Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt, and today we're talking economic cheat codes for everyday life with Darryl Fairweather.
Yeah, we are joined today by Darryl Fairweather, who is the chief economist over at Redfinn. Everybody knows about Redfinn. Before that, she was the senior economist at Amazon. And before that she was a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and she worked with Freakonomics author Steven Levitt stepping back in time there. But now she has a new book that just came out, that actually came out last week, Hate the Game Economic Cheat Codes for Life,
Love and Work, and Man. This book is all about helping folks to use game theory and behavioral science to lay out all the options as we approach these inevitable forks in the road in the road of life, like getting married and having kids or not doing those things, going for a promotion or looking for a new job, whether or not you should move. You know, these are like run of the mill, low stakes decisions we have to make a Lafe Joel. Basically, Daryl is wanting to
help folks to win at whatever game in life. That they're playing, and we're excited to talk about all of that and more today. Darryl, thank you for joining How to Money.
Thank you so much for having me.
Oh we're stoked for this conversation, Darryl. First question, though, we ask everybody who comes on, what do you like to suplore John? For Matt and I, it's craft beer. I mean, we got a couple of other things in our arsenal that we like to spend money on too, but craft beer has been one of those mainstays. What is it that you spend money on? Maybe egregiously, but you're still hey, doing the smart thing, saving the investing for your future too.
I definitely have a lot of subscriptions, Like streaming subscriptions is one of those where I'm like, do I really need to be subscribed to all these different services? And then I even have a Whoop subscription, which is like tracking my sleep and tracking my workout. And I'm a data junkie, so part of you know, spending money every month to collect data on myself is definitely feeding into that. But yeah, I question why I spend so much money. I could be doing it by hand. I could just
be like paying attention more. I don't know if I need really the Whoop, but yeah, I keep it.
I didn't know that you had to. Yeah, is that right? You have to set up for a year. I was talking to a buddy and he was just like, well, I did the Whoop thing, so I'm going to see it to the end of the to the subscription. What is like the timeframe there? Because Joel and I both have garments and it's totally free, but I'm guessing that there's additional data that you're getting with Whoop. Yeah.
With Woop, I think it's like I think it's like thirty dollars a month, and then they give you a discount if you sign up for an entire year, and then I think they give you a discount when you're first signing up and buying the device. I had friends who had them, and I got in with like their little competitions, and yeah, I got roped in and now I'm locked in. I've had it for years now.
It's amazing how there's like a social media aspect of fitness these days. Like I feel that with the garment, like my friends have garments were I'll see like the stuff that they're up to, and I just never thought, I don't know, I guess I didn't suspect those going to be the case. It is interesting, and then you're kind of tied into this network effect of the whoop now, which I don't know. Giving that up is feels like more than just get relieving yourself of a monthly payment.
Yeah, it's really easy for me to justify it too, because it's for my health, Like I'm spending money on my health. That's a good thing. But yeah, I don't know when I think it's in terms of all the subscriptions I have, that's the one that costs more than the others and feels kind of the most frivolous.
All right, I.
Would have expected like the Netflix subscription or Apple Plus. Now that severance is, Yeah.
I'm not cutting those those are mandatory.
Yeah, i'volous. Must have something else. Actually, on a personal note that you're into, you're an avid board gamer. Yeah, like it comes up a few times in your book, So I guess another small thing here, do you have any favorite board games? And maybe make the link between the decision making process matrix, the gaming process and economics kind of bridge that for us.
Yes, I got into board games back in college and graduate school, playing with a lot of economists all the time, and we're very competitive with our board games because I think that we think about the costs and benefits the same way we think about a lot of things in life. The games that I like the most, there's one called Castles of Burgundy. If there are any Euro game fans out there, you're kind of building your little, your little fiefdom with tiles and you're playing against another person. I
like that game because I'm good at it. Any game that I'm good at.
That's try to like any game I win frequently come in for that. I played Castles of Burgundy once, but it's been a minute, and I just don't play as many board games as I used to. But every year when we take our annual How the Money family vacation, we lond up a few board games we end. Lately, we've been playing a lot of Acchoir. Have you ever played that one?
Yeah?
I have that board game. It's actually in my stack right behind me.
It's a really good one. Nice. I love that she's got a stack.
Yeah, Like most economists have nerdy textbooks, and she's got those two. But yeah, the predominant feature in the bookshelf stack of games.
It does.
I like, I got to go to bed earlier than ever before, and so late night board game sessions it's very harder to come by, but I missed those days.
They're so fun. Daryl.
Let's talk about your book, and specifically a book that had an influence on you before you started writing this book was Freakonomics. It feels like, as someone who you kind of write about this. At the beginning of your book, you were an aspiring economist. Freakonomics pushed you further in that direction, and maybe your family wasn't so thrilled about that too.
Is that right?
Yes, Freakonomics came out twenty years ago, believe it or not, and that was the same time that I was getting ready to go to college. I had always been interested in math and science, and I thought that's what I was going to pursue. That's why I applied to MIT. I was headed to MIT, but then on the way to MIT, my dad hands me the book of Freakonomics and just says, like, hey, this guy, you know, he
went to MIT, maybe you'd be interested in this. So I read the book on the plane ride there and immediately I was like, this is what I wanted to do. I was, I felt like I was.
