金融专家：被动收入是个骗局！创伤后破产综合征正影响着数百万人！

人们经常谈论被动收入。

People talk a lot about passive income.

这根本不存在。听着，致富只有两种途径，而被动收入不在其中。但对人们真正重要的是如何花钱。因为我研究金钱、金融和投资已有二十年，我可以告诉你。

This is not a thing. Look. There's two ways to get wealthier, and passive income is not part of that equation. But what's really important for people is how we should spend money. Because I've written about money and finance and investing twenty years, and I can tell you.

消费水平与幸福感之间可能存在关联，但远比你想象的复杂。传奇金融大师摩根·豪塞尔揭示，我们被告知的关于储蓄和消费的一切观念，可能正是我们最大的陷阱，原因如下。如果你对生活不满，很容易假设拥有更多钱、更大房子、更好汽车等就能改善现状。但这不过是自我欺骗的谎言。因为真相是——

The correlation between how much you spend and how happy you are, it can exist, but it is not as simple as you think. Morgan Housel is the legendary financial guru, revealing that everything we've been told about saving and spending money Could be our biggest downfall, and here's why. If you're unhappy with your life, it is a very easy assumption to make that if you had more money, a bigger house, a better car, or whatever it might be, things would be better. And it's a lie we tell ourselves, of course. Because here's the truth.

绝大多数消费都是为了缓解心理上的痒感，这种需求会以各种形式表现出来。比如生活就是场竞赛，我过得好不好不重要，重要的是我比你好多少。而最直观的比较方式就是物质条件。

So much of spending is psychological itch that you're trying to scratch, and that manifests in so many different ways. For example, life is a competition. It doesn't matter how well I'm doing. It matters how well I'm doing relative to you. And the most tangible way to do that is the material stuff.

我读到个有趣数据：如果你中了彩票，邻居破产的概率会上升。

I was reading some funny stats. They say that if you win the lottery, the probability of your neighbor going bankrupt increases.

这个统计非常发人深省。所以要谨慎选择社交圈，因为你会不自觉地以他们作为成功和幸福的基准线。

It's an amazing statistic. So be careful who you socialize with because you're going to anchor to them as a baseline level of success and happiness.

所以买劳力士有错吗？当然没有。

So is it wrong to buy a a Rollette? Absolutely not.

但当它控制你的个性时，这与任何其他成瘾无异，它迫使你去做那些你本不愿做的事情。

But when it's controlling your personality, it's no different than any other addiction where it's forcing you to do things that you otherwise don't wanna do.

那些看起来从不花钱的人呢？

What about people who don't seem to spend anything?

同样危险。有一种叫做创伤后贫穷综合征的现象，我稍后会谈到。但我敢保证，每个人都能通过某种方式花钱让自己更快乐。

It's just as dangerous. Like, there's something called post traumatic broke syndrome, and I'll talk about that. But I guarantee you that everyone can spend money in a way that's gonna make them happier.

那么如果我想建立一个框架来指导如何花钱，该从哪里开始？另外，根据你对金钱的所有了解，如果我想要获得完全的财务自由，我应该考虑哪五件事？

So if I wanted to make a framework to know how to spend my money, where do I start? But also, based on everything you know about money, if I wanna get complete financial freedom, what's the five things that should I be thinking about?

我认为最重要的第一件事是

The first thing that I think is most important is

摩根。每个人都喜欢谈论投资。他们喜欢谈论省钱。但我从未听人强调过花钱的重要性。你写了这本《花钱的艺术》。

Morgan. Everybody loves to talk about investing. They love to talk about saving money. But I've never heard anybody emphasize the importance of spending money. You've written this book, The Art of Spending.

这就引出了一个问题，像你这样每次写书都能卖出数千万册、真正在乎写作艺术的人，为什么偏偏要写一本关于花钱艺术的书？明明你可以写任何你想写的内容，而且都会取得成功。

So it begs the question, why would someone like you who sells tens of millions of copies of their books when they write about something and really, really cares about the art of writing commit themselves to writing a book about the art of spending when you couldn't when you could have written anything that you wanted to, and it would have been a success.

我从事金钱、金融和投资领域的写作已有二十年，却几乎从未自问过：我的消费哲学是什么？我可以告诉你我的投资方式、储蓄习惯以及背后的原因。但若五年前你问我：‘摩根，谈谈你个人生活中的消费哲学。’

So I've written about money and finance and investing for twenty years, and almost never had I myself said, what is my spending philosophy? I could tell you how I invest. I can tell you how I save. I could tell you why I do those things. If five years ago, if you said, Morgan, tell me your philosophy about spending in your own life.

我大概会回答‘我也不太清楚’。深入研究后我发现，市面上有成千上万本关于如何投资、增值财富、致富和职业发展的书籍，这个话题永无止境。但几乎找不到任何专门探讨如何花钱的著作。我想原因在于，我们直觉认为这无需讨论——答案似乎显而易见。

I'd be like, I I don't really know. And as I looked into it, there are literally tens of thousands of books on how to invest, how to grow your money, how to get rich, how to help your career. That top that topic is endless. There is virtually no book out there written about spending money. And I think the reason why is because we don't I think we intuitively think nothing needs to be said because the answer should be obvious.

‘越多越好，越奢华越好’就是这个话题的终点。但如果你认识真正富有的人——虽然这适用于所有人——就会明白事情没那么简单。

More is better. Fancier is better. That's the end of the topic. But if you know particularly wealthier people I mean, it affects everybody, but particularly wealthier people. You know it's not that simple.

消费金额与幸福程度之间可能存在关联，每个人都可能通过某种消费方式获得快乐，但这绝非你想象的那么简单。当我开始剖析自己的生活：何时因他人的物质财产产生嫉妒？为何嫉妒？何时感到妒忌？

That the correlation between how much you spend and how happy you are, it it can exist. Everyone can spend money in a way that's gonna make them happier, but it is not as simple as you think. And as I started digging into it in my own life of when have I been envious of other people, of their material possessions? Why was I envious? Why when have I been jealous?

为何妒忌？哪种消费让我快乐？哪种消费让我毫无感觉？这远比表面看起来复杂。这本书的另一个标题本可以是《消费心理学》，因为本质正是如此。

Why was I jealous? What kind of spending made me happy? What left me completely flat? It's it's a much more complicated topic than it seems at the surface. You know, another title for the book could have been the psychology of spending money because that's what this is.

所以这本书探讨的是贪婪心理、嫉妒心理、社会抱负、攀爬社会阶梯的欲望——你想打动哪些人？这些人是否真的关注你？这就是本书的核心。

So it's a look at the psychology of greed and envy and social aspiration and, like, climbing the social ladder, who you're trying to impress, whether those people are paying any attention to you, that's what this book is.

那么对于像我这样想改善消费关系的人，首要问题或许是理解‘花钱的艺术’——‘富足的简单选择’能为我带来什么？理解这些如何提升我的生活品质？为什么这对此刻聆听的每个人至关重要？

So for someone like me who wants to improve my relationship with spending, I guess the question yeah. I guess the first question is understanding the art of spending money, simple choices for a rich what what is it gonna do for me? How is it gonna make my life better to understand this? Why why does it matter to the person that's listening right now?

我认为这是一个非常容易做出的假设。如果你对自己的生活不满意，就会认为如果拥有更多钱，那些问题就会消失。有时这可能是真的，并非自动就是错的。只是人们更容易假设这是真的，而实际情况并非如此简单。

I think it is a very easy assumption to make. If you're unhappy with your life, that if you had more money, those problems would go away. Sometimes it can be true. It's not automatically false. It's just easier to assume that that's true than it actually is.

所以我敢保证，此刻正在听这段话的每个人，或多或少都有这种想法——'如果我钱再多一点，问题就会解决'，哪怕他们自己并未明确意识到。消费行为很大程度上是心理活动，就像试图挠某个痒处，这种冲动会以各种形式表现出来。因此我常把金钱视为...

And so I guarantee you that every single person listening to this right now has some degree of that. If I had a little bit more money, my problems would go away, even if they don't necessarily know it or not. So much of spending is a psychological exercise. There's an itch that you're trying to scratch, and that manifests in so many different ways. And so I've often thought of money look.

金钱是社会根源、社会核心吗？不是。显然有无数比钱更重要的东西，但我确实认为它是我们借以观察自身生活、他人生活及社会现状最清晰的窗口。它鲜明地展现了人们的价值观、恐惧所在和人生抱负。当然还有其他要素：健康、朋友、家庭...

Is money the root of society, the core of society? No. There's obviously a million things more important than money, but I do think it's the clearest window that we can look through to try to figure out what's going on in our own lives and other people's lives in society. It shows very starkly what people value, what they're scared of, what they're aspiring to become. There are many more elements to the puzzle, your health, your friends, your family.

这些可以无限列举下去。但金钱是个清晰的窗口——通过观察某人对待金钱的方式，你会恍然：'啊，我明白了你的不安，理解了你的抱负，看清了你的自信程度，也看透了你对他人的看法'。

We can go on that forever. But money is a very clear window that if you see how somebody engages with money, you're like, oh, I understand your insecurities. I understand your aspirations. I understand your self confidence. I understand what you think of other people.

你能从中洞悉很多。

You can learn a lot about that.

这有点像...像是你创伤的映射。

It's it's kinda like a reflection of your your trauma.

没错。而且表现方式千差万别。有位出色的财经作家蒂芙尼·阿利切，她从小极度贫困，如今非常成功。她称之为'创伤后贫困综合征'——尽管现在很富有，但（恕我不好代她发言）据我理解，她害怕花钱，因为脑中有个声音在说：'我绝不能回到过去那种境况'。

Yes. And it it manifests in very different ways. There's a great financial writer named named Tiffany Aliche, and she's she grew up very, very poor, and now she's extremely successful. And she calls it post traumatic broke syndrome, where even though she has a lot of money right now, she I I I don't wanna put words in her mouth. My understanding is, like, she's she's afraid to spend it because she's the the feeling in her head is I will never go back to that.

我再也无法回到那个创伤后一贫如洗的可怜状态。这种心理会以截然不同甚至相反的方式显现。重点不在于如果你出身贫寒就会想要炫耀，而在于这是一种心理上的痒处。不仅仅是因为豪车更好所以我想拥有。

I can't ever go back to that poor person, post traumatic broke. And so it can manifest in very different sometimes opposite ways. And so the point is not like if you grew up poor, you're gonna wanna display it. But the point is that it's a psychological itch. It it's not just I want the nice car because nice cars are better.

这是一种社会信号。你在向他人传递信号，也在向自己证明。这是给自己战胜困境的奖杯。我越是深入研究，就越清楚地发现，消费不仅仅关乎物质。

There's a social signaling. You're signaling to others. You're sending to yourself. The trophy for yourself of what you've overcome. The more I dug into it, the more it was so clear of, like, spending is not just on material stuff.

不只是因为车、房子、衣服或珠宝本身很棒所以想买。而是我试图向他人或自己传递我已克服困境的信号。我思考这个问题时想到：如果和家人在荒岛上生活，没人能看到我们的居住环境，看不到你的房子、车子——

It's not just I wanna buy this car or this house or these clothes or these jewelry because it's nice. It's I'm trying to send a signal to others or to myself of what I've overcome. One of the ways I thought about this in my own life was if I was on a deserted island with maybe just just me and and my family, nobody could see how we were living. Nobody can see your house. Nobody can see your car.

没人看得见你的衣着首饰。我会如何生活？对我而言（相信多数人也是如此），你会立刻摒弃身份象征，转向实用主义。比如，我不会想要兰博基尼。

Nobody see your clothes. Nobody can see your jewelry. How would I live? For me, and I think most people in that exercise, you immediately gravitate away from status and towards utility. Like, I would not want a Lamborghini.

我可能更想要辆皮卡——实用性更强的工具。如果无人旁观，我只需要实用功能。我不需要豪宅，而会选择景观优美的住所，因为无需向他人炫耀。

I probably want, like, a pickup truck. Something that has, like, more utility. If nobody could see it, I would just want utility. I would not want an enormous house. I would want a house with a nice view because I'm not trying to show off to other people.

我只想要让自己感到宁静平和的居所。当你开始看清实用性与身份象征的鲜明差异，当你强迫自己看清这点时，就会发现它无处不在。

I just want something that is calming and and serene to myself. So once you start seeing the stark difference between utility and status, once you once you force yourself to see it, you're like, oh, it's everywhere.

追求身份象征本身有错吗？没有。买劳力士手表是错的吗？

Is something inherently wrong with status? No. Is it wrong to buy a Rolex?

绝对不是。尤其是在你人生的某些阶段。

Absolutely not. Particularly at certain points of your life.

好吧。那么什么时候是好的？什么时候是坏的？什么时候是无所谓的，比如，漠不关心？

Okay. So when when is it good? When is it bad? When is it indifferent, like, indifferent?

我不知道。我不知道。很难用一个公式来定义什么是好什么是坏，因为每个人都不一样。但我想说的是，我个人对物质炫耀的渴望发生在我青少年晚期、二十出头的时候。

I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say what's good and bad in terms of a formula because everybody's different. But I would say this. My own personal desire to show off materially happened when I was in my late teens, early twenties.

现在回想起来，我当时并不知道，但原因是我那时没有什么可以奉献给世界的。我没有智慧。我没有见识。我不知道如何去爱任何人。我没有什么可以奉献给朋友、家人、配偶，无论是什么。

And looking back, I didn't know this then, but the reason why is because I had nothing else to offer the world. I had no intelligence. I had no wisdom. I didn't know how to love anyone. I had nothing else to offer friends, family, spouses, whatever it be.

所以，如果你试图获得关注和尊重，剩下的最后一个杠杆就是，好吧，看，我没有智慧可以奉献。我没有见识可以奉献。也许人们会因为我的车而羡慕我。这就是我想要它的原因。而现在，我希望在二十年后的今天，我能对我的妻子、朋友、家人、雇主和客户等等有更多可以奉献的，那么我对那些东西的渴望就减少了。

And so the last remaining lever, if you're trying to get attention and respect is, well, look, I have no intelligence to offer. I have no wisdom to offer. Maybe people will admire me for my car. That was why I wanted it. And now that I I hope in a in a I I hope to today, twenty years later, I have a little bit more to offer to my wife, to my friends, to my family, to, you know, employers and customers, whatnot, then my desire for those things has gone down.

虽然没有降到零，但确实减少了。沃伦·巴菲特有一句名言，他说人生的成功在于你希望爱你的人确实爱你。关键是你必须问自己，你希望谁爱你？对很多人来说，第一反应是所有人。所以你希望有一辆好车，好看的衣服，漂亮的珠宝，因为你认为每个人都会停下来盯着看。

Not to zero, but it's gone down. There's a great Warren Buffett quote where he says success in life is when the people who you want to love you do love you. And key to that is, like, you have to ask the question, like, who do you want to love you? And for a lot of people, the quick knee jerk reaction is everybody. And so you wanna have a nice car, nice clothes, nice jewelry because you think everyone's gonna stop and stare.

当我开着这辆车在路上行驶时，人们会停下来看着说，看那个人。看她。他们看起来多么成功。我羡慕他们。我尊重他们。

When I drive this down the road, people are gonna be stop and say, look at that guy. Look at her. That's a like, they're so successful. I admire them. I respect them.

总的来说，这几乎从来都不是真的，因为没有人像你自己那样关注你。他们不会在意你的车、衣服或房子。他们正忙着担心自己。吉米·卡尔，我想你之前上过节目。对吧？

And by and large, that is almost never true because no one's thinking about you as much as you are. They're not they're not paying attention to your car or your clothes or your house. They're busy worrying about themselves. Jimmy Carr, I think you've had on the show before. Is that right?

