Morgan Housel on The Illusion of Wealth and Happiness | #599

The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

The Idea Farm

Management, Investing, Business

4.8 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s guest is Morgan Housel, the bestselling author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever. His books have sold over nine million copies. His new book releasing in October is The Art of Spending Money. Morgan is a partner at The Collaborative Fund and serves on the board of directors at Markel. In today’s episode, Morgan discusses the complexities of wealth, spending, and happiness. He shares insights on the psychological implications of financial identity and the importance of independence and purpose in achieving true happiness. One theme throughout is that investing is more about human behavior than financial principles. (0:00) Starts (1:31) Introduction of guest Morgan Housel (2:01) Virality, luck and success (3:38) The psychological impact of wealth (7:15) The burden of material possessions and spending for happiness (11:17) Personal history's influence on spending and investment behavior (16:01) Cultural attitudes toward investing (22:07) The role of identity in financial behavior (27:45) Avoiding peer comparisons (37:30) Finding happiness and purpose after financial independence (50:13) Morgan's most memorable investment Sponsor: ⁠AcreTrader⁠ is an investment platform that makes it simple to own shares of farmland and earn passive income, and you can start investing in just minutes online. ----- Follow Meb on X, LinkedIn and YouTube For detailed show notes, click here To learn more about our funds and follow us, subscribe to our mailing list or visit us at cambriainvestments.com ----- Follow The Idea Farm: X | LinkedIn | Instagram | TikTok ----- Interested in sponsoring the show? Email us at Feedback@TheMebFaberShow.com ----- Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, Aswath Damodaran, Howard Marks, Tom Barton, and many more. ----- Meb's invested in some awesome startups that have passed along discounts to our listeners. Check them out here! -----Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Medfavor show, where the focus is on helping you grow and preserve your wealth.
0:10.9	Join us as we discuss the craft of investing and uncover new and profitable ideas, all to help you grow wealthier and wiser.
0:16.9	Better investing starts here.
0:19.5	Metfabor is the co-founder and chief investment officer at Cambria Investment Management.
0:22.6	Did it industry regulations, he will not discuss any of Cambri's funds on this podcast.
0:25.8	All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not reflect
0:28.9	the opinion of Cambria Investment Management or its affiliates.
0:31.2	For more information, visit cambrainvestments.com.
0:34.5	Over the past two decades, we've seen our fair share of economic volatility between inflation,
0:39.9	recession, and geopolitical upheaval risk.
0:42.2	Adjusting your portfolio can be a daunting task.
0:45.2	One asset class that historically has served as a consistent hedge against this uncertainty is farmland.
0:51.3	Investors, myself included, have been interested in farmland on account of its
0:55.0	historically stable track record in the face of rapid economic change. Between 1997 and
1:01.0	2022, we've lost approximately 4.8 acres of cropland per minute to urbanization, while this same
1:08.3	expanding population needs the food, fuel, and fiber farms produce.
1:12.7	So why aren't more considering farmland? Access. Purchasing a farm costs millions of dollars
1:17.8	and working with local farmers takes time and agricultural expertise. Acre trader provides investors
1:23.3	passive access to farmland with investment minimums of only $15,000. Learn more about investing in
1:29.6	farmland with Acre trader. Investments in private placements are illiquid, speculative, and may result
1:34.9	in the complete loss of capital securities offered through NCPS, member of FINRA SIPC.
1:41.1	Welcome back, everybody. Today is another episode. Someone I can't believe he's on for the first time, but we're stoked to have him. Today's guest, Morgan Housel, bestselling author of The Psychology Money, same as ever. His new book coming out soon, The Art of Spending Money. I got a PhD in that. Morgan is a partner, collaborative fund, serves on the board of directors at Markell.
	...

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