I was always.
Interested in the way that people behave, but it was just really hard for me to wrap my head around it without the math part, which is what I was also interested in. But Economics really brings it together. It applies this mathematical framework, this analytical framework, to the way that people interact with one another, and all those interactions make up the economy. And that book was just the one that kind of broke it opened for me and
made me realize what economics is. It's not just about the stock market or GDP, It's really about human behavior.
Yeah. I like how you mentioned how economists are essentially like profits and they explain human behavior and basically how the world works, which I've never really thought about it that way, where you're just kind of it almost allows you to like peer into the future and make pretty accurate, I guess predictions as to what might happen on that note. Well, I'm not going to ask you to make a prediction, I guess, but maybe just the current state of the
housing market. You're the chief economists over there at redfin and this is a massive question. But what's going on when it comes to housing just the current state of things prices? Can you touch on that for a minute.
The housing market has been distorted since at least the pandemic. I mean, you can argue it goes even farther back to the foreclosure crisis in the Great Recession, but I'll start with the pandemic. During the pandemic, interest rates fell to record lows, which made borrowing to buy a home historically cheap, and anybody who could buy a home was
buying a home. People were buying multiple homes, people were buying vacation homes, people were moving because of remote work, and we had all us activity in the housing market. But then by twenty twenty three, inflation was the problem, not unemployment, and so the Federal Reserve had to raise interest rates that sent mortgage rates high. They increased by like the highest percentage historically, and home buying became unaffordable.
Like it was a very sharp turn. And now homeowners don't want to sell because they were able to refinance into record loan mortgage rates during the pandemic, so their payments are still quite cheap, so they don't want to give that up because if they got gave it up and bought again, they would have to buy at these really high ends. So nobody wants to sell. People don't want to buy because interest rates are high, and it's just more affordable to rent right now in most metro areas.
So we're just stuck in this place where there's very few transactions happening. Home values are remaining high, though, because it's both supply and demand that have pulled back. It's not like during the Great Recession, where there was no demand but there was still lots of supply and that caused values to fall. Values are still propped up by the fact that homeowners don't want to give up their homes.
So we're just kind of stuck right now, and it's going to take interest rates falling or you know, new construction really taking off in order for this to break free.
So you say that we're kind of stuck, and I think you're right. It does feel like just everything ground to a halt in the housing market. But when it comes to the and I think crisis is an overused term, but maybe the affordability crisis in housing, Are there any signs of relief? I'm going to look at a city like Austin and you see pretty significant declines at least in the amount of rent that can be asked year over year. But then there are and that's due to
it seems like a cutting back of red tape. What do you see moving forward when it comes to rent and housing prices, and is that in a very city of the city.
Austin is a great example of a place that where demand increase during the pandemic, and because building is allowed there, it's just easier to build there than is in other
parts of the country. We saw an increase in new construction, and that increase in supply made it possible for rents to come back down after they had gone up in other parts of the country, like in California, when demand goes up, it just leads to higher prices because supply can't react, and that's largely due to regulations like single
family zoning and the permitting processes that are there. So I think the lesson from that is that you have to make it easy to build because you know the next time there's going to be an increase in demand, either when rates fall or the economy is just doing really well, it will inevitably lead to higher prices unless we see an increase in supply reacting to it. So I think a lot of states of like made progress there, but there's still a lot of progress to be made.
Yeah. Well, so, I mean, as you touched on supply, I think about the wildfires out in California and even Hurricane Helene damaged something like eighty I think around eighty thousand homes kind of along its path of destruction. How does something like that impact the supply of homes? Obviously you got homes that are completely destroyed and so they're not available, But even damaged homes, I feel like, at least temporarily, it kind of takes them off the market.
Is that something that feels more localized or does that have larger impacts on the supply of housing across the country as well?
It does have large impacts. We're already in a vulnerable position because of how unaffordable housing is. So climate change is inevitably going to make housing even less affordable because the cost of maintenance is going to increase with changing weather patterns. Like homes that were built for certain climates and then the climate changes, they need to be retrofitted and then it also makes insurance more expensive, and it literally like pulls homes out of the supply of housing
if they're destroyed and then not be built. So all of that just makes housing more expensive, and we're seeing that in California how insurance premiums are going up. Insurance premiums are also going up in Florida and in Texas. But there are certain parts of the country where the climate could potentially become more appealing and values will go up as people decide to move to those places. So it really is going to have an effect on the
entire country. There is no neighborhood that isn't going to be impacted one way or the other by climate change, and their housing markets are going to be impacted too.
It's like if Minnesota becomes a little more balmby here, it starts to look a little more appealing. Oh, the Great Lakes. I've never been up there, but it seems quite nice now we're not frozen over half the year.
It might be interested.
I'm curious too, Darrell. Something else that was proposed recently, a Trump administration proposal was to use federal lands to build more housing supply, And is that going to make a dent in the housing issues that we have in this country because obviously applying demand like we just don't have enough supply. We're millions of units short, it seems. But on the other side, is the supply coming where it's most needed.