嗯。喜欢吉米·卡尔。他几周前说过这个。我听到了，那是那种让我不得不停下来记下来的深刻话语。

Mhmm. Love Jimmy Carr. He said this a couple weeks ago. I heard it, and it was one of those. I had to stop and write it down because it was so profound.

他说，二十多岁时，人们担心别人怎么看自己。三十多岁时，你会说，我不在乎别人怎么看我。到了四十多岁，你终于意识到真相，那就是根本没人一直在想你。他们正忙着担心自己。当然，这不是非黑即白的。

He said, in your twenties, people worry about what other people think of them. In your thirties, you say, I don't care what anybody thinks of me. And in your forties, you finally realize the truth, which was nobody was thinking about you the whole time. They were busy worrying about themselves. And look, that's not black and white.

当然，人们会想到你、看着你，有时会评判你，但远不及我们想象的那么频繁。这就是为什么我回到那个练习：如果没人看着，我会怎么生活？真相是，除了我真正爱和敬佩的人，几乎没人关注我，而他们敬佩我的原因与我的车或衣服无关。

Of course, people think about you and look at you and sometimes judge you, but not nearly to the extent that we think. And that was why I get back to the exercise. If nobody was watching, how would I live? The truth is because virtually nobody is watching except the people who I really love and admire, and they're gonna admire me for things that have nothing to do with the kind of car that I drive or the clothes that I wear.

所有这些现象的进化基础是什么？

What's the the evolutionary basis for all of this stuff?

生活是一场竞争。我过得好不好不重要，重要的是我比你过得好。我的房子大小不重要，如果我想炫耀，唯一重要的是我的房子比你的大。

Life's a competition. It doesn't matter how well I'm doing. It matters how well I'm doing relative to you. It doesn't matter how big my house is. If I'm trying to signal, all that matters is my house is bigger than yours.

这对所有财富都适用。不存在说你拥有多少美元就算富有的标准。那不存在。一切都是相对的。事实上，我们生活在一个物质如此丰富的世界，大多数听这个的人都会有某种住所、一辆车，还能买衣服等等。

That's true for all wealth. There's no such thing as you are wealthy once you have x number of dollars. That that does not exist. Everything is relative to other people. And the truth is that we live in a world of such material abundance where the majority of people listening to this will have some sort of shelter and a car and and combine can buy clothes and whatnot.

由于相较于历史长河，我们生活在物质极大丰富的时代，这场关于更大、更美好事物的竞争与军备竞赛空前激烈。如今它比以往任何时候都更具影响力，原因有二：一是社交媒体。我现在能清楚知道别人住什么样的房子、开什么车、去哪里度假——这种信息透明度是十五年前无法想象的。二是互联网使获取用户注意力的途径民主化，暴富的可能性比历史上任何时候都更触手可及。

And because relative to a lot of history, we live in material abundance, the competition, the arms race for bigger, nicer things is extraordinary, And it's way more powerful and potent today than it's ever been for two reasons. One is social media. So I am now aware of the homes that other people live in, the cars that they drive, the close the vacations that they take. I'm now aware of it in a way that we were not fifteen years ago. The other thing is because the Internet has democratized access to audience intention, the ability to become extremely rich is much more powerful than it's ever been.

当然这仍然罕见，但如今变得极其富有确实比以往更容易——即使只有少数人能做到，因为你的潜在客户群已是全球范围。想想看，一百年前商人的客户仅限于同城居民，而现在你的客户可以是全世界任何人。因此积累巨额财富的门槛降低了。

It's still rare, of course, but it's it's easier today than it's ever been to become very, very wealthy, even if only a small number of people are doing it because your your potential customer base is now the entire world. You know, a hundred years ago, if I was a businessman, my customer base was whoever lived in my town. Mhmm. Now if you're a businessman, your customer base can be the entire world. And so it's easier to make a huge fortune.

而通过社交媒体，一旦你获得财富，世人很快就会知晓。因为许多新贵会炫耀生活，这就形成了向下渗透的欲望链。如今年轻人对'富裕'的定义可能是拥有私人飞机和岛屿的亿万富翁，而八十年前人们眼中的富裕可能只是三居室、一辆车和美满家庭。在这个欲望被极度膨胀的世界里，消费竞赛的水准被推向了前所未有的高度。

And because of social media, once you make that fortune, people are probably gonna know about it. Because a lot of those people who become very rich are gonna say, look at how I'm living. And so you have this, like, trickle down aspiration of everyone else being like, my definition of wealthy if you're a young person today, a young person's definition of wealthy might be a a multibillionaire with a private jet and a private island, where I think eighty years ago, people's definition of wealthy was a three bedroom house and one car and a and a and a happy family. And so we live in a world where, like, aspirations have inflated by such a dramatic degree that the arms race of spending just gets that much that much higher.

我认为这其中隐含着一个生存智慧：若想活得幸福，就必须培养将'钦佩'与'渴望'剥离的能力。很多孩子会因崇拜而说'我长大后要成为摩根那样'，但他们看到的只是你人生的橱窗展示。就像人们总这样看待埃隆·马斯克——

I think there's something in this idea that you almost have to develop the skill of disconnecting your admiration from your aspirations if you wanna live a good life. Because so many kids will, like, look up to you and say, I wanna be like Morgan when I'm older because they admire what you've done. But the reality is they they're just seeing the sort of shop window Yeah. Of your life. And so I people do this with Elon all the time.

没错。埃隆甚至说过'你们以为想成为我，其实并不'。他在那个著名视频里指着脑袋说'这里就像龙卷风肆虐'。事实上，那些被仰望的极端成功者之所以取得惊人成就，往往是因为他们将生命每分每秒都献给了事业——这通常以牺牲健康、婚姻和亲子关系为代价。

Right. And Elon has even said, he's like, you might think you wanna be me, but you you don't. And he the the clip where he did that, he points to his head, and he's like, it's a it's a tornado up here. And I think it's true that for most people who are extremely successful, who are the ones that people tend to us to look up to, like the extreme outlier successes, a lot of the reason they're so successful financially and in their career is because they've devoted every second of their life to that career, which most of the time comes at the expense of everything else. So they are very successful, made a lot of money, and that came at the expense of their health, their relationships, relationships with their their spouses, their children.

我在书中指出：全球前十富豪累计离婚13次。虽然样本量小不足以定论，但这个被普遍崇拜的群体——尤其是埃隆·马斯克、杰夫·贝索斯、马克·扎克伯格——让无数年轻男性向往'拥有那么多钱该多好'。

So I make the point in the book that of the top 10 richest men in the world, there are cumulative 13 divorces among the top 10 richest people. Mhmm. And it's a small sample size. Like, you can't really, you know, say that that that much with that, but this is a group that is almost universally admired, particularly among young men. You know, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, how how amazing would it be to have that much money.

但若全面审视他们的人生，而不仅是净资产、豪宅或私人飞机，你会发觉：事情没那么美好。你可以幻想拼凑式地获取他人生活的碎片——想要他的房子、她的车、他的事业和体型——但现实是你必须全盘接受整个生活包，包括所有代价。

But after if you dig into their actual the the the their whole life, not just their net worth, not just the house and the jet that they have, but if you look at holistically their entire life, you're like, I don't know. It's it's it's it's not that great. It's it's one thing to admire someone if you can pick bits and pieces. I want I want his house and her car and his career and his physique, but you can't pick bits and pieces. You have to take the whole thing.

当你真正经历这一切后，你会发现，那些你曾仰望的人，要么生活并不比你优越多少，要么只是略微好一点，而这种差距很容易被忽视。

And once you take the whole thing, you realize that, like, a lot of the people who you may have been looking up to either did not have a better life than you did, or it was just marginally better in a way that was easy to overlook.

上周我在纽约和一个女孩有过这样的对话。当时我在为客户拍品牌宣传片，她坐下来为TikTok采访我。她问我，'你是在多少岁成为百万富翁的？'我回答大约24、25岁。她立刻说，'可我现在就是24、25岁，却还没成为百万富翁。'

I had this conversation with a girl in New York last week. I was at a shoot a client, like a brand shoot, and she sat me down to interview me for TikTok. And she said she was, oh, what what age did you become a millionaire? And I said, about 24, 25. And she went, oh, I'm 24, 25 now, and I'm not a millionaire.

我记得当时对她说：'是啊，但你真的愿意和我交换人生吗？'然后我解释道，18岁到20岁左右那段日子我非常孤独，整天在呼叫中心工作。

And I remember saying to her, was like, yeah. But would you would you take my trade? Right. And I explained to her, was like, so I was lonely between the age of 18 and roughly 20. I was working in call centers.

父母不和我说话，那段时间几乎与家人断绝联系。18、19岁时为了填饱肚子开始偷窃。我哥哥曾给过我一包工业装的燕麦粉，我的日常就是把这些粉末兑水喝。

My parents wouldn't speak to me, so I had no contact with my family really through that period. And then I started shoplifting at about 18, 19 to feed myself. And my brother had given me this big sort of industrial packet of oats. And what I had to do is it's like powder. I mix the powder with water.

网上有张照片——可能在我第一次TED演讲里——就是我喝着这种粉末糊的样子。所以我对她说：'虽然24岁成了百万富翁，但代价是孤独、与家人决裂、喝着燕麦糊、偷窃、同时在多家呼叫中心上夜班。'

And there's there's this photo online, I think, my previous TED Talk, my first one, where I was just drinking this this powdered water. So I said to her, I said and I was a millionaire at 24. Lonely, not speaking to my family, drinking powdered dough. Drinking it up. Shop shoplifting, working night shifts in multiple call centers.

这样的交换，你愿意接受吗？

Right. Would you take the trade?

确实。

Right.

然后她说，不行。对吧。她坚决表示拒绝，不愿接受这种交换条件。我说，所以你不能挑三拣四，因为如果你想要我的结果，就必须走我走过的路，才能得到我特定的成果。

And she went, no. Right. She went, absolutely not. She wouldn't take the trade. And I said, so you can't you can't pick it apart because I if you wanted my outcome, you have to take the path that I took if you want my specific outcome.

人们往往不会考虑这一点。这个播客教会我的事情之一，就是通过权衡取舍的框架来思考问题。没错。要把每件事都看作一种交换。把Zenpek也视为一种取舍。

And people don't think about that. Like, one of the things this podcast has actually taught me is to think through the framework of trade offs. Yeah. So think about everything as a trade off. Think of a Zenpek as a trade off.

在任何地方你都在做某种交易。甚至，当你向往或羡慕别人时——比如你羡慕我们在这里的成就，就要想想背后的代价。就拿这个团队来说，过去十四天在纽约，团队成员每天从早到晚工作，包括周末，日复一日。对吧。你想做播客吗？

There's a trade you're making somewhere. And even, you know, when you aspire or you admire people, if you admire what we've done here, for example, think about the trade off. Like, even with this team, the team have been working here every single day, including the weekends, from morning till night for the last fourteen days here in New York every single day. Right. Do you wanna do you wanna do you wanna podcast?

就像，你愿意接受这种交换吗？如果愿意，那没问题。但正如你所说，要对交易的两面性有清醒认知。

Like, you Right. Do you want the trade? And if you do, fine. But just be informed about, as you say, both sides of the trade.

吉米·卡尔还有一句我喜欢的名言。他是个深邃的人，不仅幽默至极，还非常睿智。这句话是：人人都会嫉妒你拥有的东西，但没人会嫉妒你获取它的过程。

Another Jimmy Carr quote that I love. He's a profound individual. Not only is he hilarious, he's very smart. The quote is, everyone is jealous of what you've got. Nobody's jealous of how you got it.

是啊。这太容易被忽视了。我在书里写过一种叫'反向讣告'的方法——虽然有点阴暗，但写下你希望讣告上出现的内容是很有益的练习。对每个人来说答案都不同。

Yeah. And I think it's just so easy to overlook. One of the things I write in the book is what's called the reverse obituary, which is it's a very good helpful exercise to write down. It's kinda morbid, but what do you want your obituary to say? Kind of a weird thing, but for me, everyone's different.

但对我来说，我希望上面写着：摩根是个好父亲、好丈夫、好朋友，帮助过社区，是个优秀的劳动者。我永远不希望讣告里提到我的收入、房子大小、度假次数或是汽车马力——想到这些会出现在上面就很荒谬。嗯。

But for me, I would want it to say Morgan was a good father, a good husband, a good friend, helped his community, was a good worker. That's what I wanted to say. Never in a million years in that obituary would I wanted to say what my income was, how big my house was, how many times I went on vacation, how many horsepower my car had. Like, it's ridiculous to think that that's what it would be. Mhmm.

我希望你能立刻转向那些你内心深处真正渴望的事物。当然，每个人的追求都不同，但我发现这个方法很有帮助——因为你会意识到，若把那些我可能穷尽一生追逐的东西写进讣告里，将是多么荒谬。所以如果在某一天、某一年里，你总想着'我得赚更多钱，买更大的房子，换新车'——不。

I would want it you instantly drift towards the things that you know you're actually you actually want in life. And, of course, it's gonna be different for everyone, but I I I found it a helpful thing because you realize that it would be completely absurd to put the things that I might be chasing in my life in my obituary. And so if in any given day, in any given year, you're like, I gotta earn a higher income, I wanna buy a bigger house. And I I need a new car. No.

你看它们最终只占了这么点分量？但到你生命尽头时，这些根本无关紧要。真正重要的是：你是否是个好伴侣、好父母、好同事？你是否诚实？你是否是个好朋友？

Do you see they came out this much? But at the end of your life, you know that's not gonna matter. What's gonna matter is were you a good spouse, a good parent, a good worker? Were you honest? Were you a good friend?

你是否幽默风趣？这些才是关键，因为这才是你希望被铭记在讣告里的品质。

Were you funny? That's you know that's what's gonna matter because that's what you want in your obituary.

我认为人们的消费方式也与这点相关，就像开场提到的创伤话题——有时会导致'储蓄成瘾'。我常思考这个问题，年轻时我曾有疯狂消费的问题，而我也见过那些几乎不花钱、像守财奴般囤积资本的人。你在书里也谈到这点，这种极端行为同样有害吗？

I think part of the reason people spend in the way that they do as well is linked to that, which is sometimes that behavior, which is also linked to the point about trauma at the start, might result in a savings addiction. I often wonder this because, you know, when I was younger, I had this crazy spending problem. And I've also seen people who don't seem to spend anything, and they're just, like, hoarding capital. You talk about this a bit in the book. Like, what is that equally bad behavior?

我认为同样有害，因为两者本质相同——都是被金钱控制。金钱本应是让你成为更好、更快乐、更满足的自己的工具。但当它开始主导你的个性时，这与任何其他成瘾症没有区别，它迫使你做出违背本心的行为。这种失控可能表现为两种极端：要么无法停止消费，要么吝于支出。

I think it's equally bad because both of them are the exact same thing, which is money's controlling you. Money should be a tool that you use to become a better version of yourself, to become a happier, more content version of yourself. But when it's controlling your personality, it's it's it's no different than, like, any any other addiction where you don't it's forcing you to do things that you otherwise don't wanna do. And that can manifest on either end of the side. Either people can't stop spending or they cannot spend enough.

很多理财顾问会告诉你，他们最头疼的客户是那些已攒够退休金的人。干得好，你攒了四十年钱，缴满401k计划，做完所有该做的事——如今70岁的你有足够资金旅行打高尔夫，却不肯行动。

A lot of financial advisers will tell you one of the biggest problems that they have are clients who have saved enough money for retirement. Good job. You saved for forty years. You maxed out your four zero one k. You did everything you were supposed to, and now you're 70 years old and you have enough money to travel and play golf, and you won't.

