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Getting wealthy and staying wealthy are opposite skills
💡 Building wealth takes optimism and risk; keeping it takes paranoia, frugality, and above all — survival.
Housel draws a sharp line between two skills. Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there. Keeping money requires the opposite: humility, frugality, and a fear that what you made can be taken away just as fast.
The key to staying wealthy is survival. Applying compounding's lesson, the single most important thing is to never be forced to sell, never get wiped out, and stay in the game long enough for time to work. Housel admires financial 'survivors' who plan on things not going according to plan and leave a margin of safety — a gap between what could happen and what they need to happen.
He pairs this with a mindset he calls being 'barbelled': optimistic about the long-term future while being paranoid about the short-term things that could stop you from surviving to see it.
Source: The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness — Morgan Housel