Sean Murray 2:52
It’s a great distinction, and I agree with you. The word happiness is a really a broad term. It covers a lot of ground. It can mean different things to different people. You describe it as a fork in the road with one path of interpretation, saying, “Look, happiness is about feeling good. It’s about maximizing pleasure.” And the other path says, “Look, happiness is about finding meaning and purpose in our lives and pursuing that purpose.” So when we bring money into the equation, you can see how it fits into that first fork–the one about pursuing pleasure, right? Because you just buy more things. It’s a little more challenging to figure out how money fits into that other fork–the one about pursuing purpose. And you refer in your book to a seminal study by the Nobel Prize winning economists, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, and they looked at this question, and what they found was pretty amazing. They discovered that as you gain income, each additional thousand dollars brings you an incremental gain in happiness. But only up to a point, right? And that point was $75,000 per year or so. At that point, additional income no longer really moves the dial, when it comes to creating happiness through pleasure. However, it opens the door to pursue happiness by finding meaning and purpose in our life. And I found that fascinating.

Brian Portnoy 4:04
I make a distinction in the book between experienced happiness and reflective happiness. You know, hopefully to the benefit of the reader or the listener, I just sort of take a lot of the nuances, and just say, “Hey, there’s two buckets here. There’s the day-to-day experience of living. You wake up, and you’re on the wrong side of the bed or the right side of the bed. And then, there’s that deeper, reflective happiness, where you step back, and say, ‘Hey, am I living a life well-lived?'” You refer to, you know, I think an important study from two Nobel Prize winners, Dan Kahneman and Angus Deaton, where they took that distinction. Now, they use slightly different vocabulary, but the categories are identical, and did some pretty interesting research on where money fits into that distinction. And they sort of reinforced some conventional wisdom and provided a contrarian perspective in other ways. That $75,000 figure which they use and a number of other scholars have kind of circled around sort of the same number. You know, the idea is that once you can pay your basic bills; have a decent roof over your head; take okay care of your family; have your kids go to a decent school; have access to reasonable and affordable health care, and things like that; once you have enough money to afford those things, then additional income doesn’t really make any difference whatsoever in sort of your day-to-day happiness. What they found–this is more of the contrarian part, but it’s also been backed up by other research. Although, I would say that it’s still a little speculative, and I think kind of the causal factors behind it remain vague. I’ve tried to think through it, but I don’t think the last word has been spoken on the topic, which is that, on that reflective happiness; that deeper sense of meaning or purpose, they actually showed that higher levels of income were associated with higher levels of–their term is–life satisfaction. Meaning that if you go from 75 to 100 grand to 150 to 250, or whatever the number is. As that income climbs, you actually show increasing levels of, of life satisfaction. What, what they didn’t answer, and I try to take a stab at a little bit is: What exactly does that mean? And why is that? Like, what is it that you’re purchasing at those higher income levels? Now, before we get into that, one sort of element of skepticism or a question mark that I’d put out there is that this $75,000 figure has been bandied about a ton. I find it only partially useful for at least a couple reasons. One is that number is a snapshot in time and doesn’t really reflect all of the differences that many of us have in our lives. So Manhattan-New York versus Manhattan-Kansas, $75,000 means very different things. So there’s a cost of living element. Forget even the nuances of inflation of all of this and how that works over time. But you and I both know that inflation is a pretty nefarious force to our purchasing power over the long run unless we, you know, have strategies to take care of it. And then secondly, a really big bucket is difference between, you know, income and assets, or income and balance sheets. So you can imagine a retiree living on a–will just use that number $75,000 income–but they’ve built a really nice nest egg. And it’s 75 grand that they need to do the things that they want to do, but, you know, maybe they’ve saved a few million bucks. So the income level doesn’t really tell you anything about how much money they have, and whether or not, you know, we would consider them to be rich. So you know, I don’t want to throw too much shade on that $75,000 number. But I would say that despite the fact that this has been debated since Aristotle, going back 2400 years, we still don’t have the crispest of answers as to what the relationship is.

