Stealth wealth
📪 The Optimal Agent Newsletter #048
Take Action:
Embrace stealth wealth.
Why It Matters:
When you stop spending on the look-at-me signifiers of wealth, you’ll begin building actual wealth — all while setting yourself up for a happier, more fulfilling life. Along the way, you’ll avoid the common psychological traps of money, bringing calm, joy, and a sense of what’s truly important to your wallet.
How to Do It:
Beware the hedonic treadmill. This cycle of “desire, acquire, desire more” is built into our biology and powers the marketing machine — it’s what makes you want to buy a new one, even when the old one will do. Take a moment to learn how it works so you’ll know when it pops up in your life.
Reject social comparison. Remember, you don’t need to keep up with the neighbors. New cars, shiny toys, and exotic vacations are not a reliable indicator of wealth — rather, they’re a signal that money was spent or debt was taken on.
Know what kinds of spending will make you happy. A review of the research (awesome PDF, worth reading) shows it’s not what you think.
Remember wealth is the money you don’t spend. Here’s the original Housel quote: “Wealth is what you don’t spend, which makes it invisible and hard to learn about by observing other people’s lives. Spending is contagious; wealth is mysterious.”
The Inspiration:
Daniel Norris is a major league baseball player, surfer, thyroid cancer survivor, and multimillionaire — and my new hero. Why?
“Just cause money’s there, it doesn’t mean you gotta have nicer things that you used to have, ya know?”
He spends the offseason living in a 1978 Volkswagen camper van
When given a $2MM signing bonus as a rookie, he bought a $14 t-shirt and saved the rest
And (perhaps because his karma is so remarkably correct), he also became the first American League pitcher to hit a home run at Wrigley Field — in his first MLB at-bat
Explore More:
Listen: O.A. Podcast Episode #48: Don’t Acquire Things: Stealth Wealth vs. Conspicuous Consumption — where Patrick and I go deep on how to spend less than you make, my ill-advised purchase of a 2011 Audi R8, and the reasons Bryan Johnson’s annual $2MM quest to “not die” is actually pretty reasonable.
Watch: The YouTube version of O.A. Podcast Ep. 48. Pat’s got some solid “surprised by government data” facial vibes this week.
P.S. There’s going to be a total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8th. Mark your time-blocked calendar (and crank up the U2).