他们就是做不到。我认为这是因为他们已完全认同'我是储蓄者'这个身份。每月存钱、净资产增长已成为习惯，他们无法转换思维模式。对这些人而言，金钱完全掌控了他们的身份认同，支配着他们的生活方式、喜好、抱负和乐趣。

You won't do it. And I think it's because they become so accustomed to the identity of I'm a saver. Every month I save, and every month my net worth goes up, and they cannot bring themselves into switching gears and going in the other direction. And for a lot of those people, the money is in full control over their identity. It's telling them how to live, what to like, what to aspire to, what to enjoy.

金钱完全掌控了他们的人格，这种控制就像你十几岁时无法停止消费一样危险且有害。两者都存在——金钱就像操纵你生活的提线木偶，精确地告诉你该做什么以及何时去做。

The money is totally in control of their personality, and and it's it's just as dangerous and just as just as detrimental as you when you were a teenager of I can't stop spending. It's and both of those are in are there the money is like playing the marionette doll of your life. It's telling you exactly what to do and when to do it.

如果我想建立一个如何花钱的框架，我该从哪里开始？我需要明确某些事情吗？你知道吗？我想另一个与此相关的问题是那个围绕‘金钱能否带来幸福’的 overarching 辩论。对吧。

If I wanted to make a framework to know how to spend my money, what where do I start? Do I have to get clear on something? Do I you know? And I guess the other question, which is somewhat linked to this is this overarching debate around can money make you happy. Right.

但我正在试图弄清楚，比如，我该从哪里开始？因为我今天想达成的一件事就是，我希望有一个更清晰的关于如何花钱的框架。

But I'm trying to figure out, like, where do I start? Because I I wanna one the things I wanna get out of today is I wanna have a a clearer framework for how to spend my money.

嗯，你刚才提到的这两点我认为是密切相关的。首先是‘金钱能否让你更幸福’这个问题——答案是肯定的，但旁边需要加个星号说明。多年来学术界一直在争论‘更多钱是否能带来幸福’，部分研究显示确实如此。

Well, those two points that you just brought up, I think, are very related. The first on the point of can money make you happier? The answer is yes, but there's a there's a there's an asterisk next to it that we need to get to. For years, there was a big academic debate of does more money make you happy? A lot of some of the studies showed, yes.

显然可以。但其他研究则表明并非如此。经济学家们为此争论了几十年。直到最近这二十年，随着一些细微差别的发现，这个问题才逐渐明朗：

Clearly, it does. Others show studies showed, no. It really doesn't. And the academics, the economists were, like, battling for decades. It's kind of been cleared up in the last just the last couple of years, this last couple of decades with some nuance, which is this.

如果你本身是个不快乐的人，如果你已经焦虑或抑郁，大体上来说，拥有更多金钱对你帮助不大——最多在边缘问题上稍有改善。但如果你原本就是个快乐、满足、充满欢笑的人，更多金钱会让你生活得更好。所以无论哪种情况，金钱都只是放大你原有的状态，它不会彻底改变你。

If you are already an unhappy person, if you're already anxious, if you're already depressed, by and large, having more money will not help you, at least that much. It might help you a little bit around the margins if you're if you start as an unhappy, depressed, anxious person. If you are already a happy, content, joyful, laughing person, having more money will give you a better life. So in either direction, it's just leveraging who you already were. It's not gonna change you that much.

它只会放大你原本的样子。这和人们常说的权力很像——当你在政治等领域获得权力时，它只是放大了你原有的性格。金钱也是如此。所以它并非万能药，不是说如果你很痛苦，有了更多钱就能解决所有问题。

It's just gonna leverage who you already were. Very similar to, like, they say this about power. Like, once you gain power in politics or something, it just leverages the personality that you already had. Money is very much like that. And so it's it's not a a a panacea in the sense of, like, oh, like, if if you're miserable, like, you had more money, it's gonna clear up your problems.

它能让你的某些问题变得稍微容易处理些。但我的意思是，用这些赤裸裸的事实来思考。假设你超重且不快乐，你讨厌你的工作，最近离婚了，孩子们也不理你，但你住在车道上停着法拉利的豪宅里，拥有各种奢侈品。这样的生活算好吗？

It can make some of your problems a little bit easier to deal with. But I mean, think about it in these stark terms. Let's say you are overweight and unhappy. You hate your job and you're recently divorced and your kids won't talk to you, but you live in a mansion that has a Ferrari in the driveway, and you got all kinds of fancy stuff. Is is that a good life?

如果你生活中其他所有事都糟透了，每天早晨醒来想着：'唉，今天又得去上班。我讨厌我的工作，实在受不了。我很孤独，痛苦不堪。'

If all if everything else in your life sucked and you woke up every morning going, oh, I gotta go to work today. I hate my job. I can't stand my job. I'm I'm lonely. I'm miserable.

我超重，失眠，酗酒成瘾，无论具体是什么情况。这样的生活当然糟糕透顶。房子和车子根本无关紧要。

I'm overweight. I can't sleep. I'm addicted to alcohol, whatever it might be. Of course, it's a terrible life. The house and the car don't matter at all.

但你可以反过来想：假设你住在普通的中产阶级住宅，开着一辆十年车龄的本田思域，但你热爱工作，与同事相处融洽，与配偶关系美满，孩子们崇拜你，每周五晚都邀请朋友来烧烤聚会。

But you can flip that around and say, like, let's say you live in a very modest middle class house and you drive a a a ten year old Honda Civic, But you love your job. You love your coworkers. You have a great relationship with your spouse. Your kids admire you. You have your friends over for a barbecue every Friday night.

物质上虽很普通，但你所需皆有。不算贫困潦倒，也不是无家可归。有想要的食物和住所。若要在豪宅里的痛苦者和中产住宅里的知足幸福者之间选择，只有疯子才会选前者。

Materially, it's very modest. You have what you need. You're not impoverished. You're not homeless. You have the food that you want, the shelter that you want, but you would be an absolute maniac to choose the miserable person in the mansion versus the content, happy person in the middle class house.

如果你的目标是过上好生活，在这两者间做选择时偏向前者简直是精神错乱。

If your goal is to live a good life, it's psychotic to pick one of one over the other.

我最近对此感受特别强烈，因为我独自飞往开普敦。之前只和女友及朋友去过几次，在那里有栋大房子。第一次是和家人同住，第二次则是带着女友和朋友们。

I felt this quite starkly recently because I flew to Cape Town on my own. I've only ever been there with my girlfriend and with other friends, and the first time I've I've only been there a few times. I've got a house there, and it's a very big house. And the first time I came in was with my family. The second time, it's with my girlfriend and my friends.

这次我是独自来的

This time, I came on my

是啊。

own. Yeah.

醒来时我感受到一种深刻的存在主义情绪，独自穿行在那栋房子里想着，真该死。就像，我突然无比清晰地意识到，这种房子的意义本应是让人群填满它，而你却说

And I felt this deep existential feeling waking up, walking through that house alone, thinking, fuck me. Like, it was so clear to me that the point of such a such a thing is to fill it with people and you say

这正是我在书中强调的观点，就像那个简单的问题：大房子会让你更幸福吗？

That's what I I may I make this point in the book of, like, the very simple question, will a big house make you happier?

我认为如果空荡荡的，它只会让你抑郁。

I think it will make you depressed if it's empty.

没错。

Yes.

因为这就是我的感受。我当时想，与其独自住在大房子里，我宁愿蜗居在单身公寓。

Because that's how I felt. I was like, I'd rather be in a studio apartment alone than a big house on my own.

没错。几年前我和家人去毛伊岛度假时，也有过类似的顿悟。我深爱毛伊岛，那是世界上我最钟爱的地方。如今有了孩子，我就在毛伊岛的海滩上陪他们堆沙堡。

Right. I had a similar realization to you a couple years ago when I took my my my my my family and I went to Maui for a vacation. I love Maui. It's my favorite place in the world. And now I have kids, so I'm building sandcastles with my kids on the beach in Maui.

记得当时我想，这简直是满分体验，就是我人生的巅峰时刻。和孩子们堆沙堡，阳光下每个人都笑容灿烂。但随后我意识到——如果这是10分，那么在家客厅地板上陪孩子玩乐高就是9分，真的相差无几。

And that I remember thinking, like, this is this is a 10 out of 10. This is, like, this is peak life for me. Building sandcastles with my kids, everyone's happy in the sun. But then I had this realization of, if that's a 10, playing with LEGOs at home on the living room floor with my kids is, like, a nine. Like, it's really close.

因为我真正享受的是与孩子共度的优质时光。人们喜欢度假旅行，往往不是因为热衷坐飞机环游世界、忍受时差和挤在狭小酒店里，而是渴望远离工作和日常压力的专属时光——这才是他们真正向往的旅行意义。

Because realization was what I enjoy is, like, quality time with my kids. I think a lot of the reason that people like vacate like travel is not because they like getting on an airplane and flying around the world and being jet lagged and cramped into a small hotel. What they like is uninterrupted time away from work, away from all the other stresses of everyday life. That's what they actually enjoy. That's what they like travel.

关键不在于地理位置本身，而在于这个地方能为你带来什么。所以「大房子会让你更幸福吗？」这个问题的答案是：如果它能更方便亲友相聚，那么答案是肯定的——因为真正让你幸福的是亲友，而非房子本身。

It's not necessarily the location. It's like what the location is doing for you. So the question of will a big house make you happier? It will to the extent that it makes it easier to have your friends and family over because your friends and family are the ones who are actually making you happy. And so the answer can be can will a will a nice house make you happy?

只要动机正确，答案就可以是肯定的。《纽约时报》曾有篇报道（大约10-15年前），说朱丽叶·罗伯茨那周经历了两件事：一是获得奥斯卡奖，二是发现丈夫出轨。

The answer can be yes if you're using it for the right reasons. There was this article in the New York Times. This is probably ten or fifteen years ago. And, the article said, two things happened to to Juliet Roberts this week. One, she won the Academy Award, and two, she found out her husband was cheating on her.

专栏作者设问：朱丽叶·罗伯茨这周过得好吗？若回答「好」就太愚蠢了——那可能是她人生中最黑暗的一周。

And so the column said, pop quiz. Did Juliet Roberts have a good week? And it's like, you'd be a fool to say yes. It was probably the worst week of her life, I imagine. Yeah.

但从外界视角，我们只看到她盛装华服，接受职业生涯最高荣誉，仿佛光鲜亮丽。可一旦了解全貌就会明白：事情远非表面那么简单。

But what we see from the outside was dolled up in a beautiful dress, accepting the highest honor of her career, and saying like, wow. That must be an amazing. But he gets back to once you see the full picture, you're like, nah. It's not as easy as it seems.

你在书的第23页引用了一句我很喜欢的话：'展示你房子的内部，而非外观。'

You say on page 23 of your book a quote that I loved, show off the inside of your house, not the outside.

没错。因为房子的内部才是你的朋友和家人真正看到的。

Right. Because the inside of your house are what your friends and your family are seeing.

这里面有什么窍门吗？因为现在网上有很多社群，他们想出各种生活妙招，以不同方式生活。他们跳出所谓的'矩阵'，形成自己的小圈子，不按常规行事。我深感我们大多数人都被困在这个矩阵里。

Is there like a a hack here? Like, is there you know, because you have all these, like, Internet communities that come up with these, like, hacks, these other ways to live. They they they step outside of the matrix and they form their own little their own little cult that are, like, doing it differently and not not abiding by the rules of the the quote unquote matrix. I very much feel like most of us are trapped in the matrix. Yeah.

我们被困在这场地位竞争中互相攀比，而非追寻幸福。那么，究竟有什么破解之法？我该如何逃离这个矩阵，那又会是什么样子？

We're trapped in this, like, status game competing against each other, not not searching for happiness. Like, what is the the hack here? How do I get out of the matrix, and what does that look like?

我认为如果要说书中提出的一个公式——虽然我强调花钱没有固定公式——但若要为美好生活总结一个远超金钱范畴的公式，那就是：独立+目标。若问'如何获得幸福'，你需要独立自主，能随心所欲地做想做的事、与想同行的人共处，同时需要一个超越自我的生活目标。

I think if there is a formula that I I lay out in the book, and I I make the point that, like, there's there's no formula for how to spend money. But if I did try to make a formula for a pretty good life, and this extends way outside of money, the formula for a pretty good life is independence plus purpose. If you wanna say, like, how how can I be a happy person? You need to be independent. You need to be able to do what you wanna do when you wanna do it with whom you wanna do it with, and you need some kind of purpose that is higher than yourself.

这个目标可以是无数事物：朋友、家庭、事业、宗教信仰等等。

And that could be a million different things. It could be friends. It could be family. It could be career. It could be religion, whatever it might be.

很难想象缺乏这两要素的人能拥有美好生活。如果你的整个生活和日程都被他人支配——不得不做厌恶的工作，忍受痛苦的通勤，被迫违心行事——就很难快乐。若所做之事毫无意义，幸福更是遥不可及。因此我认为，金钱最值得投资的就是获取独立。

I think it is very difficult to imagine anyone having a good life without those two things. If your entire life and your schedule is dictated by somebody else of you have to go to this job that you don't like, you have to have a long commute that you don't like, You have to do this when you don't wanna do it. It's it's hard to be happy. And if you don't have any kind of purpose that you're doing it for, it's difficult to be happy. And so the idea that to me, the best thing to spend money on is independence.

而我将其视为购买行为。我不认为这是省钱，我认为这是在购买自由。这就是我的看法——当我储蓄时，我感觉自己是在购买自由。因此对我来说，我花钱最重要的地方（虽然听起来有点怪），其实就是储蓄。

And I view it as purchasing. I I don't view it as saving money. I view it as purchasing independence. That's how I I view I feel like I'm buying independence when I save. And so to me, the biggest thing that I spend my money on, and this sounds weird, but I is saving.

我认为这等同于购买自由。我认为每存下一美元，我就比从前更自由一点。这是我对自己未来多掌控的一小部分。如果你正在听这段话却想着：'我根本不可能实现财务自由'——

And I view that as buying independence. I view that as every dollar that I save is a little bit more independent than I was before. It's a little bit of my future that I now own and control. And if if you're listening to this and you're like, look, I'm not financially independent. I've had no does I have no possibility of being financially independent.

自由本就是一个渐进的过程，你每多存一美元，确实就比从前更自由一点。银行里有100美元存款，意味着失业时你能多撑几天房租或杂货；一千美元、一万美元，任何积蓄都让你比从前更自由。当认识到美好生活的核心是自由，而任何储蓄行为都在为你购买自由时——我认为这对人们是个极具力量的启示。

Independence exists on a spectrum, and literally every dollar that you save is a little bit more independent than you were before. If you have a $100 in the bank in savings, that can make it so that if you were to lose your job, you have a little bit more flexibility for rent or groceries or whatever it might be that you didn't before. The thousand dollars, $10,000, any amount that you have is a little bit more independent than you were before. And so when you view one of the cores of living a good life is independence, and any amount of saving money will buy you independence. I think that's a powerful observation for people.

至于人生目标则因人而异。现阶段对我而言，就是成为好父亲。这是我想要的人生终极身份，是我生命的最高目标。我相信绝大多数父母都会告诉你，没有什么比看着孩子茁壮成长更让人感到喜悦与充实了。

And then the purpose part is gonna be different for everyone. For me right now in my life, it's being a good father. That's what I want my end my identity to be. That's my overarching goal in life is to be a good dad. I I think the vast majority of parents will tell you that there was no greater joy, purpose than watching their kids thrive.

