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Morgan Housel: What You Need to Master (And Avoid) to Get Rich, Stay Rich, and Build Wealth - YouTube

发布时间 2024-05-27 22:15:02 来源

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Not having FOMO is the single most important financial skill. I think it's so important that you cannot ever imagine accumulating significant wealth over your lifetime if you are susceptible to FOMO. Like if there's literally one thing, like one trait that you want that's gonna allow you to accumulate wealth, it's the lack of FOMO. Why do index funds work so well? Two reasons. One is it's always gonna be the case that a very small number of stocks account for the majority of returns. The other is I think the. Whether it's like an investing debate or a saving or spending debate. They're not actually debating it. It's people with different personalities talking over each other. And once you come to terms with that, there's not one right answer for any of this. What's the difference between being rich and being wealthy? Rich is when you have enough money to make your mortgage payment, make your car payment, and you can pay off your credit card bill every month. Wealthy I think is when you have a degree of independence in autonomy. The weird thing here is that wealth is the money that you don't spend. Let's switch gears and talk about reading and writing. How do you select what you read? I heard this idea. I think it was from Patrick Ashaunissing many years ago who said, You want a wide funnel and a tight filter. You're one of the best storytellers of our generation. Teach me how to tell a story like Morgan Hassel. I think it's two things. One is. I want to start with a bit of a paradox.

没有FOMO（害怕错过）的心理是最重要的理财技能。我认为它的重要性如此之大，以至于如果你容易受到FOMO的影响，你无法想象在一生中积累显著财富。就像如果有一种特质能帮助你积累财富，那就是缺乏FOMO。为什么指数基金表现如此出色？两个原因：一是总有少数股票占多数收益；二是无论是投资、储蓄还是消费的争论，其实不是在争论，而是不同性格的人在各说各话。一旦你接受这一点，就不会有一个正确答案了。富有和财富有什么区别？富有是指你有足够的钱付房贷、车贷，并且每月能还清信用卡账单。而我认为财富是你拥有一定程度的独立自主。奇怪的是，财富是你没花出去的钱。我们换个话题，聊聊阅读和写作。你如何选择阅读材料？我听到一个想法，可能是多年前Patrick Ashaunissing说的，他说你需要一个宽广的漏斗和一个紧密的过滤器。你是我们这一代最好的故事讲述者之一，教教我如何像Morgan Housel那样讲故事。我认为有两点。首先，我想从一个悖论开始。

The less money we seem to have, the more risks we're willing to take. Can you explain that to me? Daniel Kahneman said something along the lines of, When all your options are bad, your willingness to take a risk explodes because you got nothing else to lose. I think you see this in a lot of areas in life. One that I see it all the time in, that is a big news story in the United States. I don't know if it's the same in Canada, but in America we spend something like $100 billion a year on lottery tickets. $100 billion. It's massive that people spend on lottery tickets. If you dig into who's buying it, it's almost exclusively poor people. They buy the vast majority of lottery tickets and the poorer you are, the more lottery tickets you buy. These are some people for whom they literally can't buy food or they might be homeless. Whatever little money they have, they go into a 7-Eleven and buy some Scratcher tickets. You might look at that and say, you idiot. It's like, what are you doing? This is the dumbest idea I've ever seen. Maybe that's the right answer. Maybe you couldn't stop there. In Kahneman's framework, I think it starts to make a little bit more sense. If you have someone in a situation like this who in their mind at least, they think, I can't get a raise. I can't build a career. I can't get promoted. I'm stuck in minimum wage jobs. If that's their mindset, then buying a lottery ticket might be the only time in their life where they can say to themselves and believe, this is my literally ticket out of here. This is the only chance that I have to get ahead. It starts to make a little bit more sense in that situation. Maybe you contrast that with someone who has a very high net worth. They might be like, look, I could just put all my money in Treasuries and just live for the rest of my life to solve the interest. When you have so much, you don't need to take the risk. Well, it comes down to perspective. If I could see what you see and feel what you feel, that decision would be rational. There's so many things in life where you can look at other people and the decisions they make, not just in money, but for politics, their health decisions, whatever it might be, and fiercely disagree with it. But what's easy to overlook is that if I were in your shoes and had experienced what you had, had the same family dynamic that you do, the same DNA that you do, I would do the exact same thing. I think that is a more important question to ask yourself. What financial decisions would I make differently if I were born in a different era, born to different parents, born in a different country? And I think you can't answer that question, honestly, because you don't know. But you know there would be a lot of things different that are completely outside of your control.

我们似乎越缺钱，就越愿意冒险。你能解释一下这个吗？丹尼尔·卡尼曼曾说过类似的话，当你所有的选项都很糟时，你愿意冒险的意愿会大幅增加，因为你已经无所失去了吧。我认为这在生活的许多领域都能看到。在美国有一个我经常看到的重大新闻故事，不知道在加拿大是否一样，就是美国每年在彩票上花费了大约1000亿美元。1000亿美元，这是个天文数字。而如果你深入研究谁在买这些彩票，会发现几乎都是穷人在买。大多数彩票是他们买的，而且你越贫穷，买的彩票越多。这些人有些甚至连食物都买不起，或者没有住的地方。不管他们仅有的那点钱，他们都会去便利店买一些刮刮乐彩票。你可能会觉得，他们这是在做蠢事。这是我见过最愚蠢的想法。也许这答案是对的，也许你还可以进一步思考。在卡尼曼的框架下，我觉得这就更合理一些了。如果一个人在这种情况下，至少他们认为自己无法加薪，无法建立事业，无法得到升职，他们只能做最低工资的工作，那么买张彩票可能是他们唯一一次可以对自己说并相信这是他们改变命运的机会。在这种情况下，它开始显得稍微合理一些。你可以对比一下一个非常富有的人，他们可能会说，看看，我只要把钱投资在国债里就可以安享余生了。拥有很多财富的时候，就不需要冒险。这归结为一种视角问题。如果我能够看到你所看到的，感受到你所感受到的，那么这个决定就是理性的。有很多事情，你可以看着别人做出的决定，不仅仅是在金钱方面，还包括政治、健康等方面，可能会强烈反对。但很容易忽视的一点是，如果我站在你的立场，经历过你所经历的，拥有相同的家庭背景和基因，我也会做出同样的决定。我认为这是一个更重要的问题，问问自己：如果我出生在不同的年代，不同的父母，不同的国家，我会做出什么不同的财务决定？而我觉得你无法诚实地回答这个问题，因为你不知道。但是你知道会有很多完全不受你控制的不同之处。

Where and when you were born would have a massive impact. You and I should not pretend that if we were born in the 1960s in Nigeria, that we would have the same views about investing in the stock market over time that you and I do today. This kind of gets to the topic of luck. And a lot of people when you bring up luck, they will say something that sounds smart that I fiercely disagree with. They say like, oh, you should increase the surface area of your luck. You should like, oh, the harder I work, the luckier I get. It was like some variation of that. And I'm like, no, if you can do something that changes your odds of an outcome, it's not luck by definition. Luck to me, the biggest start, where and when you were born. You can't control it.

你出生的地点和时间会产生巨大的影响。你和我不应该假装，如果我们在1960年代的尼日利亚出生，我们对股票市场投资的看法会和今天一样。这话题涉及到运气。很多人在谈到运气时，会说一些听起来聪明，我却强烈反对的话。他们会说：“哦，你应该增加自己的运气表面积。”或者类似“我越努力，运气越好”这样的话。而我认为，不是这样的。如果你能做一些事情来改变结果的概率，从定义上来说，这就不是运气。对我来说，运气最大的决定因素就是你出生的地点和时间，这是你无法控制的。

Bill Gates couldn't control it. Elon Musk couldn't control it, but it has a massive impact on where you're going to go in life. That to me is what luck is. It's what you truly have absolutely no control over. And then there's also the, not only the country you're born into, but the socioeconomic household you're born into, the schools that you go to. How much of this is nature versus nurture versus chosen nurture? The stat that I think is so astounding is that income among brothers is more correlated than height or weight. So basically that means if you have a brother who is rich and tall, you are more likely to also be rich than you are. It's more correlated than the literal DNA that you're sharing with each other.

比尔·盖茨无法控制它。埃隆·马斯克也无法控制它，但它对你人生的走向有着巨大的影响。在我看来，这就是运气。它是你完全无法掌控的因素。而且，不仅是你出生的国家，还有你出生的社会经济家庭，你上的学校，这些都是不可控的。有多少是天性决定的，有多少是后天环境决定的，还有多少是选择性后天环境决定的？我觉得最令人惊讶的数据是，兄弟间的收入相关性比身高或体重的相关性更高。所以这基本上意味着，如果你有一个富有并且高个子的兄弟，那么你更有可能也会富有，而不仅仅是因为你们共享的DNA。这说明收入的相关性比遗传特征的相关性还要高。

Look, is it a perfect correlation? No. Is it possible to be raised by a poor family and become rich? Of course. Is it possible to be raised by a rich family and end up in the streets? Of course. But there's a very strong correlation between those two. I think people get really, can get kind of testy when you talk about luck. Because if I say that you got lucky, I look jealous. And if I say that I got lucky, I feel diminished in what I'm doing in life. So it plays a massive role, but it's very easy to ignore the impact that it has in the world.

看，是不是完全的因果关系？不是。出身贫困家庭却变富有，有没有可能？当然有。从富裕家庭出来后却沦落街头，有没有可能？当然有。但是这两者之间确实有很强的关联。我觉得人们在谈到运气的时候，往往会有些敏感。因为如果我说你运气好，我显得嫉妒。而如果我说我自己运气好，又觉得自己目前的成就被贬低了。所以运气确实起着巨大的作用，但我们很容易忽视它在世界上的影响。

How do we break down that contribution between luck and skill or what's repeatable on our part? Rather than saying, what is luck? I think it's important to just say like, what is repeatable? What is something that happened that I could do again? And if we look at Buffett, this guy standing behind our shoulder here, and listen to this, and let's look at the course of his life. I cannot. He cannot recreate the trading conditions that existed in the 1950s that allowed him to buy blue chip stocks at three times earnings, whatever it was back then that he was doing. He can't recreate that. He couldn't do it again. But could I or you or anyone else listening try to recreate his patience, some of his risk framework? Yes.

我们如何区分运气和技能的贡献，或者说哪些是我们可以重复做到的？与其问什么是运气，我认为更重要的是问什么是可以重复的？什么是我可以再次做到的事情？看看巴菲特，这位站在我们身后的传奇人物，听听他的经历，回顾他的生平。我们无法，也巴菲特也无法重现1950年代的交易环境，那时他能够以三倍市盈率买入蓝筹股，不论他当时在做什么，现在都无法再现。但是，我或者你，或者其他任何人是否可以尝试重现他的耐心，以及他的一些风险框架？答案是可以的。

So that's something we should pay attention to. And we want to find what is repeatable and what you could do again. And those are the things that you should pay the most attention to. I think that's fascinating, right? Because when we look at Buffett, what we want is the outcome. And what we don't think about is all the things that go into creating that outcome. So what stays the same between all these different decades where he's done this, right? So he's done it from buying net net, Ben Graham stocks, all the way to buying great businesses, all the way to the patients to do nothing, and then once every 10 years deploy a whole bunch of cash. What is consistent across that period in your mind? Two of the big ones, we could come up with dozens of things that are consistent with someone like Buffett. But the two big ones are endurance and maybe tied to that, capping a downside risk that allows him to stick around for longer than anyone else.

所以这是我们应该关注的事情。我们要发现哪些事情是可以重复做的，哪些事情是你能够再次实现的。这些都是你应该最关注的。我认为这很有趣，对吧？因为当我们看巴菲特时，我们想要的是结果，而我们没有考虑到的是为了取得这个结果所做的所有事情。那么在过去的几十年里，他是如何做到这一点的呢？他从购买“净资产股票”（本·格雷厄姆的投资理念）开始，一直到购买优秀企业，再到耐心地什么都不做，然后每十年一次动用大量资金投资。你认为在这个过程中，什么是一致的？我们可以找到许多和巴菲特一致的特点，但两个最重要的一个是他的韧性，另一个可能是他对下行风险的限制，这使得他比任何人都能坚持更长时间。

There's also a psychological trait of wanting to keep going longer than anyone else. I use this stat in my book that 99% of Buffett's net worth was accumulated after his 60th birthday. Like the vast majority of people, including me and maybe you, if we became a billionaire at age 60, would be done. He moved to Florida and buy a private island and like live happily ever after. For him to be that successful and to keep going full blast for what's now another 33 years and still going stronger than ever is a very unique characteristic that plays a massive role in his success. If Buffett had retired at age 60 or 50 like a normal person would have in that situation, you have never heard of him. The whole reason he's so successful is just the endurance. And there's a, again, there's a psychological and a financial component to that.

还有一种心理特质是想比别人坚持得更久。我在书中用了一项统计数据说明这一点——巴菲特的99%的净资产是在他60岁以后积累的。像大多数人，包括我自己，可能还有你，如果我们在60岁时成为亿万富翁，就会觉得差不多可以退休了。他会搬到佛罗里达，买个私人岛屿，然后过上幸福的生活。但巴菲特不仅成功，并且在接下来的33年里依然全力以赴，而且比以往任何时候都更强大。这种独特的特质在他的成功中起到了巨大的作用。如果巴菲特像正常人那样在60岁或50岁退休，你根本不会听说过他。他如此成功的原因就在于他的持久力。而这其中既有心理上的，也有财务上的因素。

Never getting wiped out financially and the psychology that will allow him to keep going full blast for nearly a century on end now. But that sounds academically correct, but in temperament, incredibly difficult because I see my friends getting rich off like Bitcoin or something. And that makes me want to change the patience that I have. I know how to get wealthy over time. We know historically that what's worked is saving money, being very patient, letting it compound decade after decade. And then all of a sudden you wake up with a ton of money and financial independence. But if I see my neighbor getting richer quicker than I am, it makes me want to accelerate that timeline. And my lack of patience sort of changes the outcome.

永远不会在财务上彻底崩溃，而这种心理状态将使他能够近乎一个世纪以来一直全力以赴。但这听起来在理论上是正确的，但在性格上却异常困难，因为我看到我的朋友们通过比特币之类的东西迅速致富。这让我想改变我的耐心。我知道如何随着时间的推移变得富有。历史经验告诉我们，有效的方法是存钱，非常有耐心，几十年地复利增长。然后突然有一天你会醒来，发现自己有了一大笔钱，实现了财务独立。但如果我看到我的邻居比我更快致富，这会让我想加速这个时间表。我的耐心不足在某种程度上改变了结果。

不患得患失(FOMO)是最重要的财务技能。我认为这一点非常重要，以至于如果你总是受到FOMO的影响，你无法想象你一生中能积累到可观的财富。可以说，如果你想要具备一种能够帮你积累财富的特质，那就是不患得患失。特别是在现代市场上，社交媒体、Reddit和Twitter等平台会让你变得非常疯狂。如果你容易受到FOMO的影响，长期来看你是没有希望的。我真的不觉得这是夸张。能够看到你的邻居比你富有得多而不受影响，这一点在如今是非常关键和容易被忽视的。

I don't have that many financial skills. I could never be a stock picker. I could never be a trader. I don't have the intellect or the horsepower to pull that off. But I feel like I've never been, at least that susceptible to FOMO. It doesn't bother me and the slightest to watch other people getting rich. Brent Bishore, our mutual good friend, had a quote that I love. He said, I am perfectly happy watching you get very rich doing something that I would never want to do. And I think that's a great way to frame it. I don't get jealous or anxious to watch other people get richer than I am over time.

我没有太多的金融技能。我永远无法成为一个股票挑选者，我也永远无法成为一个交易员。我没有那种智力或动力去完成这些事情。但我觉得，我从来没有，至少并不那么容易受到错失恐惧症（FOMO）的影响。看着别人变得富有一点都不会困扰我。我们共同的好朋友布伦特·比肖尔有一句话我很喜欢。他说：“我非常乐意看到你通过做一些我永远不想做的事情变得非常富有。” 我认为这是一个很好的表达方式。我不会因为看到别人比我更富有而感到嫉妒或焦虑。

My investing strategy is to own index funds for as long as I possibly can. To be average for an above average period of time. And I think that will actually lead to an incredible outcome. Not only will it achieve the financial goals that I have for my family, but I think over a long period of time it will put you in the top decile at least of people who are compounding money over time. I think that's really hard to appreciate that what short-term optimal and what's long-term optimal are often two different things. Completely different things. Howard Marks talked about this investor that he knew who in any given year he was never in the top half versus his peers. He was never in the top 50% of other investors. And over a 20-year period he was in the top 4%. Because everyone else who was beating him in a given year couldn't keep it going.

我的投资策略是尽可能长时间持有指数基金。要在一个超长的时间内保持平均水平。我相信这实际上会带来非常好的结果。这不仅会实现我对家庭的财务目标，还会在长时间里使你处于至少前10%累积财富的投资者行列。我认为很难理解的是，短期优化和长期优化往往是两件完全不同的事情。Howard Marks曾提到一个他认识的投资者，这个人在每一年都没有超过同行中的前半部分，也从未进入过前50%的投资者行列。但在连续20年的时间里，他却跻身前4%。因为那些每年都在超越他的人，最终无法继续保持下去。

And so like what's your ultimate goal? So much of investing is just define the game that you're playing. And I don't look down upon or criticize people who are short-term traders. Maybe that's their game and for their investors or for their like it makes sense for them. My game is different. I think your game is different. Most people's game might be a little bit different. And what's important is that if your game is to invest for the next 20, 30, 50 years, that you're not taking your cues from people who are playing a different game of trading for the next quarter. And that's where a lot of danger and investing comes from. You've changed my capital allocation strategy. Our conversations. Our walks totally. How so? What did you used to do that you don't anymore? We used to do a lot more private investments. And now it's mostly index funds. And as things sort of roll in through dividends or whatever, it just gets reinvested in index funds. But it's our conversations that change that.

那么，你的终极目标是什么？投资的很多方面就是要明确你在玩什么样的游戏。我不会看不起或批评那些短期交易的人。也许那是他们的游戏，对于他们的投资者或者他们自己来说，这样做是有意义的。我的游戏不同，我认为你的游戏也不同。大多数人的游戏可能会有些不同。重要的是，如果你打算投资未来的20年、30年、50年，你不应该从那些只规划下一个季度交易的人那里获取方法和策略。这就是很多投资风险的来源。我们的对话和散步彻底改变了我分配资金的策略。怎么改变的？你以前做什么，现在不做了？我们以前做了很多私人投资，现在主要是投指数基金。而且随着股息等收入进来，这些钱都会重新投资到指数基金中。但正是我们的谈话改变了这一切。

Well, great. That makes me happy and nervous that I'm having influence. One thing that some people will say when you talk about index funds is like, what is the guarantee that this is going to work for the next 50 years? Okay. I understand it works in the past 50 years. And my response is always like nothing. There's no guarantee that this is going to work. It's very possible that it doesn't work out for whatever reason. And there have been periods, you know, from the late 1920s and 1950s where the returns were terrible. Or even from 2000 to 2010, you had basically zero percent real returns in index funds. So it's not perfect in the slightest. Nothing guarantees that it's going to work or be satisfactory over time. But I think when you adjust it for the effort that is put in, the lack of effort that's put in basically zero effort to do this. And you adjust it for the fees, which round to zero now. When you adjust for all those things, it's a very appealing way to invest over time.

