Getting rich requires taking risks. Staying rich requires humility, patience, and avoiding ruin.“Getting wealthy and staying wealthy are different skills.”

Getting Rich vs. Staying Rich

You don’t need a specific goal to save. Just having cash gives you freedom, options, and peace.

Save Money Without a Reason

Small, consistent gains over time beat big, dramatic wins. Time + consistency = wealth.“The most powerful force in investing is time.”

Compounding is Magic

Success isn’t always earned. Failure isn’t always deserved. Be humble about your wins and forgiving of losses.

Luck and Risk Shape Everything

You don’t need to be a genius. You need to be calm, consistent, and self-aware. Emotional control beats IQ.

Your Behavior Matters More Than Your Knowledge

A few big wins or losses usually shape the entire outcome. You don’t need to get everything right — just avoid disaster.

Tail Events Drive Outcomes

The real value of money is control over your time. Freedom is the ultimate dividend.“The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up and say, ‘I can do whatever I want today.’”

Wealth is Freedom

Greed is endless. Define your “enough” — and stop moving the goalposts.

Know What “Enough” Looks Like

You don’t have to make perfect decisions — just sustainable ones. Your financial plan should feel good enough to stick with.

Be Reasonable, Not Rational

Fancy cars and designer clothes show spending, not wealth. True wealth is hidden — it’s savings, not splurging.“Spending money to show people how much money you have is the fastest way to have less money.”

Wealth is What You Don’t See

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money—investing, personal finance, and business decisions—is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

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Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, winner of the New York Times Sidney Award, and a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two kids.

Be Reasonable, Not Rational

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