525. The Art of Spending Money (And Why Most of Us Get It Wrong) with Morgan Housel

The ONE Thing

NOVA Media

Business, Careers, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Morgan Housel is back on the show to talk about his newest book, The Art of Spending Money. You know him from The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever. This time, we dive into what happens after you’ve earned the money—how to actually use it well. Morgan makes the case that money can buy comfort and independence, but not love, health, or meaning. Because it’s easy to measure, many of us fall into chasing money as a proxy for progress and end up stuck in comparison games. His antidote: spend for utility, not status. Think high-end Toyota over entry-level BMW—the value you feel, not the logo others see. We also explore parenting and money. Kids pick up on our financial habits more than our lectures. Modeling empathy, consistency, and healthy values goes further than rules or restrictions. And we connect this back to The ONE Thing: clarity. When you’re clear on what really matters, you can spend money to buy back time, deepen relationships, and build freedom—like Morgan’s “reverse obituary” exercise that helps align spending with what you want your life to stand for. Challenge of the Week: Ask yourself (and your partner): What are we spending money on that doesn’t bring us joy—but we think we’re supposed to enjoy? Pick one and experiment with reducing or replacing it. *** To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit: the1thing.com/pods. We talk about: How to swap status spending for utility spending Why kids learn money values from what we model, not what we say A simple “reverse obituary” exercise to align money with what matters Links & Tools from This Episode: Read The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel Read The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel Read Same As Ever by Morgan Housel Read Die With Zero by Bill Perkins Read 30 Lessons for Living by Karl Pillemer Free Resources Want to be a guest or share feedback? Email podcast@the1thing.com or send us an audio note at Speakpipe.com/the1thing. Produced by NOVA

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm so excited about this week's guest, Morgan Howsell. He's one of my favorite authors in the world.
0:05.4	He's written some books that have sold over 10 million copies. You've probably heard of them. The
0:09.4	Psychology of Money, same as ever. These books have gone around the world in multiple languages and
0:14.2	changed lives. This week, we're talking about his brand new book, which comes out next week on
0:19.1	October 7th, The Art of Spending Money.
0:22.0	So many books are written about how to make money, how to build your wealth. Very few tell us how to use it once we have it.
0:29.0	And Morgan has done a deep dive for us and gone deep into the drives that we have around spending money.
0:34.8	How do we balance the external pressures to spend it with our own
0:37.9	internal values? How do we raise our kids to have a healthy appreciation for what money can and
0:43.3	can't do for our lives and also take that advice ourselves so we can role model it for them?
0:48.1	We go through lots of ground very quickly because if you know Morgan, you ask him a question
0:52.6	and he's got a very great story
0:55.0	and usually lots of research to back it up.
0:57.4	I hope you'll come out of this smarter
0:59.2	about how you can better spend the money that you make.
1:02.5	Here we go.
1:03.3	I'm Jay Papazan, and this is the one thing.
1:05.8	Your weekly guide to the simple steps
1:07.7	that lead to extraordinary results.
1:21.6	Thank you. to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results. Morgan, welcome to the show.
1:23.9	Nice to see you again, Jay.
1:24.9	Thanks for having me.
	...

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