好吧，这太好了。这让我既开心又紧张，因为我有影响力。当你谈到指数基金时，有些人会问，未来50年它还会奏效吗？好吧，我理解过去50年它的表现不错。我的回应总是，什么都没有。这没有任何保证它会奏效。完全有可能因为某种原因它不能奏效。曾经有过这样的时期，比如从1920年代末到1950年代那段时间，回报率非常糟糕。甚至从2000年到2010年，指数基金的实际回报率几乎为零。所以它一点也不完美，没有任何保证它会一直有效或令人满意。但是我认为，当你考虑到它所需要的努力几乎为零，还有它的费用现在几乎为零时，综合来看，这是一个非常吸引人的长期投资方式。

If I was to look at your balance sheet, what is your capital allocation strategy? I'm trying to think of what like the percentage wise, it's probably something like 15 to 20% cash, the house that I live in, and then the rest index funds and shares a Mark L where I'm on the board of directors. And that's it. Those are those are my only assets. Cash house index funds, Mark L stock. That's it. Which index fund? Vanguard total stock market index, Vanguard value fund, and a little bit of an international fund. Why do index funds work so well? Two reasons. One is it's always going to be the case that a very small number of stocks account for the majority of returns.

如果我查看你的资产负债表，你的资本配置策略是什么？我试图理解你的资产分配比例，大概是这样的：15%到20%的现金，住房（我自己居住的房子），剩下的用于指数基金和我在Mark L公司（我在董事会）的股份。就是这样。这些是我唯一的资产：现金、房子、指数基金和Mark L的股票。就这些。你投的是哪些指数基金呢？Vanguard总股票市场指数基金、Vanguard价值基金，还有一点国际基金。为什么指数基金效果这么好？有两个原因。第一，总是会有很少数的股票贡献了大部分的收益。

So recently it's been a fang plus Nvidia. If you didn't own those stocks, fang plus Nvidia over the last decade, your odds of outperforming are very, very low. It's not zero, but it's incredibly hard if you didn't own those few. And even if you look at an index fund that owns a thousand stocks, let's say, you're going to get the majority of your returns. From probably fewer than 20 of them. And it's always been like that. Back in the 90s, it was AOL and Cisco and Microsoft and Dell and those kind of companies. In a previous generation, it was general electric and Intel and those kind of companies. It's always the case that it's very tail driven, the distribution of returns. And owning the index just guarantees that whatever is going to be the next driver I own. Because it's extremely difficult to know what those are going to be.

所以，最近来说，投资FANG股票加上英伟达（Nvidia）非常重要。如果你在过去十年间没有持有这些股票，你战胜市场的几率非常非常低。虽然不至于完全没有可能，但如果没有持有那么几只股票，要跑赢市场真的非常困难。即使你看一个包含一千只股票的指数基金，你的大部分回报可能也是来自不到其中20只股票。而且这一直以来都是这样。90年代的时候，是AOL、思科（Cisco）、微软（Microsoft）和戴尔（Dell）等公司。在更早的一代，是通用电气（General Electric）、英特尔（Intel）等公司。股票回报分布总是非常极端化的。持有指数基金只不过是保证了你会拥有未来表现突出的那些股票，因为预判哪些公司会成为未来的驱动因素是非常困难的。

If you had gone back to 2004, 20 years ago and tried to predict what are the big winners going to be over the next 20 years. Well, by the way, some of those companies didn't even exist yet. Facebook didn't even exist yet. Google was still a private company or maybe just gone public in 2004. The big winners are, I think, extremely difficult to know with any foresight what it's going to be. And if you had suggested, even three years ago, that Nvidia was going to be one of them. You ought to be like, what? And like, make like, what a sound and absurd.

如果你回到2004年，也就是20年前，试图预测未来20年的大赢家会是谁。顺便提一下，那时有些公司甚至还不存在。Facebook还没有成立。Google在2004年还是一家私人公司，也许刚刚上市。要提前知道哪些公司会成为大赢家，我认为是非常困难的。如果你在三年前就说Nvidia将会是其中之一，你可能会被人觉得不可思议，甚至荒谬。

So you're guaranteeing that you're going to own the oddballs that account for the majority of the returns over time. The other is, I think, the lack of effort that goes into it that is needed. Investing is one of the very few endeavors in life where the harder you try, the worse you're probably going to do. And yes, there are exceptions to that Renaissance technology. So, of course, you can name the exceptions for people who tried very hard and did very well. But for the vast majority of people, there's going to be a negative correlation between the effort you put into it and the results that you got out of it. And so the leave it alone aspect of investing in index funds is very important.

因此，你实际上是在保证自己将拥有那些长期贡献了大部分回报的异常股票。另一个原因，我认为，是因为这其中投入的努力很少。投资是生活中为数不多的，越努力可能反而效果越差的事情之一。是的，当然也有一些例外，比如文艺复兴科技公司。所以，当然你可以列举那些努力拼搏并取得巨大成功的例子。但对于绝大多数人来说，投入的努力和得到的结果之间会存在负相关。因此，在投资指数基金时，保持不动实际上是非常重要的。

One little stat that I love about this is that if you look at both the DAO and the S&P 500, those are not static indexes. They change over time. There are new constituents that are added. Companies go out of business or they merge. And then new companies are added to that. If you were to look at the DAO, I think one of the studies showed over the last 100 years, if rather than adding a new company when one of the original components when at a business emerged, if you just left it alone, don't add anything else, don't take anything out, just literally take the original components and leave them alone. You would have done better than the companies that were added and removed, added and removed.

我喜欢的一个小统计数据是，如果你查看道琼斯工业平均指数（DAO）和标准普尔500指数（S&P 500），你会发现这些指数并不是静态不变的。它们会随着时间的推移发生变化。会有新的成分股被加入进来，而一些公司会破产或被合并，然后新的公司会被添加进去。如果你看一下道琼斯指数，有研究显示，在过去的100年里，如果当原始成分股中的一家公司破产或被合并时，你不添加新的公司，只是保持原封不动，不增不减，只看原始的成分股，你的表现会比那些不断被加入和移出的公司要好。

Like any activity that goes into it tends to be detrimental over time. That's I've always thought is very fascinating. It's literally like there's very few exceptions in the index world to where the more effort you put into it, the better you're going to do over time. Do you think we find it boring and that's why we don't want to do it? It's a combination of boredom and just the counter intuition of the less effort the better we're going to do. Because any other endeavor in life, whether it's your physical fitness or whatever it might be, there is a positive correlation. If you want to become in better shape, you exercise, you put more effort into it. In most endeavors in life, the harder you try, the better you're going to do.

像任何投入其中的活动一样，随着时间的推移，通常会产生不利影响。这是我一直认为非常有趣的地方。在指数投资领域里，几乎没有例外，投入越多的努力，长期表现越好的情况非常少见。你觉得我们觉得它很无聊，所以不愿意去做吗？这是一种无聊感和直觉上的反差的结合：投入越少的努力，表现却越好。因为在生活中的其他任何事情上，不管是身体健康还是其他方面，都是正相关的。如果你想变得更健康，你就要锻炼，投入更多的努力。在生活中的大多数事情上，你越努力，表现就会越好。

And investing is just not one of those. And it's so not intuitive that people end up tripping over themselves. I would also say too that I am not against active investing in the slightest at all. I have so much respect and admiration for the people who do it well. And the stats that get thrown around that are true that 90% or more of mutual funds will underperform the benchmark. My response to that is always like, of course, that's how it is. You should not expect to live in a world in which everyone who tries to beat the market can do it. Of course, that's how it is. And the people who can do it are enormously talented. And I have so much respect for them to have them sitting behind our shoulders here.

而投资并不是其中之一。而且它是如此不直观，以至于人们最终在这个过程中不断绊倒自己。我还想说，我一点都不反对主动投资。我对那些做得很好的人充满了尊敬和钦佩。确实有统计数据显示，90%或更多的共同基金表现不及基准。对此我的反应总是这样的：当然，这就是现实。你不应该期望生活在一个所有尝试战胜市场的人都能做到的世界里。现实就是如此。而那些能够做到的人拥有巨大的才能。我非常尊敬他们，愿他们一直在我们身边。

And other people, I know people, you know people who have been and I think will continue to be successful at this. So I'm not a passive zealot in the slightest. I just think for myself and many other people, it's probably the smartest way to invest. How do you keep your goalposts from moving as you accumulate and compound wealth? Hey, I think everyone's including my and my wife's have not stopped moving nor should they. I don't personally aspire to live in a world where if I'm lucky enough for my net worth to go up, 100% of it just a cruise to savings over time. That's not the life that I want to live. I want to have a great life with some great material possessions and travel with my kids and live well over time. If your net worth grows 10%, but your expectations grow 12%, that's when you get into trouble. It's just the gap between the two. And so, look, I'm making this up. This is not an actual analysis, but I bet over time, if my net worth has gone up by 10% per year, our goalpost has grown by 5% per year, making those numbers up, but it's something like that. So, yes, my family lives a better life materially today than we did 10 years ago, but we've still saved and lots of money during that period. I think that's all that mattters over time.

我认识一些人，你也认识一些人，他们过去很成功，我觉得他们未来也会继续成功。所以我并不是什么消极的狂热分子。我只是觉得对我自己和许多其他人来说，这可能是最聪明的投资方式。你怎么在积累和复利财富时保持目标不变呢？嘿，我觉得每个人，包括我和我妻子在内，我们的目标都没有停止变化，也不应该停止变化。我个人不希望生活在一个如果我幸运的话，资产净值上升后，100%都只是存到储蓄里的世界。那不是我想要的生活。我希望能拥有一些不错的物质财富，和孩子们一起旅游，并且随着时间的推移过上好日子。如果你的净资产增长了10%，但你的期望却增长了12%，那你就会遇到麻烦。关键在于两者之间的差距。因此，我只是打个比方，这不是一个实际的分析，但我猜随着时间的推移，如果我的净资产每年增长10%，我们的目标每年增长5%，这些数字是随便编的，但情况大概就是如此。所以，是的，我的家庭今天的物质生活比10年前好了很多，但在这期间我们也存下了不少钱。我觉得这就是长远来看最重要的事情。

Is that you? And even Buffett and Munger, who are known for being frugal, Buffett lives in the same house. He bought when he was 26. Yes, but he also flies a private jet and had a beautiful beachfront house in Laguna Beach. These guys are not living like poppers over time. And that's what I think is really important. It's just making sure that there's a gap between your net worth and your expectations. Seems one of the things that we inherit from society is that the house you live in is your prime financial asset. Yeah. That seems really recent as well, maybe the last 30, 40 years where that's become the vast majority of wealth for Americans and Canadians.

是你吗？即便是以节俭著称的巴菲特和芒格，巴菲特现在还住在26岁时买的那栋房子里。是的，但他也乘坐私人飞机，还有一栋漂亮的海滨别墅在拉古纳海滩。这些人并没有一直过着清贫的生活。我觉得重要的是，确保你的净资产和你的期望之间有一个差距。一个社会给我们灌输的观念之一就是，你住的房子是你最主要的财务资产。对，这个观念似乎也是最近30到40年才变得普遍的，现在它成了美国人和加拿大人大部分财富的来源。

I know in the United States, real home prices for most of modern history in the 20th century were flat as a pancake. Robert Schiller of Yale did a lot of analysis on this, tracking US home prices since 1800s. And in real terms, from probably the 1940s through the 1990s were flat as a pancake, on average across the United States. And then in the last 20 years, starting with the housing bubble that started around 2003, they exploded higher. And then of course, we had the housing crash in 2008, and people thought that was the end of the bubble. But then they've exploded higher even more. Real home prices in the US, I'm sure it's the same in Canada, are much higher today than they were at the peak of the bubble in 2006, on average.

我知道在美国，20世纪大部分现代历史中的实际房价一直平稳得像煎饼一样。耶鲁大学的罗伯特·席勒做了大量分析，他追踪了美国自1800年代以来的房价。以实际价格计算，从1940年代到1990年代，美国房价基本保持平稳。而在过去的20年里，从2003年前后的房地产泡沫开始，房价大幅上涨。然后在2008年房地产崩盘，人们以为泡沫已经结束。但后来房价再次大幅上升。美国的实际房价，当然我相信加拿大也是一样，如今平均水平要比2006年泡沫高峰期还要高得多。

Of course, there's many variables going into that, a lack of building of new homes that didn't keep up with generational growth. And it makes it kind of bifurcates the world in terms of if you have owned a home for any period over the last 20 years, you've probably done very well. And if you are looking for your first home today, it's harder than it's ever been, particularly now that interest rates in the US are 7 or 7.5% for 30 year fixed rate mortgage. Combine that with home prices that are just absurd, particularly in the metro areas that people want to live in. It's completely bifurcated because if you own a house for the last 10 years, you can sell that house and take the equity that has grown in that house to buy a new one to use for your down payment on the other house that's been inflated, whose price has been inflated. But if you're trying to break in for the first time, it's a joke. It's a complete joke. So that's, it's a very difficult thing. I would not, I have a lot of sympathy for the first time home buyer today who is just, who does not have parental support, which is the vast majority of them. It's harder than it's ever been. And there are few things that make you feel like you are stable in your adult life than owning the house that you live in. And I think it plays a huge role in a lot of things in life. A lot of people, this would have been same for my wife and I don't want to start having kids until they own their home. They want to have that sense of stability before they start having kids. So I think the lack of housing affordability has an impact on demographics and having kids over time that will echo for the next 50 or 70 years. So it plays a huge role in what's going on in society.

当然，有很多变量影响到这一情况，其中一个就是新建住房跟不上代际增长。这导致了世界的分化，如果在过去20年内你已经拥有了一套房子，你可能过得很好。而如果你今天正在寻找你的第一套住房，现在比以往任何时候都更难，特别是在美国的30年固定利率房贷利率达到7%或7.5%的情况下。再加上房价的高涨，特别是在人们想居住的大都市区，情况更是离谱。这个分化非常明显，因为如果你在过去10年中拥有一套房子，你可以卖掉这套房子，用这期间房子的增值来支付另一套房子的首付款，这些房子的价格已经被抬高了。但如果你是首次购房者，情况就变得非常困难，简直是开玩笑。所以，这是一个非常困难的问题。我对今天的首次购房者，特别是那些没有父母支持的大多数人，深感同情。他们现在比以往任何时候都要难。拥有一套自己的住房能让你在成年生活中感到稳定，这在很多事情上都有很大影响。对于很多人，包括我和我的妻子在内，他们在拥有自己的房子之前不想要孩子。他们希望在生孩子之前有那种稳定的感觉。所以，我认为住房负担能力的缺乏对人口结构和未来50到70年的生育情况都有影响，这对于社会现状有着巨大的影响。

There's also sort of a difference between what's optimal financially and what's optimal psychologically. We've had this conversation before where you've told me you paid after mortgage. And that makes no very little financial sense because you had one of those crazy, like really low mortgages. Like a mortgage rate was 3.2% fixed for 30 years and we paid it off, which I say is very true is the worst financial decision we've ever made. But it's the best money decision we've ever made. And the difference between the two is like, look on a spreadsheet, it's terrible. I've done the math of like, what if I had just invested that money instead? How much more money would we have today? It's a lot. It's a lot of money. But nothing that we've ever done in our financial life has I think given us more happiness than paying that off. And a lot of that is unique maybe to my personality. This is not advice for other people because maybe you and other people don't have that personality. I'm a worst case scenario thinker. I also have a career that can be thickle. And so, and I'm the sole breadwinner in our household. My wife is home with our kids. So with all of those, my personality, my career and whatnot, it made perfect sense. And when we did it, I was nearly in tears with joy when we did it. Knowing full well that it was a dumb financial decision. So I think once you stop viewing money as just trying to make the spreadsheet happy and you view it as a tool to live a better life, a lot of things change. And in that situation, it was a tool that improved the quality of my life and my family's life, I think dramatically. Even if it was the dumbest thing that we've ever done on a spreadsheet. And a lot of people when I say this, they'll still push back and be like, well, walk me through like why it was, why it was rational.

在经济最优和心理最优之间也有一个区别。我们以前聊过，你告诉我你还完了房贷。从财务角度来看，这几乎没有任何意义，因为你当时的房贷利率非常低，30年固定利率仅为3.2%。我们还清了房贷，从纯财务角度来看，这是我们做过的最糟糕的决定，但在金钱决策上却是最好的。两者的差别在于，从电子表格上看，这很糟糕。我做过计算，如果我把那些钱用来投资，我们现在会有多少钱？会有很多很多钱。但在我们的财务生活中，没有任何事情比还清房贷给我们的幸福感更强。这个感受可能只是因我个人性格独特，这并不是给其他人的建议，因为你和其他人可能没有这种性格。我是个会考虑最糟情况的人，我的职业生涯也可能变化无常。而且我是家庭唯一的经济支柱，我的妻子在家照顾孩子。考虑到这些因素，我的性格、职业等，这样做非常合理。我们还清房贷时，我几乎流下了喜悦的泪水，尽管我完全知道这是一个愚蠢的财务决定。所以当你不再仅仅把钱看作让电子表格满足的工具，而是看作改善生活质量的工具，很多事情都会改变。在这种情况下，这是一种极大地改善了我和我家人生活质量的工具，即使在电子表格上看这是我们做过的最愚蠢的决定。很多人听到我说这个还是会反驳，想让我解释为什么这是合理的。

I'm like, it's not rational. It's not rational at all. I can't explain to you on a spreadsheet. It was the it was dumb to do, but it made me really happy. And like, is there any worth, is there any value to that? You know, for you, like it made me happy. We could just stop right there. I don't need to prove it anymore. But doesn't that make it rational? If you're playing a different game, right? Like if you're trying to optimize every penny over the long term, maybe that doesn't make sense. Yeah. But if you're optimizing for happiness and longevity, maybe it does make sense. And so I think the qualitative factors of money are hard for people to wrap their head around, particularly in a field that has been taught as an analytical field. If you get a degree in finance or get your CFA or whatever it would be, it's purely numbers. That's not totally accurate. There's some in there. But vast majority of how they teach finance is just numbers. And so it can be hard for a lot of people to wrap their head around why you would do something where the numbers don't make sense. What can money do for us and what can it do for us? And what's the lie it tells us? What's the thing that we feel like it can do for us that it can? Well, I think the lie is that a lot of people in life, if they're unsatisfied with how their life is going, it's a very quick and easy answer to say if I had more money, things would be better. And that can be true. It can solve a lot of your problems. But I think what a lot of people want in life, not everyone, I don't want to completely generalize this.

