Millionaires In Cars Getting Coffee with Arthur Brooks
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Don't be fooled by thinking you're going to get more satisfaction from the junk that you bought as opposed to the disutility, the dissatisfaction that comes from the fact that you're running your credit card balance. People had a bone to pick with you after your last episode. So people will say, you know, the reason I hate my job is because my boss is such a jerk. No, the reason you hate your job is because you've got a credit card balance. It's like you're gatekeeping in the meaning of life right now. One of the best ways for you to have, to buy happiness, literally buy happiness is...

What's up, guys? George here. And today we're talking about the kind of wealth that doesn't just add zeros to your bank account, but adds value to your life. And who are we talking to? Dr. Arthur Brooks. He's a fan favorite guest, a social scientist, a bestselling author, and a Harvard professor. And this time we're getting out of the stuffy studio and we're keeping it cash with a fan favorite segment, millionaires in cars getting coffee. And because Arthur is a happiness expert, let's test this theory. Can we make him even happier by hitting those like, subscribe, and share buttons? Please and thank you.

Let's hit it. Arthur, welcome. Hi, George. How are you? Thanks for coming back. Thank you for giving me a ride in your car. Back by popular demand. The people clamored.

They were clamoring this whole time, weren't they? That's the only word for it. I know. It's a clamor clamor. So we brought you back to a little more casual. Last time we talked, you were in a full suit. Oh, yeah. You were about to go do a big fancy talk. Yeah. And today, you're just regular Joe. Yeah. I was thinking about wearing like a white tie and tails, like a whole Fred Astaire thing. With a monocle. Yeah. With a monocle. The top hat wouldn't fit in the car. Well, it would go with our theme today because this is Millionaires in Cars Getting Coffee. Uh-huh. And...

I'm going to assume, and I may not be safe to assume, maybe you've made terrible financial choices, but over your career as a bestselling author, Harvard professor, you name it, columnist, that you've accumulated a million dollars of wealth. Is that fair? That's fair. Okay. That's the only checkmark we need to get this conversation going. I'm not a billionaire. No, that's a big gap.

It's a thousand millions. It's true. But let's first get into how Arthur built wealth. When did you actually focus on, oh, I got to get control of my money? So I never had a period of irresponsibility exactly. But I spent a lot of years when I was doing something for a living that wasn't very lucrative. I was a professional musician. Oh. Yeah. What were you playing? I was a French horn player. So I was actually a classical musician, which still isn't very lucrative. But I left college when I was 19.

You know, kicked out, dropped out, splitting hairs. And I went pro, but that meant I was making, you know, $12,000 or $13,000 a year. I didn't have any health insurance for six years. Oh, wow. For the first six years of my career because it was simply too expensive. I didn't go to the dentist one time for six years. Because you're essentially like a contractor. Yeah, yeah. I was working for gigs. I was working for grocery money is what it came down to. And the result is I didn't have any savings at all. And I didn't like that. I come from a...

a family of people that, you know, a lower middle class family, but one that there was no debt. And it was really, really important to my dad. My dad always said, if you want something to master you, make sure you owe money. If you want to be free, don't owe any money. I mean, it's like the proto...

George Camel. Yeah. I mean, this was very good advice. That's how you grew up, knowing in the back of your mind, debt equals bad. Yeah. And so I never had any debt, but I never had any money. I've never run a credit card balance, literally not even one month in my whole life, including during my poorest years.

I would prefer to eat Top Ramen every day than have $1. You're willing to make any sacrifice necessary to not have to carry that. And some could say that's pathological. I married a girl who thought that was incredibly pathological. I'm curious about that. What were her views on money and how did she grow up comparatively to you? Well, she grew up in a family where her father had multiple bankruptcies.

