that's obviously true, without needing further explanation or detail. And it's probably something you'll remember for a long time, easy to recall without having to memorize dozens of details.  This podcast is a smattering of ideas that have been important and impa...

This episode has little to do with money. But in some ways it has everything to do with money.  That's the riddle I want to unpack.  I want to share a bunch of examples of what one field can teach us about another.  What can we learn from biology that teaches us something about money? What can we learn from physics that teaches us something about business?  If you find something that is true...

One of the most complicated topics in money: How it impacts your family. Your spouse. Your kids .  How do you avoid spoiling kids?  How do you and your spouse learn to agree about the best way to spend?  There are no easy answers -- but I try my best here, including sharing the letters I wrote to my kids when they were born. 

The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, “I can do whatever I want today.” People want to become wealthier to make them happier. Happiness is a complicated subject because everyone’s different.  But if there’s a common denominator in happiness -- a universal fuel of joy -- it’s that people want to control their lives.  The ability to do what you want, when you wa...

Getting rich and staying rich are two different skills. They are often conflicting skills, so many people focus on one or the other.  But you need both to do well over time.  This episode tells a 100-year-old story of two investors, neither of whom knew each other, but whose fates converged during the same week in the 1920s.  It shows why a barbell personality of optimistic on one hand, and parano...

There are only a handful of financial rules, ideas, and observations that really move the needle -- and explain the majority of what you need to know to do better with your money.  I could have narrowed this down to 10, but I had fun with this thought experiment, so here are my top 30 rules of the money game. 

The first episode -- who knows where this will go? There is a science to spending money – how to find a bargain, how to make a budget, things like that. But there’s also an art to spending. A part that can’t be quantified and varies person to person. In my book I called money “the greatest show on earth” because of its ability to reveal things about people’s character and values. How people invest...