我觉得，这根本不理性。完全不理性。我没法用电子表格给你解释清楚。这事挺傻的，但真的让我很开心。那这个开心有价值吗？对于你来说，像这种让我开心的事，是不是有点价值？我们可以就此打住，不需要再证明什么。但这不也是一种理性吗？如果你玩的是不同的游戏，比如说如果你要长期最大化每一分钱的价值，可能这就说不通。但如果你追求的是幸福和长寿，那可能就说得通了。所以，我觉得钱的定性因素对于人们来说是难以理解的，尤其是财务这个领域通常被教得很是分析化。如果你拿到金融学位或是获得特许金融分析师（CFA）证书，那基本上都是在学数字。这并不完全准确，里面有一些定性因素。但他们大部分教的都是数字。所以，很多人会很难理解为什么你要做一些数字上看似不合理的事。钱能为我们做些什么，不能为我们做些什么，还有它让我们误以为能做什么的问题。很多人生中不满意自己生活状态的人会很快很轻易地认为：如果我有更多钱，生活会更好。这种想法有时候是对的，钱能解决你很多问题。但我认为很多人的真正需求，并不是都靠钱能解决的，我也不想一刀切地说所有人都是这样。

But what I want that I think is reasonably common for people is I want independence. And I want to spend time with the people who I love, my family and friends. And that's pretty much it. And can you use money to do that? Of course, money is kind of the oxygen of independence. And if you can use your money to spend more time with your friends and family, you and I went out to a lovely dinner last night with each other. That costs money. Thank you for buying, by the way.

但我想要的，我认为是很多人都想要的，就是独立。我想要和我爱的人在一起，和家人朋友共度时光。基本上就是这些。而且，钱能帮助实现这些吗？当然可以，钱就像是独立的氧气。如果你能用钱来和朋友和家人共度更多时光，那是很好的。比如昨晚我们一起出去吃了一顿美味的晚餐，那是需要花钱的。顺便说一句，谢谢你请客。

And we had a great time with each other. Now, if you and I went for a walk that would have been free, it would have been great too. But using money to spend time with whom you want, when you want, for as long as you want, waking up every morning and saying, I can do whatever I want today. Even if what I want to do is go to work and be productive is absolutely critical. And that is different from the knee-jerk of just, oh, if I have more money, I can buy more things, nicer things.

我们彼此度过了一段愉快的时光。如果你和我去散步，那是免费的，也会很棒。但是，花钱和你想要的人在一起，随时随地，想多久就多久，每天早上醒来都可以说：“我今天可以做任何我想做的事情。” 即使我想做的事是去工作并且有生产力，这也是非常重要的。这种感觉与那种下意识的“哦，如果我有更多钱，我可以买更多东西、更好的东西”是不同的。

But what you actually want in your soul is to like, is you want independence and to spend time with people who you love. Money can do those things, but it's not as direct as people as people think. One example of this is like, will having a nicer house make you happier? It might, but the reason it's going to make you happier is because it makes it easier to have friends over. It's, it's, makes it more convenient to hang out with your kids in a big, nice, glorious living room. So it's not that the house will make you happier, but the house can make it more conducive to do things in your life that those things will make you happier.

但你真正内心渴望的是独立和与爱的人共度时光。钱可以实现这些目标，但并不像人们想象的那么直接。一个例子是，住在更好的房子里会让你更快乐吗？可能会，但原因是它让招待朋友更方便，让你和孩子在宽敞漂亮的客厅里一起玩耍更舒适。所以，并不是房子本身让你更快乐，而是房子能让你更容易做那些会让你快乐的事情。

I was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad with my youngest and we come to the concept of a house. And if I get this right, it was sort of your house's liability and not an asset. So don't think of it as like a financial asset that's going to grow and acquire wealth for you. Think of it as a liability. That's just a sort of table stakes for playing, playing the game if you want or living life and having stability and all these other things. And I thought it was really interesting. As we talked about it, I was like, you know, it's just the house. What the house is effectively, it's a container.

我在和我最小的孩子一起读《富爸爸穷爸爸》，我们谈到了房子的概念。如果我没理解错的话，这本书认为房子是一种负债，而不是资产。所以不要把它当作一个会增长并为你积累财富的金融资产来看待。要把它视为一种负债，只是为了玩这场游戏或者生活得更稳定等需要的一种基本配置。我觉得这个观点很有意思。我们讨论的时候，我意识到，房子实际上只是一个容器。

And what matters is what happens inside that container. The house in and of itself, like, who cares? Just recently, just last month, I traveled with my son to the town that I grew up in. And I stopped by the house that I grew up in for the majority of my childhood. I hadn't been there in 20 years. We pulled in the driveway. Of course, there's people who live there now. So we just sat in the car. But I sat there for 10 minutes, just kind of reminiscing about as soon as you pull in the drive, all these memories start flooding back of the things that happened in that house.

重要的是那个“容器”里面发生了什么。房子本身，其实谁在乎呢？就在上个月，我和儿子一起去了我成长的小镇。我还顺便去看了我童年大部分时间住的那栋房子。我已经有20年没去过那里了。我们开车停在车道上。那里当然现在是有人住的，所以我们只是坐在车里。但我在那里坐了10分钟，一旦你驶进车道，各种回忆立刻涌上心头，想起在那房子里发生的种种事情。

Good and bad, fun and sad, like so many memories in there from my childhood. And of course, you can go on Zillow and see what that house is worth. It'll give you a very specific dollar figure for what the house is worth. But what the house is worth to me and my parents and my siblings is invaluable. You can't put a price tag on those kind of memories. And I think that's common for most people. There's a tangible financial value and there's this intangible that you can't ever put a price on. That's true for vacations. It's true for a lot of things in life that there's a financial value.

好的坏的、快乐的悲伤的，像是我童年时期的那么多记忆都在那里。当然，你可以上Zillow网站看看那幢房子值多少钱。它会给出一个非常具体的金额。但是，对于我和我的父母以及兄弟姐妹来说，那幢房子的价值是无价的。你不能给这些记忆贴上价格标签。我认为这对大多数人来说都是常见的情况。有一个可见的经济价值，还有一个你永远无法定价的无形价值。这对假期来说是这样，对生活中的许多事情也是这样，它们有一个经济价值。

If I asked you and said, what is this house worth? Again, you can go on Zillow and say, but what are the memories built inside that house worth? You can't put a price on that. When you've reached financial independence, is that the ultimate when you're spending money, but it's not a matter of the money. You're not quantifying it and sort of a dollar figure. You're quantifying it in a feeling or. I think there's truth to that. It's when you start using it as a tool to become happier. Now, what's going to make people happy is very different. Having an incredible Ferrari collection might make you happy. So if it's not to say that the things will make you happy are not material, that you should just use this for experiences, that I think is a step too far. I think a lot of people have hobbies that cost a lot of money that are material that really make them happy. So it's like, great. There are a lot of people out there who would say, you know, who would really promote frugality and be like, you don't need a big house.

如果我问你，这栋房子值多少钱？你可以去Zillow上查，但房子里积累的回忆值多少钱呢？这个是无法用金钱衡量的。当你达到财务独立的时候，那是不是就是花钱而不是在乎钱的问题了呢？你不会用具体的金额来衡量，而是用一种感觉。我认为这是有道理的，那时候你会把钱当作一个让自己更快乐的工具。当然，让人快乐的东西因人而异。拥有一套绝佳的法拉利收藏可能会让你感到快乐。所以，并不是说物质的东西不会让你快乐，认为你只应该把钱花在体验上，我觉得这个观点走得太远了。很多人的爱好需要花很多钱，涉及物质，但它们确实让人感到快乐。所以这很好。有很多人会提倡节俭，认为你不需要一个大房子。

You don't need a nice car. Well, big houses and nice cars make some people really happy. Other people, they don't. It's whatever you can use money as a tool for to live a better life versus, I think, a yardstick of status and success to compare yourself against other people. That's what gets dangerous, is when you're just using it as a scorecard to compete with other people. How do we catch ourselves in a status game? We're playing a status game, but we can't see it because we're in it. It's unavoidable at the economy level, especially at the broad macro level. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that people compete with each other. There's limited resources.

你不需要一辆漂亮的车。嗯，大房子和漂亮的车确实能让一些人非常开心，但对其他人来说却未必如此。关键是看你能否把钱当作工具来提升生活质量，而不是用它来跟别人攀比，视其为地位和成功的标尺。当你只是把钱当作竞争的分数牌时，这就变得危险了。我们该如何察觉自己在玩这种地位游戏呢？我们正在玩这种游戏，却看不见自己身在其中。这种现象在经济层面，尤其是在宏观层面是不可避免的。从进化的角度来看，人们相互竞争是有道理的，因为资源是有限的。

And like, if I want the food, if I want the mate, whatever it would be, I need to compete with you. That's always what it is. So it's so natural. It's never going to go away. This is truly like, same as ever. People are always going to be keeping up with the Joneses. And you can imagine a world in which our kids and our grandkids are living way better lives than you and I are and living longer and have better material access to you and I do. And they're no happier for it because they're just competing with other people who have even more than that. That's always been like that. If people 100 years ago could see how you and I are living today, they'd be completely dumbfounded with virtually everything we have in our life. But I would also wager that you and I are not that much happier than they are. There'd be some aspects of life or healthier. We don't have to wake up, you know, worry that we're going to die from the flu next week.

如果我想要食物，我想要伴侣，无论是什么，我都需要和你竞争。这一直都是这样。所以这非常自然，这永远不会消失。这真的就像一直以来一样。人们总是会攀比。你可以想象一个世界，在这个世界里，我们的孩子和孙辈们过着比你我更好的生活，活得更长，拥有更好的物质条件。但他们并不会因此更快乐，因为他们仍然在和拥有更多的人竞争。这情况一直都是这样。如果百年前的人们能看到我们今天的生活，他们会被我们生活中的各种事物彻底震惊。但我敢打赌，你我并不会比他们更快乐多少。我们生活的某些方面可能更健康，我们不必醒来担心下周会死于流感。

But people just adjust their expectations to whoever is around them. A lot of this is like a DNA thing. Some people are just way more susceptible to wanting to keep up with others and other people, which could just care less what other people think about them. There's probably six people in my life who I'd really desperately want their love and respect. My parents, my wife, my kids, a handful of friends. And everyone else, it's not that I could care less, but after those six or maybe eight people, it drops dramatically. And the vast majority of people on Twitter and whatnot, I could care less what you think about the decisions that I'm making. So I think if you define that, it's, you know, who's love and admiration do I want in life? Defining who those people are and what do I have to do to earn their love and respect? The love and respect of my wife and my kids and my parents. And that's what I want to use money to do in my life. So like spending time with my family, taking them to cool places and whatnot.

但是人们通常会根据周围的人调整他们的期望。这在某种程度上是一种DNA的影响。有些人对跟上他人有强烈的需求，而另一些人则完全不在乎别人怎么看他们。在我的生活中，可能有六个人是我非常渴望得到他们的爱和尊重的。我的父母，我的妻子，我的孩子，还有一些朋友。对其他人来说，我并不是完全无所谓，但在那些六到八个人之外，对他们的看法就显得不那么重要了。而对大多数在推特等社交平台上的人，我完全不在乎他们对我做出的决定有什么看法。所以我认为如果我们定义一下，谁的爱和尊重是我在生活中真正想要的？明确这些人是谁，以及我需要做些什么才能赢得他们的爱和尊重。比如，我希望用钱来实现这些目标，花时间陪伴家人，带他们去一些很棒的地方等等。

There is a financial aspect to this, but once you define that personal game you're playing, a lot of these decisions clear up. I think a lot of people don't actually think about what came to their point. They look at other people and, you know, from my lens, you should be doing something different. But that really comes because we're optimizing for different things. Yes. I bet if you and I sat down and like deeply compared our lives, there would be things that we do very differently. Spending like you spend a lot of money on this and I don't. I spend a lot of money on this and you don't. And it's not a disagreement. It's just we're different people. Even if you are about you and I are about the same age, same education, you know, there's probably a lot that is just like, yeah, but we're different. So I think most financial debates, whether it's like an investing debate or a saving or spending debate, people are not actually disagreeing with each other. They're not actually debating.

这个问题涉及到财务方面的考虑，但一旦你确定了自己真正追求的目标，很多决策就变得清晰了。我觉得很多人其实并没有真正思考过是什么让他们走到了这一步。他们看到别人时，总会觉得你应该做些不同的事情。但那只是因为我们在追求不同的目标。是的，如果你和我坐下来深入比较我们的生活，肯定会发现我们在很多事情上的做法很不一样。比如你在这个方面花了很多钱，而我没有。我在那个方面花了很多钱，而你没有。这并不是意见不一致，只是因为我们是不同的人。即使我们年龄相仿，教育背景相似，可能还是会有很多不同之处。所以，我认为大多数财务上的争论，无论是投资、储蓄还是消费的争论，人们其实并没有真正意见相左，也并不是真正在争论。

It's people with different personalities talking over each other. And once you come to terms with that, there's not one right answer for any of this. There's so many things that we inherit from our parents, like invisible rules about money or practices around money. I remember like these moments in my childhood where, you know, my parents had to decide between fixing the roof and fixing the car. And they couldn't afford to do both. And I remember they, you know, they worked for the military and the military had sent them a financial advisor.

这是不同性格的人在彼此争论。一旦你接受了这个事实，你会发现这些问题没有唯一正确的答案。我们从父母那里继承了很多东西，比如关于钱的无形规则或处理钱的方法。我记得在我童年时，有一些时刻，我的父母不得不在修理屋顶和修理汽车之间做出选择，因为他们负担不起同时修理两者。我还记得他们当时在军队工作，军队还派了一位财务顾问给他们。

And I remember listening to the conversation they had with the financial advisor and how out of the loop, they were with what was happening with my, you know, the severance pay that my mom was getting and what was happening. And they had new knowledge of it. And I was like, I never want to be in this position. Yeah. What are the lessons that you learned from your parents that really stick with you today that sort of defined how you think about money? The two things that stick out for my parents, my parents upbringing.

我记得他们和财务顾问的对话，他们对我妈妈的遣散费和相关的事情都一无所知。我当时心想，我绝不想陷入这种境地。那么，你从父母那里学到的哪些教训一直在你心中挥之不去，并且影响了你对金钱的看法呢？关于我父母和他们的成长经历，有两件事情让我印象深刻。

So my dad started undergraduate college when he was 30 and had three kids. I'm the youngest of three. He started his undergrad when I was like a month old, something like that. And he became a doctor when I was in third grade. My early childhood, my parents were very, very poor. They were students and maybe they had some like student grants that allowed us to buy groceries and live in a tiny little apartment. We were very happy at a great childhood, but they were very, very poor.

所以，我爸爸是在30岁的时候开始上本科的，当时他已经有三个孩子了。我是最小的那个。他开始上本科的时候，我大概才一个月大，差不多是那个时候。他在我上三年级的时候成了医生。我小时候，我父母非常非常穷。他们还是学生，可能有一些助学金让我们能够买食品，住在一个小小的公寓里。我们当时很幸福，有一个很棒的童年，但他们真的非常非常穷。

And then my dad became a doctor when I was in third grade and had the, so it was immediate shift towards very poor to like upper middle class, literally overnight when I was in third grade. And my sibling, my brother and sister were teenagers at that point. So I got to see very like both sides of the spectrum. And I remember the year of 1993 is the year everything changed in our family. What sticks out from that is that the frugality that was demanded of my parents when they were poor stuck with them after they started making more money. And so even after my dad became a doctor, they were, we were very frugal. We lived a much better life than we did when we were poor because we were, we were living in abject poverty for most of my childhood. And, but after that it was, they had a very high savings rate.

然后，当我上三年级的时候，我爸爸成为了一名医生，所以我们的家庭状况从非常贫困一下子变成了中上阶层，真的是在一夜之间发生的。那时候我的兄弟姐妹已经是青少年了。我因此见证了非常不同的两个生活阶段。我清楚地记得1993年是我们家庭发生巨大变化的一年。让我印象深刻的是，即使在爸爸成为医生后，我父母在贫困时期养成的节俭习惯仍然保留了下来。所以，即使我们生活水平显著提高了，我们家还是非常节俭。虽然我童年的大部分时间都在极度贫困中度过，但之后我们生活变好了，他们依然有很高的储蓄率。

We were not spending money like my dad's coworkers were. Like you would expect a normal doctor too, it was nothing close to that. I think I looked down upon my parents for that. I was like, we could be living in an nicer house. I know how much money you make. We could be living in a better house and driving a better car, but we don't because you're cheap skates. That was my view for my teens and early twenties. My dad was an ER doctor, which is a very stressful field. It's literally people dying in front of you in your arms every day and working night shifts. And it's a very stressful field.

我们并没有像我爸爸的同事那样花钱。像你期望普通医生那样，我们家花的钱完全不像那样。我想我当时有点瞧不起我的父母。我会想，我们本可以住在更好的房子里。我知道你们赚了多少钱。我们明明可以住在更好的房子里，开更好的车，但我们没有，因为你们太节省了。这是我青少年时期和二十岁出头时的看法。我的爸爸是一名急诊科医生，这是一个非常有压力的职业。每天都有病人在你面前甚至在你怀里死亡，还要上夜班。这是一个非常有压力的领域。

So after about 20 years or so, he had just had enough. And well before I think he intended to retire, he more or less woke up one day and said, I'm done. It was a little more planned than that, but that was close to it. And because he had saved so much, he could do that. He had the independence to wake up one day and say, I'm going to do like, I'm proud of what I did, but I'm going to go do something else now. And a lot of his peers could not do that because they spent like doctors. They lived in big houses and sent their kids to private school and drove fancy cars. So when they wanted to quit, they couldn't.

所以大概过了二十年左右，他真的受够了。在他原本规划退休之前，他差不多有一天醒来就说，我不干了。虽然有点计划，但差不多就是这样。他之所以能这样做，是因为他存了很多钱，有了足够的经济独立，可以随时决定改变生活方式。他对自己之前的工作感到自豪，但也决定去做些别的事情。而他的许多同龄人却不能这样，因为他们花钱如流水，住着大房子，送孩子上私立学校，开豪车。所以当他们想辞职时，却无力实现。

They wanted to retire. They were tired and they wanted to quit, but they couldn't do it. And that was such a profound shift in my thinking. This was not that long ago. I don't know, 12 years ago or so. Of when I was like, oh, that's why you were saving so much. It wasn't because you were cheap skates. It's because you wanted to become independent. And now you are. You want to quit so you could quit. That's why you were saving. That was a profound shift for me of like, you're not saving because you're just scared to spend. You're saving because you want something different, which is independence. And independence is going to give you so much more pleasure than the big house ever would. That really stuck with me. How did they talk to you when you said, hey, you're just being cheap skates, like, let's do this thing or let's get this bigger house or.

他们想退休。他们累了，想放弃，但他们无法做到。这对我的思维来说是一个深刻的转变。这并不是很久之前的事，可能有12年左右的时间。我当时就想，原来这是你们为什么存那么多钱的原因。不是因为你们吝啬，而是因为你们想要独立。而现在你们实现了独立。你们想退出就能退出。这就是你们存钱的原因。这个变化对我来说非常深刻，不是因为你们害怕花钱而存钱，而是因为你们追求不同的东西，那就是独立。而独立会给你们带来比大房子更多的乐趣。这点真的让我印象深刻。当你们说“嘿，你们就是吝啬鬼，让我们做这个事情或者买个更大的房子”时，他们是怎么回应你的？

If they heard what I just said, they would say, yes, in hindsight, that's all true, but we didn't know we were saving for independence. My parents are very interesting that they have dollar cost averaged into Vanguard index funds for more than 40 years and never sold anything ever. So they would be like literally in the top probably 2% of investors during that period without any financial education, no financial skill, like no, no nothing like that. So I think a lot of the decisions they've made have worked out well, but it hasn't really been conscious. So I think back when I said your cheap skates, I'm sure they just kind of shrugged and, you know, okay, well, this is what we're doing, but I don't think they actually had a plan for what they were doing. It was just, again, the frugality that was demanded of them.

