Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I'm Matt, and today we're talking about how to overcome your idiot brain.
Hey, we've all done some dumb things. Joel, Actually, so what's the is there something that you do on a recurring basis that is kind of an idiot thing or a dumb thing? Or ask my wife? You have two options. What's the one of the dumbest things you've ever done, or what's something that you do more regularly that you're like, why do I do that?
That's not gonna minute, that's probably Matt.
Well, we'll make sure to hit those topics when we have our Wives episodes later this summer. If I said, I thought about this because I was gonna ask you this question. But I think one of the dumbest things I ever did was I a jeep when I was in high school, and I thought that meant oh that means I can drive through mud of any depth and.
Pipe worked like that.
Well, I I was such an idiot, Like I drove, we went not we It was just me that there's one mistake I wasn't. I didn't have a buddy there, you know, who had my back. But I went to this field that I had never been to before, and it brained a whole lot, and there's a bunch of big puddles, or so I thought. And so I'm like,
why driving around mud splashing everywhere. I'm just like living the life until the nose of the jeep just like dives down and it was this massive hole and I couldn't get out, and we had a call like a tow truck to winch me out of there. There is Yeah, it was a mess. That was most likely the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life.
I mean, that's not the worst thing about A lot of people have done a lot of dumber things.
It ruined the transmission, okay, like like mud and liquid water got into the transmission and the transmission had to be That was a costly misfan.
That's no fun. Well, we're gonna talk about all sorts of things today on this episode. Ways, especially specifically that our brain works largely because of the thousands and millions of years of evolution, right, and and how it doesn't really work to our advantage in the modern modern day society. That's true, ways that we're conspiring against ourselves. And then how to overcome them.
Yeah, and there's certain things and more in our more recent history and in our own personal lives that has an impact on how it is that we handle our money, and you didn't reciprocate. I was hoping you would have a good dumb story, but you keep thinking about it. Folks can hang on for at the end of the episode. Uh, maybe you'll not tell you So my girls they love
to hear this one. You tell us one story. When I was in college in South Carolina, it didn't really snow very often, but one time it snowed, and what idiot college dudes think to do when that happens. Well, we wanted to go skiing, but there's no place to ski in Greenville, South Carolina, naturally, So what we did was we put on the skis, we threw an electrical cable, slammed it in the trunck on Mytota camera, and we went skiing on the icy roads.
And nobody got terribly injured. But there's a minor injury at least. That's just like one dumb thing that I remember doing.
See that just sounds like fun because it was, like you said, nothing bad happened, So that was just a good time.
It's not been like a dislocated shoulder or something like that.
But that's about it. Stuff like that all the time, Like okay, maybe we'll say this one for yeah, I don't want to go down this path of dumb stuff that we did that was actually fun, not considered dumb because it didn't come with it come at a high cost. But actually, speaking of college, a quick little story to share with folks, Amazon is actually no longer in the college textbook rental business.
My wife found this out the hard way. So we've talked about this before, how that's a massive way to save when it comes to the tech instead of buying brand new or even buying used and then returning into the school bookstore renting it instead. And if you're.
Talking about I mean hundreds and even thousands of dollars when it comes to the amount that these college textbooks cost for sure.
And so my wife, she's in grad school and she's been using Amazon Textbooks, checking it against the prices other places too, But Amazon Textbooks, I guess they found out we're pricing these things too low and we're not making any money, so they shut her down. And so now if you want to rent a textbook to save money, which I think is still a good way to go, still good route to choose, get a tactic. Yeah, book Scouter, e Campus, and cheg are the three websites you should
be checking out. We'll link to those in the show notes.
But those are I think book scouter in particular, it's like a marketplace, like it aggregates a bunch of different additional websites and you can compare prices easily on there, which is huge, huge.
And I hate to see one less competitor, especially one as big as Amazon in the space. But yeah, if you were like my wife and you were bummed and you're like, I don't know where to go now, we'll check out one of these sites, because yep, yeah, you still it's better to rent than to buy.
And so I bet there's probably still a lot of folks out there who have Amazon books that they had rented, and you actually have I think it's until sometime this fall, like August or September, in order to return those those books.
We just returned hers for the last sulster. You don't get to keep them. We were shopping for the next semester and we were like, oh, bummer, but we found we went to cheg for some of hers and save some money. But if he had just word otherwise, if you're in school or you know someone who's in school and they're like, these books are expensive, this is definitely one way to save money. Absolutely.
All right, man, are you ready for this beer?
I'm ready, We're born ready.
It's time to tap some of the beers that I grabbed recently from Asheville, North Carolina. But this is End of Plagues and this is a beer by Burial Brewing Company. We will enjoy this one during this episode and share our thoughts at the end of the episode.
Burial always so chill in their naming conventions. Not all right, let's move on, Matt. Let's say, let's get to the topic we want to discuss on this episode, which is overcoming your idiot brain, and specifically, how are brains process information that make us bad with money? And we've all seen the meme of the guy on the bike who puts a stick in his own wheel and he falls off.
That's kind of becoming ubiquitous at this point. There are literally hundreds of different memes based on this goofy poorly drawn comic and for instance, Matt I saw one. The first line says, fifteen holes a good go, and then it says, my brain realizing I'm playing well as he puts the stick in the front wheel, and then what happens. He's lying on the ground writhing in pain. It's amazing. That just reveals a deeper truth whenever you attach something to this meme.
Yeah, one of my favorite. It makes me think of, Like the first one's like, I'm tired at work, falling asleep at my desk, drinks a big old cup of afternoon coffee as he sticks the stick in the spokes and can't sleep that night. Is the end result, which I feel like is something we've all done.