当然这也会带来许多忧愁、无眠之夜、焦虑和担忧。但据我所知，没有哪位父母会认为生命中还有其他事物能超越这种体验——尽管伴随痛苦，但终究是美好的。我们之所以讨论这点，是因为幸福公式是'自由+目标'。对我而言，目标就是为人父母，但这并非放之四海皆准。

Can also bring a lot of sorrow and a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of anxiety and a lot of worry that comes along with it. But nothing that I've experienced or any of the other parents that I know would would say that anything in their life has come before that, that it's been a great thing. So we got on this point because the formula is independence plus purpose. For me, the purpose is being a parent. That's not gonna be true for everyone.

但你在用自由交换这个目标？

But you're trading independence for that?

我放弃的是内在自由。我愿意为孩子牺牲。对值得忠诚之人保持忠诚是美好的，但对不值得者保持忠诚则糟糕透顶。如果你效忠的公司不尊重你，那感觉简直糟透了。

I'm trading it's internal independence that I'm giving up. I wanna sacrifice for my kids. I wanna, like, loyalty to people who deserve your loyalty is a wonderful thing. Loyalty to people who don't deserve your loyalty sucks. And so if you are work if you're giving your loyalty to a company that doesn't respect you, that sucks.

这太糟糕了。对值得的人忠诚是件非常充实的事。所以我的孩子们值得我的忠诚。

That's terrible. Loyalty to people who deserve it is a very fulfilling thing. So my kids deserve my loyalty.

他们是如何终结这种忠诚的？

How did they end that loyalty?

仅仅因为他们是我的孩子。有些日子我觉得他们并不领情，这很正常。但我认为这往往是事实。当人们对不值得忠诚的个人、组织或政治派别保持忠贞时，就会陷入困境。

Just by being my kids. And there's some days where I feel like they they don't appreciate it. Of course. But I I think that tends to be true. People get into problems when they are loyal to people or organizations or political affiliations who don't deserve loyalty.

那才是最危险的时刻。

That's when it gets dangerous.

你认为独立自由的承诺是否暗藏着人们避而不谈的阴暗代价？因为当下有种文化在宣扬'做自己的老板'、'自力更生'。但当你思考什么能让人快乐时，似乎都是集体性的事物。就像你说的，实际上是依赖关系——你的孩子们依赖着你。

Do you think the promise of independence and freedom has a secret hidden dark trade off that people don't talk about? Because there's this culture right now of, like, know, be your own boss and stand on your own two feet. And when you think about what makes humans happy, it seems to be collective things. It seems to be actually in your case, as you're saying, dependence. Your kids depend on you.

是的。某种程度上你也依赖着他们。在我看来，朋友来家里做客比独自在家更让我快乐。

Yes. And in some ways, you depend on them. All the things that seem to me, like having my friends at my house made me happier than being in the house alone.

没错。

Right.

但狭隘的公共叙事全都在强调，比如，为自由而优化，无论那意味着什么，实际上更多是为独立而优化，不依赖他人。但当你观察那些看起来最不快乐的人，他们似乎恰恰是最

But the narrow the public narrative is all about, like, optimizing for freedom, whatever that means, and really more so optimizing for independence, not depending on someone else. But when you look at the people that seem to be the the most unhappy, they seem to be the most

独立的。没错。因为他们——如果你想象一个人，比如独自生活在蒙大拿州中部，周围空无一人之类的。

independent. Right. Because they're they if they if you picture someone, like, living in a kingdom themselves in the middle of Montana with no one around them or whatever.

没有家人，没有宠物，仅靠一台笔记本电脑自由职业，在迪拜的玻璃盒子里，没有重大责任，也不属于任何教会。

No family, no pets, freelance work on a laptop on their own, in a in a glass box in Dubai, no no big obligations, not not in a church.

但回到这个公式，独立曾是目标。那些人没有目标。

But back to the formula, independence was purpose. Those people have no purpose.

哦，是的。

Oh, yes.

所以我认为，是的，每个人都会——我依赖我的妻子、我的孩子。但你知道，那里存在依赖关系，但这是我选择的。我选择她作为配偶，我选择要孩子。所以我仍然按照自己的意愿行事。

And so I think it's I think, yes, everyone is gonna be I'm I'm dependent on my wife, my kids. But, you know, there there is dependency there, but I'm I'm choosing. I chose her as a spouse. I chose to have kids. And so I I still did it on my terms.

因此你永远不会——或者说，我认为你不想在那种意义上100%独立，即你不依赖任何人，也没有人依赖你，因为那样你就没有目标。关键在于选择你想要依赖的对象。我认为如果你不得不忠诚于一份讨厌的工作，只因这是你唯一的工作，你必须做它，还得支付高额房租住在一个并不那么喜欢的公寓里——这些就是对你不想要之物的依赖。而我愿意依赖我的家庭，因为这赋予我目标。

And so you're never gonna be or, yeah, I think you don't wanna be a 100% independent in the sense that you don't rely on anyone and no one relies on you because then you have no purpose. It's choosing who you want. I think it's I think you're not independent if you have to be loyal to a job that you hate, but you have to have it because it's the only job you got, and you and you have to do it. And you're you you have to pay this exorbitant rent on an apartment that you don't even enjoy that much. Like, those are dependence on things that you don't want, but, like, I want to be dependent on my family because that gives me purpose.

我想，这就像是拥有做出选择的自由。

It's like the independence to make the choice, I guess.

选择你要依赖谁的自由，对吧？

To make the choice of who you're gonna be dependent on. Right?

明白了。关于之前提到的储蓄，你说你最喜欢的消费方式就是储蓄。对，现在有人在听呢。你认为他们至少应该存多少钱？

Got you. And on this earlier point, you're talking about saving and that you your favorite form of spending is saving. Yeah. Someone's listening now. How much money do you think they should, at a minimum, have saved?

如果要具体来说，我会问：在你一生中，有多大可能会失业且半年内找不到新工作？这种情况发生的概率并不低。虽然想想不太舒服，或许你已经经历过，但确实有很大概率会发生。因此，如果说要衡量某种较高层次的独立性——不是低水平，而是中等程度的独立——那就是能维持自己六个月的生活开支。

If you try to get technical about it, I would say, what are the odds that at some point in your life, you're gonna lose your job and not be able to find another job for six months? The odds are not bad that that will happen to you at some point. Not very comfortable to think about. Maybe it's already happened to you already, but the odds that at some point that will happen are pretty good. And therefore, if you were to say, like, look, a good measure of some level of higher end independence, not a low level of independence, but like a a medium level of independence is six is is I could keep myself going for six months.

对很多人来说这是个艰巨目标，没关系。18岁时可能还做不到，需要慢慢积累。但达到这个水平后，你就能体验到大多数人从未有过的松弛感——生活中难免有糟糕的事，会不舒服，但终究能度过。

Now for a lot of people, that's a daunting task, and I it it's okay. You're probably not gonna achieve that when you're 18. Am I it's it's gonna take some savings to get there. But that is a level at which you can exhale to a degree that most people have never been able to do before of, like, there's gonna be some bad stuff happening in your life. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but it's gonna be okay.

历史上多数人面临的困境是：坏事发生就意味着灾难。而储蓄的关键在于，失业时能让你有底气寻找真正合适的工作——地点、内容、同事都称心那种。若没有积蓄，就只能被迫接受第一份找到的工作，哪怕内容讨厌、地点厌恶、同事不合。储蓄的意义，正是给你时间找到更合适机会的灵活性。

And for for for most people, for most of history, it was there's bad things gonna happen to you, and you're not gonna be okay. It's gonna be very traumatic. And and one of the important things there is when you lose that job, the ability to go find a good job, even a better job, where you want, doing what you want with the people who you like working with is very important. If you don't have any savings, you're gonna have to, by default, pick the very first job that you can come across, even if it's a terrible job in a location that you hate, doing something you hate, working with people you don't like. And so the flexibility to give yourself time to find a job that is a little bit easier and better for you, that is the purpose of savings.

这又回到你关于独立性的观点：积累储蓄就是在积累选择工作伙伴的自由与独立。

And that goes back to your point about independence, which is you wanna building up those savings is building up the independence or the freedom to make a choice about who you work with.

没错。

Right.

如果最坏的情况发生，你不一定非得去某个糟糕的地方工作。

If the worst were to happen, you don't have to necessarily go get a job at, you know, some awful place.

某个特别糟糕的地方。

Some some terrible place.

你在书里也谈到了嫉妒。我读到一些挺有趣的统计数据，基本上是说如果你中了彩票，你邻居破产的概率会增加。对吧。

You talk about jealousy in the book as well. And I was reading some stats that quite funny stats, but they they say that, essentially, that if you're if you win the lottery, the probability of your neighbor going bankrupt increases. Right.

这个统计数字很惊人，对吧？

It's an amazing statistic. Right?

那么这背后是什么原因呢？

So what's what's happening there?

嗯，你看到邻居中了彩票，他们可能买了度假别墅、新车，送孩子上私立学校等等。你看着这些就会想，我也要拥有这些。他们有的我没有，这不公平。于是我会做出任何鲁莽的财务决定来获得这些。我们以为的常态其实很多都是这样。

Well, you're looking at your neighbor who won the lottery, and your neighbor probably bought a vacation house, bought a new car, sending their kids to private school, whatever it might be. And you watching that are like, I need that for myself. It's it's unfair that they have it, and I don't. And I'm gonna go do any reckless financial decision to get that. So much of what we think is is normal.

我们对成功的定义往往来自周围人的生活方式。如果你看到邻居过得比你好，突然间，你就会以他们的生活作为好生活的标准，并可能为此做出一些鲁莽的举动。我认为这就是现实。因此其中一个启示是：要谨慎选择交往对象，因为你会以他们作为衡量成功与幸福的基准。务必注意你的行为、你崇拜的对象以及你渴望成为的人。

Our definition of success is what other people around us have. And so if you are watching your neighbor live a better life than you, then all of sudden, your definition of a good life is what they're doing, and you will do some reckless things to get it. I think that's that's what happens. And so one of the takeaways there is, like, be careful who you socialize with because you're going to anchor to them as a baseline level of success and happiness. Be very careful with what you do and who you look up to and who you aspire to.

我在加利福尼亚州的太浩湖畔长大，那时还没有科技资本涌入，那里并不富裕。如今因为旧金山的科技资金流入而变得富庶。但九十年代和二十一世纪初的太浩湖还只是片林区。你知道，那时房子便宜得很，镇上大多数人都不富裕。后来我去洛杉矶读大学，那里充斥着财富。

I grew up in Lake Tahoe, California, and this was before tech money when it was not a wealthy area. It is now because all the tech money from San Francisco came up. But Tahoe in the nineties and early two thousands was was just out in the woods. And, you know, you could buy a house for nothing, and most people in town didn't have any money. And then I went to college in Los Angeles where there is a lot of wealth.

那里有着高标准的期待，随处可见兰博基尼、劳斯莱斯等豪车。我的观察是太浩湖的人们反而更快乐。我认为原因在于当时太浩湖对成功的定义：一套两居室房子和一辆皮卡车就是成功。而在洛杉矶，成功的定义是豪宅和宾利。

There are high expectations, and there are Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces and whatnot. And one of my observations was people were happier in Tahoe. And I think the reason why is because the definition of success in Tahoe back then was a two bedroom house and a pickup truck. That was success. In Los Angeles, the definitions of success was a mansion and a and a Bentley.

因此太浩湖的人更容易满足，他们会想：我很好，我已经达标了。看啊，我很成功——看看我的小房子和破旧的皮卡。

And so it was it was easier for people in Tahoe to be like, I'm good. I I checked the boxes. Like, look. I'm successful. Look at look at my tiny little house and my beat up pickup truck.

这就是成功，对吧？所以这再次说明：要谨慎选择社交圈，因为你会以他们的成功标准作为参照。

That's success. Right? And so that was like, be careful who you socialize with because you're going to anchor to their level of success.

我面前有些图表，其中一张应该是财务自由光谱图。能否请你解释这个概念的意义？理解它为何重要？以及这种认知的实用价值？

I have some graphs in front of you that I think one of them is the spectrum of financial independence. Yeah. Could you explain to me what that is and and how how that's useful to understand and why that's useful to understand?

我想起十年前或二十年前有个朋友说：'我不存钱，因为觉得没意义。每月只能存100美元，这能有什么用？既然没用，不如花掉。'而我认为：不，完全不是这样。

I think it's I had this friend ten or ten or twenty years ago, and he said, I don't save any money because I don't see the purpose. All I'd be able to save is a $100 a month, and what's that gonna do for me? And since I don't think it's gonna do anything for me, I I might as well just go spend it. And I think, no. No.

这相当于节省了100美元。如果坚持一年，就能省下1200美元。这1200美元是否比你之前拥有更多的独立性？记住，不是假设，而是当你失业或车子抛锚时，你会真切体会到这笔钱有多么珍贵。而且这不仅仅是储蓄。

That's like a $100 in savings. Or if you do it for a year, $1,200 in savings. Is $1,200 more independence than you had before? And again, not if, but when you lose your job or your car breaks down, you're gonna realize how unbelievably valuable that money is. And it's not savings.

它赋予你的是独立性。所以独立性的概念是渐进的——并非要么完全不用工作，要么必须工作，没那么极端。但多数人往往二元对立地思考：如果不可能不工作，我为何还要追求独立？

It's independence that it's giving you. So the idea that independence is on a spectrum. It is not you either don't have to work or you have to work. It's not that stark, but most people think of it in those terms. Why would I try to become independent if I have no chance of not working?

简单的理解方式是：你节省的每一美元，都是你未来掌控的一小块人生。反之，你背负的每一美元债务，都意味着未来有某个时刻被他人掌控——那是属于别人的时间。因此我始终以渐进视角看待这个问题。

And the simple way to view it is every dollar that you save is a piece of your future that you own, that you control, that is yours. The flip side of that is, like, every dollar of debt that you have is a piece of your future that somebody else controls. It's a it's a moment in time in the future that is not yours. It belongs to somebody else. And so I've always viewed it on a spectrum.

年轻时我经济拮据，却坚持储蓄。那时算独立吗？当然不算。我必须工作支付房租和日常开销。

When I was younger and much poorer, I was a big saver. Even though, like, was I independent? Like, no. Of course, had to work. I had to work to pay my rent and pay my groceries.

但我把每省下的20美元、50美元都视为比从前更好的处境。如今回想，二十年前我或许无法清晰表达，但这就是当时的真实感受——很大程度上源于恐惧。我对自己的职业缺乏信心，所以想着必须储蓄以防生活崩盘。

Of course. But I viewed it as, like, every $20 that I saved, every $50 that I saved put me in a better position than I was before. And looking back on it, I I I don't think I could have articulated that twenty years ago, but it's what I felt. A lot of that for me back then was coming from a place of fear. I didn't have a lot of self confidence in myself and my career, so I was like, I need to save to prepare for when this all comes crashing down.

嗯。尽管危机最终没来，我仍庆幸当初的选择。从二十出头起，我就拥有了财务安全感和独立性——并非因为巨额存款（其实并不多），而是任何数额的储蓄都像缓冲垫，让我更有底气面对可能的困境而不至于手足无措。

Mhmm. And even though it didn't come crashing down, I'm so glad that I did it because I've I've had a sense of financial security, and I've had a sense of independence financially since I was in my early twenties. Not because I had saved a ton. I hadn't. But any amount that I saved, I viewed as like the cushion that that gave me a a much higher sense of confidence that if or when things go wrong, I'm not gonna be flailing.