Stig Brodersen 7:58
So when we asked the question: Can money buy happiness? It feels like the answer is: It sort of does. And it sort of doesn’t.

Brian Portnoy 8:07
Yeah, that’s and I kind of want to capture that. Like, it sort of does and it sort of doesn’t. And so how can we break down the sort of and versus sort of doesn’t. And we know, look if, if you’re impoverished, more money certainly buys the things that you want and need. And you will certainly be happier being well-fed, and well-schooled, and well-housed versus not. In that sense, absolutely. And then beyond subsistence, like, yeah, well, you know, all else equal, having some extra dough to do different things that feels pretty good. I mean, the, the inverse to this is safety and security. I mean, don’t forget, from a human perspective, the number one imperative for all of us is survival. That’s the deepest of evolutionary instincts. The surviving and hedging off or protecting ourselves from danger is what we’re all about. And I think if we have enough money, and we can get into what we mean by enough. Having enough money means that you are less vulnerable to hardship. That isn’t happiness in terms of celebrating your birthday and having a fun party. That’s not happiness in that more narrow sense, but it is a deeper form of happiness or meaning in knowing that you’re relatively safe. And as I pointed out in the book, it’s also just an experience I’ve had in the, you know, finance industry going back a number of years. It’s that despite all of the numbers, and statistics, and complexities, the real question that most people are asking is simply: Am I gonna to be okay? That question or that concept of “okay” that’s really not assignable to a specific number. That’s more of a conceptual and qualitative thing. We need to calibrate or recalibrate a little bit what that relationship is between having money and being okay.

Sean Murray 9:54
Another way I’ve heard people talk about this is to say, “Money can’t buy happiness, but being poor will make you miserable,” which I think gets at this idea that somewhere around $75,000, we have escaped poverty, and we enter into a different realm or a different phase in the money-happiness relationship. And you go into the reason why things potentially change at this point, and it’s a well-defined and well-researched psychological effect called “hedonic adaptation.” Can you talk about that?

Brian Portnoy 10:25
Let’s start with the jargon and then simplify it. So in social psychology, there’s this notion of hedonic adaptation and the hedonic treadmill. The idea with the hedonic adaptation is that human beings tend to flex to their environment in both good and bad circumstances. We kind of get used to most things, and that’s a really nice feature for people to have. So we, we like to be in balance. Homeostasis is sort of our, our neutral point. Because being permanently ecstatic or permanently depressed are pretty unstable, exhausting states of being, so we like to be somewhere in the middle. A consequence of that is that when we encounter some sort of event. You can talk about it in terms of goals, so achieving a goal, which I think we would see you as, as a positive thing. Once we achieve that goal, what–I think we all know it intuitively, but it’s certainly been reinforced through research is that when, you know, your kid gets into the college of her choice, or you get that promotion at work, or you win the lottery. Whatever the good thing that happened is, well, both the intensity and the duration of the happiness that you feel in response to that is relatively muted and short-lived. Humans are pretty bad at predicting the future, but they’re even worse at predicting the intensity and duration of their emotional state in response to something that happens in the future. And the same thing works on the negative side–which I think we think is a good thing–illness, injury, losing your job, getting divorced. Like humans actually do a pretty good job at responding in terms of adapting to those things. Because again, like being very depressed is not a very stable good place to be. And, and we kind of, we kind of snap out of it. As a result, we become used to everything. Not everything, but there are many things we can accommodate in our daily lives. And so we’re on this treadmill in the sense that we’re working toward goals. Our families are working toward goals, and we’re just sort of chasing things that once we get them, well, we want more, you know? Great line, which I’ll bungle a little bit from Mad Men is when, you know, the main character Don Draper is asked, “Well, what is happiness?” He says, “Happiness is that feeling that you have until you want more happiness.” He is a pretty depressing character, but also speaks some truth. And I think that’s something that we can be more conscious of, and take into account not only from the process of financial planning, but more broadly in life planning,

Stig Brodersen 13:01
I love that line. And I can definitely relate to it in my own life. The hedonic treadmill, I think that we all experienced. And at some point, we must take a step back, and ask: How can I get off this thing? And what is the answer? Is it more money? More consumption? Is that going to satisfy me? And I really like the concept you introduced to address the hedonic treadmill. And it’s what you call “funded contentment.” Could you please elaborate on that?