如果他们听到我刚刚说的话，他们会说，没错，事后看来，这一切都是真的，但我们并不知道我们是在为独立储蓄。我的父母很有意思，他们在过去40多年里一直坚持以美元成本平均法投资于先锋指数基金，从未出售过任何东西。因此，他们实际上在那段时期内可能是投资者中排名前2%的人，而他们没有经过任何财务教育，没有任何财务技能，什么都没有。所以我认为他们做出的很多决定效果都很好，但这并不是有意识的。所以当我说你们很抠门时，我确定他们只是耸了耸肩，觉得，好吧，这是我们正在做的，但我不认为他们实际上有任何计划。他们只是顺应了当时逼迫他们需要节俭的生活方式。

My parents also met on a hippie commune in the 1970s, not exactly the breeding ground for like good saving skills. And so for their entire adult lives for literally decades, they were, they had zero money. They had absolutely nothing. So they learned how to be poor. And they're also very happy and have a great marriage. If you can learn how to be poor with dignity, that skill will just like stick with you forever. So when they started making money, I think it's probably true that they didn't exactly know what to do with it because they were so used to being poor.

我父母在20世纪70年代的一个嬉皮士公社相遇，这个地方并不是培养良好储蓄技能的温床。所以，在他们整个成年生活中，真的就是几十年，他们都没有钱，几乎一无所有。因此，他们学会了如何在贫困中生活，而且他们也非常快乐，有着幸福的婚姻。如果你学会了在贫困中保持尊严，这种技能会伴随你一生。所以，当他们开始赚钱时，他们可能真的不知道该怎么处理这些钱，因为他们太习惯于贫困生活了。

But whether it was conscious or not, it created this thing that has given them so much happiness and pleasure, which is independence. What's the difference between being rich and being wealthy? The definitions are my own. I'm just making this up. But I think rich is when you have enough money to make your mortgage payment, make your car payment. You can pay off your credit card bill every month. Like you can afford the things that you're buying technically. Wealthy, I think, is when you have a degree of independence and autonomy. The weird thing here is that wealth is the money that you don't spend. That's what wealth is like, the homes you didn't buy and the car you didn't buy. It's money that you saved and invested that is going to give you independence. And that's a hard thing for people to wrap their head around that wealth is what you don't see because I can see your house. I can see your car. I can see your clothes. But I have no idea what you're not worth this. I can't see your bank, your brokerage account. I can't see your bank account.

但不管这是否是有意识的，这件事给他们带来了巨大的幸福和快乐，这就是独立。富有与财富之间有何区别？这些定义是我自己想出来的。富有，我认为，是你有足够的钱来支付房贷、车贷，可以每月还清信用卡账单。也就是说，你能负担得起你购买的东西。而财富，我认为，是你拥有一定程度的独立性和自主权。奇怪的是，财富其实是你没有花掉的钱。财富就像是你没有买的房子和车子，是你节省和投资的资金，这些能带给你独立性。这一点很难让人理解，因为财富是看不见的。我能看到你的房子，看到你的车，看到你的衣服，但我看不到你没买的东西。我看不到你的银行账户和证券账户。

So wealth is always hidden. And it throws a lot of people for a loop because if I was looking for a role model of physical fitness, well, I can see your fitness. I can see your weight and your muscle tone. It's all visible. But when you're looking for a financial role model, who do you look up to? And a lot of people, particularly young people, will look up to the guy in the mansion with the Ferrari. But that guy for all you know is living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of those people are. And the person who is actually wealthy and independent might be the person in the modest house driving the modest car that you would actually want to be. If you want to be wealthy instead of just rich, you want to be independent instead of just making your monthly payments.

所以说，财富总是隐藏的。这让很多人感到困惑，因为如果我要找一个身体健康的榜样，我可以看到你的健康状况，我可以看到你的体重和肌肉线条，这些都是显而易见的。但是如果要找一个财务上的榜样，该向谁看齐呢？很多人，尤其是年轻人，会仰慕住在豪宅里、开着法拉利的人。但是，就我们所知，那个人可能是每个月靠工资过日子。其实很多人都是这样的。而真正富有和独立的人，可能是住在普通房子里、开着普通车的人，这才是你真正应该仰慕的榜样。如果你想要富有而不是仅仅看起来有钱，如果你想要独立而不是每个月还贷款，那就要向这些人看齐。

The people that you actually want to look up to are some of the hardest people to identify in society. Who do you look up to? In general, who I look up to are people who do whatever they want and people with independence. And there's a huge range of that. I think there are people whose net worth is in the low six figures who are independent. There's a guy named Mr. Money Mustache who kind of started the fire movement 10 or 15 years ago. And his story was when his net worth was $600,000, not that much money. He retired and lived a great life on it. And there's other people, obviously Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are independent, but I would venture that more than half of Elon Musk's day is doing things that he doesn't want to do.

你真正想要仰慕的人，往往是社会中最难识别的人。你仰慕谁？总体来说，我仰慕的是那些按照自己意愿行事并拥有独立精神的人。这样的人范围很广。我认为有些人虽然身价只有六位数的低端，但依然实现了独立。有个叫“胡须先生”的人，大概在十到十五年前启动了“火运动”（一种提倡提前退休和节俭生活的理念）。他的故事是，当他的净资产只有60万美元时，并不算很多钱，他选择了退休，并用这笔钱过上了美好的生活。当然，还有其他人，比如杰夫·贝索斯和伊隆·马斯克，他们也很独立，但我敢说，伊隆·马斯克每天有一半以上的时间都在做自己不愿意做的事情。

It's like piling on all these things that he's still driven to do them and get them done. And of course he could quit tomorrow, but doing things that he doesn't necessarily want to do. So anyone who can wake up every day and say, I can do whatever I want today. If you have independence, that's my personal goal. So the people who have that at any income level are the ones I look up to. Why are so many people who have money? I think the answer may be embedded in the last one, but why are so many people who actually have a lot of objective wealth or money, if you will, unhappy?

就像把所有这些事情都堆在一起，他仍然被驱使去做并完成它们。当然，他明天可以辞职，但他在做一些他并不一定想做的事情。所以，任何一个每天醒来都能说“我今天可以做任何我想做的事”的人，如果你拥有了独立，那就是我的个人目标。那么，无论是什么收入层次，能做到这点的人都是我尊敬的人。为什么有那么多拥有金钱的人却不开心？我认为答案可能包含在前面那句话里，但为什么这么多真正拥有大量财富或金钱的人不快乐呢？

Andrew Wilkinson, our friend, had a saying where he says, a lot of people, I'm paraphrasing him, but a lot of people who are very successful are just walking anxiety disorders harnessed for productivity. And I think it was Patrick O'Shaughnessy who said the single word that he would use to describe a lot of very successful people is not driven. It's not passionate. It's tortured. They wake up every morning tortured about like, I'm trying to solve this problem. I have to get ahead. I have to hit this goal. And they are literally, they wake up very anxious and depressed and like, you know, just tortured about achieving their things.

我们的朋友安德鲁·威尔金森有一句话，他说（我在这里稍作概括）很多非常成功的人其实只是将焦虑症状转化为生产力的人。此外，帕特里克·奥肖内西也曾说过，如果他要用一个词来形容许多成功人士，那不会是“有推动力”或“充满激情”，而是“受折磨”。他们每天早晨醒来就被折磨着：我必须解决这个问题，我得领先，我一定要达到这个目标。他们真的每天醒来都非常焦虑和抑郁，为实现自己的目标而备受煎熬。

Elon Musk a couple months ago gave an interview where he said, you might think you want to be me as in like the richest person in the world, richest person in history, but you don't. And he was like, I think he said something like, it's a tornado up here. It's a mess inside of this head. You do not want to be inside of this head. I think that's really true. I think that's a profound truth that you might think you want that kind of life, but there is a cost to that life. And the reason he's successful is because he's probably woken up tortured for his entire adult life trying to solve these problems.

埃隆·马斯克几个月前接受采访时说，你可能以为自己想成为他，成为世界上最富有的人，有史以来最富有的人，但其实你不想。他当时好像说过类似的话："这里像龙卷风一样，我脑子里一团乱，你不想进入我的头脑。" 我觉得这真的很真实。这个深刻的道理是，你可能以为自己想要那样的生活，但那种生活是有代价的。他之所以成功，可能是因为他整个成年生活中一直在为解决这些问题而痛苦地醒来。

I am so glad and grateful that people like himself exist because they made the world a better place, new technologies that we can all benefit from. But there's a big difference between saying, I'm glad you exist and I would want your life. Those are two very different things. It's almost like we're looking at the outcome. We're like, I want the outcome. I don't want, I don't want all this stuff. We do this with athletes too, right? Like I want the gold medal. I don't want the five AM practices seven days a week. I don't want that.

我非常高兴和感激有像他这样的人存在，因为他们让世界变得更美好，带来了我们都能从中受益的新技术。但说“我很高兴你存在”和“我想要你的生活”之间有很大的区别。这是两件截然不同的事。这就像我们在看结果，我们会说，我想要那个结果，但我不想经历那些过程。我们对待运动员也是这样的，对吧？我们想要金牌，但不想每天早上五点起床训练，那些辛苦的过程我们不想经历。

I think it was an evolve who said, you can't just pick and choose bits of someone's life and say, I want his physique and her net worth. And I want his house and you have to take the whole package. And a lot of the great things in anyone's life, there's a cost that came with that, whether it's their career success that they had to put into it. There's stories that Bill Gates worked, I think it was 25 years without ever taking a single day off. And what's the days he's working? It would be like he came home at midnight and crashed on the couch for four hours and went back to work.

我记得有人说过，你不能只挑选某人的生活片段，像是说，我想要他的身材、她的财富，我想要他的房子。你必须接受整个人生的全部。而且在任何人生活中的美好事物，通常都伴随着相应的代价，比如他们在事业上的成功付出了很多努力。据说，比尔·盖茨曾经连续工作了25年，一天假都没休过。那段时间，他每天回到家时，已经是半夜了，然后在沙发上睡上四个小时，又继续回去工作。

I'm so grateful that he exists, but I would not want that for myself. That's not my definition of the life that I would want. Our friend, David Senra, who runs the podcast Founders, has profiled, I think now by 350 founders over time. And he says, I don't want to put words in his mouth. I'm pretty sure he said, the only founder that he has ever read their biography and thought, I want his life is Ed Thorpe. And everybody else that he reads it, I think he comes into the same conclusion that I do. I'm glad they exist. I would never want to live their life. Because there's always a hidden cost that when you dig into it, you're like, yes, he was very successful because he sacrificed a million things that would be very successful. That are very important to you and I.

我很感激他的存在，但我不希望自己过那样的生活。那不是我对生活的定义。我们的朋友大卫·森拉，他经营着一个名为Founders的播客，至今已经剖析了大概350位创始人的故事。他说，他唯一读过传记并且认为自己想要那种生活的创始人是艾德·索普。对于其他所有创始人，他的感受和我一样。我很高兴他们存在，但我绝不会想过他们的生活。因为总会有一些隐藏的代价，当你深入了解这些代价时，你会发现，他们之所以非常成功，是因为他们牺牲了很多对你我来说非常重要的东西。

Well, let's talk about that a little bit. You're incredibly successful. Your books have sold well over 5 million copies now. The inbound to you for requests of your time. You're speaking. Your presence. Hop on the phone for 15 minutes. Must be off the charts. How do you keep your surface area small or keep doing the things that you want to do? Well, the only way to manage that is to say no to virtually everyone. And that sucks for me for two reasons. A, I don't have any assistant. I'm personally saying no to them.

好吧，我们来聊聊这个话题。你非常成功，目前你的书已经卖出了超过500万册。你收到的各种请求大概都多得数不清了。有人邀请你演讲、出席活动、打个电话聊15分钟。这些请求一定堆积如山。你是怎么保持自己的工作范围不被侵占，或者说，怎么坚持做你自己想做的事情呢？嗯，唯一的办法就是对几乎所有人都说不。这对我来说有两点不太好。一是我没有任何助理，我需要亲自拒绝他们。

I don't pawn it off to anyone else. And I don't like making people sad when you blow someone off or even respectfully say no. They're going to be hurt a little bit. I vividly remember. I'm not going to say who, but names that you and people would know that I reached out to early in my career and said, hey, can I please pick your brains? Can I please pick your brain for 15 minutes? And they said no. And I was hurt. I still remember it. I still remember the emails.

我不会把它推给别人。我也不喜欢让人感到难过。当你拒绝某人或者即使是有礼貌地说不时，他们都会有点受伤。我记得很清楚。我不会说是谁，但有些人你肯定知道，是我在职业生涯早期联系过的人。我问他们能不能聊15分钟，向他们请教一些问题。他们拒绝了我，我当时很受伤。我至今还记得那些邮件。

I remember reaching out to a couple of authors probably 15 years ago and saying, my name is Morgan. I'm an aspiring author. I'm trying to do this. I so admire you. Can I please ask you, you know, just 10 minutes on the phone? And some of them didn't respond. And I still remember that. So if anyone who remembers that gets in that same position themselves, well, they have to say no to a lot of people. It sucks. But there's no other way to handle it. There's no other way to manage it. It seems like success.

我记得大概15年前，我曾联系过几位作者，告诉他们“我叫摩根，是一名有抱负的作者，我正在努力写作。我非常敬佩你们。能不能请你们抽出10分钟时间在电话里聊聊？”有些人没有回复，我至今记得这件事。所以，如果有人经历过类似的情况，也需要对很多人说“不”，这感觉很糟糕，但没有其他办法。这似乎就是成功的代价。

And we've talked about this before, but success sows the seeds of its own destruction. How do you think about that? And what ways does it do it? The biggest is just that it allows you to become lazy and it's going to degrade the thing that made you great. What made you, what made you, like literally you, successful is probably like some degree of like waking up and feeling, feeling inadequate. Just waking up and being like, I know I'm capable of doing more than I've achieved already and I got to go do it. And it's pretty common.

我们之前谈过这个问题，成功会种下自我毁灭的种子。你怎么看这个问题？它是如何做到的呢？最大的原因就是成功让人变得懒散，这会削弱你曾经成功的因素。使你成功的，可能就是每天醒来时感到不够好，觉得自己能做的比已经完成的更多，并且必须去实现它。这种感觉其实很常见。

Like whether that was driven by a lack of self-esteem, like whatever it was, you're waking up and you're like, I need to achieve more than I have today. And once you have achieved some level, it's easy to be like, well, I've already done that. And then the thing that made you successful, that drive you had is diminished. Using some companies and in people. And the other thing that's really powerful is when you are lower on the totem pole, it's very, it's easier for everyone around you to tell you what you're doing wrong.

就像不管是什么原因，比如缺乏自尊心，或者其他什么原因，你每天醒来时都会觉得要比昨天做得更好。一旦你达到了某个目标，很容易就会觉得，"我已经做到了"，于是那股推动你成功的动力就减弱了。有些公司和个人也有这种情况。还有一点，当你处在较低的职位时，周围的人更容易指出你的错误。

And the higher you gain, particularly when you get up to the very high levels, no one wants to tell you doing wrong because you're probably paying those people to be surrounded. To, you know, to surround you with advice and they don't want to tell the emperor he has no clothes. That happens to a lot, lots of people, lots of companies and whatnot. The thing that made you great is degraded the more successful that you become. And some people fight this very well, but a lot of people don't. It's a tough thing.

而且，当你获得越来越高的地位，特别是当你达到非常高的层次时，没有人愿意告诉你你做错了，因为你可能在付钱让这些人围绕在你身边，提供建议。他们不愿意告诉"皇帝没有穿衣服"。这种情况在许多人、许多公司等身上都发生过。让你变得优秀的东西会在你变得更加成功时被削弱。有些人能很好地应对这种情况，但很多人做不到。这确实是个难题。

I think the laziness aspect of it, of once you become more financially independent, you're not driven. For most of my career, I was writing because that was how I fed my children. I have to do this. Yes, I love it. Yes, I enjoy it, but I absolutely have to do this. Once you get to a point where it's like, look, I still love to do this, but I don't have to do it anymore. Is my motivation lower than it used to? I think the answer is yes. I don't like to admit that, but I think the answer is yes.

我认为，当你变得更加财务独立后，就会出现一种懒惰倾向，你不再那么有驱动力。在我职业生涯的大部分时间里，我写作是因为那是我养家糊口的方式。我必须这样做。是的，我热爱它，享受它，但我绝对必须这样做。一旦你到了一个阶段，尽管你还是热爱写作，但你已经不必再依赖它了。我的动力是否比以前低了？我觉得答案是肯定的。我不太愿意承认这一点，但我认为答案是肯定的。

Now I'm still as motivated. I'm still very motivated to keep writing because I love doing it. And I think there's a part of it that I enjoy more now that I'm not doing it to feed my children. I'm doing it because I just love, because I love the art of writing rather than just the business of writing. But people's motivations change over time. Now part of that is great. I don't want to be 60 years old and having to work to feed myself this week, but you shouldn't pretend that it's going to not impact the thing that made you great.

现在我仍然充满动力。我依然非常有动力继续写作，因为我喜欢写作。而且我觉得，因为现在不再是为了养家糊口而写作，我反而更享受这件事了。我写作是因为我热爱写作的艺术，而不仅仅是为了赚钱。但人们的动机会随着时间的推移而改变。某种程度上，这很好。我不希望到了六十岁还要为了这周的生计而工作。不过你也不应该假装这不会影响到你曾经出色的原因。

I want to come to writing later on. I get a lot of questions about your process around that. But before we get there, what is risk? You can have a million different definitions of risk. I think broadly it's anything that's going to prevent you from achieving the goals that you want. That's a very basic answer, but I think that's what it is. And the reason that's important is because take volatility in the stock market. Is that risk? Well, it could be. If you're a day trader, then yes, the market goes down tomorrow. That's a risk for you.

我想稍后再讨论写作这件事。很多人对你的创作过程很感兴趣，有很多问题想问。但在那之前，什么是风险呢？关于风险有很多不同的定义。我认为，广义上来说，风险就是任何会阻碍你实现目标的东西。这是一个非常基础的回答，但我觉得这就是它的本质。这个问题之所以重要，是因为我们来看股市波动。那是风险吗？如果你是一个日间交易员，那么答案是肯定的。明天市场下跌，对你来说就是一种风险。

If you're going to retire in 50 years, it's not whatsoever. So just defining it in personal terms is I think the most important. But a lot of financiers do not do that. They define risk as volatility, whatever it might be, recessions, all these different things. But it's a very personal answer. What is risky for me might not be for you and vice versa. And this is what gets back to most financial debates are people with different time horizons talking over each other. There's a quote I love that is personal finance is more personal than it is finance. That is really important for everyone. You and I should not pretend that risk for Renaissance technology is going to be the same for you and I within our personal households. Completely and utterly different. So anything that pulls you away from whatever goals you personally have is what I would define as risk.