Oh, wow. He was a real wastrel. He was a wonderful man and I loved him and we had a good relationship, but he didn't understand the concept of money. Money was only there to spend. In a way, he wasn't stressed out about it. He wasn't responsible enough to be stressed out about it in a strange way. So it's like a

maybe at some sort of edge case financially. I'm not exactly sure, but my wife never saw a normal, healthy relationship with money. They didn't have very much. And when they had it, they spent it. And when bills came due, they didn't pay them. And sometimes the electricity got cut off and there were all those creditors calling. So you're basically, she's starting from scratch when it comes to financial literacy. Yeah, exactly right. And so she thought it was nuts. She's like, you know, why don't we take a credit card, just put stuff on the credit card and say, well, here's kind of the way that it works.

And the way that I finally made the case that we shouldn't do this is I said, I'm going to be so stressed out, I will die if we have a dollar in credit card balance. And that convinced her. And she's like, I love you. I don't want you to die. Okay. Wow.

wow, I have not tried that strategy. When couples call on the show, how do I get my spouse on board? Tell them you will die if I take on any debt. I can't handle this. Sweetheart, I can't handle this. I cannot handle being in debt. And the result is that my kids are never in debt. How do you instill that into them? Because I told them it's terrible. It's terrible. Somebody else owns you. Now, again, maybe this is a privileged point of view,

And it sounds like, you know, a millionaire in a car getting coffee, giving advice to never have credit card debt. But the truth is, this was going on for me when I was 20 and 21 and 22 years old and I was too poor to go to the dentist. Wow. And to get to consistently go to the grocery store when I was refusing to have this kind of debt because I...

I was not going to feel that way. I was very conscious of living below my means. Very conscious of living below my means. And my wife was on board. The great thing, there's so many great things about my wife. I just love her so much. And one of the great things is she doesn't care about stuff. She just doesn't care about stuff.

So, you know, we have a nice car, we have a crummy car, whatever it happens to be. We have two cars, we have one car. None of this matters, really. Well, that must come from a place where she doesn't really care what other people think, doesn't have anyone to impress. Couldn't care less. I mean, that's a position of privilege as well. If you saw my wife, you'd be like, of course she doesn't care what anybody else thinks. She's more beautiful. Oh, that is privilege in its own right. I mean, look, when I was living in Barcelona, I mean...

Guys were shouting wedding proposals from moving cars. So how did you... No offense, but how did you stand out among... You should have seen my hair in those days. The beautiful Spanish men. It was... I mean, I had this magnificent head of hair in those days. Wow. It was incredible. So you just did like a kind of a Fabio swoosh thing? And she couldn't understand a word that I said, so she didn't know I was an idiot. So how did you even communicate? There was no, like, Google Translate. It's a mystery. So we met...

I was 225, I was 24 in France. And we were both musicians after concert. And we didn't speak literally a single word of each other's language. And on the basis of going out to dinner with her three times, I quit my job in the United States and moved to Barcelona and took a job at the Barcelona Symphony. Wow. On the bid that I could probably close the deal and get that role. That's love. Well, it was...

Obsession. I'm an entrepreneur. There we go. Good salesman. Always be closing. How has your view of wealth changed as you've gotten married, had kids? Did it change over the time? Yeah. Wealth is freedom at best. It can eliminate sources of unhappiness at relatively low levels, and then it ensures a certain amount of freedom. As such, you're able to take more risk in ways that matter in your life.

You know, one of the things that Americans don't, they do better than people in most countries, but still could do more of is take more risk professionally. And the more that you've been able to save, the more you've got a safety net, the more that you've created your own safety net.

A lot of people stay in lives of quiet desperation, in jobs that don't bring them passion or where they're not able to be creative or do anything that they like a little bit because they're mortgaged up to the hill. So people will say, you know, the reason I hate my job is because my boss is such a jerk. No, the reason you hate your job is because you've got a credit card balance.

And they don't see that as the reality. No, because they're not connecting. It's easier to blame the boss than the person in the mirror who went to credit card debt. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so the only debt I've ever had is a mortgage in my life. Yeah. And at this point in my life, I'm...