Yeah, for sure. And the truth is it's not really all that hard for any of us to become our own worst enemy on the money front, right, and that, yeah, good intentions just aren't going to get the job done. So today we want to talk about some of the common ways we're inspiring against ourselves, and we want to offer an antidote or multiple antidotes to help us make the progress we're looking to achieve more possible, more of a reality.
Yeah, Like that's what makes these memes so hilarious and poignant at the exact same time. Right is that because like we know the truth, like we know what it is that we should be doing, but then we go we basically do the exact opposite. Right, We have all been there and it's impacted all areas of our lives as well. I think like anyone ever sabotage relationship? Have you ever sabotaged a job interview? Almost like subconsciously though, right, Yeah,
Like even without realizing. I think sometimes we only become aware of it, like what we have done after the fact in hindsight, like.
Oh wait, that's how I That's how I ruined that thing.
Yeah, Like, I mean honestly, like that's what it's what it means to be human. Like we get to just revel in the complexity and the incomprehensibility of being human beings. But as Carl Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And yeah, yeah, when we leave these underground, subterranean thoughts and beliefs unexamined, untapped, we're going to be prone to make the same mistakes just on repeat throughout our lives.
It's honestly, it's truly amazing that humanity has even come this far, given our tendencies to self sabotage. Luckily, great philosophers and thinkers like Carl Jung who have paused, and they cause us to think a little bit and so maybe spend some time digging below the service a little bit. And and honestly, even today, I think just the emotional
or like mental health has risen in prominence. And I think that's a good thing because I think that has allowed a lot of folks to maybe think a little bit more about why it is that they're doing the things that they're doing.
So they can hopefully avoid sticking the stick in the wheel again exactly basically styming their own progress and hurting their inability to do the things that they really do want to achieve in favor of often kind of some sort of short term reward. And I do think that thinking and feeling affect the way we handle our money so much more than we give it credit for, and even more so than the immutable characteristics that we possess,
like our personal history and our personality. Tendencies are likely to play a bigger role in how we react to spending and investing than even our age or our education level.
Yees about their skills and how good you are, right, yeah, it's it's really about your history and kind of different things probably that formed early in life.
I mean, we're going to sound like a psychotherapist here, like you're laying down on a couch and we're you know, picking your brain or something like that. But that's it really is true that a lot of kind of how we have come to view and think about money has been tainted, has been informed by those early years. And so it doesn't matter how good you are at math,
that's not a prerequisite for handling money well. Either. It's really difficult to remove ourselves from our day to day way of living in order to understand and come to grips with the groundwork that we've laid already that's been laid over, you know, especially those first formative years, which informs how we're making decisions in the present that impact our lives on an ongoing basis. I mean, it doesn't help that everyone out there is basically trying to sell
you something, you know, like attention. It's the most important commodity that we have in this day and age. And every company out there is they're doing their absolutely best to hijack our attention for their profit.
We think about we recently talked about the TV and like, you're having your attention, you're having your literally your eyeball is hijacked in order to get something for free, free TV.
And you say, and then you know it comes at a high cost.
That well, initially it seems like it's a low cost in that case, right, like the free TV, but.
They ultimately except for no money.
Yeah, ultimately what this means are more dollars flowing out of your life because of it. In social media is a great example as well, but a plethora of streaming options like that's an entirely additional front.
I feel like that we have to fight.
Right Like there are still like more good TV shows out there than any sane human being could possibly watch.
There's a lot of bad ones out there too.
But a lot even just goofy little games like candy Crush on our phones, Like these are all distractions that are pulling at us. And the more that we give into these distractions, the less productive and the more unhappy that we're going to become. And we say it like, no judgment here right by the way, we fall prey to these same distractions, these same things that are constantly
viol for our attention. And so maybe a part of why we're covering this topic, like we're doing this for ourselves sure, as well.
As for you. Yeah no, I mean I think ye that the goal of this is where you and I are always trying to be lifelong learners too. We don't want to just point fingers at anybody who uses candy crush and call them crazy or anything like that. I try to avoid games, video games, any sort of games on my phone, but I realized that they bring some people a lot of joy, and in fact, they help your voter skills and coordination to some degree too. So
I'm not saying there's no visit at all. Yeah, yeah, but we're talking just.
A double edged sword though, you know, like like that's the thing with tech in particular, Like like when we were talking about counseling earlier. It also makes me think of like the rise in like headspace, Like there are some different apps out there that cause people to slow down and to pause and reflect. But it's a double edged sword because like five hundred years ago, like back in the day. I'm guessing there was probably less issues when it came to mental health. I don't know if
that's proven. That's just this is that's just my assumption. They probably didn't need some of these apps because today environment like the way things are today, our again, our attention is just hijacked constantly, instead of having downtime where we might naturally reflect on things, where we might naturally have a conversation with the loved one and do some of the things that matter more. Instead, yeah, we're just scrolling social media, and so we have to be more purchases, more proactive.
Basically because of the nature of the society society we live in, and because of the things that are the flaming arrows that are aimed our way, we need some sort of like shield to fin them off so that we can protect ourselves and seth godin he writes about defeating the lizard brain, and that's kind of like what we're talking about here in this episode. You know, the basic part of our psyche that only cares about the most fundamental aspects of life, like surviving, eating, and procreating,
which are all good, necessary things. I like all the above, you know, but that lizard brain can also cause us to function with the survivalist short term mentality. And Matt, I remember hearing Tim Urban say this. He said, the world we were programmed to be in and didn't have long term projects that often. So so basically the reality that our ancestors grew up in long term wasn't really
a thing, Like nobody was investing for retirement. Like our brains haven't kept up with the new reality of much longer life spans and four one k's and all the stuff that come along with those things. Three baby, right, And so it's just no surprise that our brains have had trouble keeping up with this new reality, albeit a very fortunate reality, right. I mean, I personally like electricity,
indoor plumbing. I'm not mad about any of the progress that we've made, but it comes with, like I said, double edged short, it comes with the downside and somethings with something we need to pay attention to if we want to live a fulfilling life and one that also comes along with financial security at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, there's no part of me that wants to go back five hundred years ago. There are a lot of things that we don't have to worry about There are a lot of diseases that would not so much progress. Yeah, exactly, Like I'm very, very happy to be living in the air that works.