Federal land tends to be in parts of the country that don't have access to amenities like city amenities. They might not even have access to roads to begin with. So I think developing, yeah, that kind of land, it's not the high value land. If it was high value, it wouldn't be federal land. It would have already there would have already been a push to develop it. So I think that it's not really solving the real problem,
which is how expensive housing is. In the most productive cities in the United States, like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, there is some federal land in those areas. It's like post offices and federal buildings, and I think that the idea of densifying those types of buildings and allowing there to be mixed use housing, mixed use development with like a federal building and then housing on top of it, I think is a really interesting idea that
we should just allow. I think the default should be that we allow housing on more lots of land, especially if it's near places that people want to live.
Yeah, just by default say yes, and then if there's problems, we'll figure it out. That seems much more appealing to me than living in an Oppenheimer like desert town that gets erected in Utah or something.
Like that in New Mexico.
But right, yeah, which is what I pictured, beautiful hours in the middle of nowhere.
But I like the idea of the post office being on the bottom floor of like a high rise. Like think about that. That sounds like maybe what you're suggesting, Darryl.
Right, yes, yes, talk to us about the rule of thumb for a housing budget. You talk about this in chapter five of your new book. But has your advice on that changed as we have seen cost rise faster than we've seen wages go up.
The rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than thirty percent of your pre tax income on housing. But the reality is that the majority of renters are spending more of that on their rent. So I think that that was the rule of thumb, you know, fifteen twenty years ago, and people were able to meet that, but now a lot of people just it just feels
like so out of reach for them. So what I advise people to do is to go through their spending habits on a monthly basis, like pull it up your credit card transactions or your bank statements, or use software that's out there, and just look at how much you're spending on each category. And then when you're thinking about moving somewhere new, think about how all those categories could change,
because it's not just the housing payment. If you're moving somewhere with public transit, you might not be spending money on your car or on gas anymore. Or if you're moving somewhere that's smaller, then maybe your energy bill is not going to be as big compared to somewhere that's larger. So I think every category deserves evaluation and taken in and taken in because that thirty percent rule is really, just, like I think, more something that academics use to understand
how many people are struggling. But at a personal level, you just have to make do with what options are available to you.
Yeah, I realized I'm asking this question of someone who is an economist at a real estate website. But I think in this country, at least, home ownership like this ride of passage for a lot of people, and the majority of individual wealth is often tied to equity in a home, which we don't think is a good thing, but it's a reality. Have we just overly deified home ownership in the US. Is that part of the problem. We've made home ownership seem like it's a prerequisite to live the American dream?
Yes, And I think it like goes back to the founding of our country how people with property were the ones who are allowed to vote initially. It's it's just seen as like a step into having wealth or being in the middle class when you own property, and the first piece of property that people own is typically their own home. So yeah, I think that there's really, from an economic standpoint, no reason to glorify housing. It's actually, you know, unadvisable to put all of your money into
one undiversified asset. You can see that with climate risk. So if we reimagine like how we want people to build wealth and look at all the different ways to invest besides home ownership, I think we'd be a better position as an economy.
Totally agree.
When you buy a home, though, like you're oftentimes doing it for personal reasons, not necessarily from like a wealth building standpoint that although that is a positive proxy results. Yeah, yeah, but I guess when you are looking at it as a primary residence, Like one of the problems when it comes to especially like when you're bidding on a house is getting emotionally attached and you say to watch out
for that, which is it's easier than done. But do you have any tips for avoiding like envisioning ourselves in a home as you're going out there as your house shopping, because that can lead to perhaps, yeah, maybe you overpaying for that house. Yes.
My My first piece of advice is to do a lot of your thinking before you even start your home search, setting your budget, talking to a mortgage lender to understand, like if you what you qualify in terms of your loan, going through whatever your must haves versus your nice to havebs, looking at homes that are available for salor that recently sold, an understanding if your budget makes sense given what is that you want, and then start your home search with an idea in mind of like this is how much
I'm going to pay and these are the home features
that are most important to me. When you find the home that fits all that criteria and you're starting to fall in love, I would definitely advise you to slow down, Like, don't start imagining Thanksgiving dinners or happy family memories there because it's not your home yet, and there are going to be other people, yeah, making offers on this home, and you could get in a situation where you end up overbidding because you are already become attached to it.
And there's a lot of behavioral economics research about how once you own something, you tend to overvalue it. So just kind of stay attached. Yeah, it's not yours yet, that's my biggest advice.
Okay, yeah, I think so, like a true economist, remove the emotion, remove those feelings, right, look at the numbers.
One of the things you just mentioned in there too was talking to a mortgage broker. And this is one of those things that I feel like it's so underplayed, is to talk to a few different lenders and get quotes because of how much it can save you. Like, the stakes are so high, so much higher than almost anything else we buy, than really anything else we buy. So let's say you go to a credit union to get a loan for a car instead of getting it
at the dealership. Sure, save a couple percentage points on the APR right at the rate of the loan, But when it comes to your mortgage loan, just because of the balance, the amount of money you're borrowing, it can be significant. Is that something that people From everything I've read, it seems like people don't do that enough.
Do you agree?