Don't have a mortgage. Wow. Is that controversial in today's world? Because most people I've talked to that are outside of the Ramsey bubble say, well, George, it's unwise to pay off your mortgage because you have a low interest rate and you can make the spread. What caused you to say, nah, I'm going to pay it off. I'd rather not have a payment. I don't want to be in debt. Because I got the data, by the way, I'm a behavioral scientist at this point. After stopping being a musician, I got my PhD and became a behavioral scientist. And I specialize in the science of happiness. And one of the things that I know is that

One of the best ways for you to have, to buy happiness, literally buy happiness is to not be a dad.

You will be happier. In today's world, ownership, you know, people come at us and go, well, you got property taxes, Arthur. You'll never really own it. The government owns it all. You'll always have expenses. Woe is me. That also exists. Yeah, sure. And, you know, too bad. I mean, that is, in fact, a wealth tax that the government imposes on the, you know, the value of your home, the unrealized value of your home if it's appreciated and you're not, and your property taxes go up. And I got all kinds of policy problems with that. I got all kinds of

with the way that we penalize prudent and wise behavior in this country. It's not right. That the more wealth you have, we must punish you. Yeah. So I'm going to pay my property taxes. Okay. I'm going to pay my insurance, obviously, but I don't have to, I don't have

I don't have to pay the bank. That's great. That sounds awesome. Well, we're at Starbucks, which I heard you grew up next to the very first one in Seattle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I thought, what a way to honor that. Yeah. Let's find out what Arthur's Starbucks order is. Hello. I'm going to have what he's having. Well, let me find out what he's having first. I might hate it, actually. Yeah, yeah. What will you have? None of the fancy stuff. I want a tall decaf, please, right now. I just want coffee. Can you get a tall decaf coffee? And then I'll do a nitro cold brew. Does it ruin your sleep?

I asked you the old guy question. Can you sleep with that? No, the fact of the matter is I will sleep poorly regardless. So might as well when in Rome, enjoy a nice cold cup of coffee. It's actually a really interesting metaphor I heard today, George. I was in the car of this guy. He's driving me down here because you guys are 20 miles south of beautiful Nashville. And the guy's driving me down there. He's telling me about his, you know, he's like, how long your family's lived here? He said,

many generations. And he says, God, it's so expensive. But fortunately, my grandfather, he built this house with his hands and it's the family home. Wow. And I said, oh, he's a builder. He says, no, he's a farmer. So what? He said, yeah, but he had this strategy every day on the whole on the way home from the field. He was stopped by the quarry and he would pick up some rocks.

And then he built the family home with the rocks little by little by little. And I said, I'm going to Ramsey Solutions. This is perfect. That's incredible. You know what the strategy is? One rock a day. That's beautiful. Don't spend your rock at Starbucks. There you go, my good man. Put it on my tab. This is a debit card, guys. I'm watching you. I'm watching you. Have you looked into Transcendental Meditation? Because I know Jerry Seinfeld's really big into it. And I was like, I'm interested because he keeps mentioning this is his secret life hack. What?

What are your thoughts on that? For sure. I mean, I've studied meditation in Dharamsala with the Dalai Lama and his monks. Wow. And a great deal for 11 years, as a matter of fact. And I use it, I mean, I'm a Catholic and that's the most important thing in my life. What that's taught me is my technique in my prayer life. And one of the things that you learn is that the secret to meditation improving your life is you don't do it so that you feel better.

