Morgan Housel

Like that's kind of as high as my intelligence goes here.

But I think the truth is that that is the best position to be in.

Smart enough to understand the basics, but not so smart that they become boring to you.

Because once they're boring to you, you're just like, ah, sweep those away.

Let's try to pull some more levers here.

Monthly wage growth going back for about 25 years.

Well, but this is growth.

So in any given year, even if the growth is 2%, that's 2% higher than the previous year.

So this is not wages over time.

Now it is true that if you look over a 25-year period and you took the average American family, not everybody, but the median, that their wages adjusted for inflation have gone up.

Not up as much as people would want over 25 years, but that they are better off than they were 25 years ago.

What is also true is that the average median family

would probably disagree with that statement, even if it is true statistically for several reasons.

One of which is their expectations have gone up over the last 25 years.

The other is even if you're looking at average wages,

Average, and when we talk about these statistics, does not refer to any specific family.

This is just a statistical number.

Everyone spends their money differently.

So if I told you, hey, average family, you're richer than you were in the year 2000.

And they're like, yeah, but I'm trying to put my kids through college.