总有些缓冲垫能让我有所依靠。

I'm gonna have some cushion to fall back on.

那么这个光谱是什么？这个光谱的阶段有哪些？

And what is this this spectrum? What are the stages of this spectrum?

让我们从最底层开始。你无家可归，靠乞讨为生，依赖陌生人的善意。往上走，你可能完全依赖你不喜欢的工作的老板。那又是另一个低层次。

So let's start at the very bottom. You're homeless. You're panhandling, Relying on the kindness of strangers. As you go up from there, you can be completely reliant on your boss in a job that you don't like. Now that's that's that's a that's another low level.

再往上，你看，我依赖我的工作，依赖我的薪水，但我可能有一些机会。我可以换另一份工作，我可以选择在这里工作。

As you go up from there, you have look. I am I'm relying on my job. I'm relying on my on my paycheck, but I probably have some opportunities. I could go work at another job. I could I could choose to work here.

我可以选择在那里工作。然后继续往上。就像，嘿，我喜欢我的工作，而且我有一些储蓄。所以如果我丢了这份工作，我可以依靠这些储蓄。

I could choose to work there. And then go up from there. It's like, yo. I I like my job, and I have some savings. So if I've lost this job, I can fall back onto it from there.

你可以再往上，住在你想住的地方，工作在你喜欢的地方。你可以转行，可以做完全不同的事情。如果你想的话，甚至可以休假两个月去旅行。

You can go up from there to have you can live where you want. You can work where you want. You can change fields. You can you can go and you can do a completely different job. You can take two months off and travel if you wanted to.

就像这样一步步提升，直到财务独立的最高层次——我不再需要工作。我已经存够了钱，每天早上醒来可以做任何我想做的事。这显然是大多数人的愿望，可能直到他们七十多岁退休，有了社会保障和其他储蓄才能实现。但对大多数人来说，一个良好的独立水平作为目标就足够了——有足够的储蓄，这样如果你丢了工作、车坏了或需要换屋顶，你都能应对而不至于失眠。这是一个我认为几乎任何人都能达到的现实水平。

Like, you're working your way up all the way to the highest level of financial independence, which is I don't need to work anymore. I've saved enough, and I can I can I can wake up every morning and do whatever I would like to do? That's obviously an aspiration that for most people will never be reached until they're maybe in their, you know, seventies and they're retiring, and they have Social Security and some other savings from there. But for most people, like, a good level of independence as a good goal is enough savings so that if you lost your job, if your car broke down, if you needed to replace the roof on your house, you'll be able to do it without losing that much sleep. That is a realistic level that I think almost anyone can achieve.

根据你对金钱的所有了解，如果我想达到那种完全财务自由的最高层次，我应该考虑的五个最基本的事情是什么？因为现在很多听众觉得，我的人生目标不是成为亿万富翁或千万富翁，而是尽快达到那种自由的状态，可以开始自己做主。前几天我和一个人聊天，他说现在网上有一群年轻人正在追求他们所谓的什么来着？

Based on everything you know about money, if I wanna get to that highest level of complete financial freedom, what what what's, like, the the five things that I should be thinking about at just a sort of a very simple level? You know, because so many people listening right now think, you know, my goal in life isn't to become a billionaire or tens of millionaire. My goal in life is just to get to that point of freedom as soon as I can Yeah. Where I can start calling the shots. And there's there's someone who I was speaking to the other day and said that there's there's this Internet movement of kids who are trying to get what do they call it?

他们似乎正努力达到可以提前退休的目标。Fire？Fire什么的。

It's like they're trying to get to the point where they can retire early. Fire? Fire something.

财务独立，提前退休。我记不清了。对。

Financial independence retire early. I can't remember that. Yep.

对。比如，我该怎么达到那个目标？

Yep. Like, how do I get how do I get there?

我认为最重要的事情，这是首要也是最后一点，最关键的在于，所有财富感等于你拥有的减去你渴望的，而人们很容易忽视后者。我在书中提到我已故的岳祖母，她几年前去世了。三十年来，她仅靠每月1700或1800美元的社会保障金生活，钱并不多。

The first thing that I think that's most important this is the first and the last thing. This is the most important part, is that all wealth, your feeling of wealth is what you have minus what you want, and it's so easy to ignore the latter. I talk about in the book my my late grandmother in law, my wife's grandmother, who passed away a couple years ago. For thirty years, she lived off of nothing but 17 or $1,800 a month in Social Security. Not a lot of money.

在大多数人看来，那点钱微不足道。但她别无他求。如果她每月挣1700美元，她连1701美元都不想要。她完全心满意足。她在花园劳作、散步、观鸟、欣赏日出日落、与朋友聊天、和家人共度时光中找到了全部快乐。

By most accounts, very little money. But she didn't want anything more. She did she if she made $1,700 a month, she did not want $1,700 and 1 and and $1. She was perfectly happy. She she found all of her happiness working in her garden, going for walks, watching the birds, watching the sunrise, watching the sunset, talking to her friends, hanging out with her family.

但如果你问她，你每月只挣1700美元，你很穷，这不会让你不开心吗？她会反问，什么？你觉得钱多了日落会更美吗？

But if you asked her, you said, you only make 700 teen $100 a month. You're broke. Doesn't that make you unhappy? She'd be like, what? Like, do you think having more money makes the sunset more beautiful?

你觉得钱多了散步会更惬意吗？我并非主张你应该满足于那样的收入水平。关键在于，她是知足的，完全出于自愿。我认为她在财务上比某些亿万富翁更幸福，因为很多亿万富翁坐拥十亿却渴望二十亿。

Do you think having more money makes going for a walk more pleasant? And I'm not saying you should live like you should be content with that amount of money. But the point is, like, she was content. She was totally content, and it was her choice. And I think she was happier financially than some billionaires because there's a lot of billionaires who have a billion dollars, but they want 2.

他们拥有20亿，却还想要40亿。其中关键在于'幸福'这个词可能用错了。人们真正渴望的是'满足'。当你坐在这里幻想着拥有更大的豪宅时，实际上你想象的是自己在豪宅里心满意足的样子。你想象自己坐在那栋房子里说：'我再无所求了'。

They have 2,000,000,000, but they want 4. One of the things is that happiness might be the wrong word here. The word that people want is content. When you sit here and daydream about having the bigger mansion, what you're actually doing is you're imagining yourself in the mansion being content with it. You imagine yourself sitting in that house and saying, I don't want anything more than this.

我们追求的那种感觉其实就是满足感。幸福总是像持续三十秒的情绪，就像笑声。比如我讲个笑话，你会笑三十秒然后就结束了。人生中很少有持续几分钟以上的快乐时刻。

The feeling that we are aspiring to is just being content. Happiness is always like a thirty second emotion. It's like laughter. Like, if I tell you a funny joke, you'll laugh for thirty seconds and then and that's over. Like, very few times in life are you happy for more than a couple minutes at a time.

但你真正想要的那种持久情绪是满足感。就像在说：'我很好，这样就够了，我不需要更多了'。

But what you want that is like an a durable emotion is being content. Just saying, like, I'm good. I'm good with this. I don't want anything more.

我采访过安娜·莱姆克博士，她是研究多巴胺最负盛名的科学家。我在想这种多巴胺分子与这个话题有多大关联。因为她告诉过我，多巴胺是'渴望'的化学物质，而人们常误以为它是'愉悦感'。

I interviewed doctor Anna Lemke, and she's like the the the scientist who's most renowned for talking about and writing about dopamine. And I was wondering how much the molecule dopamine dovetails into this. Because I think one of things she said to me was that dopamine is the chemical for wanting. And people have, I think, mistaken it for being the pleasure.

对男性而言的幸福。就是更多、更多、永无止境的渴望。

Happiness. Yeah. Happiness for men. It's it's more, more, more, more. It's like you want more.

她告诉我一个关于老鼠的惊人实验：科学家移除老鼠大脑中的多巴胺受体使其无法产生多巴胺后，把食物放在离它嘴巴两英寸的地方，结果老鼠活活饿死了。这让我深刻意识到——原来这就是多巴胺的作用。

And she told me this crazy study about this rat where they removed the dopamine receptor from its brain so it couldn't produce dopamine. And then they put food two inches from its mouth, and the rat starved to death. Because it it it and in that so I've always thought about that. It's like, okay. So that's what dopamine is.

它是驱动你去获取、去渴望、去追逐的动力。那么多巴胺在这里扮演什么角色呢？

It's the motivation to go get to go get to want to pursue. What role is dopamine playing here?

这很重要。实际上这是一个很好的认识，意识到很多问题不是电子表格能解决的，也不是公式能计算的。这是你大脑中的化学反应。显然，有些人会比其他人更容易受此影响。

It's huge. And that's actually a good realization to be like, a a lot of this is not something that you can solve on a spreadsheet. It's not something you can solve with a formula. It's chemicals in your brain. And, obviously, some people are gonna be more susceptible to that than others.

我想我的岳祖母天生就与大多数人不同。部分原因是她成长于大萧条时期，那段经历可能降低了她的期望值。她从未接触过社交媒体之类的东西。当然，我认为有些人在满足感方面天生就与他人不同。

I think my grandmother-in-law just had, for whatever it was, was was wired differently than most people. Part of that was, like, she was a product of the great depression. She grew up during the great depression, which probably, like, lowered her expectations. She never had social media and whatnot. But, of course, I think some people are wired differently than others for a level of contentment.

但精神病学中有个重要观点：诊断心理疾病有时比治疗更重要。如果得到'你有注意力缺陷多动症'之类的诊断，仅仅是知道'原来如此'，停止质疑'为什么我会这么想'，理解这些想法的根源——有时这比治疗本身更重要。我认为这个道理同样适用。完全控制欲望说起来容易做起来难，但只要明白行为动机，意识到这不会带来你想要的快乐——就像所有成瘾行为一样，越是追逐，它离你越远——

But I think just there's a a big thing in psychiatry where diagnosing a mental illness is sometimes more important than the treatment. If you just get a diagnosis of, oh, you're ADHD, whatever it is, just knowing just like the the fact that you can stop questioning why am I having these thoughts, you can you can understand why you have those thoughts is more important than the treatment sometimes. And I think that's true here. If if you it's easier said than done to complete control your desires. But just knowing why you're doing it and realizing that it's probably not gonna give you the happiness that you want, that it's just like any addiction, that the more you chase it, the further away it's gonna get

嗯。

Mhmm.

就能有很大帮助。就我个人而言，我经常会有'该换那辆车了'、'也许该换大房子'的念头，这些感觉每天都会出现。虽然感觉不会消失，但我现在比过去更擅长提醒自己：这不会让你更快乐。

Can go a big ways. And so for me myself, there's all the time, there are moments where I'm like, oh, I I should I I should get that car. Maybe we should get a bigger house. I have those feelings daily. So the feelings don't go away, but I think I'm better now than I've been in the past at reminding myself of, like, it's not gonna make you happier.

你明明知道。你尝试过，以前试过但没让你快乐。真正能让你快乐的是陪伴孩子、与妻子保持良好关系、保持自身健康、与朋友开怀大笑、和喜欢的人共度美好时光。你知道这些才会带来快乐，而那个不会。

You know that. You've tried this before. You've tried it before, and it didn't make you happy. What is gonna make you happy is spending time with your kids, having a good relationship with your wife and your own physical health, and laughing with your friends, and having good times with people who you enjoy. You know that's gonna make you happy, and you know that's not.

我必须不断提醒自己，因为这并不直观。多巴胺总在叫嚣着'你要更多、更多'。你永远无法摆脱它，但一旦诊断出问题根源，就更容易识别这种情绪，意识到它在讲述一个很可能不真实的故事。

And I have to remind myself because it's not intuitive, and I have dopamine that tells me you should want more, more, more, more, So you never get over it, but I think once you've diagnosed the problem, it becomes easier at just, like, spotting that emotion and realizing that it's telling you a story that's probably not true.

我在想是否可以转换这种成瘾行为，既然你将其称为成瘾。如果是为了多巴胺的获取，我能否将成瘾转移到更具生产力的事情上？这是否意味着我的消费习惯会改善？回想18岁时那个可怕的消费问题，或许我只是将获取多巴胺的源头转向了创业、播客、写书或是成为好父亲。我不知道。

I wonder if you I could trade the addiction because you you referred to it there as being an addiction. If it's for dopamine equation, could I not shift my addiction to something more productive? And would that mean that my spending would get better? So actually, when I think about me as 18 years old and having that horrific spending problem, maybe I just shifted the the thing that gave me dopamine to, like, building businesses or to podcasting or to writing books or to being a great dad. I don't know.

你知道吗？

Do know?

我认为毫无例外，每个人都会对某些事物上瘾，关键在于如何驾驭这个过程。比如我妻子痴迷园艺，她对投资、豪车消费完全无感——你的车、我的车、任何人的车她都不在乎。

I think it's probably true that everybody, without exception, is addicted to something, and it's just harnessing that that process for whatever it might be. So some people are addicted to my wife's addicted to gardening, let's say. She she couldn't care less about about investing or spending money on a nice she could not care less about her car or my car or your car.

但如果你有

But if you have

一个优秀园丁，如果你的花园很美，她会全身心投入。每个人都有自己沉迷的领域，问题在于能否将其转化为生产力。许多极端成功人士正是将天性中的痴迷导向了事业。

a good gardener, if you you have you have you have a pretty garden, she's she's all over it. So everybody's got their thing, and it's just like, can you harness that for productivity? I think a lot of, like, extremely successful people are people who took their their natural addiction and harnessed it for productivity into their business.

嗯。

Mhmm.

这正是他们成功的原因——对某件事物病态般的专注。我们是否能主动引导这种成瘾，还是它本就先天注定？以我自己为例，二十年来写金钱主题的书籍，思考金钱问题，就是明证。

And that's that's why they're so successful. They just became obsessed with one thing. And it's it's a good question of whether we can actually guide that addiction or if it's just kinda prewired in itself. I think it's true for myself. Someone who's written books about money for twenty years, thought about money for twenty years.

我妈妈讲过一个故事，说我三岁时会坐在那里数硬币。我不想数贝壳，不想数卡片，也不想数石头，我只想数钱。

My mom tells a story that when I was three, I would sit there and count pennies. I don't wanna count seashells. I don't wanna count cards. I don't wanna count rocks. I wanna count money.

所以我觉得我一直以来都对金钱有种天然的着迷。

And so I think I've always had this disposition towards being fascinated with money.

为什么？

Why?

我不知道。因为我三岁时就这样了，甚至还没学会思考前就这样。但我觉得每个人都有自己的小癖好，金钱对我而言总是充满魔力。

I don't know. Because I did when I was three. I did it before. I could even think through it, but I think everyone has their little thing. It's always been fascinating to me.

别误会我对金钱着迷。它并没有控制我的生活，不过如果必须改善与它的关系，我会努力。但确实，我选择现在这个职业的原因就在于——金钱始终是我的兴趣点。我相信每个人生命中都存在这样的执念。

Don't think I'm obsessed with money. I don't think it controls my life. But if I had to go out of my way to have a a healthier relationship with it. But I think it's definitely been true that the reason that I've found myself in this career is that it's always been my thing. And I think everybody has that thing in their life.