I mean, even even if you're in the bottom twentieth percentile of Americans, you're living better than French kings did three hundred years ago, which is I mean, just pretty amazing to think about.
Like had some perks they.
Okay.
So one of the problems I think we face that stems from what Seth Goudin calls the lizard brain, is that we all have a tendency to overvalue the present. This is called present bias. There's a study from twenty nineteen and they found that present biased consumers are more likely to spend in the present and less likely to.
Save for the future.
And obviously this makes sense given where we've come from ancestrally, like our brains they just haven't adapted to this long term thinking that's required as lifespans have increased and just our need to build up assets for you know, like potentially multiple decades. That's the reality now that we live in Like this is the.
Exact opposite of what used to happen when our ancestors would come across food like they didn't. Now we have as much food as we want at our fingertips to a certain area. Right, you can walk into a gross story get whatever you want. Before it was like you come upon food, you almost have to hoard it. Yeah, you almost have to eat.
You can arrise that honey, like that's some good stuff. But now everything is sweet, and we still crave sugar.
That's right. But unlike our ancestors, we can get them whenever we want it, and so we don't have to and they're quite refined, but we still like to eat them the way ancestors did. And so when we have it like we want to consume it. Yeah.
Yeah, because this present bias is something that we're continually rubbing up against. We just have a hard time mustering this self control, even though we know that we don't need, for instance, those additional calories via that sugar. We lack this self control that's needed when it comes to your finances, curb spending and to set more aside for your future.
But the good news is that there are some tools at our disposal in order to help us, you know, within this quest on our as we're on our path to financial independence. So we'll discuss some other psychological hurdles that we face and how to overcome them right after this.
All right, Matt, let's keep going. We're getting psychological with this one. It's true our brains conspire against us and they cause us to do things that aren't in our best interest.
And overcoming the ancestral lizard brain.
Yeah, I mean, I think back to middle school and uh it just or even even high school. I was babb with the ladies and I remember trying, like I wanted to ask somebody out on a date or something like that. I was so nervous that that person was going to say no. And it took me a while to come to grips with the fact that what if they do say, Now, what's the worst thing that happens,
Like you feel bad for a second. What if they say yes, you have this awesome chance to hang out with this person that you would really like to spend some time with.
So, coming back to Joel's base desire, exactly.
Well, these are the kind of things that, like we we have a hard time rationalize. It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, to realize that the stakes were actually a lot lower than I thought.
That you weren't in literal life harm because like, that's what it feels like. It's exactly when it's when faced with either confrontation, at least when you're sixteen, Yeah, something like that. It feels that like, literally, I'm going to die, like, which is why that's a phrase that you hear teenagers say, because I think a lot of time, like haven't oftentimes like identified that, No, you're not literally gonna die, even though I totally get that that's what it feels like. Yeah,
that's what we're oftentimes trying to overcome. But like we were just talking about present bias, you know, just before the break, and how we fail to think ahead, how we fail to prepare for the future by investing our money. And I think that one of the reasons that so many folks don't have enough in retirement is simply because it's so difficult for us to understand the concept of compounding, right,
Like it is tough to wrap your mind around. I would say that most things in our lives actually occur linearly. It's nice and orderly. One thing happens after the other, as opposed to things happening exponentially, which, at least personally, it feels a bit more chaotic. It's certainly more complex, but it's also more difficult to comprehend.
It's too complex for us to really wrap our minds arend. It's kind of like those big, big numbers, like, oh, we a trillion dollars worth of this.
Or that spending. It's like, what exactly does that mean?
And we see a bill like that and we just chalk it up to how future generations just ahead paying off these desks. But a trillion dollars is substantial, and we just I'll admit I have a hard time explaining how much a trillion dollars is. It's pretty it blows my mind. Yes, okay, So, for instance, so we're talking about numbers. Take a simple math problem of addition five plus five plus five plus five plus five and so you know the answer.
Pick me if you're keeping up. You heard me say five five times, So we're talking about a sum of twenty five.
There you go, so smart.
I'm hoping there's a lot of folks that answered out loud. But now take those same fives and then multiply them, right, So five times five times five times five times five. We might have some rare math geniuses out there, but the answer here is three twenty five. And this is
I wouldn't have gotten the one I wouldn't have either. Basically, what I'm getting at it's this is a much more complex problem, and it's just simply more difficult to comprehend and then to actually apply it to our money, specifically to our investments.
But this is so important to understand because this is the basis for turns that we're going to get in the stock market. It's a different set of skills, and most folks are not able to simply figure this out
on the fly. So let's give another example on the compounding front, Matt, Like, imagine taking a big sheet of paper and folding it in half, but then you fold it in half again and again until you've done this fifty times, which fifty sounds reasonable, right, right, because you're like, oh, you can do something and a half fifty times, but no, you've actually yeah, that's actually physically impossible. Right, But if you were to do this, if it were possible, how
tall would that stack of paper be? It turns out would be sixty four million miles tall, around two thirds of the distance of the Sun, which is crazy, doesn't seem right when you put it in terms like that, But that's what would happen if you had the ability to make it happen. And so it's no wonder that Einstein called compounding interest the eighth wonder of the world. It's it's a wonder in the fact that we, like
our brains can't wrap around it. But it's also a wonder in the fact that it can be a wealth generator. Even though our rudimentary brains have a hard time understanding exactly how it works. The reality is that it does work, and it works hard advantage.