如果你计划在50年后退休，这个问题对你来说根本不重要。所以，用个人观点来定义风险是最关键的。但很多金融家不会这么做，他们会把风险定义为波动性、经济衰退等等。但这其实是一个非常个人化的问题。对我来说的风险，可能对你来说并不是风险，反之亦然。这就导致了很多金融争论其实是持有不同时间观的人在彼此对话。我很喜欢的一句话是，个人理财更多是关于个人而不是财务。这对每个人都很重要。你我不应假装文艺复兴技术的风险和我们个人家庭的风险是一回事，完全不同。所以，任何让你偏离自己目标的事情都可以被定义为风险。

If you had to break down the skill differences between accumulating money, keeping money and spending money, how would you do that? I've often defined it as getting rich and staying rich are completely different skills. And there's not that many people who are equally skilled in getting rich versus staying rich. There's a sliver society that's very good at getting rich that has no ability to stay rich. And there's some people who are very good at holding on to money but much less talented at building it and growing it over time.

如果要区分积累财富、保有财富和花钱的技能差异，你会怎么做？我经常说，变得有钱和保持有钱是完全不同的技能。能够同时擅长这两者的人并不多。有些人很擅长赚钱，但完全没有能力保持财富。而有些人很会守住钱财，但在积累和增长财富方面则逊色许多。

When you have both skills combined, it's a very special thing. Buffet is obviously that Bill Gates is that there's a handful of people who are extremely good at getting rich. And have stayed rich very well. The example that I always use is Bill Gates when he started Microsoft took the most audacious entrepreneurial swing that maybe anyone's ever taken of saying every desk in the world needs a computer on this. And he's saying this in 1974, whatever it was. Crazy amount of risk, crazy bold vision. At the same time, he said that he always wanted Microsoft to have enough cash in the bank to make payroll for one year with no reason. Which is the most conservative, pessimistic way to run a business. So he's like very risk taking and very conservative paranoid at the same time. Very good at getting rich, very good at staying rich at the same time. It's very unique to have both of those acting at the same time. And I think at the individual level, you can have it too. My net worth you'd say is very barbelled. Like a lot of cash, that's the paranoid conservative side. And stocks that I hope to hold for 50 years. That's like incredibly audacious that this is actually going to work out over the next half century. And I don't think that's any contradiction. It's just trying to get both of the skills of getting rich and staying rich work at the same time.

当你同时拥有这两种技能时，这是非常特别的事情。巴菲特显然是这样，比尔·盖茨也是这样，有一些人非常擅长赚钱，并且一直能够保持富有。我经常用的例子是比尔·盖茨，当他创立微软时，提出了一个可能是历史上最大胆的创业愿景——他认为世界上每张桌子上都需要有一台电脑，而且他是在1974年左右说的。这是极其冒险的决定，有着疯狂的风险和大胆的愿景。但与此同时，他又坚持让微软的银行账户里始终有足够的现金，可以在没有任何收入的情况下支付一年的工资。这是极其保守、悲观的经营方式。因此，他既非常敢于冒险，又极为保守和谨慎。他在赚钱和保留财富这两方面都非常擅长，同时兼顾这两者是非常独特的。我认为个人也可以做到这一点。我的净资产你可以说是非常独特的组合——有大量的现金，这是保守谨慎的一面，还有我希望持有50年的股票。这种组合看上去非常大胆，期望在未来半个世纪里能够获得回报。我并不认为这是矛盾的，只不过是试图同时获得赚取财富和保持财富的技能。

Speaking of staying rich, one of the stories we talked about last night was the Vanderbelts and how they basically blew $400 billion fortune. What happened? If you look at all of the robber baron, very wealthy families, the Carnegie's, the JP Morgan's, the Ford's, the Rockefeller's, the Vanderbelts. I think virtually all of them did well or did a decent job at managing that dynastic money except the Vanderbelts. The Vanderbelts completely and utterly botched it. The status, you know, when Cornelius Vanderbelts died, his net worth adjusted for inflation. Because he died in the 1800s. Was the equivalent of $400 billion. And in three generations, there was nothing left. Which is an astounding thing to think about. And in between there sat three generations who just blew money in the dumbest ways you can imagine. And the reason you could say it was dumb is because I don't think any of them were happy. I think they were pretty much all miserable. If you dig into the biographies of these three generations, a lot of the other robber baron families taught their children, taught their heirs to run the business or to become good philanthropists, whatever it was.

说到保持财富，昨晚我们谈到的故事之一是关于范德比尔特家族的，他们几乎挥霍了4000亿美元的财富。究竟发生了什么？如果你看看所有的强盗大亨和非常富有的家族，例如卡内基家族、摩根家族、福特家族、洛克菲勒家族和范德比尔特家族。我认为几乎所有这些家族都很好地或至少体面地管理了他们的家族财富，除了范德比尔特家族。范德比尔特家族完全彻底地搞砸了。那么情况如何呢？科尼利厄斯·范德比尔特去世时，他的净资产经过通货膨胀调整后是相当于4000亿美元的。他死于19世纪。而在三代人的时间里，这些财富就全部消失了。这令人惊讶。期间，这三代人以最愚蠢的方式挥霍了钱财。你可以说这是愚蠢的，因为我认为他们当中没有一个人是快乐的。他们几乎都很痛苦。如果你深入研究这三代人的传记，你会发现在其他很多强盗大亨的家族中，父母会教他们的孩子、继承人如何经营生意或成为好的慈善家，等等。

The Vanderbelts effectively told their heirs, your job, your sole purpose on this planet is to spend more money than anyone else. And so they did it. They built the biggest houses that were so big, they didn't even want to live in them because they were too big. They threw parties that were so extravagant, they were just burdens on themselves. They were so financial metric is can you spend more money than the other socialite? And they were all miserable for it. And the story that a lot of people know now is that the first Vanderbelts heir to not get any money, when all the money was exhausted, the first heir, whether there's nothing left, was Anderson Cooper of CNN. His mother was a woman named Gloria Vanderbelts. She got the last trust fund in the family. And Cooper is not only the most successful Vanderbelts heir in like 180 years, he's probably the happiest. And he's talked about this, that money that you are given, that you inherit can be a burden to your ambition, a burden to your identity of building a name for yourself. And he was kind of the first Vanderbelts heir who was like relieved of the burden of having to carry on this thing of like, I'm a socialite, I'm a Vanderbelts. It's like I can build my own name and my own career. And I'm sure because his mother was Gloria Vanderbelts, there were doors open to him that would not be open to anyone else. But he pretty much had to build it for himself for the first time in 150 years.

范德比尔特家族实际上告诉他们的继承人，你们在这个世界上的唯一职责就是花比其他人更多的钱。所以他们照做了。他们建了大到不想住的房子，因为房子实在太大了。他们举办了奢华到让自己都觉得负担沉重的派对。他们的财务标准就是看谁花的钱更多，结果所有人都因此感到痛苦。许多人现在所知道的故事是，当所有的钱都花光后，第一个没有得到任何遗产的范德比尔特继承人是CNN的安德森·库珀。他的母亲是格洛丽亚·范德比尔特，她得到了家族最后一笔信托基金。而库珀不仅是180年来最成功的范德比尔特继承人，他可能也是最幸福的。他谈到过，继承的钱财可能会成为你野心的负担，成为你建立自己名字的束缚。而他是第一个不必肩负那种负担去维护自己社会名流身份的范德比尔特继承人。他可以建立自己的声誉和事业。尽管因为他的母亲是格洛丽亚·范德比尔特，有些机会对他是开放的，但他基本上是150年来第一个靠自己打拼的人。

Do you believe that money should be able to pass between parents and kids? Well, able, sure, it's your decision. But there are obviously downsides. And I'm sure, I hope it's a long time for now that I'll leave my kids some money, not a lot. I love the Buffett quote where he says, leave your kids enough money so that they can do anything, but not so much money that they can do nothing. And that I think is really important. I want to use whatever money I've saved to give my kids the best opportunity of building the life that they want, but not so much money that they are forced to live the life that I want for them. I've met some families who are very wealthy and wealth becomes like a personality burden of because I inherited this much money. My job is to just be an heir of my grandfather, an heir of my parents, rather than finding out who I am and discovering who I am for myself.

你认为金钱应该在父母和孩子之间传递吗？当然，这取决于你的决定。不过，这显然也有一些负面影响。我希望我能在很长时间之后才留一些钱给我的孩子，不多。我非常喜欢巴菲特的一句名言：“给孩子留下足够的钱，让他们可以做任何事，但不要多到让他们什么都不做。”我觉得这很重要。我希望用我积攒的钱给孩子们提供最大的机会，让他们能够打造自己想要的生活，但不要多到让他们被迫过我为他们设想的生活。我见过一些非常富有的家庭，财富变成了一种人格负担，因为他们继承了这么多钱，他们的工作只是成为祖父母或父母的继承人，而不是找到自我并发现自己想要的生活。

That's true at the very high levels, but you don't want the wealth that you pass your kids to burden them into a lifestyle that they don't want for themselves. You just want to be like, here's enough money so that you can have the leverage and the tools to find out who you want to be and live the life that you want. But not so much that it's going to burden you into forcing you into a direction that you don't want to be. It's almost like there's a geometric progression of surface area here where the more houses you acquire, the more staff you need. The more staff you need, the more managers you have, the more managers. I was talking to Sam Zell, we were supposed to record a podcast that never happened because he unfortunately passed away. But when I was talking to him, he just wanted two houses. He didn't want 10 houses. He didn't want all of these things. I can just rent them. I don't want the hassle. I don't want the burden that comes with that. Do you think that we lose sight of that?

在非常高的层面上，这确实是对的，但是你不希望你传给孩子的财富成为他们生活的负担，让他们过上他们并不想要的生活。你只是希望给他们足够的钱，让他们能够有杠杆和工具去发现自己真正想成为谁，并过上他们想要的生活。但不要给他们太多，以至于迫使他们走向自己不想要的方向。这有点像是表面积的几何级数进展，你拥有的房子越多，你需要的员工就越多。你需要的员工越多，你就需要更多的管理者，更多的管理者带来更多的复杂性。我和山姆·泽尔谈过，我们原本要录制一个播客，但因为他不幸去世而未能成行。但当我和他聊到这个话题时，他只想要两套房子。他不想要十套房子，他不想要所有那些东西。他说：“我可以租它们，我不想要那种麻烦，也不想要那种负担。”你认为我们会忽视这一点吗？

And then there's sort of like a natural entropy to wealth. It starts to expand. And you actually have to apply a lot of energy to keep it small. It's obviously not the case that the more money you have, the less happy you're going to be. That's obviously wrong. But I think if you have more money, you can have more complicated life. And complication can lead to a lot of unhappiness. That's definitely true. And I think this is mostly true for people who are like middle wealth. If you're like extreme upper wealth, you can just hire out every decision people can take care of for you. It's people who have enough money to buy a second home, but they have to manage it themselves. That's when things get like really complicated in your life.

财富有一种自然的扩散趋势，你需要付出很多努力才能保持其规模不变。显然，并不是钱越多就会越不幸福，这显然是错的。但我认为，拥有更多的钱可能会让生活变得更加复杂，而复杂性又可能导致很多不快乐。这确实是事实。我认为这种情况主要适用于中层富裕的人。如果你是极度富有，你可以雇人帮你处理所有决定。但对于那些有足够钱购买第二套房子却又必须自己管理的人来说，生活会变得非常复杂。

Many years ago, I did this consulting session with a group of NBA rookies. They were some of them were 19, 20 years old, and they're now making millions. And a lot of them grew up in like inner city poverty. They grew up very, very poor. And when they are teenagers, they signed contracts for millions of dollars. It's like such a stark movement for them. And the purpose of this conversation was to talk about money to try to prevent the very well known path of athletes going bankrupt. A very significant percentage of these people who make millions of dollars are bankrupt by the time they're 30. So like, how do we prevent that? And one of these athletes who was, I think it was 19, said something that I thought was so profound and wise. He said, when you grow up in inner city poverty, and then you make millions of dollars when you're still young, that's not just your money. That is mom's money, that is brother's money, that is cousin's money, that is neighbor's money. You can't just tell everyone back at home, good luck to y'all. I got my money. I'm going to go live in the mansion. You stay in this level, but you can't do that. And he said, the reason so many athletes go bankrupt is not because they bought themselves a mansion. It's because they bought their fifth cousin, a house, and they felt so much pressure to do it. That they had this like social burden that came with the money. And I think at many different levels, that's an extreme example, but at a lot of levels. There is social debt that comes with money. So if you, at every level of net worth, like if your net worth grows by $1 with that, comes a couple pennies maybe of like social debt, where you are like incentivized or like pushed towards to increase your lifestyle or to take care of other people in ways that might be great, but might be a burden, might be a debt that comes with it. And at some point, I think that social debt explodes. I mean, people who are worth, you know, 50 or 100 billion dollars, we see there's not that many of them, but their social debt to use that money wisely and to donate that money wisely is off the charts. It's enormous, the pressure that they have to use that money well to not end up like the Vanderbilt's. How much pressure does Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have to donate their money effectively? And no matter what they do, no matter what causes they give to, people are going to say, well, that's not a worthy cause. This was more worthy than that. An enormous amount of like invisible social debt that comes with that. Talk to me more about that. Like I love that concept. I don't want to talk about the extremes or like Bezos, Musk and that, but the social debt, like almost like you go to a wedding and you have to give more because you have more.

多年前，我与一群NBA新秀进行了一次咨询会谈。这些新秀有些只有19、20岁，却已经赚了数百万美元。很多人都是在城市贫困区长大的，非常非常贫穷。当他们还是青少年时，就签下了几百万美元的合同。这对他们来说是一个极其剧烈的变化。此次会谈的目的是讨论如何管理这些钱，以防止那些成为百万富翁的运动员破产。众所周知，很多运动员在30岁之前就破产了。所以，我们要找出如何避免这一点的方法。其中一个运动员，那时只有19岁，他说了一些非常深刻和智慧的话。他说，当你在城市贫困区长大，然后在年轻时赚了数百万美元，这不仅仅是你的钱。这是妈妈的钱，这是兄弟的钱，这是表亲的钱，这是邻居的钱。你不能只是对家里的人说，祝你们好运，我拿了我的钱，我要搬到豪宅去了，而你们就留在这里。你不能这么做。他说，许多运动员破产的原因不是因为他们自己买了豪宅，而是因为他们给第五个表亲买了房子，他们感觉到巨大的压力去这么做。他们面对一种来自社会的负担，金钱带来了这种负担。我认为在很多不同的层面上，这虽然是一个极端的例子，但有很大程度的相似性。金钱带来了社会债务，不论净资产是多少，每增加一美元，可能都会带来几分钱的社会债务，推动你提高生活水平或者去照顾别人，这有时是好事，但有时也是一种负担，一种债务。到了某个点，社会债务会爆发。像那些净资产有500亿或1000亿美元的人，我们可以看到他们虽然不多，但他们使用这些钱的压力，以及合理捐赠这些钱的压力是巨大的。他们必须合理使用这笔钱，以避免落得像范德比尔特家族那样的下场。杰夫·贝索斯和比尔·盖茨要合理捐出他们的钱面临多大的压力？不管他们做了什么捐赠，都会有人说，那不是什么值得的事业，这个事业比那个更值得捐赠。这是一种巨大的无形社会债务。跟我多聊聊这个话题吧，我很喜欢这个概念。我不想谈论极端案例，比如贝索斯、马斯克等等，但社会债务，比如你去参加婚礼，因为你有钱，所以你得多送礼。

Is that where you go out to if your friends know the F money, you got to dinner, you're forced to pay kind of thing or like, oh, I heard, I heard this guy just got a huge bonus last year. Let's see what he gets me for Christmas kind of thing. There's a lot of that that comes with it. And of course, it's a good problem to have. You should not have sympathy for people who made so much money that they now have social debt, like boo, boo, boo, you deal with it. But it's a real thing. And a lot of it is just the incentive on yourself or within your own family to be like, oh, we have more money now. We should, I guess we should buy more stuff. It's like this pressure to do something that you may or may not actually want. One other like, like weird oddball story that I thought about here on the Amtrak train from Washington, D.C. to Boston's where it goes. There is always a quiet car. It's it's one section of the train where you're supposed to be completely quiet. If you want to get some work done or whatnot. And always what happens. You go there for peace and serenity, but everyone on the quiet car is so anxious and upset because on the quiet car, if someone's so much as whispers. Or if your phone accidentally goes off, people lose their minds because they have this expectation that it's going to be completely quiet. And so the slightest little sound sets them off. And like the irony is you go there for serenity, but you're just so angry while you're there because of anyone's making any noise and drives you crazy. And it's this thing of just like, if your expectations shift, then the littlest thing can make you upset. Like when you go to the quiet car, yes, it is quieter, but you also have this like sound debt that comes with it.

如果你的朋友们知道你有钱，他们就会带你去吃饭，然后强迫你付钱的那种感觉，或者听说你去年拿了大笔奖金，看你会给他们买什么圣诞礼物。很多这样的事情会发生。当然，这种问题是有钱人才会遇到的，所以我们也不应该对他们有太多同情，毕竟他们自己要处理这些事情。但这确实是真实存在的，很多时候是你自己或者你的家人感觉到了压力，觉得既然我们有更多钱了，那就应该买更多的东西。这种压力让你做一些你可能并不真的想做的事情。还有一个很奇怪的经历，我想起了在从华盛顿到波士顿的Amtrak火车上。车上总有一个安静车厢，那是乘客应该保持完全安静的地方，适合用来工作或者其他用途。每次去那里寻求平静和安宁时，你会发现所有在安静车厢的人都很焦虑和不满，因为他们期望那里会完全安静。因此，如果有人哪怕低声说话，或者手机不小心响了，人们都会失去理智。他们希望绝对的安静，所以一点小声音都会让他们抓狂。讽刺的是，你去那里本是寻求安宁，但任何人的一点噪音都会让你变得非常愤怒。这就像是，如果你的期望改变了，那么最微小的事情也能让你心烦。去安静车厢，确实更安静，但你也因此背负了“声音债务”。

You could say this invisible sound debt, but it's a liability now. And I think it's so true with money as well that the more money you gain, the more pressure you have to live a better life that may or may not actually make you happier. Will Smith, the actor said that when he was poor and depressed, he could tell himself, if only I had more money, all my problems would go away. And then when he became rich and he was still depressed, he couldn't say that anymore. He was still depressed, but he was like, I can't say that if I had more money, I would be happier because I already have more money that I could ever spend. So he said what happened when he became rich is it just removed the hope that he had when he was poor, he had this hope like, I got to make more money and then I'll be okay. And he's rich is like, you lost all the hope. He's still depressed. It's very inspiring to think if I have more money, my problems will go away. But then once you have that money and you realize that you still have just as many problems, maybe even more problems than you had before, that could be a tough thing for people to wrap their heads around. We're talking about that a little bit last night in the sense of people who have money can't really talk about money either because they have all the same problems that everybody else has, but they don't feel like they can openly converse about it. Because it's like boo hoo. And it's true. They are boo hoo problems. There are much bigger problems in the world. If you have can't afford health insurance, you're homeless, whatever or not. There are much, much bigger problems.