你知道人们常说起成瘾性人格。我想到我最好的朋友，他先是酗酒，后来沉迷赌博，又暴饮暴食，接着疯狂参加马拉松。他总用新的瘾替代旧的。现在他又痴迷健康健身。联想到那些为金钱所困的人——包括曾经的我——我觉得自己可能也是用其他事物替代了金钱执念。说实话我挺高兴，因为换成了更有建设性的瘾。

You know, people talk about addictive personalities, and I was reflecting one of my best friends who was al an alcoholic, had a problem with gambling, then had a problem with eating, then got obsessed with marathons. And he he traded each one of those things for the next thing. So now he's, like, obsessed with health and fitness. And so I was when I was thinking about people that are struggling with money problems and even my own historical struggle struggle with money, I I think I probably just traded it for something. And actually, I'm kinda happy about that because I traded it for a better addiction, one that was productive.

你的事业？

Your career?

我的职业生涯，我想，就是做这个。我对做这件事相当上瘾。

My career and, I guess, doing this. I'm pretty addicted to doing this.

没错。但我觉得你乐在其中。

Right. And but in that I think you enjoy it.

这很健康。比沉迷于等离子屏幕强。

That's healthy. Than the plasma screen.

正是如此。对金钱上瘾的真相在于，它就像典型的瘾症——你会告诉自己，只要再得到一次满足，就一次，就能知足了。然后然后然后就够了。但答案是否定的。

It's exactly. Yeah. I think what's true about a money addiction is that it tends to be the classic addiction of, like, you tell yourself, if only I get one more hit, so to speak, then I'll be satiated. Then then then that'll be enough. And the answer is, no.

永远都不会知足。说个私事吧，虽然我不认为这是真的，但确实让我笑了。我和妻子一年前买了新房，那房子棒极了。

It absolutely will not. I'll tell you, like, a a personal thing. I don't think this is true, but it made me laugh. My wife and I bought a new house about a year ago. It's an awesome house.

我们超爱这房子。前几天我姐夫来访时说，你们在这儿最多住两年就会想换更大的房子。我不得不苦笑，因为天啊...虽然我不认为会这样...

We love it. It's great. And my brother-in-law came over the other day, and he goes, you know, you're only gonna live here for two years before you wanna buy a bigger house. And I had to laugh because I was like, god. Like, I I I don't think that's true.

我觉得我们会住很久，但我知道他说得对。这是人性使然。当初买房时我们想着：哦这太棒了，能实现这个能做那个，还有这些好邻居。但人很快会习以为常，然后目光就投向更高处了。

I think we're gonna live here for a while, but I know what you're saying is right. That's the natural guide towards it. That when we bought the house, it was like, oh, this is gonna be so great. Can you imagine we're gonna get to do this and get to do that, and we have these neighbors and whatnot? And you become accustomed to that very quickly, and then your gaze shifts a little bit higher.

然后你会说，是啊。但看看那边那栋房子。那栋更好，不是吗？这总是自然而然的事，那就是多巴胺在起作用。纯粹是多巴胺的作用。

And you're like, yeah. But look at that house over there. That one's nicer, isn't it? That's always the natural thing, and that's dopamine at work. That is dopamine purely at work.

因为事实是我们之前的房子很棒，而且它曾经是我们的梦想之家。

Because the truth is our previous house was was great, and our previous house used to be our dream.

多巴胺存在于你当前状态与渴望达到的目标之间存在差距时。当这个差距消失时，人们常称之为'到达谬误'。

And dopamine exists when there's a when there's a gap between where you are and where you wanna be with something. And when that gap closes, they often refer to that as the arrival fallacy

对，没错。

Yeah. Right.

这其实正是你所描述的情况。

Which is really kind of what you're describing.

你告诉自己，一旦到达那里，我就会满足。那就足够了。但这是个谬误，因为你知道事实并非如此。当你登上某个山顶时，总会发现还有更高的山峰。这种推动力让人并不轻松。

You tell yourself, once I get there, then I'll be then I'll be good. Then that's enough. And it's a fallacy because you know that's not true. As soon as you get to that whatever that mountaintop is, there's another mountain above it. It pushes you in a way that is not easy.

就像，没人应该假装你今天就能做到这点，但它促使你学会珍惜现有的一切，通过其他不存在'到达谬误'的事物寻找快乐。作为父母，我从未说过'要是再多一个孩子就好了，那样就完美了'。养育孩子根本不存在这种谬误。你只会觉得，我就是喜欢和你在一起，珍惜所有的一切。如果真要说有什么不同，那恰恰相反。

Like, nobody should pretend that you can just go do this today, but it pushes you into appreciating what you have now and finding your joy, finding your happiness through other things that don't have the arrival fallacy. Never have as I, as a parent, have I said, oh, if only I had one more kid, then then then that would be great. There's no there's really no arrival fallacy for kids. You just kinda be like, this like, I I I just appreciate being around you. I just appreciate all the and if if anything, it's the opposite.

当你回首往事时，你会感叹，哦，我我我怀念你年轻时的样子。那种感觉就像是，哎呀，你成长得太快了，真让人伤感。与其向前看并想着未来会更好，不如回头想想，唉，我真该更珍惜那段时光。

It's you look back, and you're like, oh, I I I miss when you were younger. It was like, oh, I I'm it's it's sad how fast you're growing up. If if anything, rather than, like, looking ahead and being like, oh, it's gonna be better then, you're looking back and like, oh, I wish I had appreciated that phase a little bit more.

你提到实现提前退休和更好生活的方法之一，就是满足于现有的一切，本质上就是减少欲望。我对这个观点反复纠结，因为一方面有僧侣说幸福在于无欲无求，另一方面现实生活里，追求目标似乎让我快乐，而且大家都说奋斗过程才是最享受的。这就是人生的意义所在。

When you talked about one of the ways to get to early retirement and to live live a better life is to want what you have and basically want less things. I go back and forward a lot with this idea because there's like the monks who say that happiness is not wanting something. And then there's the reality of life where striving for things seems to make me happy, and everybody describes the journey as being the most enjoyable part. That's your purpose. Yeah.

所以这该怎么理解？僧侣们告诉我不该有欲望，否则会痛苦不满；但我的切身经历却是，和一群人共同奋斗让我感到快乐。

So like what what how do how do I make sense of this? That like the monks are telling me that not to want anything because that's gonna make me frustrated and unsatisfied. And then my lived experiences, striving for things with a group of people makes me seems to make me happy.

我觉得这里有微妙但关键的区别——追求你真正热爱的事物（比如你的事业这些），与沉迷于追逐尚未得到的东西是不同的。如果我理解错了请纠正，但我想你工作时不会整天想着'必须更努力让播客未来如何'，而是每天醒来都觉得'我今天就喜欢做这个'。

I think there's a there's a difference. It's a subtle difference, but between pursuing something that you genuinely enjoy doing, which for you is this and your your business and whatnot, versus being addicted to something that chasing something that you don't have yet. And so I imagine you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine when you're doing this, you don't tell yourself, I need to work harder so that one day the podcast can be up here. Mhmm. I I imagine tell me if I'm wrong, but I imagine you come to work every day and you're like, I I like doing this today.

我喜欢今天，喜欢昨天，也会喜欢明天。所以你追逐的不是虚幻目标，而是真正乐在其中。

I like today. I like yesterday. I'm gonna like tomorrow. And so you're not chasing a false goal. You just actually enjoy doing it.

知道吗？这很矛盾，说实话才有价值——其实是两种状态的混合体。我认为我们需要某些目标...

Do you know what? It's a weird thing because it's it's I'm gonna be honest because it's the only useful position to take. It's it's a weird combination of both. So I I say, like, it's important for us to have some, like, goal

没错。

Yeah.

但同时也要完全明白，目标其实并不重要。

But also live in the in in the total understanding that the goal doesn't actually matter.

没错。

Right.

这就是我生活的奇怪二分法。比如，如果我们设定成为全球最大播客的目标，因为它能给我们一些

And it's this weird dichotomy I live in. Was like, if we become the biggest podcast in the world, set that as a goal because it gives us something To

追逐的动力。我懂。

boo to chase. I get that.

关键绩效指标，然后设定时间框架，为之兴奋并专注其中，但同时也要彻底认识到这根本无关紧要。对吧。我的生活不会有任何改变。零改变。真的。

KPI and then put time frames against and get excited by and focus on, but then also living in the total realization that it's not gonna matter at all. Right. Nothing is gonna change in my life. Zilch. Right.

我能得到什么？一件更好的黑T恤？就像

What am I gonna get? A better black shirt? It's like

不错的黑T恤。但真相是：我们之所以生活在一个科技发达、商业繁荣、医学进步的世界，是因为几乎所有人自古以来每天醒来都会说：这还不够，我需要更多。这才是进步的燃料。

Nice black shirt. But here's the truth. The reason that we live in a world with a ton of technology and a ton of great businesses and great medicine whatnot is because virtually everybody for all of human history has woken up every morning and said, it's not enough. I need more. That's the fuel of progress.

我不想生活在一个所有人醒来都说‘我已拥有所需一切’的世界，因为那样进步就会停滞。我们很可能从那天起开始倒退。所以这里存在一个悖论：作为整体社会，我充满感激，而你们也该感激人们醒来时仍感到不满足。是的，正因为如此，我们今天生活的世界比一两百年前好得多。

And I don't wanna live in a world where everyone wakes up and says, I have all I need because then progress would stop that day. We'd probably start declining that day. And so there is a paradox here of, like, as a whole society, I'm grateful, and you should be grateful that people wake up unfulfilled. Yeah. Because we live in a way better world today than existed a hundred or two hundred years ago because of that.

那些我认为普遍心理受折磨的世界首富们，创造了让你我受益的惊人技术。我们之所以能做这个播客，是因为比我们富裕得多的人早晨醒来时说‘这还不够’。比尔·盖茨、杰夫·贝索斯、埃隆·马斯克、马克·扎克伯格，他们醒来时说‘就算有千亿资产也不够，我需要创造更好的技术’——这很棒。

And the richest people in the world who I think are by and large tortured psychologically have created amazing technology that you and I benefit from. And the reason we're doing this podcast is because people before us who are way wealthier than you and I woke up in the morning and said, this is not enough. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, all those people, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, they woke up and said, don't care if I have a $100,000,000,000. It's not enough. I need I need to create better technology, and that's great.

我们因此受益。这里存在一个永恒不变的悖论：社会越进步，我认为整体上我们仍会保持某种程度的焦虑与不满足，永远会说‘这还不够’。

We benefit from that. And so there is a paradox here that what is all and that will never change. That will never change. So there's a paradox that, like, the more the better society becomes, I think. Like, it's always gonna be the case that as a whole society, we're gonna have a level of angst and anxiety and not be satisfied and say it's not enough.

但在个人层面，你可以认清这个游戏规则，将其置于生活语境中：我想要更多钱、想卖更多书、拥有更好事业、存更多钱。但必须时刻提醒自己——除非有超越金钱的更高目标，否则这些都毫无意义。

At the individual level, though, I think you can recognize that game and contextualize it within your own life and say, like, look. I want more money. I I want to sell more books and have a better career. I wanna save more money. I also have to go so far out of my way to put it into context and say none of it's gonna matter unless I have a higher purpose beyond that money.

所以我认为，你可以在追求更多的同时，刻意去理解这种期望机制——即使无法完全掌控它。就像我想健康饮食，当然想吃健康食品，但不会假装不想要奥利奥和冰淇淋，因为它们永远美味。

So I think you can aspire for more and still go out of your way to realize what the expectations gain is even if you can't perfectly control it. It's similar to, like, I wanna eat a good diet. Of course. I wanna eat healthy food. I'm not gonna pretend for a second that I don't want Oreos and ice cream because they're great, and they're always gonna taste great.

我永远不会达到‘不想要更好房子’的境界，我是人类，你也是，所有人都是。你永远会有这些欲望，但你可以看透这个游戏。

And so I'm never gonna get to a point where I say, I don't want a nicer house. I'm I'm a human. And and and so are you. So is everyone else. You're always gonna have those feelings, but you can recognize the game.

你能识别那个对你说话的声音，明白它何时在欺骗你，何时在讲述一个虚假或不完整的故事。如果要描述世上最幸福的人的生活状态（不是具体指谁），我猜大概是住三居室、开五年车的中产家庭——拥有美满婚姻、众多朋友、健康体魄，但在其他任何统计数据中都平凡无奇。

You can recognize the voice that's talking to you and realize when that voice lies to you and when it's telling you a story that is either false or just a little bit incomplete. I think if you had to, like, say, who is the happiest person in the world on average? Not like naming a person, but if you had to describe the life of, like, who's the happiest person out there? My guess is it's probably something close to a a middle class family that lives in a three bedroom house and has a a five year old car, but they have an amazing marriage, tons of friends. They're in good health, but they are, by any other statistic, ordinary.

而在他们生命的尽头，比起那些非常非常成功的人，那个普通家庭会在临终之际，当他们95岁时回首往事，会说，那样就很好。那段时光就很美好。

And at the end of their life, more than the people who are very, very successful, that ordinary family is gonna look back when they're on their deathbed, when they're 95 years old, and be like, that was good. Just that was a good time.

你觉得，这个问题可能有点奇怪，但你认为我能让自己变成那样吗？

Do you think, this is a very strange question to ask, but do you think I could make myself like that?

不能。真相是这样的。我认为在天性与教养的谱系上，我们大部分的信念和感受在受孕时就已经铸就，我们天生如此，对此我们无能为力。有些人具备不同的特质。埃隆·马斯克生来就与你我截然不同，我们对此束手无策。

No. Here here's the truth. I think on the nature nurture spectrum, most of what we believe and the feelings that we have is forged at conception, and it's just we're just wired that way, and there's not much we can do about it. Some people have different aspects. Elon Musk was born wired very differently than you and I, and there's nothing we can do about that.

所以我们就是自己，但我觉得我们可以将这些感受置于更完善的语境中。即便无法控制这些感受，我们可以选择——可以告诉自己一个更完整的故事，关于为何会有这些感受，以及这些抱负实际上会对我们的幸福产生什么影响。

So we are who we are, but I think we can put those feelings into a better context. Even if we can't control having those feelings, we can choose we can put tell ourselves a more complete story about why we're having those feelings and what those aspirations will actually do to our happiness.

那么在关于如何提前退休这点上，第一点是关于管理你的欲望。还有其他方面吗？如果我想提高提前退休的概率，在策略和战术上还有什么需要了解的？

So on this point of how to retire early, the first one was about managing what you want. Is there anything else there that if if I'm trying to increase the probability that I get to retire early, I should know in terms of tactics and strategies?

嗯，有一点与你问的问题略有不同，但很重要的一点是，许多真正提前退休的人，他们告诉自己，我要存够钱，32岁就退休，然后生活就会很美好。实际上发生的是，他们32岁退休，六个月后就无聊至极。他们意识到，真正让你快乐的是目标感。对很多人来说，这个目标可以是事业。或者他们发现，原本以为退休后生活会无比美好。

Well, one of the things this is a little bit different than the than the question that you asked, but one of the things that's important is that a lot of the people who do retire early, who they tell themselves, I'm gonna save so much money, and I'm gonna retire when I'm 32, and then life's gonna be great. What actually happens is they retire at 32, and six months later, they're bored out of their mind. And they realize that, like, what actually makes you happy is purpose. And for a lot of people, their purpose can be their career. Or they realize well, they had this idea that when they retired, it was just gonna be a great life.

但事实是，他们所有的朋友都在工作，没时间在周二下午陪他们打高尔夫。所以很多提前退休的人最终又回去工作，他们意识到现实与想象相去甚远。因为如果公式是‘独立加目标’，他们获得了独立，却某种程度上失去了目标。因此这是不完整的，他们并未得到真正想要的。

But the truth is all of their friends are working and don't have time to go play golf with them on Tuesday afternoon. And so a lot of people who retire early end up going back, and they realize it was not what it was meant what it was made out to be. Because they had if the the formula is independence plus purpose, they gained independence, but they kind of lost their purpose. And then the and so it was incomplete. They didn't get what they wanted.