Brian Portnoy 13:31
There’s the broader issue of what is happiness, and that’s a pretty deep well. But, you know, what I’m trying to get at in the context of investing in money and markets is, well, where does money fit into a happy life? So I basically say that being rich is just having more money. You have half a million bucks, and you grow it into a million dollars. There you go, you’re richer. But you’re not necessarily wealthier. I define wealthy as the ability to underwrite a meaningful life. And my shorthand for that is “funded contentment.” I’ve been in the financial services world as analyst, and portfolio manager, and other roles for going on 20 years now. And I would say from that practitioner’s lens, but also, you know, looking at the way clients conduct themselves, it’s very much about the money first, okay? Let, let’s focus on turning 5 into 10, or 10 into 20. What I want to kind of think through and what I’ve tried to write about is, well, for what purpose? A million bucks sounds better than 500,000 bucks, but it isn’t necessarily to the point that we’ve been emphasizing about the hedonic treadmill, you know? Just because you’ve achieved these goals doesn’t mean that you’re gonna be happier just because you have more; doesn’t mean that you’re going to be happier. So the phrase, “funded contentment,” which I’ve been pleased to see as sort of a lot of people have latched on to that, is it’s just this notion that, well, let’s think about contentment first. And then, secondly, let’s think about how we can afford that contentment or how we can afford a meaningful life. I do think, and it’s almost on purpose, it’s a little bit of an awkward or uncomfortable framing like buying a meaningful life. But I think that’s better than not thinking about it at all. And I think it’s good to put some planning into making money for the right reasons, when they’re tied to the things that really matter to you.

Sean Murray 15:18
Exactly! And that is the way I find it’s helpful to think about it. You recommend setting aside some time for reflecting on what’s most meaningful in our lives. What, what is it that gives us that deeper sense of satisfaction? And then directing our spending in a way that underwrites that life. And you suggest three broad categories of how we can spend, or I might even say, invest our money to get the highest return on happiness. And one is experiences, so investing in experiences over material things. Perhaps going on a long multiday hiking trip, or learning a new language or a new instrument, or for me it’s activities like running or skiing experiences that give me that flow state. And the second is others or spending time with friends, families, communities; building deeper relationships with the people who matter most in our lives; and, and also serving others thinking beyond ourselves. And then finally, the third is time. We can spend our money to buy time. And you talked in the book about what a good investment that can be. Talk a little bit about those three buckets cause I think, as a listener, if we’re gonna spend money to get the good life, you know, where do we want to spend it?

Brian Portnoy 16:30
Those are the three areas that based on my own reflection, but really on the existing research across psychology, and anthropology, and little bit of neuroscience, seem to carry the most weight in terms of if you want to spend money wisely as it relates to having a happier life, what should you buy? You sort of tick them off. So the first is buying experiences over material things. Experiences like travel are associated with more happiness. And an insight that’s relatively new; that’s been codified is that, well, your spending time with others. Your social relationships; that need for belonging is so deep-seated in who we are as human beings, that anything that you can do to increase that sense of connectedness is super important. Experiences over things is number one. Generosity is another; sort of spending on others. I like to say that generosity or charity is the most selfishly constructive thing that we can do. Again, I’d like to rely on research and just not anecdotes. And there’s an increasing amount of research that show that people who are generous in their lives tend to report higher life satisfaction. People with a little bit of privilege can do themselves a lot of good by tipping more broadly; tipping more; helping people out in their own journeys. That’s very valuable on multiple levels. And then the third category is buying time, which is a big topic. One way to narrow it is just to say that convenience matters. Lack of aggravation matters. Whether it be a fastpass at an amusement park, or a more direct flight, or any number of things that save us mental aggravation and allow us to have the time to do the things that, you know, you had mentioned, for example, in terms of developing hobbies or traveling. You know, going back to experiences. That buying of time; that buying of flexibility, you know, sort of liberating yourself from burdensome obligations because you have enough money to eliminate those burdens. Or those obligations is really important, but also–I would add just as a footnote–gives us a little bit of an interesting window as to why there’s actually a fair number of very rich people who are quite miserable because they haven’t purchased enough time or they haven’t purchased it well. Meaning that, okay, they’ve got a ton of dough, and there was a lot of people around them in terms of family members, and business associates, and people in the community, who want a lot of things from that person; whether it be money, or their time, or their attention. That pile of money that other people see creates an enormous amount of stress for that rich, but not wealthy person. So when I talk about more money buys more happiness, you know, maybe I want to say it creates the opportunity to buy more happiness if you’re thoughtful about it.

Sean Murray 19:19
You know, being based here in Seattle, one of the things I think about as you’re talking about the ability to buy time is traffic. I know a lot of cities in the United States have traffic problems. We’re one of them here in Seattle, and, you know, a certain amount of wealth can purchase a smaller commute. Maybe no commute at all. There’s all kinds of research that says when you’re stuck in a commute, it’s one of the most anxiety inducing activities that you can insert into your life.

Brian Portnoy 19:47
It’s a really important point because sometimes it’s difficult to connect the kind of the profound with the pedestrian. So we’re talking–is Jack Handey thinking deep thoughts, right? Money, and happiness, and philosophy, and all this stuff. But, you know, let’s attach it to the commute. You know, we all know we’ve all seen all the studies, and all the surveys that commuting is just about the most miserable experience on the planet. Sitting in your car, or even sitting on a train for an hour each way to and from work is a lousy experience. I mean, you can make it better now because of podcasts or having your phone handy or whatever. But like, you know, that’s time that is not particularly well spent. If you have the opportunity because of your resources, but also, you know, you’re planning ahead to not do that, you’re purchasing a more meaningful life. You’re using your money in a meaningful way. And instead of buying a nicer car for the commute, figure out how not to commute. Like there’s sort of that, you know, literal and figurative fork in the road.

Sean Murray 20:48
Yeah, it’s a great example of the experienced happiness and reflective happiness, and being able to purchase that time for that reflective happiness.

Stig Brodersen 20:58
I think that’s such a great point, Sean. And it really reminds me of Buffett talking about that whenever you get to his age, what really matters is whether the people you love also love you back. And it’s just something that always stuck with me. It’s not about the zeros. It’s about the relationships and the experiences. That’s the real scorecard.

Brian Portnoy 21:23
What is really important here, and I want to do more writing and research on this, but I’d love to get your views as well. And maybe it’s just a reflection of where I am in my life with growing children and aging parents and thinking about a variety of different things. But sort of an emerging thought I’ve had over the last few years is that maybe in life, it’s more important to minimize regret than maximize happiness or maximize gain. You know, we haven’t mentioned it yet. But I think one of the most important psychological principles that we understand is this notion of loss aversion. This idea that losses are more painful than gains are pleasurable. And psychologists set the ratio of about two to one, meaning that $100 loss feels twice as bad as $100 gain feels good. Why is that? I think that it’s tied back to this notion that our number one priority is surviving. You only get to lose the big game once, but you don’t have to really win it in any particular day. So not losing is actually from an existential point of view, more important than winning in terms of a day-to-day routine. Doesn’t mean that we don’t want to strive for more and thrive in our own ways, you know? This idea of minimizing regret, you know, we see it in our personal lives. We see it with our parents; the conversations about woulda, shoulda, coulda. I wish I had repaired that relationship, or I never went to that place that I always wanted to. I think as we grow older, those thoughts tend to dominate a little bit more than the other way around. It’s not as fun to think about minimizing regret as it is maximizing gain because one is, “Hey! I’m gonna, I’m gonna play the lottery every day, and every day I get this little bolt of dopamine that’s says, ‘Hey, I can win a million bucks or 100 million bucks.'” At the end of the year, you’re like, “Ah! Boy, I wish I had that 400 bucks that I spent on the lottery,” knowing that there was a one in a gazillion chance that I was going to win it anyway. This is hard. It’s not necessarily easy to do this. And it taps into all of the disciplines that we’ve referenced to here: religion, and philosophy, and literature, and psychology, and so forth.