It just doesn't work the way we think it should work, like, it just doesn't make sense, even though you can like sit down and crunch the numbers, do the math. I like the I think the rest of the Einstein quote is that, like, those who understand compound interest will actually earn it, and those who don't are going to end up paying it. But again, just because our dumb brains don't actually, like naturally conclude that this is possible, this doesn't mean that we can't actually do the math and.
Figure it out.
Because we just did it right like people have calculated what the distance of that sheet of paper would be were you to fold it fifty times and then so the trick is to then take these principles and apply them to investing. Basically, the earlier that you're able to start investing, the more that you're able to keep at it, the more that you're going to have at the end of the day. What seems small is going to be able to grow large because of this reality that can
just be so difficult to grasp. The longer you allow your investments to double and then double again, the more money is going to grow, giving you lots more options. So one last example, let's say you start out with nothing safe for retirement, like literally you've got zero in your roth ira or your four one k.
Hopefully that's not where most of our listens find themselves.
Hopefully you've got like a little bit of seed money, right, but let's say that's that is where you're starting from. You you've literally got nothing set aside for retirement. Were you to max out your roth ira every year at sixty five hundred dollars, it's going to take you a little less than thirty six years to reach millionaire status.
To hit those you know, those seven digits. That is a long time, I will say, and again, but that's assuming you know you're you're starting with nothing, a little less than thirty six years. But then how long before you have two million dollars? Well, you'll actually hit that milestone in less than ten additional years. But then guess what five more years in addition to that. Well, then
you're up to three million dollars. So the first million took you a little less than thirty six years, but then the subsequent millions after that then take less than ten and then around five years.
Now we say your first crazy, the first million is the hardest.
Well, yeah, no joke. When you understand compound exactly like you can truly understand Like again, it's hard to wrap your mind around, but you don't have to totally understand it where it makes sense in your mind in order for you to put.
It to use, in order for you to trust the principle exactly see the reality of what it can provide. Yeah, you're right, and I do think that is a really interesting point, that the first million is harder, largely because your money is not working for you on your behalf yet you're working to funnel money into this account that's going to eventually do the work for you. But it takes a while for that work to start to start happening. But then once it starts happening, it starts to happen quickly.
It's like a snowball rolling downhill, right, And so that's why, Yeah, our brains again have a hard time understanding this concept. But if we can kind of at least understand it a little bit and then do trust the principle, trust the other reality that this is how money works and how investing your money is going to help grow your money over time, we can take advantage of it. Whereas our lizard brain wants to say, I don't know about this. I can't quite understand it, and so maybe I should
avoid like going in this direction. I think that's probably where a lot of people, a lot of people stand the way a lot of people think about investing or saving money for the future.
Okay, so this is a random thought, but I was thinking a back to like five hundred years ago or I don't know, like five thousand years ago or something. But like, in my mind, the only way that I feel like folks way back in time had the ability to experience exponential growth or compounding like that is if so the beer we're drinking it is called end of plagues. Is if they were if there's a plague upon them, like literally, like a plague of locusts or rats or
something like that. I feel like back then they would say even then, they didn't totally understand it, even though they experienced it. And what they would say is like, oh man, the gods must be mad at me. We must sacrifice whatever we need to do in order to
appease the appease the gods. But like that's an example of exponential growth, right, Like when you've got a locust that multiplies and then those locusts multiple, you know, like that is in an instance, I think in natural I don't know in the natural environment where you might have
experienced exponential growth or compounding. Maybe again five hundred years aga, so if they've known a little bit more, they would have realized what was going on beneath you would have said, Aha, here's what's going on.
This is just science, not some sort of apocalyptic plague being sent after me and by some higher power. Yeah sure, yeah, right, let's talk about how our lizard brains work against us in regards to how we use money in the present too. I think one way that our idiot brains keep us from making progress is it stops us from investing as much as we could or as much as we should, because we don't fully comprehend the process or we're not
willing to funnel our money in that direction. But on the other side of the coin is the fact that we don't save and invest enough because we're spending every dollar we make, and that is the American way, right. I think when you look at the savings rate right now in the United States of America, it's like, what two point three cents on the dollar is what we save on average, which is pretty pathetic. And specifically, let's throw out some examples, Matt and discuss kind of what's
going on under the surface. Some situations it might trigger our idiot brains, but tricking us really into doing something that's not in our best interest. I feel like this often hits us on the shopping front, and I think, especially in our ever interconnected world, we're just bombarded by ways, avenues and means to shop more than ever before too.
Yeah, like the seventy percent off sign falling prices at Walmart or resist like sales like this is trigger us so much like I feel like it activates something within that lizard brain. It's sort of like this this limited time only phenomena, which again a long time ago, we had to take advantage of stuff like that when we were hunter gatherers. But now the impulse is working against us, and even more so given the preponderance actually a fake deals out there that can be found online thanks to
the way that pricing works on the internet. What's the actual real price? Who knows?
Right?
Like, what is the actual list price? What is the manufacturer? Is that the where.
The thing actually costs?
Well, of course not because there's profit built in, but it's tough to know what, you know, how good of a deal that you're actually that you're actually looking at. But yeah, when you're shopping Allline and you see that it's a negative thirty percent and it's written in all read, yeah, we're conditioned to know, oh, it's time to pounce. We've been conditioned to know that this is a deal. It's a signal to buy and the original price it's great out It's got like a little little line cut through
it and I saw two Amazon. They're just stacking all the tactics against us, and now it says like deal and is also written in like all caps red letters in order to again to kind of evoke that emotion that tells us that we should be making a purchase right now.
