MORGAN HOUSEL’S NEW book, The Psychology of Money, covers a host of topics related to money and emotion. I was especially drawn to his notion that “how you behave is more important than what you know.” I’ve been a student of behavioral finance for some time and know this to be true academically—but it also made me think of my father, Ole.
My father was born in 1948 into extreme poverty.

IT’S THAT TIME OF year again, when Wall Street strategists begin publishing their market forecasts for next year. If you’re wondering whether to put any stock in those glossy publications, here’s my recommendation: Think back a year to the forecasts issued at the end of 2019. Did any of them predict that a virus would come out of left field, throwing the economy into recession, triggering a bear market and killing more than a million people worldwide?

I’M NOT MUCH OF a bartender. But when my wife and I hosted an art show in Missoula for a friend, I got the chance to serve wine while meeting a whole new group of people. Bankers—my usual social circle—tend to be strait-laced analytical types, so it was entertaining to spend an evening meeting creative folks from our thriving arts community.
One young couple, who sported an array of tattoos and piercings, had a story that caught my attention.

KEEP AN EYE ON THE neighbors. They could be the reason you’re poor and unhappy.
We all like to think we’re independent thinkers who weigh the evidence and reach our own conclusions—and yet there’s ample evidence that our views are heavily influenced by those around us, whether we’re choosing presidential candidates, bottled water or mayonnaise. This extends to financial matters, sometimes with grim consequences.
Stocking up. Studies have found that those who live near one another tend to invest in a similar fashion.

WHEN I THINK ABOUT investment advisors selling high-fee products, it brings to mind the story of two politicians who were shouting at each other. One of them stands up and screams, “You’re lying!” The other one answers, “Yes, I am, but hear me out!”
In my 40 years of investing, I’ve bought into some questionable sales pitches. You’ve heard them: “The easy money’s been made. It’s going to be a stock picker’s market going forward.” Or: “Only losers are satisfied with just earning the market averages,

I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU about a unique new book. How I Invest My Money is a compilation of personal money stories shared by 25 investment professionals. The book takes its title and inspiration from a 2019 blog post by investment advisor Josh Brown, a widely followed author and TV commentator.
Brown’s motivation: After years of on-air commentary, discussing every conceivable financial topic, it occurred to him that no one ever asks investment people how they invest their own money.

HOW MUCH WOULD you pay for $10? Taking my cues from a game developed by economist Martin Shubik, I’d offer to auction off a $10 bill to my high school students. There were three rules:

Students could only offer bids. No commentary, cooperation or deal-making were allowed.
The highest bidder paid me the money and received the $10.
The second-highest bidder had to pay me their final bid but got nothing.

I ran such auctions for 20 years and it almost always had three stages.

WHY DO WE MAKE spending decisions that we later regret? Yes, we tend to live for today and give scant thought to tomorrow. But it’s more complicated than that—which brings me to four insights from psychology.
I find the insights below fascinating, in part because they describe how I behave with uncanny accuracy. Many readers, I suspect, will also catch a glimpse of their own behavior:
Moral licensing. If we do something good—exercise,

RESEARCHERS HAVE spent decades probing the connection between money and happiness. For instance, a much-cited 2010 study by academics Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that folks tend to feel happier the more money they make—but only up to a point, which they estimated to be about $75,000 a year.
But using only income to measure the link between money and happiness is incomplete. Another study, entitled “How Your Bank Balance Buys Happiness,” analyzed the connection to people’s “cash on hand.” The researchers found that having more money in checking and savings accounts was associated with higher levels of life satisfaction.

YOU’RE SITTING IN your favorite restaurant, feeling famished. The waiter arrives and reads a long list of mouth-watering specials. Yet the moment he walks away, all you can recall is the last item on the list.
Welcome to the recency effect.
In psychology, the recency effect refers to the human tendency, when asked to remember a long list of things, to have sharper recall of the final items. No doubt you’ve experienced this at a party.

I WAS AGE 31 WHEN I started my job as a department manager at a small college in Portland, Oregon. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for people to mistake me for one of the students.
Now I’m 53 and people assume I’m the mother of one of the students. I’ve been working at the college for more than 22 years, which means I’ve been there longer than most of the current students have been alive.

DANIEL SUELO IS ONE of the most interesting characters I’ve ever met. At dinner with him and some friends almost a decade ago, I spent the evening trying to understand his view of money—or, to be more accurate, his refusal to believe in money at all.
Suelo was in Montana to talk about a book that had been written about him, The Man Who Quit Money. As the title implies, Suelo—a well-educated and articulate man—made a decision in 2000 to stop using money.

WE FIGHT ABOUT MONEY all the time. Politicians argue over how to spend the stuff and who should pay. Couples argue about why there isn’t enough and who’s to blame. And nerdy folks—that would include me—bicker over which investments to buy, when to claim Social Security, the virtues of homeownership and countless other topics.
These debates may amuse others, but I often find them frustrating—because they’re never just about facts and logic. Instead, far too many people come to these arguments with baggage that borders on cargo.

FOR A LIFE TO BE meaningful, it doesn’t need to be unique—and yet many of us believe that’s necessary. We’re convinced we lack something special, and that paralyzes us. This is a mistake, says the philosopher Iddo Landau, who argues that everybody already possesses what they need for a meaningful existence. We just need to look harder.
I’ve spent years researching and educating myself on how to find and cultivate purpose. This helped me to develop a process to guide clients,

WHEN I WAS GROWING up, I don’t remember my parents talking about the stock market. In fact, I’m not sure when they started buying stocks. It could have been sometime after I graduated from high school in 1969.
When I was a junior in high school, however, I do remember a conversation about stocks between two of my classmates. Brandon was telling Brian that he could buy a motorcycle if he sold some of his shares.