I think that everybody should shop around. I think it's easier now than it used to be because there are so many websites and there's so much comparative shopping you can do online. But I do think that there are people who just go straight to whatever their bank is and ask them what they can borrow, and they think that, you know, this is my bank. They've been good to
me before. Why wouldn't I not go to them for my home loan, not realizing that the bank is giving you a much higher rate than what maybe a different lender would give you. So I definitely advise people to shop around. It's easy to do online, get at least three different opinions, and then the other thing to consider, because there are some differences between lenders, is just how responsive they are. If you like the software in terms
of uploading your documents, and you know they are. They doing a good job explaining it to you what you can afford. I think if they're hitting all those criteria, then the next thing is just to focus on the price that they're giving you guys.
Yeah, the rate.
You also write about being smart when you are selling at home, and you mentioned renovating, how do you think about the ROI and whether renovations that you're considering whether they're going to pay off when it comes to a higher sales price.
Not all investments have an ROI, and I think it's kind of unfortunate, but the things that tend to have the ROI tend to be those really visual things where if somebody is looking at the listing online or they're walking through the home, that are just kind of a turn off, like old paint, for example. It's really easy to repaint your house, but can make it just look fresher, newer,
and more appealing. Those hidden things like say redoing the electrical they're really costly and they might not pay off unfortunately. So I think just talking to your agent can help you evaluate what investments are going to be paid, are going to have a payoff. Also understanding the market and really competitive markets it you don't really need to do
that much specialty your home to get it sold. In weaker markets, you do have to make sure that the home is moving ready if you want to attract a buyer.
I'm thinking putting in on your listing. At the very top, we just put new insulation in. It's It's true that it'll be super sexy, yeah, next home, but they're trying to imagine themselves at the thanksgaming dinner table in that home, just like we don't want to imagine ourselves in that situation. You want as a guest, as a seller, other people
thinking that about your house. And so it's when you look at kind of the annual studies that come out about what renovations make the most, offer the most bang for the buck. The thing and I've noticed in recent years is that it's garage doors that tend to be to offer the biggest bang, Like that people actually make more than what they spend on the garage door. Is that just because it's such a big piece of curb appeal.
Yes, I think curb appeal matters a lot in real estate. And yeah, those newer garage doors they have, like the windows on them, they come in different colors. I think that they they do just make the overall home look newer, And I think new is what people tend to gravitate towards.
Which is why Joel I just got done not too long ago, why I painted my garage door. Yeah, looks like a brand new, gradual, cheaper way to get the bang.
Yeah.
Although, oh yeah, we won't get into this there. But they also sell like these little window these magnet kits where it looks like there's windows in your garage, you like slap on it, like the fake carriage handles on there. I was just like, Babe, we're.
Not going to do that.
Come on, We're not here to create the false illusion. But Drek, we've got more to get to. We're gonna continue to discuss just the intersection of economics and everyday life.
Will get to that more. Right after this, we're back from the break.
We're still talking with Daryl Fairweather talking about we just got done talking about the housing market. There's so much more to discuss, though, so much more that Daryl covers in her new book that's really worth checking out. It's called Hate the Game. And Daryl in this book, you really you focus on the fact that that and you mentioned this kind of at the very beginning of our conversation.
Do you feel like economics has something to say about like everything we do or and does it have predictive powers where if we were just a little more in tune with economic realities that we would stand to gain an edge.
I think economics has a lot to do with anytime there's a limited resource and there are people who want it, that explains that economics can explain it. And you see that in so many different settings. You obviously see it and say investment, you see it in the labor market, but you also see it in romantic interactions too, that two people want something. Maybe it's different things and there's a conflict that happens. But I don't think it applies
to like nearly everything. I do try to like stay in my lane somewhat and not pipe up on things I'm not an expert on. But economics it touches so many things. It gives me a lot to talk about.
It's funny.
I'm reading a book by Thomas soul right now, Applied Economics, and he talks about how economics applies to healthcare, but then also it's immigration, and he gives just like not only first order effects, but second and third order effects. How do you think about the role that I think sometimes people can think of an initial reality that might happen if we change this one thing. It's like, oh, it's going to do this and it's going to be so good. But then there are oftentimes secondary and third
like just cascading reality of impacts of economic decisions. But I don't know, as humans, we tend to really only be able to visualize kind of the first set of things of consequences.
Yes, this is the law of unintended consequences. When it comes to incentives and economics, you can bet that people are going to respond to incentives. So if you change the incentives, people's behaviors will change. If, for example, you make a product illegal, it's not just that people are no longer going to consume that product. You can expect
some of the consumption to go underground. So I think just thinking through the way that people change their behavior when you change a law, or change a policy, or just change anything, can help you avoid that pitfall of not thinking through the unintended consequences.
Yeah, I like this higher level of thinking. Like on that note one line that you write in your book, the decisions you make in one game often impact your ability to attain your objectives in other games. And that's when you were talking about finding balance in life. Can you talk about that, just like the trade offs of let's say, balancing career, success and family, and how that can have an impact on some of the other areas of life, sometimes without intending to.
Of course, Yeah, there's this.