Sean Murray 23:24
Yeah, you know, I’m in a similar place in my life. I’ve got teenage kids. I’ve got aging parents. I’ve put almost 25 years into my career. And you do start thinking about things a little differently. You wrote another book before The Geometry of Wealth, The Investor’s Paradox. You mentioned that you feel like The Geometry of Wealth is really the book that is a prequel, even though you wrote it as your second book. It really more naturally fits in as the prequel ’cause The Investor’s Paradox is more about the knots and bolts of investing. But as we’ve been discussing, The Geometry of Wealth is more about thinking about: What’s the aim? What’s the purpose of creating wealth? And creating a plan and a strategy to get to a contented life. Is part of that just where you are in your life when you wrote the book?

Brian Portnoy 24:11
Yeah! I mean, 25 years into my career; teenage kids; aging parents. Sounds like we should go grab a drink. Being sandwiched this way is not something–I’ve actually never seen a book written about. And actually, I, I don’t know what the next book is gonna be. But I am thinking about writing a book called, “Sandwiched,” and like sort of just the joy and pain of living between these two generations. I guess, different time of life, but not an irrelevant topic. It’s just different. I don’t want to not articulate the argument of The Geometry of Wealth, which is that, you know, this path to wealth that I talk about is really only accomplished through calibrating both purpose and plan. So we’ve been talking mostly about purpose, but two-thirds of the book is on the planning part. And I don’t mean like choosing which insurance provider. I’m not at all deep in the weeds like that, but how do you set broad financial priorities? And then, toward the very end of the process, I talked about in that book, making specific decisions about your portfolio. And as you refer to where The Geometry of Wealth, my second book, leaves off, is where my first book, The Investor’s Paradox starts off. The time, this was seven, eight years ago, you know? I had sort of discovered this field of behavioral finance, which is, you know, just sort of the science of making good decisions, especially about money. And, you know, for me, like the biggest of light bulbs went on, and I had had a relatively unreflective investing career and after reading Kahneman, Tversky, and Faler, and Dan Ariely, and a lot of other smart people, I was like, “Wait a minute! I’ve been making bad decisions unwittingly for years. Maybe I should reflect on that.” And so, wrote a book basically, the subtext of which was like I was a terrible investor. But like, you know, I made myself feel a little bit better, recognizing that all human beings are kind of wired to make terrible decisions on money related matters. So the decision making stuff, which is sort of more of my day-to-day routine in my career; building better portfolios; making better investment decisions. That is really important, but it’s important within the context of knowing why you’re doing something to begin with. And, you know, having some thoughtful treatment of, well, “What are my values and my objectives?” And then making the good decisions within that context. Because I think, and it wasn’t just me, I’d break my own chops a bit. But generally, the financial services business, investment management, wealth management, and so forth, it’s so much just focused on growing portfolios from something smaller to something bigger. That is the hedonic treadmill. That is sprinting and getting nowhere.

Stig Brodersen 26:53
Absolutely. So the first third of your book is really about how to take a step back, and consider what drives meaning in your life, and uncover purpose of what a good life is. So let’s talk a little bit more about how to get there. We seem to be hardwired to make bad investment decisions, which just makes it worse that in today’s society, we even more in charge of our own financial future. We don’t have defined benefits and pension plans like we used to. So how do we make the right financial decisions for us to have a good life more than for us to optimize these asset allocators?