They want you to feel like a fool for passing up on a deal as good as this one, which I'm gonna be honest, like this is one that has been difficult for me for a long time because that I feel like I've gotten a lot better. I've grown in this, but only as I've started to realize the fact that this is what's happening behind the scenes, right only as I've started to be like, wait a second, that's my lizard brain trying to get me to do
something that's not my best interest. But I was like all about the deals, and I was like, I realized I was just spending too much time thinking about buying stuff and trying to get a good deal on things, and the best thing to do was to want less stuff and to care less about the prices of things and just not be into shopping nearly as much as I was. So it's I think I inherited that gene
from my mom to a certain dream. Not trying to throw shade mom, but this is one of those things where I think a lot of people, especially in today's era, when Amazon and Instagram and email newsletters kind of pull at us, trying to get us to spend money, hard us from our money, and they're using all sorts of sneaky tactics. It is. It is something like most of us are susceptible to.
Yeah, well, I mean, like you said, email newsletter or whatever, like the abandoned cart email where retailer checks in with you. I mean, dude, like there is an entire offering you an.
Additional discount because you walked away.
Here's a coupon code. Did life get busy? Like all of these things that triggered the like, Oh yeah, this is something that was important to me that I should be doing and I should be so thankful that they're
following up with it. At CRM, like customer relationship management, that is an entire industry, and it's not that it's evil, but I mean their sole goal is to get you to buy more stuff, whether that's them keeping up with the different purchases that you've made, but not Oftentimes it's not even the things that you buy, it's the stuff
that you're looking at. It's the things like on Instagram, it's the ads that you linger on or the ads that you swipe on where there's a carousel because you're like, oh, I really like that first item. Let me see if they got some of the other stuff on sale, And then you're feeding the system, going back to the whole free TV thing, like they now know more about you. That's gonna end up costing you more money down the road.
Yeah, window shopping used to be a completely innocent activity, and now window shopping is watching you a window into your soul for advertisers, for people that want to sell you stuff, which is only really putting us at more of a disadvantage when it comes to like our brain and how we react.
Yeah, and this isn't to like demonize the folks that are in that, like I used to be in advertising myself, but it's important as consumers to highlight the fact that this is what's going on, so that we're essentially we're equipping other consumers out.
So you can put that shield up it's a fair fight, yeah, and be like stop, Yeah, well, and we'll give some practical ways to in a bit to kind of help make that a reality, to help stop your brain from progressing this way. But part of the beginning at least is to highlight some of the ways that it happens. Another thing is like the impulse by right, that's a struggle for lots of other people out there. It's not
just a sale. It's a good deal, but it's and maybe sometimes you do find the perfect thing at a thrift store or an artist market. I've done that, and you make the purchase because it really is kind of something that's not going to come along again. But there's often something else that causes us to make an impulse buy. It's when we feel like we deserve it, right, it's time to treat ourselves. Ye. And so maybe you've had a hard week at work.
Which in reality is just a moment of weakness.
Exactly, That's exactly what it is. It's not that you've actually found the right thing that's never going to come along again. It's that you're trying to soothe yourself through
some consumption. And so yet buying something can provide a temporary relief, It can make you feel better for a second, like you click buy and you're like, ah, I feel I'm you know, this is just a method of sweet solace, self soothing, right, But look back maybe to a recent impulse buy, what emotions triggered it, and how did you feel afterwards? I think those are good questions to ask yourself. And I realized maybe I'm sounding a little bit like a therapist right now, taking a page out of my
wife's book. But asking those questions are going to help you get to the heart of the why behind the impulse spending that you've done, and it can allow you to recognize them moving forward, because it's typically matt it's going to be those same impulses, those same triggers that cause you to do it in the future, and if you can identify them, you might be able to catch yourself in the act next time you are tempted to buy on the fly. That's right.
Yeah, So retailers they also use just different subtle tricks out there as well, like free shipping. Again, like when it comes to online shopping, that's one of the words that's written in all caps emboldened off to the side.
Do you see free and you.
Think, oh, yeah, somehow this is free even though there is a prices station.
We know they're not losing money on shipping.
Come on, exactly, it's not truly free shipping. And we also know that even if we pay for something in for easy installments, that will end up paying the same amount in the end.
They're just making it easier for you by not pay later. Adds to the frictionlessness of it all. Yeah, they're reducing the friction just enough, but we know it logically we're paying the same amount anyway.
Yeah, but by doing that, they're able to actually garner a sale from us that otherwise they wouldn't get and we find ourselves parted with our money when we might have otherwise saved it. So again, awareness of how these different strategies and tactics and tricks impact us is crucial so that we can put up a good fight. I will say, like I think for me, I don't know for me to say the whole sale mentality, it's not something that gets me. You know, my adrenaline, myes don't dilate or whatever.
My people don't do. It's an impervious robot to a certain extent.
But we know what I'm not impervious to what is uh messaging, like when they try to sell you an image or when they're trying to sell you basically like a message, even if it's subconscious, right, Like like I'm specifically thinking about it. Like I bought a really nice coffee grinder recently. We talked about it, maybe a couple months ago. I was thinking about getting Actually we talked
with Brandon on Monday. That's one of the things him and I nerded out about because he actually recently bought a blade. Well mine is a flat blade grinder. I think his was kinic coal. Oh, I don't know the difference. Yeah, he was also considering mine. But the way that that thing is styled and the way it's designed, it's it's like Matt Black. The design is I mean, it's beautiful. It sits there on your counter, and so the reason it's well reviewed and stuff is because it actually does
grind your coffee really really well. So practically speaking, it does an excellent job. But you're also buying the image, right.
Like the way we're always being sold in the image, right.
Yeah, It's just branded in such a cool way and it is like minimalist, and I think there's a part of me that bought into that where it's just like, by getting this thing, you're gonna be cool, like the like all the other guys, like like this is gonna make your house look like the counters that this coffee grinder is featured on within the picture on our website.