你可以说这是一种无形的“声音债务”，但现在它成了一种负担。我认为，对于金钱也是如此：你赚的钱越多，你面临的压力就越大，需要过上更好的生活，但这种生活未必真的让你更快乐。演员威尔·史密斯曾说，当他贫穷且抑郁时，他可以告诉自己，如果有更多的钱，他的所有问题都会消失。可当他变得富有且依然抑郁时，他再也无法用这句话安慰自己了。他依然抑郁，但他无法再说“如果我有更多的钱，我会更快乐”，因为他已经拥有足够多的钱，而这些钱多到他一辈子也花不完。所以他说，当他变得富有时，唯一发生的变化是，他失去了贫穷时那种“挣更多钱就能好起来”的希望。他还是感到抑郁。想到“如果我有更多的钱，我的问题就会消失”这种想法确实很让人鼓舞。但是，一旦你有了这些钱并发现自己依然有很多问题，甚至问题比以前更多，这对人们来说可能是一种难以接受的事情。我们昨晚也聊到了这个话题，有钱的人也不能公开谈论金钱，因为他们和其他人一样，依然有各种问题，但他们觉得自己不能公开讨论，因为这样会显得像是在无病呻吟。确实如此，他们的问题可能显得微不足道，因为世界上还有更严重的问题，比如无力支付医疗保险费或者无家可归。相比之下，那些问题确实更加严重。

But first world problems are real problems in people's heads. And you're right that they're by and large can't talk about them. It's very interesting when you get together a group of wealthy people into a room where they can all start in that safety zone. They can talk about the problems and they all have the same problems. How do I not spoil my kids? How do I do this? Things that they can't talk about with anyone else in their life because those problems are so different from the other very real material health living problems.

但“第一世界”的问题在人的脑海中是真实存在的。你说得对，他们在大多数情况下都无法谈论这些问题。不过，当一群富人聚在一个他们都觉得安全的环境中时，这就变得非常有趣了。他们可以谈论这些问题，而且每个人都有同样的问题。比如，我怎么才能不把孩子宠坏？我该怎么做？这些问题他们无法在生活中的其他人面前提起，因为这些问题和其他的非常真实的物质、健康、生活问题相比是如此不同。

But there are lots of things that are very difficult to figure out when you have a lot of money or even just a modest amount of money that you can't talk about even with some of your closest friends. I am sure you do have friends who have less money than you and I do. And you can talk about with those friends you can talk about anything else in life. Problems with your marriage, problems with your health, whatever it might be. And there's all these other things that you're like, I can't talk about the things that are actually giving me anxiety right now.

但是，当你有很多钱或即使只有一些钱时，有很多事情是非常难以弄清楚的，而且你甚至不能和一些最亲密的朋友谈论这些事情。我确信你也有一些朋友比你和我更少钱。而且你可以和那些朋友谈论生活中的其他任何事情，比如婚姻问题、健康问题等等。但有很多让你感到焦虑的事情，你却无法说出口。

It seems like the meta skill to think about right now through this conversation is how do we learn to manage our expectations? This is maybe this is how we started the podcast. I don't want my expectations to never move. I want them to just grow a little bit slower than my wealth over time. I want it so that in 50 years, I hope that I'm living a better material life to some degree. I just want that level to not exceed my net worth over time.

通过这次对话，现在要思考的核心技能似乎是我们该如何学会管理自己的期望？也许这就是我们开始这个播客的初衷。我并不希望我的期望永远不变，我希望它们能比我的财富增长得慢一点。我希望在50年后，我的物质生活有所改善，但我希望这种改善的速度不要超过我的财富增长速度。

Once your aspirations exceed the growth of your wealth, that's when people get into, they take too much risk, they go into debt, whatever it might be. You've hung around and spent time with a lot of wealthy families, either giving talks or individually. The problems are the same. How do they deal with not raising spoiled children? What have you learned from that? I'd say most of them, how do they deal with not raising spoiled children? They don't deal with it well. It's a very hard thing to do. I had a conversation recently with a guy who was his father is a billionaire and they've lived like billionaires his entire life. He's roughly our age and he's a very down to earth grounded polite guy.

一旦你的愿望超过了财富的增长速度，人们就会开始冒险，可能会负债，无论是出于什么原因。你与许多富裕家庭有过接触，无论是演讲还是私人交流。他们的问题是相同的：怎样才能不把孩子养成娇生惯养的人呢？你从中学到了什么？我得说，大多数富裕家庭并没有很好地处理这个问题。这实在是很难做到。不久前，我和一个人交流过，他的父亲是亿万富翁，他们一辈子都过着亿万富翁的生活。他大概和我们同龄，但他是个非常脚踏实地、有礼貌的人。

I asked him, how did you grow up with private jets and mansions and not become a spoiled little prick? He's such a nice guy. Despite having that much money and living like a billionaire, his parents never told him that because we have more money, we're better than anyone else. They told him quite the opposite. He said something I thought was really important. He said the reason that so many kids grow up spoiled is because their parents are obsessed with money. That's why the parents are rich is because they're obsessed with money. But it naturally grows into this thing of like, you are better than other people if you have more money and if people have less money than us than we're not, they are not equal to us.

我问他：你是怎么在私人飞机和豪宅中长大，却没有变成一个被宠坏的小子呢？他是个很好的人。尽管拥有这么多钱，过着亿万富翁的生活，他的父母从未告诉过他“因为我们有更多的钱，所以我们比别人更优秀”。他们告诉他的恰恰相反。他说了句让我觉得非常重要的话。他说，很多孩子长大后变得被宠坏，是因为他们的父母对钱太过着迷。这就是为什么那些父母会很有钱，因为他们对钱很痴迷。但这自然发展成一种观念，就是如果你有更多的钱，你就比别人更优秀，而那些钱比我们少的人就不和我们平等。

It's so basic and almost cliche, but if you are very wealthy but you're still teaching your kids the good values, that will stick with them. And the opposite is true too. If you raise your kids, even if you have a lower income, but you raise them with an obsession with money, that's the scorecard of measuring other people. It's like, well, what's your net worth? What's your salary? That's why I'm going to measure you by and rank you by. That's when you get spoiled little jerks as children. How do you and Gretchen talk to your kids about money? Our kids are foreign aid, so not that much yet.

尽管听起来有点老生常谈，但如果你非常富有，却仍然教导孩子们良好的价值观，这些价值观会在他们身上扎根。反之亦然。如果你收入较低，却执着于金钱，并用金钱来衡量他人，比如用净资产或者薪水来评判和排位你的孩子，这样教育出来的孩子就可能变成宠坏的小混蛋。你和格雷琴是如何和孩子们谈论金钱的？我们的孩子还小，所以目前谈论得并不多。

The other thing that I've noticed, I'm sure it's the same for you and other people who have multiple children is that my kids could not be able to do it. They could not be more different in their personalities. And of course, they're raised by the same parents. They shared, they shared, have their DNA. It's the same house, the same rules, the same upbringing and they're utterly different people. So you can't create one philosophy, one parenting philosophy for that. The other thing is even if I know my children today, I don't know who they're going to be when they're adults. Does my daughter want to be a partner at Goldman Sachs? Does she want to work for Greenpeace? Does she want to be a kindergarten teacher? Do you have no idea what they're going to do? And the different rules are going to be different for them.

我还注意到另外一件事，我相信你和其他有多个孩子的人也一样，我的孩子们性格完全不同。尽管他们是同样的父母抚养的，有相同的DNA，在同一个房子里，遵守同样的规则，接受同样的教育，但他们却是完全不同的人。所以，无法为此制定一种统一的育儿理念。另外，即使我今天了解我的孩子，我也不知道他们长大后会变成什么样的人。我的女儿将来想成为高盛的合伙人吗？她想为绿色和平组织工作吗？她想做一名幼儿园老师吗？你根本不知道他们将来会做什么，不同的规则对他们会有不同的效果。

I also think that what's true is that the more you try to tell your kids, this is what you should do. The more they're going to rebel against that, particularly when they're teenagers, but the more that you can just lead by example, like A, they are going to pick up on it. You don't need to sit your kids down and say, let me teach you about money. In fact, if you do that, most kids are going to yawn and say, I'm not interested in this. But they are definitely paying attention to every time you say, we can't afford this. They're making a mental note of it. Every time you say, that's too expensive. Every time you say, I value this, I don't value that. They're forming a model in their head that's going to stick with them forever.

我也认为事实是这样的：你越是试图告诉你的孩子应该怎么做，他们反而越会反叛，尤其是在他们是青少年的时候。但如果你能以身作则，比如做A，他们自然会学到这一点。你不需要把孩子们叫过来说，让我来教你们关于金钱的知识。事实上，如果你这样做，大多数孩子会打哈欠并说：我对这个不感兴趣。但他们肯定会注意到你每次说“我们负担不起这个”的时候。他们会在心里记住这些。每次你说“这太贵了”的时候，每次你说“我重视这个，我不重视那个”的时候，他们在脑海里形成的模式会永远伴随着他们。

And so I think just leading by example with them is what we try to do rather than trying to say, this is what I want to teach you. These are the values I want to instill back to my own parents. I don't think they ever sat me or my siblings down and said, let me teach you about money. But I learned profound money lessons for them by just observing when I was eight years old. Well, let's invert it. We can go from parenting and then maybe to money broader, but like what lessons don't you want your kids to learn about money? What would be the worst thing that they can take away from you about money? Don't think that all poverty is due to laziness and don't think that all wealth is due to hard work. It's not if you are just ranking people by their net worth and ranking their value by the net worth.

因此，我认为与其说“这是我要教你的东西”，不如以身作则来引导他们。回想我的父母，他们从来没有专门坐下来和我或我的兄弟姐妹说“让我教你关于金钱的事情”。但我通过在八岁时观察他们，学到了深刻的金钱观念。我们可以倒过来看这个问题，从育儿谈到金钱，哪些关于金钱的观念你不希望孩子们学到？什么是他们可以从你这里学到最糟糕的金钱观念？不要认为所有的贫穷都是因为懒惰，也不要认为所有的财富都是因为努力工作。如果仅仅根据净资产来排名人们的价值，这是不对的。

That's probably the most dangerous thing you can do with money. It's the most profoundly wrong takeaway from money. And yes, a lot of wealthy people earned it, of course. And a lot of poor people made some very bad decisions. But once you just use it as a yardstick to measure people's value by, you're making a huge mistake. There are a lot of wealthy people who I cannot stand and some of my best friends don't make that much money. And I think you can only have that in your life if you divorce someone's salary and net worth from their personal worth in life. What else? Keep going.

这可能是你能用钱做的最危险的事情。这是对金钱最严重的误解。没错，许多富人确实是通过努力赚来的，当然，许多穷人确实做出了一些错误的决定。但是，一旦你用金钱作为衡量人们价值的标准，你就犯了一个巨大的错误。有很多富人我一点也不喜欢，而我一些最好的朋友收入并不高。我认为只有当你将一个人的工资和净值与他们在生活中的个人价值分开时，你才能真正体验到这样的生活。还有什么？继续说。

I think what's interesting, I don't know if this is a lesson, what's interesting is that if you ask most parents, what do you want for your kids? Almost every parent will say, I just want them to be happy. I just want to raise happy kids. And then if you said, do you want your kids to be rich and successful? Like, well, sure, but I just wanted to be happy. I just want them to be happy. So then figuring out how to use money as a tool to make you happier rather than just a tool to pile on to become wealthier is really important. That I would, you know, there are for sure people who earn 30 grand per year that are so much happier than people who earn $3 million per year. And understanding that value of money, I think, is really important. Like, what can money do to make you happier? Because there's no other purpose. There's nothing else that you should even think about other than that.

我觉得有趣的是（不知道这算不算是一堂课），如果你问大多数父母，他们希望孩子得到什么？几乎每个父母都会说，我只希望他们能快乐。我只想培养快乐的孩子。然后如果你再问，他们希望孩子富有和成功吗？他们可能会说，当然，希望孩子富有成功，但最重要的还是希望他们快乐。所以，学会如何将金钱作为一种让你更快乐的工具，而不仅仅是积累财富的工具，这一点非常重要。我知道确实有一些每年赚3万美元的人比那些每年赚300万美元的人要快乐得多。理解金钱的价值非常重要，即金钱能做些什么来让你更快乐。除此之外，没有什么其他目的了，你甚至不应该考虑别的。

What do you think is the biggest risk to capitalism? I think it's always going to be the case. It is inevitable. And it is actually ideal that there is some level of inequality in the world. It's not only inevitable, it's ideal. The opposite of that is a nightmare. But it's also the case that you do not want a third of society waking up every morning and saying, this doesn't want to be a third of society. You're waking up every morning and saying, this doesn't work for me. This system doesn't work for me. So once you get to some critical level, maybe it's not 30%, whatever it is. But if enough people wake up in the morning and say, this sucks, this system doesn't work, then it's going to reverse itself. And there's a very long history of that.

你认为资本主义最大的风险是什么？我认为它总是存在的。这是不可避免的。实际上，世界上存在某种程度的不平等是理想的。这不仅是不可避免的，也是理想的。相反的情况则是一场噩梦。但是，也有一种情况是，你不想让社会的三分之一在每天早上醒来时说，这个系统对我不起作用。所以，一旦达到某个临界点，也许不是30%，无论是多少，但只要有足够多的人每天早上醒来并说，这太糟糕了，这个系统不起作用，那么它就会自我逆转。而历史上有很多这样的例子。

So the balance of you want inequality because people's skills are unequal. You want that to be the case. But there is some barrier at which it starts to reverse itself. And it becomes a pitch forts in the streets kind of scenario. That reverse. Now, in the history of the United States, it's happened several times. In the 1920s and the Great Depression, I'm thinking what we've dealt with in the last couple of years, there's always a pendulum between labor and capital, workers and investors. And it kind of swings back and forth, who's taking the lion's share of the spoils in this economy. In the 1920s, it was capital. From the 1950s to 70s, it was labor. And since then, it's been capital. And it kind of shifts back and forth.

因此，你会希望存在不平等，因为人们的能力是不平等的，你希望这是事实。但是有一个界限，一旦超过这个界限，情况就会开始逆转，可能会引发街头抗议的场景。历史上，美国发生过几次这样的情况。在20世纪20年代和大萧条时期，包括我们最近几年的经历，劳动力和资本、工人和投资者之间总是存在一个钟摆效应。这个钟摆来回摆动，决定了谁在这个经济体中占据最大的好处。在20世纪20年代，好处是资本一方的。从1950年代到1970年代，好处转向了劳动力。而从那之后，资本又重新占据了优势。这种力量的平衡不断地来回变动。

Now, just in the last three or four years, there's been a huge growth. The segment of society whose incomes have grown the most tends to be the lower incomes. We're still kind of attached to this narrative of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But in the last couple of years, it has kind of flipped around, at least to a degree that we haven't seen in a very long time, is that the pendulum's shifting towards another, you know, 30 year trend. Maybe I have no idea. But that pendulum is always there to kind of keep itself in check. And I think if it gets too extreme, you can get very extreme outcomes.

现在，就在过去的三四年里，已经有了巨大的增长。收入增长最多的社会阶层往往是低收入群体。我们还是有点抱着那种“富人越富、穷人越穷”的说法。但是在过去的几年里，这种情况有所扭转，至少在某种程度上达到了我们很久没有见过的水平，钟摆正在向另一个新的30年趋势摆动。也许我无法预测未来，但这个钟摆总是存在的，会自己保持平衡。我认为，如果这种现象变得过于极端，可能会导致非常极端的结果。

We don't remember this now. But in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the words dictator and authoritarian and even fascism were not the same. And even fascism were not the dirty words that they are today. A lot of people during that era, it was not uncommon for people to say capitalism and even having a big democracy just doesn't work. The Great Depression in their minds proved that it didn't work. And people's push to say, hey, look at all these countries in Europe that are going towards fascism. Maybe we should try that because this didn't work.

我们现在已经不记得了，但在上世纪30年代，也就是大萧条时期，“独裁者”、“威权主义”甚至“法西斯主义”这些词语并不像今天那样带有贬义。当时，很多人认为资本主义甚至大型民主制度行不通。在他们看来，大萧条证明了这种制度的失败。很多人纷纷呼吁，看看欧洲那些转向法西斯主义的国家，或许我们也应该尝试这种制度，因为现有的制度已经不起作用了。

I think that's the danger when you get too unequal in society is that too many other people can be tempted to saying that didn't work. Let's try something even more extreme. It's almost like I feel like I don't have opportunity. I feel like I don't have opportunity. And it's almost like we want equal opportunity and we're okay with unequal outcomes. Yeah. It's a really tough thing. And I would not, I think you and I, if we felt that we were trapped, that there's no way, no matter how hard we work, if we felt whether it's true or not, that we were trapped in a low income job, you and I would be prone to some extreme views too.

我认为，当社会变得过于不平等时，会产生一种危险，那就是太多的人可能会被诱惑去说这种方式行不通。让我们试试更极端的做法。我几乎觉得我没有机会。我觉得我没有机会。我们几乎想要的是平等的机会，而我们可以接受不平等的结果。这真的很难。我认为，如果你我感到自己被困住了，无论多么努力都没办法突破，不管这是否是真的，如果我们觉得自己被困在低收入的工作中，你我也可能倾向于持有一些极端的观点。

Oh, totally. There's a saying, I love that, it was from a Russian poet who spent a lot of time in the Gulag. And he says, man becomes a beast in two weeks. If you have two weeks of deprivation, two weeks without food, two weeks in solitary confinement, a refined, kind, polite person becomes an animal. So like if, if you put someone in an extreme scenario, they're going to be prone to extreme views, extreme outcomes. Do you think most adults understand compounding? I think it's not intuitive to virtually anyone.

哦，完全同意。有一句话我很喜欢，是一位在古拉格（苏联的劳改营）待了很长时间的俄罗斯诗人说的。他说，人类在两周内就会变成兽。如果你剥夺一个人两周的食物，或让他在两周内进行单独监禁，那么一个精致、善良、有礼貌的人就会变成野兽。所以说，如果你把一个人置于极端的环境中，他就会倾向于产生极端的观点和极端的行为。你认为大多数成年人了解复利的概念吗？我觉得这个概念对几乎所有人来说都不太直观。

Michael Badnick, a good friend of mine, has a saying that's so simple, but I think sums this up the best. He said, if I asked you, what is eight plus eight plus eight plus eight? You can figure that in your head in five seconds. If I said, what is eight times eight times eight times eight, even if you're a math genius, you're like, I don't know. It's such a huge number. Like I have no idea what it is. Basic linear math is very intuitive, very easy. Compounding math is just, it's so, it's so unintuitive for even people who understand it.

我的好朋友Michael Badnick有一句话，非常简单，但我觉得最能总结这个观点。他说，如果我问你，8加8加8加8等于多少？你可以在五秒钟内用脑子算出来。如果我问你，8乘8乘8乘8等于多少，即使你是数学天才，你也会觉得不知道。这是一个非常大的数字，我完全不知道是什么。基础的线性数学非常直观，非常简单，而复利数学即使对于那些理解它的人来说，也是非常不直观的。

And it's everywhere. Compounding is not just in your bank account, your brokerage account. There's compounding in nature, it's compounding for social trends. And it's easy to underestimate how big something can become because compounding is so counterintuitive. You see this with COVID, which was compound interest at its prime. Like this virus that in the early days is, you know, doubling every day, whatever it would be. And that's how you go from, oh, three people are infected in March of 2020 to today. Like I don't know anyone who's not had COVID. And so it goes from literally three people to the entire world in the blink of an eye when it's doubling that quickly.

