Morgan Housel

Nobody can see your car.

Nobody see your clothes.

Nobody can see your jewelry.

How would I live?

For me, and I think most people in that exercise, you immediately gravitate away from status and towards utility.

Like I would not want a Lamborghini.

I probably want like a pickup truck.

Something that has like more utility.

If nobody could see it, I would just want utility.

I would not want an enormous house.

I would want a house with a nice view because I'm not trying to show off to other people.

I just want something that is calming and serene to myself.

And so once you start seeing the stark difference between utility and status,

Once you force yourself to see it, you're like, oh, it's everywhere.

I don't know.

It's hard to say what's good and bad in terms of a formula because everybody's different.

But I would say this.

My own personal desire...

to show off materially happened when I was in my late teens, early twenties.

And looking back, I didn't know this then, but the reason why is because I had nothing else to offer the world.