The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel (Harriman House, 2020) is nominally about personal financial management. As you might expect from the title, the book discusses psychology — references to people like Daniel Kahneman are sprinkled throughout. It also connects to history and politics. For example, the last chapter would be useful for a course on political economy or democratic erosion in the United States. But more importantly, and my main reason for posting about it, is that it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Some of the wisdom that it contains:
Expectations always move slower than facts.
Happiness is results minus expectations.
Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control over your time is a drag on happiness.
No one is impressed by your possessions as much as you are.
People are keenly aware of how much they’ve changed in the past, but they underestimate how likely they are to change in the future.
The most important part of every plan is to plan on the plan not going according to plan.