那么，被动收入呢？人们经常谈论被动收入。前几天有个朋友私信我说，史蒂夫，我有些债务等等。但如果我能想出办法创造一些被动收入，问题就能解决。而‘被动收入’这个词已经变得像

Well, what about passive income? People talk a lot about passive income. I had a friend DM me the other day and say, Steve, I've got some debts, etcetera. But if I could just figure out a way to create some passive income, then that should solve the problem. And this term passive income has become like

被彻底滥用了。因为很多人提到被动收入时，会说‘我要投资房地产’。我自己有几处出租房产，那算是被动收入。但如果你认为拥有出租房产就是被动收入，那你肯定从未真正拥有过——那里没有什么是被动的。它意味着无休止的马桶堵塞、屋顶漏水和拖欠房租的租户，毫无被动可言。

Completely overused. Because, for example, a lot of people, when they talk about passive income, they're like, oh, I'm gonna own real estate. I mean, I have some rentals, and that's passive income. If you think owning a rental property is passive income, you've never owned a rental property because there's nothing passive about it. It is a constant chain of broken toilets and leaky roofs and tenants who don't pay you on time on and there's nothing passive.

这根本就是份全职工作。最近我听到有人说，致富只有两种途径：要么牺牲更多，要么欲望更少，仅此而已。所谓被动收入根本不在这个等式里，因为

That's a full time job doing that. And so I heard someone say this recently that there's two ways to get wealthier. You can sacrifice more or you can want less, and that's it. And gain passive income is not part of that equation because

第一种，牺牲更多。

the first one, sacrifice more.

牺牲更多。什么意思？更努力工作。从事一份可能让你压力山大、需要早起上班、做你不愿做的事、不得不减少陪伴孩子时间的工作。要么牺牲更多，要么欲望更少。

Sacrifice more. What does that mean? Work harder. Work work in a job that is that has a lot of downsides that might stress you out and requires you to wake up early and go to work and do some things that you don't wanna do and spend time away from your kids in a way that you don't wanna do? Sacrifice more or want less.

这就是你的两个选择。我认为这在被动收入的讨论中很重要，因为绝大多数情况下根本不存在真正的被动收入。就算你把钱存进利率3%的储蓄账户，那也是你牺牲当下享受、延迟满足才积累下来的。我坚信这是个铁律：要么牺牲更多，要么欲望更少。

Those are your two choices. And I think that's important in the passive income debate because I I I don't think there's but they're by and large is not a thing of passive income. Even if you're just like, you know, you you put your money in a in a savings account that pays 3% interest, well, you had to sacrifice to earn that money and to save that money and to delay the gratification of that money. I I I really think it's an ironclad formula. Sacrifice more or want less.

你只有这两种选择。

Those are your two options.

这并不好。确实如此。人们总是想，你知道的，告诉我该投资哪种加密货币才能赚钱。

It's not nice. That's true. People want, you know, tell me which crypto to Right. To invest in to get that.

当然，每个人都想要简单的答案。就像健康问题，真正的答案是改善饮食和锻炼。但没人想要这些。他们只想知道，什么是秘密药水？什么是神奇配方？

Of course, everyone's always gonna want the easy answer. Just like for health, the answer is eat a better diet and exercise. Nobody wants that. They just say, get what's the what's what's the secret potion? What's the secret formula?

也许现在我们有了奥赛匹克（Ozempic），所以可能更接近所谓的秘密配方了。但真相是，健康的秘诀是什么？更多的牺牲——因为锻炼、举重和跑步都是牺牲。这并不有趣，还会让人感到痛苦。

And maybe now we have Ozempic, so maybe now we have it's closer to a to a secret formula. But the truth is, what's the secret to better health? Sacrifice more because working out and lifting weights and running is a sacrifice. It's not fun. It hurts.

正因如此，它才有效。或者减少欲望，学会接受不完美的身体。我认为这是健康和财富之间的绝妙类比。

That's why it's good. Or want less. Be happier with your imperfect body. And I think it's a great analogy between health and and wealth.

通常，一家公司成功与否的关键不在于产品或策略，而在于内部的人。毕竟，'公司'这个词的定义就是一群人，世界上一些最优秀的公司主要由A级人才构建。让我告诉你一个小秘密：当你雇佣一名A级员工，他们会继续吸引更多A级员工，形成良性循环。真正的挑战在于找到最初那几个A级人才。

Often, the difference between a company succeeding or failing isn't down to its product or strategy. It's down to the people on the inside. After all, the definition of the word company is group of people, and some of the best companies in the world have been largely built by a players because I'll let you in on a little secret. When you hire an a player, they go on to hire more a players, and it perpetuates. The challenge is finding those first few a players.

我大部分顶尖人才来自LinkedIn——本节目的赞助商。LinkedIn提供我在其他地方找不到的人才，他们既具备所需技能又符合企业文化。每当我付费在LinkedIn推广职位时，总能更快且更优质地完成招聘。数据也支持这一点：相比免费发布，付费推广能带来三倍多的合格申请人。

I found the majority of mine on LinkedIn who are a sponsor of this show. LinkedIn provides talent I could not find anywhere else, talent with the necessary skills and culture fit that I'm looking for. Whenever I've paid to promote a role on LinkedIn, I've been able to hire faster and, of course, better. The data supports this too. You'll actually get three times more qualified applicants than if you posted the same role for free.

如果你想打造真正伟大的事业，可以从免费发布职位开始，访问linkedin.com/doac（即linkedin.com/doac），在那里免费发布你的职位。当然，适用条款和条件。为了理解自己的消费行为、如何致富、如何储蓄，我需要在多大程度上了解世界大局和经济形势？理解宏观经济学很重要吗？

So if you're trying to build something truly great, you can get started by posting a job for free by visiting linkedin.com/doac. That's linkedin.com/doac, and you can post your role for free there. Terms and conditions, of course, apply. How much do I need to understand what's going on in the wider world and the economy in order to understand my own spending behaviors, what I should spend on how to get wealthy, how to save? Is it important to have any understanding around the macro?

因为大多数收听节目的人可能会听到政治评论员们频繁提及这些术语，比如美联储利率、关税等等。我是否需要理解这些？它们真的会以某种对我及家人重要的方式产生影响吗？

Because most people that listen to the show will probably hear these terms being spouted out on by political commentators like the Federal Reserve interest rate Yeah. Tariffs, etcetera. And should I understand any of this? Does any of it really impact me in a way that matters to me and my family?

我认为没有必要。你可以看看我书中写过的一些人，他们没有受过金融教育，没有专业培训，不读《华尔街日报》，也说不出美联储如何运作，但他们能掌控自己的心理和情绪。他们努力工作，储蓄资金并进行投资，这就足够了。

I don't think it's necessary. And you could point to people I've written about in my books who had no financial education, no training, did not read The Wall Street Journal, could not tell you how the Federal Reserve works, but they had control of their psychology, control of their emotions. They they worked hard. They saved their money. They invested it, and that that's all you need.

所以答案是——你不需要明白这些机制。就像为了保持健康，你不需要生物学博士学位，不需要懂得细胞分裂原理也能保持良好体型。经济领域同理。实际上这对很多人会适得其反——当他们开始阅读《华尔街日报》并学习金融知识后，信心增长的速度往往超过了实际能力的提升。

They you you you so the answer is you don't need to know how this works. Just in the same way that in order to be healthy, you don't need a PhD in biology. You don't need to understand how cell division works in order to be in good shape. And I think it's the same for the economy. And it can actually backfire for a lot of people that once they start reading The Wall Street Journal and learning a bit about finance, it increases their confidence more than their ability.

于是他们就想：'哦，我读过《华尔街日报》，现在该去炒加密货币了'，仅仅因为了解美联储运作机制就自以为能行。这会让你的自信膨胀得比实际技能更快。

So they're like, oh, like, I read The Wall Street Journal. I should go day trade crypto now because I read a thing that teaches me how the Federal Reserve works. So now I'm like, I'm gonna it increases your confidence more than your skill.

这太有意思了。

That's so interesting.

因此我认为，作为知情公民很重要——美联储政策会影响你的生活，关税也会。需要具备基本认知，但这更多关乎成为知情公民和选民，而非掌握金融技能。

And so I I I think it's important to be an informed citizen, and the Federal Reserve impacts your life, and tariffs impact your life. So it's important to have some baseline understanding, but I think that's more about being an informed citizen and an informed voter than it is having financial skill.

在我所有挚友中（大概五六位），现金储备最充裕的那位恰恰是对金融了解最少的——说实话，他可能是所有人里最富有的。他对金融、投资、加密货币的认知都是最浅薄的。

Of all of my best friends, there's, five or six of them, the one that's most cash cash rich is the one that knows the least about I think he's the most rich, period, to be honest. He's the one that knows least about finance, and he knows the least about investing. He knows the least about crypto.

那么，这个梗说的是什么呢，就像是财富分布的尾端，穷人开丰田，中产阶级开保时捷、宝马、奔驰，而富人又回归到丰田？这就像是，无论你是极度缺乏教育还是极度睿智，最终往往都会回到原点。

Well, what's the meme of, like, the the the tail spectrum of, like, the poor person drives a Toyota, the middle person has a Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, and the rich person goes back to Toyota? Of, like it's like, whether you are very uneducated or extremely wise, you tend to end up

哦，就是这个。好吧。

Oh, this That's it. Okay.

所以我认为，经济状况最好的人往往要么完全没有财务知识，要么拥有极致的财务教育。而处于中间的人，他们的信心增长速度远超能力提升速度，他们会说，‘不，我在Reddit上看到一篇关于日内交易的文章，现在我要把全部身家押在这家从未听说过的公司上。’

And so I I I think I think it it does tend to be the truth that the people who do the best financially either have, like, no financial education or extreme financial education. And it's a person in the middle that has their confidence is increased much faster than their ability. And they're like, oh, no. No. I I read this thing on Reddit that taught me about day trading.

所以现在我要用全部净资产去赌一家闻所未闻的公司。

So now I'm gonna go bet my entire net worth on this company I've never heard of.

太有趣了。但光谱左右两端的人在做的事情有什么共同点呢？为了让看不到的人理解，我会把它投到屏幕上，横轴代表净资产，基本说明低净资产的人买丰田，中等水平的人买兰博基尼、保时捷、捷豹，而极高净资产的人又回归买丰田。显然，这...

So funny. But so what is it that the the person on the left and right side of the spectrum are both doing that is the same here. So for anyone that can't see, I'll put it up on the screen, but it just shows the bottom axis says net worth, and it basically says that people with low net worth buy a Toyota. People with, like, in the middle, that sort of middle percentage buy Lamborghinis and Porsches and Jaguars, and then people with extremely high net worths buy Toyotas. And, obviously, it's

显然，这其中存在某种引力。虽然不完全准确，但就像很多喜剧桥段，人们觉得好笑是因为‘对，就是这样运作的’。我认为很大程度上，当你越富有，就越明白豪宅豪车并未带来预期中的满足。

Obviously, it's that there's pull. It's not it's not it's not exactly perfectly true, but I think people like, lot of comedy, you see it, like, it's funny because people are like, yes. That's true. That's how it works. I think a lot of it is, like, the richer you become, you realize that the big house and the fancy car didn't do anything for you.

它们没能给你你以为会得到的东西。于是你会想：‘算了，我还是回归实用主义吧。社会地位没给我带来快乐，我就回归实用价值。’另一种可能是，如果你成功且富有，你可以通过建立的事业、拥有的智慧或能提供给别人的友谊来获得钦佩和关注，因此不再需要通过‘看我的车’来获取认同。

It did it didn't give you what you thought it was gonna give you. And then so you're like, look. I'm just gonna go back to utility. Like, status didn't do it for me, I'm gonna go back to utility. It can also be the case that if you're successful and rich, you can gain your admiration and your attention through what the business that you built or the intelligence that you have or the the friendship that you can offer others, and therefore, your desire to be like, look at my car.

瞧瞧我的车多酷。从这往下看更是一览无余。

Look at look at how cool my car is. It just goes down from there.

我的理解是，当你没什么钱或像我朋友那样缺乏财务知识时，最终只能玩那些非常无聊的金钱游戏。是的。而当你具备丰富的财务知识时，可能同样要花大量时间玩这些无聊的金钱游戏——我指的是指数基金这类东西。

The way I also interpret it is that when you're when you don't have much money or when you don't have a huge financial understanding like my friend, you end up playing the really boring money games. Yeah. And when you have a huge financial understanding, you probably also spend a lot of time playing the boring money games. And by boring money games, I mean index funds

没错。

Yeah.

比如标普500指数基金和加密货币的对比。

And the S and P 500 versus, like, crypto.

对。你会发现投资领域里，完全的外行会投资指数基金，经验丰富的华尔街老手也会投资指数基金。反而是那些半吊子——有点小聪明、有点经验、懂点皮毛的人，才会拼命想要跑赢市场。

Yeah. I think you'll see that in investing that, like, the absolute layperson will invest in index funds, and the extremely experienced Wall Street veteran will invest in index funds as well. And it's a person in the middle that just has, like, a little bit of intelligence, a little bit of experience, a little bit of information that's trying as hard as they can to outperform the market.

我从你的《金钱心理学》里学到了这点。和许多人一样，我原以为这本书会教我某种技巧，比如如何精准择时交易加密货币或外汇什么的。但最终，如果说这本书给了我什么核心启示，那就是：耐心和更「无聊」的投资方式才是长期积累财富的正道，其他所有策略都暗藏着让你破产的代价。

I kinda learned that from reading your your book, the psychology of money, because I I think, like many people, thought there was some trick or hack that this book was gonna teach me to figure out how to trade coins at the right time or to, like, do forex trading or whatever. But ultimately, the book if there was one overarching lesson it taught me, was that, patience and more boring investing is the way to get to build my wealth over the long term and that all other strategies have hidden trade offs which lead you to being broke.

是的。还有个真相是：投资需要恰到好处的智商水平——既要足够聪明能理解基本原理，又不能聪明到觉得基本原理很无聊。很多人就是聪明过头了，觉得『指数基金、复利这些太无聊了，我需要更复杂的东西来匹配我的智商』。

Yeah. I think there's a truth too that, like, there's a there's an optimal level of intelligence that you want for investing, where you wanna be smart enough to understand the basics, but not so smart that the basics bore you. And a lot of people get so smart that they're like, look. Index funds, compound interest, like, I'm I'm just putting like, it's too boring. Like, I I need something really complex to satisfy the intelligence that I have.

我认为存在一个最佳平衡点，对我来说，指数基金和复利就是我的认知上限了。

And I I think there's a sweet spot where, like, for me, I'm just like, oh, index funds and compound interest. Like, that's that's kind of as high as my intelligence goes here.

嗯。

Mhmm.

但事实上这种状态才是最好的——足够聪明能理解基本原理，又不至于聪明到觉得它们乏味。因为一旦感到乏味，你就会想把它们撇开，转而尝试更多操作手段。

But I think the truth is that that is the best position to be in. Smart enough to understand the basics, but not so smart that they become boring to you. Because once they're boring to you, you're just like, ah, sweep those away. Let's try to pull some more levers here.