Brian Portnoy 27:30
I try to summarize sort of the path toward happiness through three shapes: the circle, triangle and square. And those are really set up as hopefully simplified and effective mental models for doing just what we’re talking about. We’ve talked a lot about the circle, which is kind of our quest for purpose. And it’s a circle because we’re always figuring it out. It goes around and around. But then, again, it’s about purpose and planning being closely calibrated. Then, we move to setting broad priorities, and I think of three; hence, the triangle. And then after that there are certain decision making principles that I, I think are very fundamental; basic in the best sense. Four of those; hence, the square. On the priorities part, I talked about three. The most important one…yes, in order of importance, I would say it’s: protect, match, and reach. What, what do I mean by those? It means put risk into your decision making mindset or your prioritization mindset as much as reward. We actually tend to, you know, think about upside first and downside second. But my experience, especially in the investment management business, is that the very best investors in the world strike a very good balance. And obviously, there’s Buffett and Munger. But there’s Howard Marks, and a bunch of other legends that I’ve had the privilege of meeting over the years, who think about being what I call, “less wrong.” I think we naturally, especially as, you know, aspirational Americans gravitate toward being more right. We want to be stronger, faster, better, bigger, richer. Great, those aren’t bad! But we also don’t want to get out over our skis, and we don’t want to take too much risk. And so we can think about the idea that Rule Number One from a biological point of view is: Survive. But Rule Number One from kind of a investment point of view is: Stay in the game. Don’t put yourself in such a bind. Both from an accounting, but also from a psychological point of view, where you’ve set yourself up to take a very big loss that you won’t recover from. Figuring out how to do that, not just in terms of our portfolios, but in terms of our careers; in terms of our relationships, that’s really important. You know, there’s a reason why most of us are employees and not entrepreneurs. Because we’re closer in on the risk curve. It’s not a question of better or worse. It’s just that most of us calibrate upside with downside somewhat naturally. But I think the more explicit we can be in how we do that, the better off we’ll be. So that’s protect. The second priority, and this is kind of where we sharpen our pencils, is matching. By which I mean that we should have a sense of what we own versus what we owe. In other words, you know, for all the accountants in the audience; assets and liabilities; having a balance sheet. I really do think that there’s a bright line in this world on this path toward true wealth between people who have a clearly articulated and updated balance sheet versus those who don’t, so that you can really understand what your financial capacity is. I can say, personally, you know, I built one many years ago. And it has made a large difference for my wife, and my family, and I in terms of the decisions that we’ve had to make. Some of them unpleasant. Some of them okay, where we know–sometimes you don’t want to know because the answer is not what you want it to be, but really knowing like–what we can afford versus what we can’t. And so in the book, it’s not a technical book, but I think mapping up, you know, as I say, what you own versus what you owe, really gives you a sense of what you’re able to do from a financial perspective. And I would say, you know, of the wealthy, or I should say rich people I know, more often than not, they do not have a balance sheet. It seems like I have a lot of dough. Maybe there’s too much debt–hard to say! And just from a social point of view, it’s relatively easy to see people’s assets; it’s impossible to see their liabilities until things completely fall apart. And so, you know, envy and competition is absolutely critical part of this dynamic. We have to keep in mind that we’re not looking at people’s balance sheets. We’re looking at only the left side of the balance sheet. Instagram and Facebook have made that considerably worse. And then, the third priority is just reaching for more. My view is that if you protected yourself from catastrophic risk, and then you’ve built kind of a balanced financial life, you’ve sort of won the money game to some extent. And now, you know, what we talked about earlier, this idea that you can spend money on experiences; on other people; on buying time and convenience. That now you could really, you know, sort of put your foot on the gas a little bit because the hard work’s been done, and you can really strive. I mean, I’d like to think this is the point when people really articulate their social mission, and think about how they’re going to leave future generations better off. Not only their kids, but their communities around them, whether that’s be a local thing, or a national thing, or global thing. But, you know, once you’ve protected and matched, the reach is the fun part.

