Cathy Carbellido's Key Ideas from The Psychology of Money
by Morgan Housel

People have different views about money.

• You know stuff about money that I don’t, and vice versa. You go through life with different beliefs, goals, and forecasts, from what I do. That’s not because one of us is smarter than the other, or has better information. It’s because we’ve had different lives shaped by different and equally persuasive experiences.
• We all do crazy stuff with money because we’re all relatively new to this game and what looks crazy to you might make sense to me. But no one is crazy — we all make decisions based on our own unique experiences that seem to make sense to us.

Nothing is as good or bad as it seems.

Luck and risk are both the reality that every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort. They are so similar that you can’t believe in one without equally respecting the other.

Happiness = results - expectations

The only way to know how much food you can eat is to eat until you’re sick. Few try this because vomiting hurts more than any meal is good. For some reason, the same logic doesn’t translate to business and investing, and many will only stop reaching for more when they break and are forced to.

Leverage the power of compounding.

More than 2,000 books are dedicated to how Warren Buffett built his fortune. Many of them are wonderful. But few pay enough attention to the simplest fact: Buffett’s fortune isn’t due to just being a good investor, but being a good investor since he was literally a child.

Good investing is not necessarily about making good decisions. It’s about consistently not screwing up.

Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there. But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk. It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.

Be ok with failures, they are the norm.

A good definition of an investing genius is a man or woman who can do the average thing when all those around them are going crazy.

“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important,” George Soros once said, “but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.” You can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune.

Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays

A small amount of wealth means the ability to take a few days off work when you’re sick without breaking the bank. Gaining that ability is huge if you don’t have it.

No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. Moeny doesn't buy respect.

When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, “Wow, the guy driving that car is cool.” Instead, you think, “Wow, if I had that car people would think I’m cool.” Subconsciously or not, this is how people think.

Riches are displayed. Wealth is hidden.

We tend to judge wealth by what we see because that’s the information we have in front of us. We can’t see people’s bank accounts or brokerage statements. So we rely on outward appearances to gauge financial success. Cars. Homes. Instagram photos.

The truth is that wealth is what you don’t see. Wealth is the nice cars not purchased. The diamonds not bought. The watches not worn, the clothes forgone and the first-class upgrade declined. Wealth is financial assets that haven’t yet been converted into the stuff you see.

Less ego -> more savings

A high savings rate means having lower expenses than you otherwise could and having lower expenses means your savings go farther than they would if you spent more.

Spending beyond a pretty low level of materialism is mostly a reflection of ego approaching income, a way to spend money to show people that you have (or had) money. Think of it like this, and one of the most powerful ways to increase your savings isn’t to raise your income. It’s to raise your humility.

Aiming to be mostly reasonable works better than being coldly rational

Reasonable is more realistic and you have a better chance of sticking with it for the long run, which is what matters most when managing money.

History is the study of change ironically used as a map of the future. The past doesn't predict the future.

The four most dangerous words in investing are, “it’s different this time.”

Have a margin for safety.

It’s fine to save for a car, a home, or for retirement. But it’s equally important to save for things you can’t possibly predict or even comprehend — the financial equivalent of field mice.

Expect your future self to change

When you consider our tendency to change who we are over time, balance at every point in your life becomes a strategy to avoid future regret and encourage endurance.

We should also come to accept the reality of changing our minds. Some of the most miserable workers I’ve met are people who stay loyal to a career only because it’s the field they picked when deciding on a college major at age 18.

Optimism sounds like a sales pitch. Pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you.

Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.

There are two topics that will affect your life whether you are interested in them or not: money and health. While health issues tend to be individual, money issues are more systemic.

Beware of your stories. Stories trump statistics.

Carl Richards writes: “Risk is what’s leftover when you think you’ve thought of everything.”

We focus on what we know and neglect what we do not know, which makes us overly confident in our beliefs.

Avoid taking financial cues from people playing at a different game than you are.

“Medicine is a complex profession and the interactions between physicians and patients are also complex.” You know what profession is the same? Financial advice. I can’t tell you what to do with your money, because I don’t know you. I don’t know what you want. I don’t know when you want it. I don’t know why you want it.

Charlie Munger once said “I did not intend to get rich. I just wanted to get independent.”

Sandy Gottesman, a billionaire investor who founded the consulting group First Manhattan, is said to ask one question when interviewing candidates for his investment team: “What do you own, and why?”

Everything has a price, but not all prices appear on labels. Be willing to pay the price of success.