这现象无处不在。复利不仅存在于你的银行账户、你的券商账户中。自然界中也有复利，社会趋势也有复利。而且，因为复利是如此反直觉，人们很容易低估某事物可能变得多么巨大。你可以从新冠疫情中看到这一点，这就是复利效应的绝佳例子。比如这种病毒在早期，每天都会翻倍感染人数。所以从2020年3月几个人被感染，到如今我身边几乎没有人没得过新冠，这现象在短时间内迅速蔓延的方式，令人震惊。

How would you explain it to kids or adults? Like what is the best way to teach people the power of compounding? It's like the one formula, I tell my kids this when they're in math and they're learning this in sort of grade eight, grade nine. They learn about compounding. And I'm like, your teacher's never going to tell you this. But this is the most important formula you're probably going to learn in your math class. Yeah. I don't know if, I'm not making this up right now. I've not thought about this. I don't know how I explain it, but just growth fuels more growth. It's like the more you grow, the more fuel you have for more growth.

解释给小孩或成年人时，该如何让人们理解复利的力量呢？这就像一个公式。我告诉我的孩子们，当他们在八年级、九年级的数学课上学习复利的时候。他们学习复利，而我会说，你们的老师可能不会告诉你们这一点，但这是你们在数学课上可能学到的最重要的公式。我现在并不是在即兴发挥，我没有仔细考虑过这个问题，我不知道该如何解释。但复利的力量就在于，增长会促进更多的增长。就像你增长得越多，你就会有更多的“燃料”来促进进一步的增长。

That's not a very good explanation for it. But that's the thing to wrap your head around is like, it's not what you start with. It's just like how long you're doing it for. And it's not even the growth. It's the duration. Yes. So I said this earlier, how I think about my own investing philosophy. If I can be average for an above average period of time, that leads to a way above average result. It's not about like, what are the returns that I can earn this year? If I can earn 8% returns for 50 years, the results are ridiculous.

那不是一个很好的解释。但是你需要理解的是，这不是你开始时如何做的问题，而是你持续做多长时间的问题。这甚至不是关于增长的问题，而是关于持续时间的。是的，我之前说过，我的投资理念是这样的：如果我能在一段超过平均水平的时间里保持平均水平，那最终的结果会远远超过平均水平。这不是关于我今年能获得什么回报的问题。如果我能在50年中获得8%的年回报率，结果将是惊人的。

The results are absurd. And so maximizing the variable that matters, which is time and endurance. You know, all compounding is effectively is returns to the power of time. And so if you understand math, the exponent there is what's doing all the heavy lifting, like maximize for that. But where is all of the effort in the investing industry? It's in the smaller number. It's in returns. How do I increase my returns this year? But I think when you understand like, you know, all the power, all the wealth, all the leverage is in the endurance. Just focus on that before you think about anything else. That's a really powerful way to think about it.

结果是荒谬的。因此，我们应该最大化真正重要的变量，即时间和耐力。你知道，所有复利实际上就是让回报随着时间增加。如果你理解数学，你会知道指数是完成所有重任的因素，所以要最大化那个变量。但是，投资行业的所有努力都在哪里呢？都集中在较小的数字上，即回报率上。今年如何提高回报率？但我认为，当你理解到所有的力量、财富和杠杆都在于耐力的时候，你就会知道，在考虑其他任何事情之前，先关注这个。这是一种很有力量的思考方式。

Let's switch gears and talk about reading and writing. How do you select what you read? I heard this idea. I think it was from Patrick Hashanah, many years ago who said, you want a wide funnel and a tight filter. I will start reading any book on any topic that looks even minor. It looks even mildly interesting to me. But I will slam it shut without mercy and move on to something else if it's not working for me. A lot of the reason that people don't like read, why people don't read as much as they should, or if they say, I'm not a big reader. A lot of the reason is because they feel like morally that they need to finish every book that they start. And we realize that the majority of books, there's 4 million books for sale on Amazon. I bet 3.9 million of those are not meant for you or for me. They're meant for other people.

让我们转换一下话题，聊聊阅读和写作。你是如何选择阅读的书籍的？我曾经听到这样一个理念，我记得是多年前Patrick Hashanah提出的。他说，你需要一个宽口漏斗和一个紧过滤器。我会开始阅读任何看起来哪怕只是稍微有点兴趣的书。但如果我发现这本书不适合我，我会毫不留情地把它合上，转去读其他的书。许多人不喜欢阅读，或者没有他们应该有的阅读量，或者有人说自己不是爱读书的人，很多时候是因为他们觉得道德上有必要读完每一本开始的书。我们要明白，大多数书并不适合我们看。亚马逊上有400万本待售书籍，我敢打赌其中的390万本都不是为你或我准备的，而是为其他人准备的。

But they just don't work for what we want out of them. And if you force yourself to finish every book, your start, of course, it's going to be a miserable experience. But when you are willing to try anything but have a filter that just has no mercy to move on if you don't like it, that's when you find the great books. Because if you only stick to books that you know you're going to like about topics that you're interested, you are missing so many other topics out there that you don't even know that you would like. You have to try a million different things, but then cut it off very quickly if you don't like it.

但是，它们并不能满足我们对它们的期望。如果你逼自己读完每一本开始的书，当然，你会经历一段痛苦的时间。但是，当你愿意尝试任何东西，同时有一个毫不留情的过滤机制，如果不喜欢就马上放弃，这样你才能找到真正好书。因为如果你只读那些你确信自己会喜欢的、你感兴趣的书，你会错过很多你甚至不知道自己会喜欢的主题。你必须尝试成千上万种不同的东西，但如果不喜欢就要立刻割舍。

So that's how I try to read. If it's even slightly interesting, if someone has said, oh, this is a good, I will start reading it. By the way, Kindle samples are free. You have no excuse to not try any book. And then just mercilessly cut it off if it's not working for you. I find this really interesting because with my oldest who reads a ton, I just put books on his nightstand. And some of them I think it'll like, some of them I don't think it'll like. And he randomly, he'll pick them up and he read like an immune system textbook last year and loved it. Yes, I think there's a lot of like that. If you ask me right now, would I like to read a book on the immune system? I say, I don't know, not really.

所以这就是我试着阅读的方法。如果一本书稍微有点趣味，有人推荐说这本书不错，我就会开始阅读。顺便说一下，Kindle样章是免费的，所以你没有理由不尝试任何一本书。如果一本书不适合你，就毫不留情地放弃。我觉得这很有趣，因为我家的大儿子阅读量很大，我只是把书放在他的床头柜上，其中有些是我觉得他会喜欢的，有些是我觉得他不会喜欢的。他会随意挑选，有些书他会读，比如去年他读了一本关于免疫系统的教科书，并且非常喜欢。说实话，如果你现在问我是否想读一本关于免疫系统的书，我的回答可能是：不知道，不太想。

But there are so many topics like that over the years that I never would have thought that I would like that I start reading. I'm like, this is incredible. Or it's working for me in that moment. It's a missing puzzle piece in that moment. There are a couple books that have always been on my go to books that I recommend to other people. Oh, this is one of my favorite books of all time. A couple of those books, I went back and reread. And I'm like, they're really not that good. But at the time that I read them, it was a missing puzzle piece that it was like perfect for me in that moment.

但是，多年来，有很多话题是我从未想过我会喜欢的，我一开始阅读时就觉得很不可思议。或者说，在那个时刻，它们对我很有帮助。就像在那一刻缺失拼图的一块。我有几本常推荐给其他人的书，这些都是我最喜欢的书之一。可是，当我再回去重读这些书时，我觉得它们其实并没有那么好，但在当时读它们的时候，它们就像是我当时所需的完美拼图。

Even if when I read it now, I'm like, this book is kind of very basic, not that well written. And so I think that missing puzzle piece is true for a lot of people. And that's why you need to read a lot of books because what other people think are good may or may not be the book that you need at that moment.

即使现在再读这本书，我也觉得它有点过于基础，写得不是很好。因此，我认为这种缺失的拼图对于很多人来说都是存在的。这就是为什么你需要读很多书，因为别人认为好的书可能并不是你当下需要的那本书。

Are you a Kindle reader, mostly? I'd go back and forth. I'm in a Kindle kick right now. And I've been in physical books before. What I love about Kindle is so easy to highlight and go back and search. Which for me as a writer is really important. When I'm writing, I'm like, what was that quote from this book? I need to go find that really hard to do that in a physical book. Where's Kindle? It's just so easy. Do you take them out of the Kindle or just leave the highlights on the Kindle? I use the Readwise app. And so everything that I highlight, whether it's in a blog post or a Twitter or it goes all into that.

你主要用 Kindle 看书吗？我会来回切换。目前我正沉迷于用 Kindle，不过之前也会看实体书。我爱 Kindle 的地方在于，它很容易进行标注，还能轻松查找回顾。对于我这样一个写作者来说，这点非常重要。当我写作的时候，常常会想，“那本书里的那句话是什么来着？”这时要去实体书里找就特别困难。而在 Kindle 上，这一切都容易多了。你会把标注内容从 Kindle 里导出来，还是只是留在 Kindle 上？我使用 Readwise 应用程序，所以所有我标注的内容，无论是博客文章、推特上的，还是其他地方，都可以同步到那上面。

David Senra is the one who said his Readwise feed of all of his highlights is his smart Twitter feed. Twitter can be filled with so much garbage and noise. But Readwise, you can flick through. I think David Senra said he has like 28,000 highlights. And he can sit there and scroll it of these like amazing quotes and anecdotes that he's highlighted over the years.

David Senra 是那个说他在 Readwise 上的所有标注就像他的智能 Twitter 的人。Twitter 上可能有很多垃圾和噪音，但 Readwise 上你可以快速浏览。我记得 David Senra 说他有大约 28000 个标注。他可以坐在那里，滚动浏览这些多年里他标记的精彩引用和轶事。

Are there passages that stick with you or haunt you that you've read that you can't stop thinking about? It might seem a weird one, but I just, because I'm a writer too, as you are, I'm a sucker for just a well-crafted phrase. But there was one, I forget who wrote this. I'm sorry, I can't tell you who wrote this, but it was a book about D-Day. And it was talking about this one group, this one company of soldiers on D-Day, of whom many of them died. And the passage was, all of them were prepared to die that day.

有没有一些你读过的，让你难以忘怀或忍不住总是去想的段落呢？听起来可能有点奇怪，但因为我也是个作家，跟你一样，我对那些精心雕琢的句子特别着迷。有一段话，我忘了是谁写的，抱歉我不能告诉你具体的作者，但那是一部关于诺曼底登陆日的书。在书中，有段描述提到一个士兵连队，诺曼底登陆当天许多人牺牲了。那段话是：“他们都准备好那天牺牲了。”

And all of them did die that day. And that was something, it's such a beautifully crafted sentence and it's also just haunting in its own way. I'm such a sucker for that. I always say the best story wins. You could phrase that fact that they all died a million different ways, but how, whoever the author was phrased that always stuck with me. Why do you think the best story wins? What's behind that? What we're trying to do when we read a lot of times is just contextualize whatever fact or story that was within our own lives.

他们那天全部都死了。这句话表达得非常优美，同时也带有一种让人挥之不去的阴森。我特别喜欢这样的表达。我总是说，最好的故事总是胜出。你可以用无数种方式来说他们都死了这个事实，但不管是谁写的，这种表达方式总是让我印象深刻。你为什么认为最好的故事总是胜出？这背后是什么原因呢？我们在阅读的时候，常常是试图将某个事实或故事与自己的生活联系起来。

And it's much easier to contextualize a story than a statistic, because there's a human element to a good story. And I also, it's just so much easier to remember and stick with you. I don't remember any of the formulas that I was forced to memorize in school, forced to memorize the night before the test. I remember a single one. But every good story that I was told, someone when I was six years old, I still remember.

讲故事比讲数据要容易得多，因为好的故事里有人情味。而且故事更容易记住，让人印象深刻。我在学校被强迫记住的那些公式，考试前一晚死记硬背的公式，没一个记得。我六岁时听过的每一个好故事，我现在还记得。

So because it's just so much easier to remember a story than a statistic and it's easier to contextualize it within your own life. And because there's so much emotion embedded in it, stories are like leverage for good statistics. If you decide, like there's some statistics, like I just said, if I said, first platoon of company E all died on D-Day, that's a statistic. But if you phrase that, if you put a name or a face to it, it becomes a completely different thing. I always use the example of Ken Burns, who makes the best documentaries about U.S. history. And the vast majority of what is in his documentaries are already known.

所以，因为记住一个故事要比记住一个统计数据容易得多，而且更容易在你的生活中找到关联性。并且，由于故事中包含了大量的情感，故事就像是能增强统计数据影响力的杠杆。如果你决定，比如有一些统计数据，如我刚才所说，如果我说E连第一排在D日全部牺牲了，那只是一项统计数据。但如果你给它加上一个名字或一张脸，它就会变成完全不同的东西。我总是用Ken Burns（肯·伯恩斯）的例子，他制作的关于美国历史的纪录片是最好的。他的纪录片中大多数内容其实大家已经知道了。

The documentary about the Civil War or World War II, you know how it ends, you know what happened. There's not that much new in there. But he is a better storyteller than I think any historian has ever been in history. He can tell a story about the Civil War that will literally bring you to tears, even if you know what happened. You knew what happened, but when you hear the story and see the face and hear the music in the documentary, it will literally bring you to tears.

这部关于内战或二战的纪录片，你都知道结局，知道发生了什么。里面没有太多新的内容。但是，他讲故事的能力比我认为任何历史学家都要强。他能把一段内战的故事讲得让你泪流满面，即使你已经知道了发生了什么。你知道了结局，但当你听到故事、看到面孔、听到纪录片中的音乐时，它会让你感动得流泪。

And Ken Burns has talked about how important music is in his documentaries, the background music. And he said that he will literally edit the script so that when the narrator says a specific emotional word, it matches up with a beat in the background music so that the emotion and the music is literally aligned like that. No other historian is doing that. No other historian does that. And that's why he can create, he has the leverage by telling, by talking about the Civil War, that no other of the historians who are writing about the Civil War can recreate.

Ken Burns 谈到音乐在他的纪录片中有多么重要，尤其是背景音乐。他说，他会实实在在地编辑剧本，以便在旁白说出特定情感词时，与背景音乐的节拍完全一致，这样情感和音乐就能完全契合。没有其他历史学家会这么做，没有其他历史学家这样做。这也是为什么他能通过讲述南北战争，创造出其他撰写南北战争历史的学者无法再现的独特魅力。

Take a few seconds and think about how you would teach me to tell a better story. You're one of the best storytellers of our generation. Teach me how to tell a story like Morgan Hassel. I think it's two things. One is right for an audience of one, which is yourself. Don't think about other people. Don't think about who's going to read this. Don't think, don't ask yourself, how is the reader going to interpret the sentence? Write a sentence that moves you. When you read it, you're like, I like that without thinking about anyone else.

花几秒钟思考一下，你会怎么教我讲一个更好的故事。你是我们这一代最好的说书人之一。教教我如何像摩根·哈索尔那样讲故事。我认为要做好这件事有两个关键点。首先，是为自己写作。不要去想读者，不要去想谁会看这篇文章，也不要问自己读者会怎么解读这个句子。写一个打动自己的句子。当你读到它时，你会觉得“我喜欢这个”而不去考虑其他任何人。

I think once you start thinking about who is my audience and what are they going to like, you start to pander. And you start to perform for them in a way that is very hard to create a good emotional story about just write for yourself. The other is don't forget how impatient everyone is. This is a sense where maybe you are thinking about the reader, but everyone is so impatient when they're reading that you just always have to ask yourself, what is the point that I'm trying to make?

我觉得一旦你开始想我的读者是谁，他们会喜欢什么，你就开始迁就他们了。你为了他们而表演，这样就很难创造出一个好的有情感的故事。所以还是为自己写。另一个要点是不要忘记每个人都很没耐心。在这种情况下，你可能确实考虑到了读者，但每个人读东西都非常没耐心，所以你要时刻问自己，我要表达的观点是什么？

Make that point and get the hell out of people's way and move on to another point. And most storytelling, you lose it once you lose the reader. Mark Twain, he said at one point that when he would edit his work, he would read it aloud to his family. You'd read the story aloud. And when he saw them getting bored, he would make a note, all right, cut that part. They're clearly dozing off here.

表达那个观点后就赶紧让开，继续下一个。大多数讲故事的过程中，一旦丢掉了读者的兴趣，就很难挽回了。马克·吐温曾说过，他编辑作品时会把故事读给家人听。如果看到他们变得无聊，他就会记下那个部分，然后删掉它。显然，他们在这里打瞌睡了。

And when he would see their eyes bug up, he'd be like, oh, this is a good part. And I think Mark Twain was the one who said, leave out the parts that readers tend to skip. That's the key to good writing. Leave out the parts that people tend to skip. I think that's important to keep in mind too, is just write for yourself in a way that you like and get to the point and get out of people's way after that.

当他看到他们的眼睛瞪大时，他会觉得，“哦，这是精彩的部分。” 我记得是马克·吐温说过，要删去读者容易跳过的部分。这是好写作的关键。删去人们容易跳过的部分。我觉得这点很重要——写作时，要为自己写得愉快，直接切入主题，然后不再干扰读者。

How did you learn to write? You didn't even go to high school. Right. When I was at the Motley Fool for 10 years, that was a 10-year period where I was sometimes writing three posts per day, three articles per day doing that every day for almost a decade. I wrote thousands and thousands of blog posts. And when you write online, people are merciless about the feedback they give you. The readers in the comment sections are on Twitter will tell you in no uncertain terms, this article was shit and you did a terrible job. Or they'll say, this was really good. I really enjoyed it. So having that level of constant feedback and doing that thousands of times over a decade will turn anyone into a much better writer than they were when they started.

你是怎么学会写作的？你甚至连高中都没上过。嗯，我在Motley Fool工作了十年，这段时间里我有时每天写三篇帖子、三篇文章，每天都这样，几乎持续了十年。我写了成千上万篇博客文章。而且在网络上写文章，人们给你的反馈是毫不留情的。读者在评论区或者在推特上会直接告诉你，这篇文章写得糟透了，完全失败了。或者他们会说，这篇真的很好，我很喜欢。因此，十年如一日地接受这样的持续反馈，会让任何人成为比刚开始时更好的作家。

So that was really what it was. It's a combination of quantity and fierce, unvarnished feedback from readers. Do you test ideas? I think in some ways you test ideas in Twitter. And if they work, you can turn those ideas into a blog post. And if the blog post worked, you can turn it into a book idea or book chapter. That's kind of the natural progression for a lot of these things. And just like it's very true in comedy too. Even the best comedians, the world class comedians don't necessarily know what's funny until they've tested it. And this is why George Carlin, Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, they test their new jokes in tiny clubs. Because even Chris Rock does not know what's funny until they've tested it, until he's tested it.