Sean Murray 32:27
Absolutely. I mean, that’s…from my perspective, that’s…the person who’s gotten there is someone who really has stepped off the hedonic treadmill, and said, “You know, more is not where the answer is for me at this point. It’s about…or more materialism isn’t what it’s about. It’s being part of something bigger than myself. It’s about giving back. It’s about investing in relationships. It’s about having time for some of those experiences. And the sooner we can get there, the better.” I do agree that social media has made it a little bit harder to step off the treadmill, you know? To say, “No, I don’t need that second home. I don’t need that new car. I’d, I’d rather spend more time with family or working on a hobby than striving for reaching that next level, or paying off the debt that I’ve built up.” Our culture sort of pushes that on us, or it’s sort of the default message that we hear as Americans. That’s why I so appreciate your book is we need more voices out there that are helping us to make a better choice, in my opinion, about where the good life really is.

Brian Portnoy 33:27
Yeah, thanks for saying that. And, yeah, I’ll just emphasize this: sometimes a lot of the hard work and the good work is done quietly and privately. You know, retiring your debt; creating more financial flexibility. Those are really important. And it’s a tough world out there, you know? If you think just in the sense of labor markets, and what it means to have a great career, and you and I, you know, with kids similar age, we think about–Google didn’t exist 20 years ago, and 20 years from now, how can I possibly imagine the world that will exist? Giving people a sense that, well, if you can give yourself flexibility and the ability to kind of flow from one experience to the next without too many obligations, that’s a great thing. But there’s really no dopamine in that. The dopamine comes from the cool Instagram post, or buying the new car, or doing something showy.

Stig Brodersen 34:18
Yes, you sort of have to rewire your brain to get the satisfaction and contentment out of experiences, where the natural dopamine simply won’t show up. It’s a stoic outlook on life that you will drive value out of your life by simply doing your duty and investing in activities that gives you meaning as opposed to joy.

Brian Portnoy 34:37
The teachings of Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, and all those guys course throughout this entire Borkan (*inaudible*). And, you know, I discovered behavioral finance maybe 10 years ago. I discovered the ancient stoics just a few years ago. They’ve become popularized. But I think they speak to a noisy world, as well as just about anybody. You know, I sort of reveal at the very end of The Geometry of Wealth that this was sort of, you know, kind of a deliberately stoic take on how to live your life. There’s sort of one of the mental models within classic stoicism is this idea of the flow from perception to action to will. And that’s the shapes. You know, perception, like looking at the world honestly–which is sometimes very painful–but still having an unvarnished view of who you are, and where you are, and where you want to go, and what’s going on around you, and having that clear perception. And then action, in terms of “Okay! Here I am, and I’m gonna take the step.” You know, build a plan. Set your priorities. And then, will. Stick to the plan! And the reason the square, which you know, it’s kind of little bit technical, but is built around this notion of, of will or, you know, sort of personal emotional fortitude is that it anchors on the idea that when your expectations are met, you’re pretty happy. And when they’re not met, you’re pretty sad. And when they are met, you tend not to make many changes. So if you can build reasonable expectations, then you’re probably not going to make the worst decisions at the worst time. And so, you can structure a way to have more will exactly at the times, when it should be the hardest.

Sean Murray 36:10
You know, at, at the end of your book, you tackle this idea of there’s no real answer. And I don’t want to put you on the spot. I think this is something that we all have to discover for ourselves. But there’s a need to strike a balance between striving for more and having enough because there is a positive side to striving for more. There’s that, you know, that American dream. It’s–drives a lot of our early career. But there’s also a downside to it, which we talked about with the hedonic treadmill. There needs to be some kind of a balance there. And finding that balance is the key. I think your three steps is a great way to think about it. Like I said, I don’t think there’s any real silver bullet, but it’s something that we all need to strive to find the right answer for ourselves.