Yeah, it's okay to have certain aesthetic preferences and to say this is my style, this is this is my jam, I'm into this. That's totally fine. But I think there's also a lot of advertising that is subtly weaving that into absolutely our brains and it's saying it's not even telling us about the product, it's just by association saying if you do or drink or buy or hang out with this product, you are by proxy gonna be cooler. Then you're gonna be You're currently a cool hit dude, right Yeah, And.
Even if it practically accomplishes what it is that you want to accomplish because you are checking off the boxes and whatnot, I think we are still susceptible to that that kind of branding. And the fact is nobody cares. It's not like anybody thinks that I'm cooler because I got Like nobody sees the stupid thing like I don't invite people over for coffee. Maybe I should, I guess, is what I'm now learning just to show off, just
to show off my fancy grinder. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that too, because I think there are some of these more subtle, subconscious brandy kind of not like you know, not the liquor, but like where there's a brand and you're kind of buying into the brand, and that's actually how they're able to make this sale. Right,
it's not that they dropped a sale on me. Is it's not that I did it impulsively where no, I've been researching this for months, but there's another part of it where I paid a premium for it.
Well, I think that's where they say about billboards and commercials. It's not that they're trying to make the sale instantly. They're trying to slowly mold your mind into thinking something about that product or brand so that eventually you come around when you're like, oh wait, now I need a car. Ah remember that toilet rab four commercial. Maybe that's the one for me. I don't know.
It's that kind of stuff that really family looked like my family. I would see us driving that kind of car.
Yeah, exactly, that's kind of tricks are being played on us, slowly but surely. But there are a lot of things that we can do. There are a lot of things in our power to react and to combat these subtle and not so subtle hints. Sure ways that we're parted with our money, whether it's on the spending or just on the not investing side. We'll get to a bunch of our thoughts on how to make progress, how to overcome the lizard brain financially speaking, we'll get to that
right after this. All right, folks, we are back.
And we are talking about overcoming your idiot brain. And this is just a fun conversation because we're just really diving into the psychology.
Right. I just say, this is not about IQ either. This is oh yeah. I think there's a lot of people who are like, I'm in mensa, Okay, I don't have an idiot brain. My IQ is one forty eight. And I think these are the things that again, we all have this lizard brain part in the back, and we're all tempted to or subconsciously reacting in these ways. We're talking about the subconscious no matter how freakan smart
you are. No matter whether you're an engineer or you stock the shelter your local grocery store, it doesn't it doesn't matter. We're all susceptible police.
Well, that's what makes this so interesting, right, Like, we are fascinated by just this behavioral psychology element and how it is that it's going to impact how we handle our money, both collectively as a society but also as individuals. And so another factor that plays into how we personally interact with our finances has to do with our history with money. Our beliefs about money often stem from how
it impacted us in our childhood. This makes me think back to our Freudian Yeah, so we had a conversation we had Christy Sheen on the podcast as an interview back in episode one to eighteen. We'll link to that one in the show in the show notes. But she grew up on forty four cents a day in China, and when you do that, that is going to make you appreciate the wealth and the opportunities available to you when you finally arrive in North America or for her,
Canada specifically Canada's in North America. But if you grew up in like an affluent suburb, like, you might have seen the downsides of money, right, Like you may have been confronted with the signaling and the unhappiness that it can produce. Some people, like Christy and much of the Fire community, like they are able to see money as a tool in order to earn their freedom, And we tend to agree that freedom is one of the best
things that money can buy. But it's important to identify your history and what it is is that informs how it is that you view money, some of the different attributes that you associate with your money.
Yeah, I think if you grew up in China and you come to North America, Canada, Canada, Canada, you see I think as mostly a good thing, right, Yeah. But if you let's say you hung out with Jordan Belfort, Wolf of Wall Street sort of thing which I never
saw in the movie. I just know very little, But if you hung out it's good in those environments, you would you might think money is all bad and only terrible people have money, right, And so you might just there's associations that we make that really when you think about it and when you do a little bit of introspection, you might be able to find some ties that you can untangle a little bit in terms of how you view money, and maybe the way you think about it
stems from some experiences from elementary, middle or high school, and some of those things might have informed you well. In others maybe not so well. And Sarah Newcomb, who writes about money psychology for Morning Star, I like that she shared this article you wrote some She had some great prompts, some questions really to help reveal what's going on under the surface in terms of our money beliefs. We'll link to that article in the show notes because
I think it's helpful to look at. But let's go over them real quick, because I think they're just really insightful or they can help you find some insight. But first she tells people to fill in the blank money is what, and then you tell your answer and you talk about why. It'll tell you a lot about your current underlying beliefs. Money is blank, like fill in the
blank what is money for you? I think that is going to give you a lot of insight as to how you think about money, how you feel about money, and what's going on below the surface. Second, she says if money was a character in your life, would be a friend or foe, a villain or hero. I think that's a helpful question as well, because some people have an inherently antagonistic view and approach towards money. They kind of view it as inherently bad. We've talked about how
it's not. It's really just this kind of neutral thing, but we make attachments to it, and I think seeing how you view it from that perspective can be helpful. Third, she says, growing up, what was your financial situation? How did the people raising you handle their money? Do you see any ways that this affects the way you think about or handle money today? For me, yes, You've talked
about it with Brandon on Monday's episode. I mean, this is one of those things where I was particularly especially influenced by the way money was handled in my house growing up. I'm sure other listeners have a similar sort
of story, right background. So, but thinking through those things and not just letting them subconsciously inform how you handle money, but bringing them to the forefront, to the surface, consciously thinking about them will allow you then maybe to combat some of those ark realities that you grew up with.
Yeah, and I would say that, Well, the argument we're making is that regardless if it was good or bad, your history is going to have an impact no matter what, and it oftentimes comes down to how you then react to that history, because like in your case, you reactive, reacted like you were polarized, like you did the opposite essentially right. But like I think back to my history, me growing up with money, and like we certainly had enough, but it wasn't like the amount of money my folks had.