所以实际上就是这样。这是一种数量和读者之间激烈、直率反馈的结合。你是否测试过想法？我觉得某种程度上你可以在Twitter上测试。如果这些想法有效，你可以将它们变成博客帖子。如果博客帖子有效，你可以将其发展成一本书的创意或书的一章。很多事情自然就是这种进程。而且在喜剧中也是如此。即使是最好的喜剧演员，世界级的喜剧演员也未必知道什么是好笑的，直到他们测试过。这就是为什么乔治·卡林、克里斯·洛克、杰里·宋飞会在小俱乐部中测试他们的新笑话。因为即便是克里斯·洛克也不知道什么好笑，直到他亲自测试过。

And I think it's true for writers as well. I've had a lot of experience with a writer blog post and I'm like, this is good. This is some of my best work. And it flops. No one else likes it. And the opposite is true too. The biggest, most popular blog post I've ever written were always ones where when I was writing and I was like, I don't think this is any good. This is so obvious. It's so boring. It's too personal. No one else is going to care about this that does well.

我认为对作家来说也是一样的。我有很多写博客帖子的经验，有时我会觉得，哇，这篇不错，是我写的最好的一篇，但结果却无人问津。相反，那些我写的时候觉得没什么特别，甚至觉得很明显、很无聊、太个人化，没人会感兴趣的帖子却往往非常受欢迎，成为最受欢迎的作品。

So even after doing this for so many years, I don't know if my ability to find a topic and say like, oh, that's going to turn into a good post is really that good, which is why you kind of have to test ideas over time. It's so interesting because a podcaster like that too. I'll record an episode and I'll be like, oh my God, that was mind blowing. And then, you know, three months later, I'll check at the stats and be like, what? And then I'll record a podcast where I'm like, oh, you know, I wasn't that engaged. And I look at the stats and it's like off the charts. Yes. The most popular blog post I've ever written by far, by like an order of magnitude, was a post in 2017 that I wrote about I grew up with and still have a stutter. And when I was a child and teenager, I could barely speak. It was a very severe stutter when I was a child. And I couldn't really overcome it to where I can talk to you like a two now until I was 30 years old.

所以即使做了这么多年，我还是不知道我找到一个话题并认为“这会成为一篇好文章”的能力到底有多高。所以你得不断地测试想法。这很有意思，因为播客录制也是一样的。我会录一期节目，觉得“哇，这真是太棒了”，但三个月后看统计数据，却发现并不怎么好。然后有时候我录一个播客，觉得自己没那么投入，但看数据却爆棚。是的，我有史以来最受欢迎的博文差不多是数量级变化的一篇，是在2017年写的，主题是我小时候以及现在依然有口吃。小时候和青少年时期，我几乎说不出话来，当时情况非常严重。一直到30岁，我才能像现在这样和你正常对话。

And so I wrote a post about this trial. It's called overcoming your demons. I know it was the most popular post I ever wrote. When I published it, I literally hid it from our blog feed because I was like, no one's going to be interested in this. I lose literally hidden. The link was out there, but it wasn't even on the feed because I was like, I'm so embarrassed about this that I would just be writing about a personal thing. No one else cares about this. And I really felt that way.

于是我写了一篇关于这次尝试的文章，叫做《战胜内心的恶魔》。我知道这是我写过的最受欢迎的文章。当我发布这篇文章时，我实际上把它从我们的博客主页上隐藏起来了，因为我觉得没人会对这个感兴趣。我真的把它藏起来了。虽然链接在那里，但它并没有出现在主页上，因为我觉得写这种个人经历的东西让我很尴尬，没人会在意。我真的有这种感觉。

And it turned into the most popular thing I ever wrote. Do you think you were scared to put it out there? Combination of scared. Also, the point of the post was overcoming your demons that I started with this like profound disability that had such a big impact on my childhood and that overcame it. And now I speak on stage and do these kind of podcasts. And I felt like it was to look at me, look at me, look at me. I didn't want that. But I think everyone has their demons. Everyone has something where they're like, I've got this problem in my life. And a lot of those are hidden. People don't talk about them because they're embarrassed. They don't want to talk about it. It's too personal.

结果那竟然成了我写过的最受欢迎的东西。你觉得你当时害怕把它公之于众吗？有点害怕吧。而且，那篇文章的重点是战胜自己的内心恶魔。我从小就有一个对我童年影响巨大的严重障碍，但我克服了它。现在我可以在舞台上演讲，参加这种类型的播客节目。当时我觉得那篇文章就像是在说“看看我，看看我”。我不想那样。但我认为每个人都有自己的内心恶魔，每个人的生活中都有些让他们感觉痛苦的问题。而且很多问题都是隐藏起来的。人们不谈论它们，因为他们感到尴尬，不愿意谈论，这些问题太私密了。

And I think when you are vulnerable and open, people love it because even if you don't stutter, you're like, oh, I had a problem. Oh, I have this similar. I have this issue, whatever it would be. And thank you for telling me that your life is not perfect. Thank you for being open about the struggles that we all have in our lives. I think people like that. But it's a fine balance between that and being too personal, which we've all seen online, or being too braggy, egotistical about like, look how much I overcame. I'm so important. I'm so special. It's a hard, it's a balance system. It's almost like a strategic. Some people use vulnerabilities strategically. You can tell there was that viral LinkedIn post a year or two ago of it was a founder and he said, I just had to lay off half my company and he included a picture of him with like tears running down his face and people are like, that's terrible. You like shame on you for just trying to like pull up the heartstrings and say like, oh, I'm, I'm so empathetic that I cry when I feel like it's actually a hard balance between like why, why did my stuttering post work. But that picture was just universally panned. It's a, it's a balance, but I think it's hard to know where you crossed the line there.

我认为，当你表现得脆弱和开放时，人们会喜欢，因为即使你没有口吃，他们也会觉得，“哦，我也有过问题，我也有类似的情况，我也遇到过这样的麻烦。” 谢谢你告诉我，你的生活并不完美。谢谢你坦诚面对我们生活中的种种困难，我觉得人们会喜欢这样的真实感。但是，这其中有一个微妙的平衡，不要变得太私人化，这是我们在网上经常看到的，或是过于自夸，像是“看看我克服了多少问题，我多么重要，我多么特别。” 这是一种很难把握的平衡，几乎可以说是一种策略。有些人会战略性地利用脆弱来博取关注。你可能听说过一两年前在LinkedIn上爆红的那个帖子，一个创始人说他刚裁掉了一半的员工，并附上了一张他泪流满面的照片。人们反应强烈，认为这太糟糕了，觉得他是在故意煽情，博取同情，其实他是在假装同理心而哭泣。为什么我的口吃帖子能引起共鸣，但那张照片却招致普遍批评呢？这确实是一个难以掌握的平衡，而且很难知道自己什么时候会越界。

I want to come back to comedians for a second. What did they know about telling stories that we should learn from that? I forget who says this. And this is not a direct quote in paraphrasing it. I'm going to do a much poor job paraphrasing it, but it's like comedy is a way to show your smart without being arrogant. Something like that. That's not the quote. I'm doing such a bad job paraphrasing this. But I honestly think that the best comedians are the smartest people in society. They understand psychology. George Carlin understood psychology. I think better than Daniel Kahneman did. That's a bold statement, but I think that is, I think that is actually true. They are so smart at understanding how the world works, what makes, what makes people tick, how people think. But they're doing it in a way where they don't want to just impress you with their intelligence. They want to make you laugh. What could be better than that? And so I'll give you one example. My favorite George Carlin line, he says, have you ever noticed that everyone driving slower than you as an idiot and everyone driving faster than you as a maniac? A, it's funny, but B, it's like, God, that is, if you think about it, that's profound. And they're saying like, how like relative views of other people and whatnot. And so they are, I think they're absolute geniuses, but they want to deliver it in a way rather than using big words to say like, look how smart I am. They just want to make you laugh. And they are also, because particularly for like a young comic, if they are not making you laugh quickly, they're going to get booed off stage. So they are the epitome of one line or just like, so succinct in their delivery, so succinct in their writing. Because they don't have the luxury that a lot of authors do of like, let me write a 7,000 word chapter. A comedian on stage is like, if you don't make me laugh every 10 seconds, you're going to get booed off.

我想先回到喜剧演员这个话题。他们在讲故事方面有什么技巧是我们该学习的？我忘了是谁说过这句话，这也不是原话，我是在概括它。我可能会概括得很差，但意思是喜剧是一种展示聪明而不显得傲慢的方式。大概是这个意思。这不是原话，我概括得很糟糕。但我真的认为最好的喜剧演员是社会上最聪明的人。他们了解心理学。乔治·卡林对心理学的理解，我认为比丹尼尔·卡尼曼还要深入。这是一个大胆的说法，但我觉得确实如此。他们非常聪明，懂得这个世界如何运转，是什么驱动了人们的行为，人们如何思考。但他们并不想仅仅通过显示自己的聪明来让你印象深刻，他们想让你发笑，还有什么比这更好的呢？举个例子，这是我最喜欢的乔治·卡林的台词之一，他说：“你有没有注意到那些开车比你慢的人都是笨蛋，而那些开车比你快的人都是疯子？”首先，这很搞笑，但其次，如果你仔细想想，这句话真的很深刻。它讲述了人们相对视角的问题。所以我认为他们是绝对的天才。但他们想以一种不同的方式表达，而不是用大词来显示自己的聪明，他们只是想让你笑。而且，尤其是对于一个年轻的喜剧演员来说，如果他们不能迅速让你发笑，他们会被赶下台。所以他们是简洁表达的典范。因为他们不像很多作家那样有写长篇大论的奢侈。一个站在舞台上的喜剧演员，如果每10秒不能让你笑，他们会被喝倒彩赶下台。

It's interesting because you mentioned psychology there. They're keen observers of human nature and psychology. And all we've talked about today, we've talked about it through the lens of money, but it's basically psychology. I think a lot of things in life fall under this umbrella of how do people make decisions around uncertainty, risk, and lack of information. And that is health, that is politics, that is friendships and marriages, and it's also money. A lot of things fall under the same umbrella. There's a study of how do people behave. And one of the things I think is important here is that you can learn so much about money by studying and reading fields that have nothing to do with money. I think you can learn more about money by reading about politics, military history, biology, sociology, then you will by reading a finance book. Because you're just trying to figure out how do people make decisions, how do you make decisions, and how do other people make decisions. And by and large you're not going to learn that in an economics textbook, but you will learn about it by reading all these other fields that have nothing to do with money.

这很有趣，因为你提到了心理学。他们是人性和心理学的敏锐观察者。我们今天讨论的所有内容，虽然是通过金钱的视角，但其实根本上是心理学。我认为，生活中很多事情都可以归结为人们如何在不确定性、风险和信息缺乏的情况下做出决策。这不仅仅是健康、政治、友情和婚姻，也是关于金钱。很多事情都在同样的范畴内。这是一种关于人类行为的研究。我觉得这里有一个重要的点，那就是通过研究和阅读与金钱毫不相关的领域，你可以学到很多关于金钱的知识。我认为，通过阅读政治、军事历史、生物学、社会学，你可以学到比阅读金融书籍更多的关于金钱的知识。因为你是在试图弄清楚人们是如何做决策的，你是如何做决策的，其他人又是如何做决策的。总体上来说，你在经济学教科书中不会学到这些知识，但你会在阅读所有这些与金钱无关的领域中学到很多。

What's your process for writing? I don't think this is a good advice. So if you're a writer out there, I'm not saying this is the right way to do it. But one of the things that I do that I think is not common is I write, by the time I get to the bottom of a post, it's pretty much the final draft. Not because I can write a final draft in one shot. But because by and large don't move on to the next sentence until I'm satisfied with the previous one. Most writers, most very good writers will do the opposite. They say your first draft should just be a brain dump and then you go back and edit. And that's never for whatever reason, it's never really worked for me. So the other thing is I can't say I think I get too anxious and jittery sitting for too long. So all the times I'll write one sentence when I'm satisfied with it. I'll get up and go do the laundry and I'll come back and write two more sentences and then I'll go do the dishes or walk my dog or something. So it's very sporadic like that. And I think that contrast with a lot of writers who are like, oh, I sit down, I can dump 5,000 words on the page and then I go back and edit it. That is probably the best advice to give. That's what you should do. And it's for whatever reason, it's never really worked for me. We should do what works for you. I guess that's it. But most writers that I look up to, I think are much better writers than I do it the opposite.

你写作的过程是什么？我不认为我的方法是个好建议。所以如果你是一个作家，我并不是说这才是正确的方法。但我有一种不太常见的写作习惯，就是当我写到一篇文章的结尾时，基本上已经是最终稿了。这并不是因为我能一气呵成写出最终稿，而是因为我通常不会继续写下去，直到我对前一句感到满意。大多数作家，尤其是优秀的作家，会采用相反的方法。他们认为你的第一稿应该只是一种头脑风暴，然后再回去编辑。而这一点对我来说从未真正奏效，不管是什么原因。另一点是，我坐得太久会感到焦虑和不安。所以很多时候，我写完一句满意的句子会站起来去洗衣服，然后再回来写两句，然后去洗碗或者遛狗。所以我的写作非常零散，与很多作家形成鲜明对比。很多作家会说：“哦，我可以一口气写5000字，然后再回去编辑。” 这可能是最好的建议，也是应该这样做的。但不知为何，这种方法对我来说从未真正奏效。我们应该做适合自己的事情。我想就是这样。不过我所仰慕的大多数作家，我认为比我写得好多了，都是用相反的方法。

How do you hook people? You're one of the best at sort of you and James Clear, the two people who, you know, the first sentence to your paragraph and sort of like the first part of your story really pulls people in. What do you think you do differently? I think it's a constant reminder of how impatient people are. And if you don't hook them in five seconds, you're gone. And I know that because I'm a big reader. And if you don't hook me in five seconds, I'm probably gone. Unless you are like an author who I really know, that I will give you a little bit more leeway to be like, okay, I don't know where your article is going, but I'm going to stick with you because I like you. If you're not that, you got five seconds to catch your attention or else you're out of there. And I think that is, it's easy to overlook that. That it's not just being succinct, you know, in the core of your article, but it's almost like an inverted pyramid where it's like people are most impatient in the first two sentences. And so you would think of me the other way around. They would get impatient after they've worked their way through your article and they're getting bored. Like, no, they're most impatient at the top.

你是如何吸引人的？你和詹姆斯·克利尔是两位高手，你们的第一句话和故事的开头总能牢牢抓住读者的注意力。你觉得自己有哪些不同之处？我认为关键在于时刻提醒自己，人们是很没有耐性的。如果你不能在五秒钟内抓住他们的注意，你就失去了他们。我很清楚这一点，因为我是一个阅读爱好者。如果你不能在五秒内吸引我，除非你是我非常熟悉和喜欢的作者，否则我可能会马上离开。对那些不熟悉的作者来说，你只有五秒钟来吸引我的注意，否则我就走了。我认为，这一点很容易被忽视。文章不仅需要在核心内容上简明扼要，而且还要像倒金字塔一样，在开头的前两句话就牢牢抓住读者的注意。你可能会认为读者是读到文章中间或后期开始觉得无聊，但实际上他们在一开始是最没有耐性的。

And there's a lot of data that can be very disheartening for authors. There was a mathematician who looked at Kindle Highlight data and he used highlights as a proxy for how far people make it in a book. And the assumption was when people stopped highlighting in Kindle, they probably stopped reading. And he showed that even among best-selling books, the most popular books, the average reader makes like a quarter of the way through. That's in the bestsellers. That's in the good books, a quarter of the way through and they're done. And so just always reminding yourself how impatient people are is just like, what's your point? Make your point and get the hell out of people's way. I also think Twitter has made people better writers because the character count limitation has forced people to be like, you have two sentences to tell me your idea. And that's all you get. I think that's been a great thing overall for making people more succinct.

有很多数据对作者来说可能非常令人沮丧。有一位数学家研究了Kindle高亮数据，并且他把高亮次数作为读者读到哪本书的指标。他的假设是，当人们在Kindle上停下高亮时，他们可能就停止阅读了。他的研究显示，即使是畅销书，最受欢迎的书籍，平均读者也只读了四分之一。这是在畅销书中，是在好书中，读者只读了四分之一就停止了。所以，时刻提醒自己人们有多么缺乏耐心，关键就是：你的观点是什么？说明观点后赶快离开别人的视线。我还认为，推特使人们成为更好的作家，因为字符数限制迫使人们用两句话表达自己的想法，这就是你全部的表达机会。总体来看，我觉得这对让人们写得更加简洁是件好事。

Well, it makes a good hook. It could be a lot of things. It could be funny. It could be profound. I think we were talking about this last night about, I forget who said it, that good writing fits one of the acronyms of like, OMG, LOL. Something like that. It should be shocking or funny or profound or scary. Something like that. That's going to invade some emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. I want to end with two questions. So one being what you can leave everybody some parting wisdom on money and life. What would it be? I think the most important is to realize how personal it is. And therefore, you really got to be careful taking your cues from other people. You and I again, same age, same like going on the list. You and I are very similar people. Probably have very different views about what to do with money. And that is fine. Just like you and I might have different views about food. You like this food. I like that. It doesn't mean that you're wrong. It's got different tastes or not. People understand that with food. But there is a common sense with money that there is one right answer for everybody. And I think you really have to be introspective and look in the mirror and just say like what works for myself and my own family. And even if there are holes and flaws and other people disagree with that, if it works well for me, that's as good as you can do. That's an important thing.

好的，这确实是一个很好的引子。它可以有很多种形式。它可以是搞笑的，可以是深刻的。我记得我们昨晚谈论过这个，但我忘了是谁说的，好写作要符合"OMG"、"LOL"这样的缩写，大概是这样的。它应该是令人震惊、搞笑、深刻或恐怖的。像这样能够激发一些情感的内容。对，对，差不多就是这种感觉。我想以两个问题结束。第一个问题是，你能给大家留下一些关于金钱和生活的智慧吗？我认为最重要的是意识到这是非常个人化的。因此，你真的要小心从他人那里获取建议。你和我年龄相同，情况相似，但可能对如何处理金钱有非常不同的看法。这很正常，就像你和我可能对食物有不同的喜好。你喜欢这种食物，我喜欢那种，这并不意味着你错了，只是口味不同。人们对于食物的这种不同理解得很清楚，但在金钱上，却常常认为有一个对所有人都适用的正确答案。我认为你真的需要内省，照照镜子，弄清楚什么对自己和自己的家人有效。即使其他人不赞同，如果对你来说真的有效，那就已经足够好了。这是非常重要的一点。

Final question. What is success for you? I heard I think Jim O'Shaughnessy said that his goal as a parent was not to raise good kids. It was to raise good adults. He like he wanted to be the kind of father that when his kids became adults, they were well balanced. That's different from raising good kids. You want to raise good adults. So that would be a big, like maybe the top box to check in my life is looking back and being like my wife and I did our best to create to raise kids that became good, self-sufficient, well balanced, polite, happy adults. That's excellent. Thank you very much, Morgan. Thanks, Jay.

最后一个问题，对你来说，什么是成功？我听说Jim O'Shaughnessy曾说过，他作为父母的目标不是养育好孩子，而是培养出优秀的成年人。他希望成为那种可以让孩子在长大后成为身心平衡的成年人的父亲。这和培养好孩子不同，你是想培养出优秀的成年人。所以，对于我来说，人生中最重要的一点可能就是回首往事时，能够看到我和妻子尽最大努力培养出了自立、平衡、有礼貌、幸福的成年子女。这是非常棒的。非常感谢你，Morgan。谢谢你，Jay。