Trope with women, right having it all means having the family, having the career, and doing all the things at the same time. But the reality is that you have to make trade offs. And I think one of the most important things you can do in your life and career is figuring out what is that you value most and then being okay with making a trade off to get
what you really want. And I think, I mean, at least in my life I have, I feel like struck that balance with family and career, but I have had to have strong boundaries in both because I'm not going to be able to like be everything to everyone all the time. But that's again it goes back to economics. There are constraints, there are trade offs that you have to make and you have to know what you value to really optimize.
Small personal follow up there, So you say that you feel like that you've found that balance yourself, do you ever doubt that, Like, like, when you're it sounds like you know, you're incredibly successful. It sounds like you've got nice family life as well. Do you ever look at your life and you're like, wait a minute, it almost seems like things are going too well.
I guess I'm just curious.
They're just a little peak at your personal life and whether or not that's a doubt that maybe comes to mind.
I think that I'm not immune to things that could happen in the economy or just like the randomness of life. So all those things are going well for me now, Like I could definitely get like, you know, knocked off my horse at any moment. I feel like that's kind of the anxiety of being in the economy that a lot of people go through, is like you never know if it's enough, because you could always imagine some scenario
where it's not going to be enough. Here you wish you didn't spend that money on you know, something today because you wish you could have saved it for that bad scenario in the future. But you can't live your life just only planning for bad scenarios, because then you end up missing out on all the good, all the on all the luck and all the good things that
could happen to you. So I think that's just another thing that requires balance and also being able to take an l when you lose, just realizing that, like, sometimes you're gonna lose, and as long as you're you know, keep making choices that align with your values. In the end, you'll get to the place that is optimal for you.
Yeah, I think that's that's good advice. And also just kind of keep tuning in because your desires and your priorities shift and change too over time. Right, It's like once you have a two or three kids or something like that, like your family life becomes more important than when you were single, and you could dedicate more time to work. I'm curious on that topic. You characterize marriage in your book as a financial strategy, which I think is interesting. I don't I wonder how my wife would
react to that. Quite I need asked when I get home it was a business decision, but you say that it can produce happiness and intimacy, So you put that part in there, but there's a trade off between those two objectives. So how do you think about the mix of love and the essential intertwined economic reality that tying yourself to another individual for the rest of your days? Like what that entails?
Yeah, I mean, obviously marriage, there's a lot of purposes to marriage, but I think the financial aspect shouldn't be downplayed. I mean, you're teaming up with another person, combining your finances, and from that point on, whatever decision you make, it's going to impact the other person. So you have to talk about these financial decisions or else you know, you might end up like not not with the outcomes that you want. I'll just put it, I guess I'll put
it that way. But one thing that's shown in economic research is that when two people have negatively correlated incomes, like say one person they both work in real estate, but one person focuses on luxury and one person focuses on foreclosures, there they have better economic stability and actually a lower chance of divorce because they don't have the same volatility and income that you know, two people who work on luxury real estate might feel because when housing
markets doing well, the couple's fine. With the housing markets doing bad, the couple's fine. And it's just interesting to see that play out like across different different industries and different careers that couples might have. I think it's something to be aware of because you know, if you're signing up for more financial hardship because of the kind of careers that you and your partner chose, that is going to be a strain on the marriage and on your life.
So for how of money listeners out there in the dating pool, what would you suggest to them? What sort of conversations should they be having when they're kind of getting to know somebody and they're saying, I don't know, I think I might want to sign on the marriage certificate with you and do life together. Are there certain kind of conversations around economics and personal finance they should be having ahead of time to make sure that's a wise decision.
I think the most important thing to establish is whose career is prioritized when it's it's not necessarily that one person's career is prioritized over the other, but at different moments you're going to have to make decisions about you know, who picks up the kids after school, or who is going to go on a business trip versus who's going to stay home with the kids, And it might be like you trade off on a weekly basis, or you trade off on like on the amount of years where
for a certain amount of time, one partner is dedicated to kids and the other partners doing the career, but then later it might switch. But I think just talking through that part of it is super important and can also help you plan for downturns in the economy, Like you're going to prioritize your career now, but if ever you lost your job, then that's when I would step
up or something like that. So just understanding like who is the primary earner at any moment in time, or not primary earner but primary career person at any moment in time, I think can avoid a lot of hard fights later on.
Yeah, yeah, I mean what I hear you speaking to and you write about this as well. It's just essentially aligning your goals. But there are ways, I guess of doing that as opposed to jumping straight to the negatively correlated careers and incomes.
I guess. I mean that's a part of dating.
Right, likely you just talk about what you're looking forward to in life, and then that's like a soft way of aligning those goals. And if you hear somebody say something that, oh wow, I've never thought about that and nor do I ever want that, it's.
Like I'm looking forward to traveling every week for the rest of my life on and maybe for work trips. Oh yeah, And you're like, wait, no, that's not good.
It's just funny.
I guess hearing in economic terms as opposed to kind of how that plays out in real life. But Darryl talk about career implications, like how should economics impact our job and career decisions the work that we decide to do.
