Morgan Housel

If you don't have any savings, you're gonna have to, by default, pick the very first job that you can come across, even if it's a terrible job in a location that you hate, doing something you hate, working with people you don't like.

And so the flexibility to give yourself time to find a job that is a little bit easier and better for you, that is the purpose of savings.

Yeah.

So what's happening there?

Well, you're looking at your neighbor who won the lottery and your neighbor probably bought a vacation house, bought a new car, sending their kids to private school, whatever it might be.

And you watching that are like, I need that for myself.

It's unfair that they have it and I don't.

And I'm going to go do any reckless financial decision to get that.

So much of what we think is normal, our definition of success is,

is what other people around us have.

And so if you are watching your neighbor live a better life than you, then all of a sudden your definition of a good life is what they're doing and you will do some reckless things to get it.

I think that's what happens.

And so one of the takeaways there is like, be careful who you socialize with because you're going to anchor to them as a baseline level of success and happiness.

Be very careful with what you do and who you look up to and who you aspire to.

I grew up in Lake Tahoe, California.

And this was before tech money when it was not a wealthy area.

It is now because all the tech money from San Francisco came up.

But Tahoe in the 90s and early 2000s was just out in the woods.

And, you know, you could buy a house for nothing.

And most people in town didn't have any money.