You do that so you can lift up the world. And I realized that that has kind of a mysterious quality to it. What does he mean? What does he mean? And the only way you can answer, you can understand

What that actually means is by learning to pray, to meditate on behalf of everyone in the world. So it's bigger than just my problem. That's kind of like a beginner's prayer. It's like, here's all my problems. Please solve them. Amen. Yeah. What it is, from a Christian perspective, is to take your problems and to subordinate them to the Holy Will. And ultimately, for your prayer to become, usually in an ineffable way, a wordless way, Lord,

what I really want is to want what you want. I want my will to become your will, not because of a conscious act of surrender, but because my life is your love. And that's a very transcendental understanding. That's a oneness. People were secular and say that's kind of a oneness with the universe. That's the ultimate transcendent. But for me, that's

That's trying to really be in touch with what heavily. I want this for the creator and alignment. Yeah. That's beautiful. Well, I guess we got to talk about wealth stuff. So let me do a speed round and I'll get your take on this. I've talked to a lot of younger financials.

financial content creators, and I've found that they are amassing an incredible amount of wealth quickly. We're talking millions of dollars. And the goalpost keeps moving for them. So it was, well, when I get 5 million, my life will be great. And then now it's 10 million and now it's 20. How much is enough? Like, how do you get to the point where you're just content? So the problem is that when you're scoring your life on the basis of what's in your bank account, it's never enough because you want to make progress in your life.

And the only way you can continue to make progress, which is the source of your bliss, is to see the numbers keep going up. Now, the truth is, progress only means something if you're making progress towards something. And so that's why the goal keeps changing. That's why the goal posts keep moving. It has nothing to do with the money. It has everything to do with the fact that if I'm not doing the work and I'm not making progress, I don't feel alive.

And the only way I know I'm making progress is if that number is going up toward a particular number. That's what's going on there. And it becomes a pathology because you start to do that to the exclusion of your family and your friendships and your faith in God. And those are really, really unhealthy sacrifices at the bottom line. I have to work with successful people all the time so they can start to be alive and

in a real way as opposed to a simulated way. They're living in an economic simulation of their own life after a certain point. So there's a scoreboard of, you know, net worth or bank account. That's easy. Yeah. But how do you measure the things that really matter? Because I've heard you say, here's like the...

Three things that really matter in life. Yeah, well, the four things that matter are faith, family, friendship, and work that serves. Which is largely hard to measure on paper. Yeah, it's much, much harder to measure. And the things that you really can measure are your money and to a lesser extent, your power and your pleasure and your fame. And so you have to become a lot more comfortable with the

with more ambiguous goals that you have. You know, how much, what does it mean for me to be more successful in my faith? And the only way that you can answer those questions is to live the problem as opposed to count the problem. And the only way to do that is to have that part of your life every single day and then you'll know.

then you'll know. You know if your faith is deeper than it was last year. You know that. You know if your family relationships are healthier. You know that. We've got a good barometer. Of course you do. I mean, you're a human being alive. Now, to be sure, I also do keep score. And so I've figured out, I mean, this is what I do for a living, what parts of life will quantitatively add more to your well-being and what won't. And so the result of that is that I keep a...

a 19-dimensional measure of my well-being, which is weighted for actually how much it affects my well-being, and I give myself a score. Is this like a... Six-month basis. How do you do this? Is this on paper? Yeah, it's actually... I've got it, and I've written macros for it in Excel, and I keep it as automatically... When do the...

Peasants have access to this. You know, it's a bunch of times people have asked about it, when that can become an app. I do it for my own personal edification. There's 19 metrics that you're finding. And I'm watching the graphs. I'm looking at the graphs. And by doing this, I can actually tell, based on my overall sense of well-being, what's driving the increases or what's driving the deficits. I assume that comes with, you know, emotional maturity, right?

growth, getting older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At some point, actually, we'll create, I will share this because, you know, it's all based on the science of well-being. It's like you're gatekeeping in the meaning of life right now with this spreadsheet that you have. All right, then, keep your secrets. Well, you've said that experiences over things. You're saying things, they don't bring happiness. The experiences, the memories created can...

But are there things that you've bought that are absolutely worth it? Or do you know, hey, if you buy X, Y, a great mattress that will improve your quality of life, that will bring happiness. What are those things? The things that will increase your well-being are either the things that bring you together with people or the things that lower your sources of avoidable unhappiness. So if you say that, look, my mattress is like rocks and I'm sleeping four hours a night.