But honestly, it was just the great way that they talked about it. Like I specifically like I might be one of the like, okay, we were talking about compounding earlier, and this was a lesson that that I learned, literally,
I think at age eleven. I specifically remember my dad sitting at the desk in our kitchen and him explaining compounding interest and when your money starts working harder for you than you are able to like, and that puts me in incredibly like rarefied waters, Like I was incredibly lucky to have had that taught to me at a young age. I didn't fully understand it then, but I do think that that certainly planted the seeds of my you know, the basis I guess of my my financial education.
But again I'm highlighting this because a I was most definitely lucky. But a lot of folks like you said there, you tend to go to one extreme or the other right, like you either vilify money or you worship it. It kind of depends on what happened in your past and then how you are reacting to it. But Sarah she Man, she had such a great article there, and one of the other things she mentioned was to ask yourself if money affects your social life, specifically in a good way
or a bad way. And then finally, this is a quote, if money were not a consideration, how would you be living your life? Would it be very different from how you currently live? And how do you feel about that? And that's just I think that's such an incredible and incredibly insightful question to ask yourself because I think it can help you to be awares to the fact that are you doing this truly because of money or maybe because of some other deeper maybe calling or mission that's
driving you. We actually included some other similar questions in our how to Money Money Mission Statement worksheet. We'll make sure to link to that in our show notes. But the truth is, if you want to make more progress with your money, the problem likely isn't that you don't know enough.
About roth IRA's right, Like for most of us, the.
Problem is the man in the mirror, the woman in the mirror. Like, it goes much deeper. Don't make me throw that song right now? And asking ourselves some of these hard questions, you know, doing some of this deep work, we think it can transform how it is that everyone out there relates to their finances. Just some of the realization can be freeing, and it can impact how it is that we spend and save our money. It is not just the spendaholics, right that need to perform this
exercise and to look inward. It's possible to be too miserly and too frugal as well.
Yeah that's true. Yeah, no, when you said that if money were not in consideration, how would you be living your life? Would it be very different from how you currently live? I think it's a really really important question for us to ask ourselves. For a lot of people they might find wait a second, I'm putting too much emphasis on money. I have all that I need. If only I could incorporate and think about money a little
bit less and just have more free time. Like those are the kind of questions you and I are asking ourselves now at this stage in our lives where it's we're.
A little more coast fire and yeah, we have the ability to kind of choose our own path.
And like we could say, no, we want to continue to enhance our lifestyle in a massive way, and so it's going to require a lot more money to fund this juggernaut for years to come. But no, that's not what we care about. But the only asked by asking yourself these kinds of questions, can you get to that
deeper understanding. But you know, regardless of which of those camps you might find yourself in at the end of the day, both of those tendencies can be taken to the extreme, which is really just a manifestation of selfishness.
And this so basically, if you spend so much, it's because you're being selfish and you're spending a lot of money on yourself. But if you're being cheap and like you know, like I was saying earlier, like meserly, that's also a very selfish ash where you're just yeah, it makes you think of storing it all away for yourself, freaking bad where Walter White always says he's doing it for his family, but the reality is his family is falling apart while he's like making meth and making bank.
And the truth is at the end he admits he's doing it all for himself the whole time, when it was clear to the viewer for all the seasons that sounds like he did some good internal work exactly exactly.
It was all that therapy he was doing that really got him to that point. Yeah, glad he reached that point.
As someone who's never watched the show, right, I'm sure that's exactly what it was like, right, something like that while counseling or kind of like the Sopranos, Well he actually goes to counseling. This doesn't really Yeah, yeah, although I never saw that show, but I hear it's great. But this is this is natural tendency, right, Like we're born as selfish, selfish beings. Our brains are wired toward what we can get. Now, this is the lizard brain in action, and to keep it all for ourselves or
for our small tribe, our family. But just because a behavior is natural doesn't mean that it's the best path to take, and especially in again modern society. And so one of the more ultimate ways that were able to overcome our dumb brains is to spend our money in ways that are sacrificial, to spend or give it away in a way that doesn't bring us any benefit at all. This is one hundred percent a way that we can
overcome our idiot brains. And it's a reason that we like to encourage folks to be charitable, yes, to give their money away, because pretty much all stages of your financial journey, if you can be giving away a small portion and hopefully a growing portion of what you have what you make, it can help reframe money, put it in the proper light. And that is so powerful. It's powerful, largely for psychological reasons, and to get to see that
money do good in the world around you. That's beautiful too. Yeah, And of course there are, like you said, in ways that where we receive no benefit, but we're also even incentivized to give money away, like that's just how the tax goes to the tax go yeah, yeah, like yeah, So it's important to realize that from a principal standpoint, we want you to be doing it because it's not
necessarily going to give you any benefit. But there's also the tax benefits, and there's there's kind of like the emotional feel good benefits as well, but we're not going to get into all of that because something else that we can do to actually overcome our idiot brain is to automate and to impose limitations on ourselves. We're talking about rules and automation because they can help us to do the right thing consistently without even having to think
about it. Because once you opt to put let's say six percent into your four h one k, well, that joker is on autopilot. You don't have to think about it ever. Again, your your paycheck is smaller, but you forget about that pretty quickly. Automation helps us to overcome our own lack of discipline. And it's not to say that it's some sort of crutch. It's an effective tool and it's out there and so we want folks to
use it. But you can also impose artificial limits on yourself where you're able to create some friction where it didn't exist before, specifically on the shopping front. You know, that's something like instituting a twenty four or a forty eight hour waiting period. That way, you're not giving into those base desires of impulse buying, right or if that means that you're on Facebook too much, which can oftentimes
lead to purchases that maybe you shouldn't have made. A loved one of mine recently made approachase on Facebook that I'm not sure if that would have happened had that ad not been seen. But if that's the case, use the newsfeed erratic or plug in. That way, you can go straight to the how to Money Facebook group, because surely that's the only reason that you need to be taking advantage.