Brian Portnoy 36:52
This is the topic that I kind of ended up at, at the end of the book, and, and realized that it was the tension that was not only flowing through the book, but through my life more generally, you know? We’ve said a lot of negative things about more. More’s great! Surviving is one thing, but growing and making progress is another. And we do from a genetic and evolutionary point of view have the dual instinct toward both thriving and growing, but also being present and being still, and, you know, finding something very valuable in that. The way I’ve thought about it, you know, more and enough or–they’re both imperatives, but they’re irreconcilable at any moment in time. Meaning that there are times when you’re going to be pushing forward, and there are gonna be times, when you’re sitting still. And that there should be recognition that there is both value in danger in each of those modes. You know, I start off the book with one of my favorite quotes of all time from Goethe, who wrote that, he, he said at one point, “Do not hurry. Do not rest.” And when I read that, it hit me like a lightning bolt because I think it speaks to pace. The pace at which we are going to conduct ourselves in this world, and including how we’re going to treat others. So do not hurry, do not rest. And, you know, we’re in a world that facilitates hurry. We’ve got the information, and we’ve got the internet. And we’ve got sort of infinite connectivity, but sort of exploding loneliness. It’s a strange time. So like hurrying, you kind of lose a sense of yourself, and you get outside of your head, but then do not rest. More than just what the benefits or not of stillness, and meditation, and whatnot, the world generally is moving forward. And you don’t want to be left behind from a competitive perspective. And so you, you just can’t rest on your laurels. How to balance “More versus Enough” is a lifelong project. And it’s something, you know, people have asked, well, what’s the next book? I usually say, “Well,” God forbid, there’s going to be a next book. But if there is, “I’d like to explore this.” It really taps into century’s worth of philosophy; notions of being versus notions of becoming. Plato is–and Socrates are in there; Nietzche is in there; Wittgenstein is in there. Like it’s, it’s–there’s a lot going on. Because I don’t want all of your listeners to like hang up on this podcast, I’ll stop my random references there to ancient philosophers. But I do think if you use that “More versus Enough” mental model to just look at the world around you, it actually is quite revealing. Both of your own rhythm, but also others. And sometimes, I’ve actually realized recently that I’m getting along with someone or not getting along with someone because we’re at opposite ends of those modes in a particular moment in a particular day. Like I’m moving forward. I got stuff I’m thriving for. And somebody else is still, and I’m just ruining their mojo, and maybe he or she is ruining mine. Because it’s like, “Hey, get up and go!” And he or she is like, “Dude, stop. Chill out!” They’re both okay, but not at the exact moment in time.

Sean Murray 40:00
That reminds me of the biblical passage, there’s a time for every season, right? It’s finding the balance and tapping into that for where you are in each moment. And I hope you do write the book. I think it’s a worthy topic. And it’s a great sequel to what the first two books that you’ve written. Brian, thank you for being a guest on the show. I really appreciate the discussion. Where can my listeners go to learn more about the book, and, and what you’re writing about?

Brian Portnoy 40:25
Sure, the best way to follow me is on Twitter. I’m @BrianPortnoy, and there, I’m pretty actively engaged in lots of conversations and ideas sharing on topics related to decision making, investing, psychology, behavioral finance, and so forth. @Brian Portnoy, and as you know, Sean, there’s a very active and lovely community, shorthand of which is FinTwit and Financial Twitter. And it’s a good–if these are topics of interest to you–it’s a, it’s a good community to participate in. It really is sort of the best of Twitter, and then I have a website: shapingwealth.com, which gives a little bit of information about my books, and blogs, and other links to stuff that people might enjoy.

Stig Brodersen 41:09
Thank you, Brian, for being a guest on The Good Life.

Brian Portnoy 41:12
Thank you.

Stig Brodersen 41:13
And thank you, Sean, for allowing me to co-host the very first episode of your brand new show, The Good Life. I’m sure the listeners are looking forward to the next episode. I know I am. And even though I won’t be co-hosting new episodes, I’m just so happy to say that I’m still heavily involved in the planning and production of your show. As opposed to We Study Billionaires, which is about accumulating wealth, which I love, and I also think that’s very important. It’s just so nice to have a show that puts everything into perspective. Because at the end of the day, having a good life, that’s really what it’s all about.

Outro 41:52
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