And you get a mattress where you're getting a solid six or seven, which, by the way, George, that's what you're going to get because you're a striver. Yeah. And anybody who says you get less than eight hours a night, you're going to, you know, your body will be filled with tumors and you'll die a terrible death at 40. It's false. It's false. We'll get back to Wealth Talk in just a second. But first...

Quick pit stop. Let's talk about your savings. How are they doing? Could they be doing better? I think they could with our friends at Laurel Road, a sponsor of today's episode. They've got a great high yield savings account so you can park your money and watch it grow. How fast? How much? Well, 5% APY is the current going rate, which is probably more than you're making in your current savings account.

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or click the link in the description. All right, let's get back to the streets. Let's talk about progress and money. What is the importance of making progress with your money over time? Humans get satisfaction from progress. They don't get satisfaction from attaining a goal. They get satisfaction from making progress toward a goal. This is one of the reasons that

When you hit a goal, it's often very disappointing. It's why Olympic gold medalists often suffer from a depression in the month after that. Wow. It's not as satisfying as we thought it would be? Well, you loved the progress. And then when you actually got the object of your attention, you assumed it was going to be even better than the progress. And it wasn't because that's not how we're designed. Human beings are supposed to get better. Getting to the actual finish line is actually not that great.

So it's literally about the journey, not the destination. Yeah, it literally is. Like scientifically, not like on a motivational poster. Right. And, you know, the Buddhists will often say you need intention without attachment.

You need to have intention toward your goal without attachment to the goal, which is a very hard thing to do. Yeah. Very hard thing to do. But if you don't, then you will make, you know, it's, you'll suffer from something called the arrival fallacy. So when I have a million dollars, when I have a billion dollars, then it's going to be so awesome. And when it's not, that leads you to jump on what we call the hedonic treadmill, run, run, run, run, run, to say, I want to get the feeling of bliss that comes from hitting my goals. I guess I needed another billion. Hmm.

And that leads to really pathological behavior. It leads to really, really big problematic behavior. But the good news behind that is if you understand this, then anything you do that will bring you financial progress is going to bring you better well-being. And anything you do that sets you back, like debt especially,

credit card debt, especially consumer debt, is going to put you behind the line of scrimmage. Don't be fooled by thinking you're going to get more satisfaction from the junk that you bought as opposed to the disutility, the dissatisfaction that comes from the fact that you're running a credit card balance and that somebody owns part of you, has a claim on you. That just gnaws at you because it means it's going to take months or years to get to the line of scrimmage. There's a reason that people come to

Ramsey solution and screen their heads off on that little stage to say that they're debt free. They've gotten free of the unhappiness of negative progress. Yeah, it is bigger than money, I've realized. Oh yeah. The emotion they're feeling, the progress they make in other areas of their life. It's not just a we saw a number go down from getting paid off. It's the same thing when people are on a diet. What happens is that people are absolutely willing to forego the foods that they like when they see the scale going down. The problem is when you hit your goal, the

The reward you get is never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. That's the reason diets fail.

It's because of this arrival fallacy. When I hit my goal, it's going to be so great. I'm going to look so good. I'm going to feel so good. And then you're no longer making progress. So you don't have an incentive to forego the things that make life literally sweet. We talked about the relationship of unhappiness and debt on the last segment we did together. Right. And you've said that there are, you can actually track the, this debt has the most unhappiness attached to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What is the number one? Number one is credit card debt. Wow. According to the data. Yeah. And is that because it's the most sort of frivolous spending you can do? It's consumer debt. Now, there are some people watching millionaires getting coffee in cars because it's the best show on YouTube. It's the best. Yeah.

We have the best guess. What can I say? Who are saying, I put my dentist bill on my credit card. I put my groceries and my gas on my... Oh. Because I had to this month or I wasn't going to be able to feed my family. Or I'll get the cash back and I'll pay it off or whatever. Or something like that. And they're thinking of some sort of special case. I'm not talking about the special cases. We can take on the special cases. And quite frankly, in many cases, I'm very skeptical of the special cases.

