Savings Are Like Purchasing Independence

You can buy stuff to impress strangers… or you can buy independence. Hear Morgan Housel tell Dave about his powerful way of thinking about savings.

💈💈💈

We’ve had 30 something episodes. I think what was just said may be the single most important point that’s been made.

  Would you rather spend your life trying to impress strangers who are not even paying attention to you or wake up every morning with a level of independence and control over your own life, control over your own time? ’cause that’s really what the trade off is.

You can buy a fancy and expensive and flashy car with the idea — the false idea, the false promise — that other people are gonna turn their heads and say, “wow, look at you. You’re so amazing.” Or you can use that money as savings and cushion and independence. And so when you deal with a job loss, a divorce, a medical emergency, whatever it is, you have a level of cushion and independence to control your time.

The only thing I’ve ever wanted out of money is independence. I just wanna wake up every day and say, I can do whatever I want today because I have saved over time. And I don’t even view it as savings.

I don’t view it as saving money. I view it as purchasing independence. That’s what I feel like I’m doing. If like every a hundred dollars that I save is a hundred dollar independence token that I have. I don’t view that as delayed gratification. I view that as I get benefit out of that today, I get to enjoy it right now. I wake up every morning with a sense of independence because I’ve been saving my whole life. I’ve been accumulating these independence tokens my whole life. And so that’s always how I’ve viewed it. And I think even to the extent that if you buy the fancy car, you love it and it feeds your soul.

Of course you know that feeling is gonna last about eight days,

That’s so true. Habituation sets in faster with cars than with anything.

So fast. But I’ll tell you, you know what is enduring that you will never become accustomed to of how amazing it is? Independence. You will wake up every morning for the rest of your life going, this is cool. This feels great. This is awesome.

Even when you’re on the road to independence, you’re not there yet. But being on that road makes people so much happier and feel so much better about where they’re going. And you know, for all of our listeners right now, we’ve had 30 something episodes. I think what was just said may be the single most important point that’s been made.

So everybody lock in on that. I mean, I’ve said that for years. In the Wealthy Barber Returns, we said it. Where you meet people who’ve made the switch, started handling their money better. They haven’t regretted having to miss out in a few things. They’ve been much happier because they know they’re on the path to independence.