Well understanding your strategy for earning more money within your career, I think it's just important to like to go to think about how you're going to advance your earnings. You can advance your earnings by gaining skills. You could advance your earnings by getting promotions or changing jobs. But I think for people just starting out their career, their biggest anxiety is just like I'm in a job. Like the entry level jobs aren't create jobs, they're not as enjoyable
as those higher level jobs. Of figuring out how you're going to get there is really important, and there's so many there's so many different ways that economics can impact that. I talk in the book about understanding the principal agent model in terms of understanding what your boss might want out of you as an employee. I talk about backwards induction to understand how to get promoted, like understanding who
is in control of promotion processes. But also there's like more macro stuff, like understanding how the unemployment rate in different industries is going to impact your own likelihood of going through about of unemployment, Like it's both the micro level but also this macro level is in the backdrop at all times.
Yeah, I'm curious. Can you talk about that just a little more? And what should we as individuals be paying attention to so that we can realize what we can push for and what's not possible. I guess in a current economic climate, when you think, is it just like the headline unemployment rate, is it we even look you look back to COVID and the there was just some employers were willing to offer so much money for job switchers.
That has declined significantly. What should we be paying at attention to from a macroeconomic perspective to kind of know are what our value might be worth in the market we're currently in as an employee.
Yeah, the kind of metrics I would pay attention to, or how many job openings are in your career sector, how many peopleeople are unemployed looking for work in that career sector, because that can kind of tell you how how much competition there is, how how many people are going to be willing to take a lower income to get the same job that you want. You generally want to gravitate towards those jobs where there are lots of openings and not that many people who have the skills
in them yet. Then you can be one of those early people when it's still rare for you to have those skills, and that's often when you can get the most raises and get them like the best career trajectory. You know everybody is going to be trying to do that, figure out what the next big thing is, But oftentimes you can kind of look at the data to give you a hint. Healthcare is one where like it's good,
they're going to need to be more healthcare workers. Like if I was advising somebody who didn't who who only wanted job security and they were entering into college, I would say, pick something in healthcare because you're definitely going to be employed in the coming decades in.
That aging population. That kind of thing.
Yeah, aging population. The spending just keeps going up on it. So yeah, and then it's a kind of job but can't be replaced by robots at least not across the board, because it's manual, it requires a human touch. There's bedside care. I think that there will continue to be plenty of healthcare jobs.
And then for folks who are so let's say they already have a career and you mentioned this, right, just the ability to increase your earnings either by like let's say, upping your skills, maybe opting for a new job, or kind of angling for that promotion. How would you recommend for someone to maybe decide between those two or even
all three of those? Right, But I guess I specifically want to drill down on, like, Okay, I'm looking to either get promoted internally here or when should someone know that they should be looking just to a different company outside of who they're currently with.
The First thing to assess is how likely are you to get promoted? Like are you already do you already have everything you need to get promoted, and it's a matter of pushing your promotion documents through and getting them approved, or are there more skills that you need and more evidence that you need to provide in order to get promoted. If it's in the latter category, there's more that you need to do. I think looking around at your peers
and looking at how they have gotten promoted. And then if you're already at that stage where you have all the skills, I think the stage to go to is who is actually in charge of the promotion decision. Your manager probably has some control of it, but your manager's manager probably has to say and maybe even the executives have a say.
So.
Making sure that people who are making these decisions know who you are and know the value you bring is going to be really important to getting a promotion approved.
Do you feel like people like great jobs have become more widely geographically available given work from home. It seems like some of the some employers are calling back work from home a little bit, and other employers are saying, oh cool, well you lived in Silicon valley and you made a ridiculously high salary, But if you're going to move to the middle part of the country, we're going
to pay you less. Is there still an opportunity for people to live in a lower cost area of living and benefit from a higher paying job that might be headquartered in a more expensive place to live.
I think that's definitely a lot easier to find those remote opportunities now than it was before the pandemic. But there is starting to be a bit of a reversal on the trend where more corporations are wanting their employees in office. We've seen that at Amazon. I think Apple and Facebook have also done this, and the federal government
has called people back into work too. So I think that if you are trying to cast that y net, I wouldn't rule out in office for you, because that if you're still in that early part of your career, it could be detrimental to completely rule out in office work. But I think it is something that is worth aspiring to if that's how you feel most comfortable working, it's something that you value. I've set up a situation where I can work remotely, but you know, earlier in my
career I didn't have the ability to do that. I'm lucky that I have it now. But I think it is something similar to your salary or similar to your vacation time or your healthcare. It's one of these features of your job that is going to impact your well being.
Yeah, for sure.
Or we've got more to get to, just a few more questions. Is with Darryl Fairwell. Featherwa with Darryl Fairweather about how economics impacts every area of our lives. We'll get to that right after this.
All right, we are back from the break with Darryl Fairweather, her book Hate the Game Economic cheat Codes for Life, Love and Work. And I will say they're not necessarily cheat codes. Like what you're doing in the book is you're essentially you're like laying out the rules of these different games so that we can quite clearly identify how
to actually win in these games. So it's not like I don't know, sometimes folks here cheat code no game Genie, Yeah, yeah, game Genie is like totally cheating, like you're not playing the game at all. You've like short not shortcut, like yeah, like hot wired the game, as opposed to clearly focusing on the pieces of data that are going to move
the needle of the most Daryl. But in the book you discuss obviously these different major life changes like moving to a new city, and and essentially it seems like you're saying that folks on the fence are typically better off getting off the fence making the change. Can you explain why that is.