But I do know that in the vast majority of the cases, people are smoothing their consumption. They're taking consumption and paying later. And that's really, really, really bad for your happiness. The second worst type is car debt. Car debt's horrible. And part of the reason is because

guarantee the value of the car is going to go below the value of the debt. And you know it. If you can buy a car in cash, buy a car in cash. And if you have to buy a worse car, buy a worse car. That's it. That's it. Arthur said so, guys. Yeah. Aye aye, Captain. People had a bone to pick with you after your last episode. Uh-oh. Because we talked about the relationship of generosity and wealth. You said, scientifically, for every dollar you give, you get $1.60 back. You said there was an exchange there. Yeah. That's according to the data on average. I mean,

People's results vary, but looking across large populations in time, the year after, people tend to earn more after they've been generous. They're demonstrating to themselves the fact that they can solve not only their problems, but other people's problems as well. That's beautiful. And that's incredible agency. Here's the bone that someone had to pick. They said, tithing is BS. What a waste of money. Why would you ever do that? What do you say to that person who says tithing is a scam? You need a better church, man.

Because they feel like I'm assuming the church is not going to handle this money well. This is a money grab for the church. So, okay. But look, I get it. I get the skepticism. Fair, fair, fair, fair. By the way, any skepticism is cool because that's what actually makes us all better. Yeah. Is questioning each other. So, okay. But the bottom line is that people who give faithfully and who see giving not as an obligation but as a privilege...

These are the people who are buying happiness. They just are. Now, okay, I got it. If you don't know what to give to, you got to do the work. You got to do the work. You got to do the work of doing something about what you're passionate. And seriously, if you don't trust your church to be a faithful steward of your money, you need a better church.

We're about to wrap, but I have one final question that I think is on everyone's minds. What's that? Everyone's a little bit freaked out. We're all on edge. Everyone's anxious. It's an election year. Nothing seems to be going well. How do you stay happy when everything around you feels like it's crumbling? This is fine. What politicians and the media want...

is for you to conclude that the only way for you to be happy is to vote for their guy. They want you to sign up for outside circumstances to be in charge of your happiness. That's wrong. That's crazy. You can't fix the whole outside world and your vote is not going to fix the outside world. Pay less attention to the outside world and more attention to your life. Start making progress in your own finances. Start making your own smart decisions.

spending decisions, start saving more money. You should pay attention to what you can do. Control the controllables. Absolutely. And one of the greatest ways to be happy is to be paying attention to things that you can actually control and make smart decisions in your love life, in your studies, in where you live, in your job, and in your money.

That's the best advice you can possibly get. And that's the best strategy you can follow. That's what I've found is the more I realize there's a lot in my control instead of focusing on everything out of my control, the more I feel capable of agency. I have joy. Yes. I can actually affect change. Yeah. Pay attention to your life and stop yelling at the TV. You hear him, guys? Stop yelling. And that means in the YouTube comments, too.

What are you working on next that people can check out? I've got a whole bunch of new projects that are cool. Right now, I'm working on a book about how to find the meaning of your life that's going to come out in the beginning of 2026. I've got a weekly column in The Atlantic about the science of happiness on Thursday morning. So go read the column at theatlantic.com.

If you read three and you're not paying, you're going to hit a paywall. But it's not that expensive, folks. Don't put it on the credit card. And The Atlantic is a lot of fun. There's a lot of interesting voices in it. And then there's me. And then there's Arthur. And that's reason to pay right there. Always a pleasure, my friend. Thanks for coming by. Thanks, George.

Made it back safe and sound. That's it for today's episode. Huge thanks to Arthur Brooks for taking a spin and for all the wisdom. And be sure to check out this next video to see my original sit down with Arthur that was absolute fire. I'll also drop a link in the description below. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.