摩根，当前世界发生了什么？人们的分歧似乎比以往任何时候都大，而我们讨论的许多话题似乎都相互关联。不平等现象在加剧，你应该比我更清楚数据——你面前那张图表显示的是...是工资增长吗？

What is going on in the world at the moment, Morgan? There's it feels like people are more divided than ever before, and I feel like a lot of these subjects we talk about are somewhat interconnected. Feels like there's a rise in inequality. You probably know the numbers better than I do. I mean, there's a graph in front of you there which shows I think it's is it wage growth?

是的，25年来的月薪增长率图表。

Yes. Monthly wage growth. Monthly wage for about twenty five years.

而且看起来在下降。

And it appears to be going down.

但这显示的是增长率。即便某年增长率只有2%，仍比前一年高2%。不过你说得对，这是长期工资趋势。过去25年里，经通胀调整后，美国中产家庭（非全体）工资中位数确实有所增长。

Well, but this is growth. So in any given year, even if the growth is 2%, that's 2% higher than the previous year. So this is not Right. Wages over time. Now it is true that you look over a twenty five year period and you took the average American family, not everybody, but the median, that their wages adjusted for inflation have gone up.

虽然过去25年的增长幅度不及人们的预期，但相比25年前，人们的生活确实有所改善。然而，即便统计数据支持这一观点，普通中产家庭可能仍会反对这种说法，原因有几个：一是他们的期望值在过去25年间提高了；二是即便我们讨论平均工资时，这些统计数字并不代表具体某个家庭的状况，它仅仅是个统计数值。

Not not up as much as people would want over twenty five years, but that they are better off than they were twenty five years ago. What is also true is that the average median family would probably disagree with that statement even if it is true statistically for several reasons. One of which is their expectations have gone up over the last twenty five years. The other is even if you're looking at average wages, average and and when we talk about these statistics does not refer to any specific family. This is just a statistical number.

每个人的消费方式不同。如果我告诉你'普通家庭啊，你们比二月份时更富裕了'，他们可能会说'是啊，但我正供孩子上大学呢，你知道现在大学学费多贵吗？'——这话没错，因为电视机价格确实下降了。

Everyone spends their money differently. So if I told you, hey, average family, you're richer than you were in the year February. They're like, yeah. But I'm trying to put my kids through college, and have you seen the price of college? And, like, yeah, that might be true because the price of TVs has gone down.

但房租和房价呢？从个体层面看，这些统计数据从来就没有太大意义。很多经济学家会陷入这样的困境——他们强调'统计数据显示XYZ发生了'，却忽略了人们心理层面的感受、个体差异、实际生活状况以及消费行为，这其中存在无穷的细微差别。长期来看，我们确实生活在经济持续增长的世界里。

But have you seen the price of rent and housing? Like, at the individual level, these statistics don't really mean that much and never have. I think a lot of economists get into a problem with that when they're like, well, statistically, x, y, and z has happened. But ignoring the psychology and the individuality of, like, what's happening actually on the ground in people's heads and how they spend their money, there's a there's just endless amount of nuance in here. And so I think it's it's always been true that we live in a world where over long periods of time, there's good economic growth.

我们变得更富裕，拥有更大更好的物品，收入更高，医疗条件更优越。但同样真实的是，人们永远能找到合理的抱怨点，这些抱怨也确实有其合理性。

We become wealthier. We've been we have bigger, better things. We have more income. We have better medicine. It's equally true too that, like, there is always something legitimate to complain about, and it's legitimate to complain about.

这不是简单的'你应该更感恩'的问题。当我看着这张图表时，如果纯粹用数学思维分析，我会说'过去25年增长相当可观'——虽然增长有起伏，但始终是正增长，图表里从未出现负增长。

It's not just like, oh, you should be more grateful. It's a real thing. And so when I look at a graph like this, actually, what like, if I was thinking just, with my math head, I'd be like, oh, there's been quite a bit of growth for the last twenty five years. Like, the growth has been gone up and down, but it's growth. You know, never in this chart is growth below zero.

那么问题在于：富人是否越来越富，穷人是否越来越穷？

I guess the question there is, are rich people getting richer, are the poor getting poorer?

这要看情况。富人确实越来越富吗？是的。穷人越来越穷吗？统计数据上说，并没有。

It depends. I mean, it's it's at the end of are rich are the rich getting richer? Yes. Are the poor getting poorer? Statistically, no.

即使经过通胀调整后也是如此吗？

Even adjusted for inflation?

我是说，这这这取决于我们讨论的是哪个时期。大约有二三十年的时间里，答案绝对是肯定的。过去十年有个有趣趋势，按百分比计算，工资增长比例最高的群体其实是低收入者。这在疫情后的两三年里尤其明显——如果你是拿最低工资的工人，那几年按百分比算你的工资涨幅相当可观。不过这种趋势已经减弱了。

I mean, it it it depends what period we're talking about here. There was about a twenty or thirty year period where the answer was unequivocally yes. There was an interesting trend over the last ten years where, in percentage terms, the the group of of wage earners who had the highest percentage growth were actually the low wage. That was true for, two or three years after COVID, where if you were a low if you were a minimum wage worker, those were in percentage terms great years for you for getting wages. It's tapered off.

所以我的的的回答是：富人越来越富。穷人嘛，我认为大体上是在原地踏步。当然总有例外。但当社会某个群体越来越富时，原地踏步的感觉就像在倒退。再加上人们具体的消费方式...

So I the the answer to your question is the rich are getting richer. The poor, I think, are treading water by and large. Always people who are doing differently than that. But when one group of society is getting richer, treading water feels like you're falling. And the specifics of how people spend their money.

因此即使经通胀调整后平均工资持平，但如果你的房租暴涨，或要供孩子上大学，或通勤距离长需要加油，个人层面的感受会与统计数据呈现的截然不同。

So even if on average adjusted for inflation, their wages are flat, But if your rent skyrocketed or you're trying to send your kids through college or you have a long commute and you gotta put gas in your tank, the individual level, things can feel very, very different from what the statistics show.

你认为这种最顶层与其他人群间不断扩大的财富差距，对当前我们目睹的所有社会现象起到了什么作用？比如在英国，我们似乎正处在骚乱边缘——上个月就有数百万伦敦人抗议乘船而来的移民，反对社会变得更加多元。这个话题让我着迷，因为我们之前讨论过：西方世界若没有移民，就会像中国那样面临人口衰退。

And what role do you think this sort of wealth inequality that is widening between the very, very top and everybody else is playing in everything that we're seeing play out at the moment? Because in The UK, it's almost like there's we're on the verge of riots, it seems. I think last month, there was millions of people in London protesting against immigrants coming over on boats and society becoming more multicultural. I'm so fascinated by this subject because earlier on we said that unless you have immigration in the Western world, you have population decline in China.

但人口衰退很糟糕。因为当前全球许多地区面临的最大问题（至少是最受关注的问题之一）正是移民问题。

But population decline sucks. Because you have a huge What's the biggest problem right now throughout a lot of the world, at least one of the biggest perceived problems, is immigration.

美国也在上演同样戏码。虽然我知道X平台的本质，但每当我登录——或许是我的算法使然——总看到人们在攻击移民、攻击棕色黑色皮肤的人群。我想知道这些现象是如何交织的，在你看来它们是否存在关联。

And the same is playing out in The United States. If I go on x, although I know I know what x is, it's people. Maybe it's just my algorithm, but it's people attacking immigrants and immigration and people that are brown and black and whatever else it might be. I'm wondering how all of this is intertwined and and if it if it is connected at all in your view.

作为一名跨文化、跨地域、纵观历史的业余历史学学生，我认为社会最需要避免的是当大约三分之一的人口每天醒来时都觉得‘这行不通’。那就是社会即将崩溃的临界点——当足够多的人早晨睁眼就感到‘无论这是什么，对我都不奏效’。我们必须避免这种情况。虽然我倾向于支持自由市场，是个资本主义者。

I think as a amateur student of history, across cultures, all over the place, all through history, what you wanna avoid more than anything in society is when probably a third of the population wakes up every morning and says, this isn't working. That's the point at which it's gonna collapse from there is when enough people wake up in the morning and just have this feeling of, like, whatever this is, it's not working out for me. You wanna avoid that part. And so, like, look, I'm a I tend to be a a free markets guy. I'm a capitalist.

我认为人们应该有机会变得非常富有等等。但同样要避免走到另一个极端：当财富过度集中，导致社会大部分群体每天醒来都咒骂‘去他的，这对我根本没用’。我认为全球许多地区要么已处于这种状态，要么正岌岌可危。社交媒体向来如此，而且让问题比以往恶化了百倍。

I think people should be able to become very wealthy, etcetera, etcetera. You also don't wanna get to a point where people become so wealthy that a big chunk of society just wakes up every morning and says, fuck this. This is not this is not gonna work out for me. And I think we've got we've we're either there or precariously close to there in a lot of areas in the world. Social media that's always been the case, and social media makes it a 100 times worse than it's ever been.

嗯。

Mhmm.

比如我们录制这段内容时，正值查理·柯克遇刺次日。虽然不确定具体比例，但在社交媒体上不难发现昨天有人为此欢呼。当年马丁·路德·金遇刺时，难道就没有庆祝者吗？当然有。但在社交媒体时代之前，除非你属于那个群体，否则基本听不到这些声音。

For example, you and I are recording this a day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday. And there were who knows what number percentage it was, but and I think it was not hard on social media to find people who are celebrating it yesterday. Now when Martin Luther King was assassinated, did those people exist too who celebrated assassination? Of course. But because of social media, by and large, you did not hear from them unless you were part of that group.

而昨天，几乎所有人都看到了对查理·柯克遇刺的庆祝。即使过去存在这种情绪，如今也暴露得更加明显。你现在能以过去无法实现的方式目睹这些。因此人们很容易断言：如今社会更分裂、更极端了。

Whereas today, virtually everybody yesterday saw people celebrating Charlie Kirk's assassination. And so even if those feelings existed in the past, they're much more apparent today. You see them today in a way that you that you did not before. So because of that, it's easy to say we're more divided today. We're more extreme today.

说我们比从前更悲观。但微妙之处在于事实并非如此——你只是更清楚地意识到这些情绪始终存在。它们存在于九十年代，存在于五十年代。

We're more pessimistic than they are today. I think the nuance is that's not actually true. You're just more aware of it, that those feelings always existed. They existed in the nineteen nineties. They existed in the nineteen fifties.

过去只是更容易控制这些情绪。对于通过一份报纸、一档晚间新闻获取信息的普通公民而言，他们更容易产生‘局势稳定可控、民众意见高度统一’的错觉，而实际情况远非如此。

It was just much easier to contain those. And for the average citizen who got their information from one newspaper, one evening news program to feel like things were much more stable and in control and that people were much more uniform in their opinions than they actually were.

在我们开始录制之前，我们正在讨论查理·柯克枪击案，以及社交媒体以比历史可能更快的速度使他人非人化的能力相当惊人。你看到很多这样的情况。你看到很多这种情况在双方都在发生。我认为双方都将对方描述得像动物一样不人道。一方称另一方为纳粹。

Before we start recording, we were talking about the the Charlie Kirk shooting and how social media's ability to dehumanize other people at a probably a faster rate than history would have done it is pretty remarkable. And you see a lot of that. You see a a lot of it taking place on both sides. I think both sides describe each other as being like animals and inhumane. And one side's calling the other side Nazis.

然后另一方用动物术语称呼对方，可能是因为他们的肤色或行为。我们看到很多这样的情况，当那个可恶的家伙杀害了右派的那位年轻女士时。在美国的火车右派事件中。而这个人被形容为地球上最他妈糟糕的东西，但语言却是在将这个人归入一群人之中。是的。

And then the other side is calling the other side referring to them in in animal terms because of maybe the color of their skin or their behavior. We saw a lot of that when the that heinous individual killed the young lady on the on the Right. The train Right. In in America. And the way that this person is the fucking this worst thing on planet Earth, but the language was very it was putting that person in a group of other people Yes.

然后把整个群体变成一群动物。

And then making the whole group a pack of animals.

没错。因为在那种情况下，我们之前也讨论过。我不知道那个人的名字，也不重要，但没有人用他的名字称呼他。是他们。是他们。

Right. Because in that situation too, we talked about this earlier. I I don't know that individual's name doesn't matter, but no one refers to him by his name. It's them. It's they.

一旦你那样非人化任何一群人，这在整个人类历史上都是如此，百分之九十九点九的人无法杀害另一个人，但他们完全可以杀害他们。那群人。一旦非人化，你可以做任何事。在更低的层面上，每个人都通过路怒症意识到这一点。

And that once you dehumanize any group of people like that, and this has been the case for all of human history, that ninety nine point nine percent of people cannot kill another human, but they're perfectly fine killing them. They. That group. Once you dehumanize, you can do anything. And at that at a much lower level, everyone realizes this with road rage.

我有过路怒症。那个人超车到我前面。狗娘养的。按喇叭。竖中指。

I've had road rage. The person cut me off. Son of a bitch. Honk my horn. Flip.

我我不会做得太过分。但面对面时我绝不会做的事。但一旦我看着一辆车，那里就没有人了。我的愤怒程度会比我们面对面时高得多。几年前我有过这样的经历，当时我正开进加油站，无意中挡了别人的路。

I I don't I don't get too extreme with it. But in things I would never do eye to eye. But once I'm looking at a car, then it's it's there's no human there. And my ability to have a level of anger is so much higher than it would be if we were just looking eye to eye. I had this experience a couple years ago where I was pulling into a gas station, and I inadvertently cut somebody off.

那是个意外，但我完全挡住了他们的路。他按了喇叭，还对我竖了中指。后来我们开进了同一个加油站，现在算是面对面了。我走过去，他可能以为我是去跟他吵架的。我举起双手说，我只是想道歉。

It was an accident, but I totally cut them off. And he honked and threw up his middle finger at me. And we since we pulled into the same gas station, we were now, like, eye to eye. And I walked over to him, and I think he thought I was, like, coming to, like, confront him. And I put on my hands and said, I just wanna apologize.

我不是故意挡你的路，真的非常抱歉，我不是有意的。他看起来非常惊讶，然后说，哇，谢谢你。

I didn't I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm so sorry. I did it was not on purpose. And he I think he was so surprised, and he was like, wow. Thank you.

谢谢你，然后我们几乎要拥抱了，那种感觉就像，我希望你有个美好的一天。那一刻，当你们把人性剥离，只是两辆车互相较劲时，我们都想着去你的。但当我们四目相对，就变成了，哦，兄弟。没关系，真的没关系。

Thanks for, like and we had this moment of, like, almost hugging of just like, I'm so like, I hope hope you have a great day. It's one of those of, like, once in the moment when it was you stripped the humanity off it when it was two cars each other, both of us were like, fuck you. Once we looked eye to eye, it was like, oh, brother. Like, it's okay. It's okay.

对我来说，这就是社会中个体互动的缩影。当你剥离人性时，我们可能充满愤怒和仇恨。但面对面时，我们会觉得，哦，一切都好。我想我们每个人都认识政治观点不同的人，不管分歧是什么。很容易就会觉得，哦，那个人是个白痴。

And I think that was just like for me, that was an individual example of what happens at society. When you strip the humanity off it, we're capable of so much anger and hate. Eye to eye, we're like, oh, that's all good. And I think all of us know somebody who we disagree with politically regardless of what it might be. And it's easy to be like, oh, that person's an idiot.

他们愚蠢，他们消息不灵通。但实际上，如果你坐下来和他们谈谈，你会发现，啊，看吧。我们可能有些分歧，但一切都好。干杯。

They're stupid. They're ill informed. And actually, if you sit down and talk to them, you're like, ah, look. We might have some disagreements here, but it's all good. Cheers.