Material success can be measured in a multitude of ways: cars, luxury items, and followers. But behavioral finance expert Morgan Housel has an unusual exercise to do so: a reverse obituary.
“It’s a little bit morbid, but it’s to write what you want your obituary to say, and then try to live your life up to that,” Housel tells Fortune in discussing his latest book “The Art of Spending Money.”
He isn’t the first to adopt the approach for living a fulfilled life. The sentiment echoes that of Berkshire Hathaway’s legendary investor, Warren Buffett, who says many of his life philosophies were gleaned from his right-hand man, Charlie Munger, who passed away in 2023.
“Early on, write your desired obituary, and then behave accordingly,” Buffett wrote in a previous shareholder letter in 2022.
Now it’s one of Housel’s ways to measure legacy too: if it’s not important enough to take to the grave, it doesn’t matter at all.
“If I were to write what I want my obituary to say, I would want it to hopefully say: ‘Morgan was a good husband, a good dad, a loving friend, helped his community, helped people in need’” he said.
Housel’s new book breaks down spending as an art rather than a science
Housel is known for his bestseller The Psychology of Money, which dissects how people’s previous beliefs, behaviors, and emotions impact finances. Now, he’s unveiling the psychology behind spending.
Housel emphasizes that spending is not about getting things down to a science, it’s an art that shouldn’t have a “one size fits all” approach. How you’re spending it also makes all the difference: Housel says if a majority of your expenditures are material items, you haven’t yet learned the most important life lessons.
Housel says that when he was in his 20s, his aspiration for the material world was at its highest– yearning for things like a new Ferrari or a mansion. Later in life, he realized that family and community took precedence over anything he had wanted to splurge on in his past.
“When you do that exercise [writing your obituary], you immediately realize what you would not care about: your salary, the size of your house, how often you bought a new car, where you went on vacation. That does not matter at all,” Housel added.
Other successful founders have emphasized long-term legacy over short-term spending.
Jeff Bezos famously used a similar approach to decide to leave his cushy financial job and start Amazon, for instance.
“I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘OK, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have,’” Bezos has previously explained.
“50 or 60 years from now, I am not going to say, I wish I earned more and spent more. There’s a very good chance we’re going to look back and say, ‘I wish I was more helpful and more loving to the people who I really cared about in my life’,” Housel said.
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