Yeah, there's a bias in behavioral economics called the status quo bias, which is that it's been well documented that people tend to stick with whatever situation they're in. I talked about this a little bit before. How when you feel like you own something, you value it more. Well, the same is kind of true for the neighborhood that
you live in. If you grew up in a certain neighborhood, you live in a certain neighborhood, you might think it's better than other neighborhoods out there, but you wouldn't really know unless you make the leap of faith and make a change. So I think if you're even if you're
even contemplating moving cities, it's definitely worth exploring. And if you're on the fence, just go for it, because for most people, they are subconsciously holding themselves back from better opportunities because of that fear of the unknown and the status quo bias.
So not just moving, but would you say that applies to I guess a lot of the diferent decisions in our life, the fact that status quo or the endowment effect that that is maybe weighing heavier on people's decision making processes than to even realize.
I think for the average person, yes, you know, I know that there are people out there who maybe struggle with impulsivity and they feel like this is the exact opposite. They need to stop making so many changes. But I think the average person is resistant to change and it's holding them back from better opportunities.
You also highlight in the book the concept of permanent income, which is the assumption of future earnings, and you say that that also impacts our money decisions how so well.
The permanent income hypothesis is this idea that if you knew how much income you're going to live over your life, then you would be able to borrow against your future income and smooth out your consumption. So instead of eating ramen noodles as a poor college student, you would recognize that in the future you're going to be making more money, so why not you know, spend money on an actual
meal instead of like making things harder for yourself. The part about the permanent income hypothesis is that I think people are afraid of that worst case scenario where they didn't end up, you know, getting the job after college that led to higher earnings, and they wish they really
didn't spend or go into debt earlier on. But the idea is that you know, on average, people do earn more money over their lifetimes, and they should spend more when they're young, they should save when they're older, and then they have to spend down that retirement savings when they're in their later years.
You just don't know, though. It was only we knew knew the future? Was it the white paper from Yale? Was it James Troy? Maybe they wrote that about kind of how how he was advocating for people to spend more early on and be willing to take on more debt because of this kind of permanent income hypothesis, saying that like hey, no, no, no, you just smooth out the ride a little bit in your living standard and it's
it's all going to be okay. But yeah, when you factor in the realities of life that layoffs happen, or you know, even something like a hike in interest rates happen, and your credit card debt now is worse than it was, or your home equity line of credit payment has gone up. Like those are the kind of things that are harder to predict. So there, I think there are second order consequences to just assuming future income too, or assuming future races, right.
Yeah, I think that the downsides can be quite severe, especially for people who don't have good safety nets. If you know, losing income would mean that you're out, you can't pay your rent, and you have nowhere to go, then like you have a different risk tolerance and somebody who can rely on their parents or can move back home. So I think for people who are worried about spending a lot when they're young, those those fears can be founded.
And if it's having the psychological toll on you not having enough in savings, then I think that in and of itself is justified. Like if if you just feel better having money in your savings account, then like, go for it. You don't know, nobody should be telling you to spend more.
Well, that feeling in your gut like that in and of itself should be a data point that you pay attention to. It's not just about like these external factors. It's just also and it's hard to quantify. But how how do you feel about this asision?
Yeah?
Because if you constantly are at feel like you're at odds with what your gut's telling you, then I don't think that's necessarily any way to live either, Darrel. You also admit, like you're talking about spending or saving up for retirement, you talk about stock picking, and you basically compare it to like a beauty like a beauty contest game. Can you share the correlation here between the two.
Yeah. So there was this old game that used to appear in newspapers like kind of like just a fun thing, like a lottery kind of game, where you'd write in your answer and maybe win a prize. And the idea was to pick the picture of the woman that everybody else was going to select as the most beautiful. So instead of picking the picture that you personally thought was the most beautiful, you're trying to pick the one that
everybody else is going to pick. But everybody else is also going through that same exercise of what else is everybody going to pick? I want to align on that. And it's very similar to the stock market because you're not necessarily picking the stock that you like the best. You're picking in the stock that you think everybody else is going to like in the future, and it's going
to go up in value. What happens in the actual beauty contest game is that you know people the best answer is not like the one that kind of goes through too many lines of logic. If you reduce the there's a way to reduce the problem to like something mathematical and basically economists have shown that ideally, you just want to think about like two degrees of separation, like what does my opponent think about me, and then just
end it there. You don't want to keep going on and on forever, like well, if this happens, or if that happens, or what are they think exactly? Sometimes overthinking can be too much, and I think that's also just a great reason to maybe not play the stock market because it's just requires too much thinking and just kind of play the averages and pick an index fund instead.
With you on that, Darryl on that Wise notes, we'll lend this conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us work in how to money listeners find out more about you and find out more about your new book.
Well, you can buy my book in any bookstore or on any of the online platforms, and you can find me on all the social media. I'm at Fairweather PhD on Instagram and that's my handle pretty much everywhere.
