I didn’t read but I listened to the audio book actually.
I am following blogposts of Morgan Housel for some time now and I find them really insightful. Moreover, this book got enough good praise so it was due.
Some key lessons which I learned from this book are as follows:
Compounding Works
Money might grow in short term but wealth doesn’t. Short-term thinking is good only for the short term. The longer one stays in the game, the more the wealth (not just money but it applies to everything else too) gets enhanced. There are some great stories shared in the book which tells about people who took their time in getting the returns out of their savings. while also some examples of people who spend too much away, too quickly.
Money means different thing to different people
I find this one particularly true. I belonged to a family in which taking risks with money has been a strict no-no as generations have been service class. Do your job, do it better, and let it speak for you has been the mantra. While some of my friends had money, stocks, Demat accounts, and businesses being discussed daily at the dinner table since they were kids. That conditioning plus an individual’s own mindset makes money appear differently. For example, a discount offer not availed is just a missed opportunity for me. While for one of my friends it was considered a loss.
Luck vs Skill
This isn’t given as much importance as much skill is given. But luck is highly important. An example of Bill Gates is shared in the book. Bill Gates is indeed a genius but we shouldn’t overlook that how lucky he was when he got access to a Computer in high school. This was the time when having a computer in a school was not even a notion anywhere in the world. People didn’t even think that Computers had a place in academia. The same lesson about how the skill in the market is just a pseudo-barrier created by some lucky people was told in this Podcast by Deepak Shenoy on Amit Varma’s The Seen and the Unseen.
Never Enough
This lesson is timeless and not obvious till you don’t have it yourself.
I found ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel a good and easy read but impactful in every sense. It is one of the first books I have ever read about money in general and I am glad that I started with this. It is not about investing or saving but just the thought that our perceptions about money are different than our perception about time. Increasing our wealth requires time, effort, and the ability to take risks. And of course, luck.
Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash