The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Moment 208: The Dumbest Financial Advice Everyone Weirdly Follows That’s Keeping Them Poor!
Fri, 11 Apr 2025
What if the key to investing wasn’t finding the next big thing—but surviving the next unknown? Bestselling author and savings expert Morgan Housel shares the true story that changed how he sees risk forever—and how it reshaped his philosophy on money, markets, and why most people lose when they try to predict the future. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify - https://g2ul0.app.link/H8BQBpwjsSb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link/Y3vybjBjsSb Watch the Episodes on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Morgan Housel's books - https://www.morganhousel.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Who is Morgan Housel and what personal story shaped his view on risk?
So I grew up skiing in Lake Tahoe, California, and I was a competitive ski racer. So all throughout my childhood and teenage years, I skied six days a week, 10 months a year, all over the world. And it was great. There were about 12 of us on the Squaw Valley ski team. We had grown up together and we'd spent our entire lives together.
And when I was 17, this was in 2001, I was skiing with two of my best friends, Brendan Allen and Brian Richman. And we would ski out of bounds. which is illegal. You're not supposed to do it. We would duck under the rope that says do not cross and we'd ski out of bounds because that's where a lot of the good skiing is.
And when we would do this, it would spit us out on this back country road where we'd have to hitchhike back. There's no chairlift when you ski out of bounds. You have to hitchhike your way back. So we did it one morning in February, 2001. The three of us did it. And when we did it, we triggered a very small avalanche. And I remembered it so clearly.
Like I can still feel it 21 years, 22 years later. I can still feel what it's like. It's the weirdest sensation that I've had in my life. Because when you get hit by an avalanche, rather than pushing on the snow to gain traction with your skis, The ground is pushing you. So all of a sudden you're skiing along and you got control and all of a sudden, boom, you have no control anymore.
The ground is pushing you around. Probably similar to what it feels like if you're standing on the ground during an earthquake, like the ground's pushing you. But it was a pretty small avalanche, maybe came up to our knees, ended pretty quickly. And we kind of like literally high-fived about it at the bottom and went about our day. We get back around to the base lodge. We hitchhike back.
And Brendan and Brian said they wanted to do it again. They wanted to ski again. And I said, hey, for whatever reason, I just didn't want to do it. So I said, hey, rather than hitchhiking back, why don't you guys go do it again? And I'll drive my truck around and pick you up. So we said, great. We made our plans, went our separate ways. They went skiing.
I went back around to take my boots off and jump in my truck and go pick them up. 20, 30 minutes later, I go to pick them up at the pickup spot and they weren't there. And I knew it only took us a minute to ski down the hill. So 20 minutes later, I knew like they weren't coming. I was not worried. I figured that they had already hitchhiked home.
But so after waiting for another 20 or 30 minutes, I just left and went back to the lodge. I expected them to be there and they weren't. And I still didn't really worry. Like we didn't have cell phones back then. And people were just comfortable being out of touch. If you didn't know where your buddy was, it wasn't that big a deal. So we went about the day. I started worrying a little bit.
I remember I stopped at Brendan's house, inspected him to be there, and he wasn't there either. And I remember calling and leaving a message on his voicemail. And I remember ending the voicemail by saying, I hope you're okay, man. Those are my last words. I remember that very clearly. The day went on.
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