Part 1 of my series on the book “The Art of Spending Money” by Morgan Housel.
One random fact from the book that stuck with me is this: Between the 10 richest men in the world, there are 13 divorces.
Even if one has all the money in the world, more than they could spend in 1’000 lifetimes, a good and happy life is not guaranteed.
On the other hand, it shows us normalos that the calendar quotes are actually correct: You can’t buy the most important things in life.
When we envy these rich people, we often only see the monetary aspects of their lives. What we don’t see is, to quote the book, “that even people with home cinemas fight with their partners”. Their life isn’t perfect either.
But the thing is, nothing in life is as important as it feels in the moment when you think about it. If all you do is think about how much more money you would need to be “happy”, you vastly overestimate the effect money has on your life.
Health, a good social life and independence are way more important. Things you can’t buy with money. Except the last one, more on that in other parts of this series.
But there's a related blind spot that goes beyond wealth.
With enough information, every behavior is understandable.
I think this is a pretty good way of thinking about the life choices of other people.
Most humans strive for their best life, the best possible reality for them and the people around. Or at least they believe they've made reasonable choices. The only issue is that we all have different information about ourselves and the world around us.
This applies to politics (won’t dive much deeper into that here), but it also applies to the realm of personal finances.
We should put more emphasis on the personal, not the finances.
There is no right or wrong when it comes to how people handle their money. There is no need to debate about whether a purchase was necessary or not. To some people it might be, to others, it might not.
To follow Morgan’s advice, we should ask the following question more:
Because of which experiences that I might not have had, do you believe what you believe?
The answers might be surprising.