Nice, we'll link to all of that, Darryl, Thanks so much for making the time for us today. Thank you all right, man, that was a good combo with old Darryl Fairweather. Yeah, it was. And she's not old. She's younger than us.
Man, She's young, she's smarter, and I thought I thought her book was really insightful.
What was your big takeaway from this conversation.
It said, the whole first segment or first section, we talked about housing and when it comes to first time home buyers and how it is that they should be thinking about buying a home. She put the two parts of home buying in the right order, which is that what needs to happen first is you need to be thinking about it a whole lot before you get out there, before you go shopping. Then you can start looking. But the problem is most people start because of the ease
that the apps make it. Unfortunately, and just like the wander lust that takes place with just oh, let's go let's see what houses are for sales browse first. Yeah, and I think there is a lot less of that going on than obviously there was over the past four years during the pandemic, but there does seem to be this sort of holdover, this kind of carryover effect of that where folks are looking, they're falling in love with a property with a house before they even know what
it is that they can afford. They haven't looked at rates, they haven't decided how long that they're going to actually stay in that house.
I don't know what the average price per square foot is for a house in an oh No.
And so she is trying to deemotionalize the conversation from square one. Let's get analytical about it and then let's get out there and start looking. And I think that that can be just a helpful matrix and decision making process when it comes to especially for some home buyers who are getting out there for the first time looking at housing.
Yeah. Yeah, that was my big takeaway how about you.
Okay, so that was potentially gonna be mine, so oh sorry, ill here. And I like when she was talking about marriage and kind of the the economic reality of marriage and how you have to kind of talk about the things planned for those things ahead of time, and that is something as someone who's very interested in personal finance and saw personal finance as an issue in my parents' marriage, that was something I was a little more proactive about, largely just because I'd seen the way I can bite
you in the butt if you're not. And also, let's be honest, even if your plans, you can't always. Sometimes things that are worse than your plans come to pass and you can't necessarily prevent that. But I was just thinking too about the prioritization of careers. I think that's a really especially in today's environment, a lot of two income households. You have to talk about that with your partner. Hey, for right now, like my job's on the front burner,
yours is on the back. You're dealing with more house duties. And right now Emily and I are in this position of flip flopping where her career is kind of taking front and center role in our family. And that's a good thing. And I'm glad we've been able to have
this conversation. And it's not that I'm bowing out of how to money or I'm completely uninterested in doing this podcast anymore, but it's just I love that I get to be in a little bit more of a hands on supportive role at the house too, and so that that will be something that I think ebbs and flows for a lot of couples over their career lifetime, in their marriage lifetime. Yeah, but it's something that having I think those conversations proactively and saying, hey, what whose era
is this right now? And then when does my era kick in? Where I get to kind of put the pedal to the metal. I think I can prevent a lot of arguments or hard feelings.
I love it, dude. Yeah, I feel like y'all have demonstrated that well. The beer that you and I enjoyed during this episode was an argyle. This is the Raspberry Key Lime Sour by Contrast Artists and Ales. What your thoughts, buddy, So still get a little more in here on a port.
I think this is my favorite beer I've had from Contrast to this point. Oh yeah, I really like this one. It's because it's raspberry.
It's because it's raspberry. So I pick this one's up specifically. And I saw that I had raspberry, I was just like, there's no way that Joel's not gonna enjoy it.
I mean, I love love raspberry beers and raspberry key lime. I gotta say it's my jam, Like I dig this so I like the combo of flavors in this one, and it's it's pretty tart, not overly tart, but very very fruity.
I dug it.
It's got the I think more beers need to have lime in them. Lime, I think is a highly underrated citrus. Lately, I've been putting more lime in my cocktails. You know.
The that beach Fire cocktail that.
I created started out as made his own cocktail people. Started out as a whiskey sour, but which is typically you make that with a lemon, and I'm like, I don't like the lemon sour though, and that you start tweaking, and I'm like, oh, wait a minute, what if I switch it to lime? All of a sudden, I love it so much more. Make some other changes, as some smoky scotch and boom. You know, you get yourself a own signature cocktail. Yeah, but no that the raspberry in
this actually kind of remind me of Cantitione. And I know that you're gonna cry. Here's the that this is not something that should ever be said. But something about that funky raspberry, man, it makes me think of those some of the greatest beers in the world. I'm not going to say it's I'm not your friend anymore. You can't compare any beer to Canti because it's its own.
I guess I think of that anytime I have a raspberry sour because of the fact that so many of the beers that you've shared with me that were either Trefontaine or Katie Yone, they were raspberry.
That was the fruit, raspberry, cherry.
Gosh, any fruited sours that those guys make, they're literally the best beers in the world.
Yeah, I mean quite literally.
I throw down the collin to the American Brewery to do better than those guys do.
But this is great, a total summertime sour kind of style beer that's super easy to drink.
Most stuff really delicious. Right.
We'll put links to Daryl's book and a few of the other resources we mentioned in this conversation up on our website at how tomoney dot com. You can find them in the show notes there, along with some other helpful resources to give you advice and encouragement in your money journey. They all live there all the time on our.
Website, you know what. So until next time, buddy, best friends out, Best Friends Out.