I got to say, I've been using that plug in for years. I have no idea what's going on on Facebook outside of the how to Money Facebook group, and I live in Bliss. I love it.
Or maybe it even means on your phone just deleting Instagram if like me, you have sometimes find yourself, you know, flipping through the carousel of the different sales or a minimum backcountry put it on page two of your apps. Yes, yeah, yeah, push it back a little bit. But there are different app limiting services out there. There is this one called one sec like one second and opal, but they can impose a delay between opening an app and actually seeing
the content. This is I think can be really helpful for both social and investing apps where you're trying to give yourself a minute to actually pause and to think is this something I need to do? Honestly, I like to just stepping backwards, Like, don't necessarily include more technology to solve the problems of more technology, but even consider taking a step backwards. I mean, I think this is why we're seeing the number of flip phones like dumb phones.
Sales of those have been skyrocketing, whereas sales of smartphones have actually declined. Thank Q four of last year, smartphone sales decline.
Oh, I seeing that, whereas.
Flip phones and like old school Nokia's sales are are actually on the rise. But Yeah, that's to me that that's an encouraging note. And I think that's something like I feel like we're seeing more of that with with gen Z because there's a younger, younger generation and they're tired of being highjacked having their screen time just completely dominate all their free time.
Yeah, I've been very intrigued by the light phone. I haven't made the jump. I haven't even played around with one, but I've contemplated, you know, jumping to something like that. I don't want to lose. I like podcasts on my phone. There's certain things that I like having at my fingertips. But then I also realized that that it's that there are other things at my fingertips that I wish were not there, that are constantly buying for my attention. And I wish I didn't even have to think about them.
I wish they didn't exist. But Mett to wrap this up, I mean, going back to that that Carl Jung quote at the beginning of the episode that you mentioned about making the unconscious conscious our lives, I feel like they often feel guided by an invisible hand, which really is our subconscious right as well as the market, as like Adam Smith said, I know that's really a nod to Adam Smith using that terminology, But that invisible hand that guys, I.
Mean, it's more than you think, because it is the market. It is actual companies truing a profit and that are trying to sell to you. But it's yeah, it's also the subcost.
It's also the things about today we've experienced at an early age, or the things that we've heard our friends say, or some sort of experience we had back in eighth grade. That informs how we think about money and how we handle it now more true than we realize. Yeah, And so I think when we unearth some of these thoughts and beliefs, we ask some of the deeper why questions, it's going to inevitably provide us with new information about ourselves, which is going to cause us to change some of
our preconceived notions and beliefs about money. And then those altered beliefs are going to invariably impact how we act, how we move forward in this world, how we spend, how we say, how we invest. And the truth is, money is not good or evil, right. It's a tool that can be used well or it can be used poorly. And we can either put too much stock in the
value of a dollar or not enough. But it's hard, if not impossible, to change our habits and our approach to money when we're not sure where the source belief material is coming from, what's subconsciously guiding us where that originates. And so I think it's important to do to do some of that deep work, not just to go, like you said, to some sort of technological halting mechanism to prevent us from taking the worst action possible.
And apps to help you to become your lizard brain.
Right. Yeah, it's not that some of those apps can't be helpful, but I think it's there's deeper work required really when it comes to fighting and overcoming our idiot brains.
Absolutely, man, Yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself. Let's get back to the beer that you and I enjoyed. This was an end of plagues and IPA by Burial. What I'll say, I'll describe the label art. It's a the artist that they have that makes all their labels. I forget his name. I'll actually make sure to link to his Instagram accounts after we've bashed in to Graham and how you should believe it in your phone, But all of his artwork is super metal.
This is just the best way to describe it.
But it's got a rat sitting there who's just like eating the earth that a rat or possum possume, I don't know either. Plagues are like rats, you know, like the bubony, filthy animal. Yeah, it's got the tail, but it's just Yeah, there's like filth all.
Around the earth. Yeah, the conventions gel up really well with the pictures, with the artwork, and they're both just a little over the top. Yeah.
Yeah, expect many more ridiculous names of the different burial beers that will have in the coming weeks. Yeah, but yeah, what were your thoughts though on this beer? I say, this was juicy and sharp, and it was almost like I pa concentrate, like, yeah, that's how I think of this, and but that's how I think of most of the burial beers and burial IPAs in particular, because they just
make some of the thickest, juiciest, beastly, most beastly iPAH. Yeah, I would say, so this is a single like a regular and in my mind the boty it was relatively light and body considering it's burial, and so it felt like a like a foundational IPA because there's some other ones that we're gonna have that are more.
Over the top, like maybe this is a nine and then the other one's taking up to twelve.
This is like their equivalent of a session idea. But it was really good, solid, and again when you poured it, it's kind of got that pale, milky golden color where you can't see through it at all. It's sort of like the new cars today where like your paint jobs, they've got zero metallic speck or fleck or whatever that's in them, you know, because like the old school and it's super traditional paint jobs. You see them and it's kind of it's got a sparkle to it. Yeah, but
like the new ones, they don't have any sparkle. It's just like a flat color. It's shiny, but there's just no additional metallic in it.
That's what this is.
Yeah, Like it's just solid one note color, but the flavor was anything but one note.
I'm glad you and I got to enjoy this one todays definitely all right, that's gonna do it for this one. You can as always find show notes for this and links to everything we mentioned, as well as a bunch of other money resources up on our site at how tomoney dot com. Don't forget the how to Money credit card tool. You can find that in the upper right hand corner of the homepage at howtomoney dot com. It's super easy to find the best credit card for you.
But Matt that's going to do it for this episode until next time. Best Friends out and best Friends Out