1828: The Science of How We Spend

Summary

Podcast Summary: So Money with Farnoosh Torabi Episode: 1828: The Science of How We Spend
Release Date: May 19, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode and Guest

In episode 1828: The Science of How We Spend, award-winning financial strategist Farnoosh Torabi delves into the intricate psychology behind our spending habits and debt management. Joining her is John Dinsmore, a Wright State University professor and author of the insightful book, The Marketing of Debt: How They Get You. Together, they explore how biology, psychology, and marketing intertwine to influence our financial decisions.

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John Dinsmore’s Journey into Financial Behavioral Research

John Dinsmore shares his transition from a marketing professional to an academic focused on financial decision-making. Triggered by the financial turmoil following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Dinsmore pursued a Ph.D. to better understand the complexities of financial behavior.

[04:38] John Dinsmore: "I've taken a million finance classes, I should understand this better than most. And yet I still just face planting all the time trying to make the right decision."

This personal struggle motivated him to investigate why financial decisions often remain challenging despite extensive education.

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The Psychology Behind Debt and Spending

Dinsmore’s research highlights how our brains misjudge the costs of debt due to inherent biases and optimism.

[07:42] John Dinsmore: "Our tendency is to overestimate our ability to pay and underestimate the challenge of being able to handle debt."

He explains that marketers exploit these psychological tendencies, making debt seem more manageable and appealing than it often is.

Optimism vs. Pessimism in Financial Decisions

Farnoosh probes the role of optimism in financial planning, questioning whether a touch of pessimism might lead to better financial outcomes.

[07:42] John Dinsmore: "Optimism is definitely helpful for us to just keep on living our daily lives or getting through any sort of hardships, but it can be expensive when we're thinking about our finances in the future."

Dinsmore concurs, emphasizing that while optimism is beneficial, it can lead to overspending and unrealistic financial expectations.

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Debt as a Tool for Status Building

The conversation shifts to how debt is often used to enhance personal status, especially through branded credit cards and luxury purchases.

[12:35] John Dinsmore: "When someone of lower means has a status-branded card, they tend to use them more in front of others and spend more as a result."

Dinsmore discusses the evolution of status symbols in finance, noting how even high-interest cards are marketed as prestigious, encouraging increased spending among users seeking social validation.

The Rise of Quiet Luxury

Farnoosh introduces the concept of "quiet luxury," a trend where individuals choose understated brands to signal status without overt display.

[14:41] Farnoosh Torabi: "It's almost like there is a backlash now to wearing a lot of the brand names out loud."

Dinsmore relates this to evolutionary psychology, suggesting that the subtle display of wealth still fulfills the human desire for status without attracting unwanted attention.

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How Money Influences Behavior and Generosity

Dinsmore presents his research on how handling money affects behavior, particularly generosity. In a study, men handling $20 bills experienced a rise in testosterone and were less likely to donate to charity compared to those handling blank or $1 bills.

[22:52] John Dinsmore: "People who handled $20 bills experienced a rise in testosterone and became less likely to donate to charity."

He connects this to evolutionary traits, where increased status leads to decreased reliance on cooperation, thereby reducing generosity.

Gender Differences in Financial Behavior

Farnoosh highlights how women often exhibit greater generosity, supported by research indicating higher empathy levels.

[26:32] John Dinsmore: "Research backs that up. On average, women are much more empathic and think about others more so than men."

This distinction underscores the varying impacts of wealth on generosity across genders.

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Wealth, Success, and Social Dynamics

The discussion touches on how sudden wealth or success can lead to social pushback and internal conflicts, such as survivor's guilt.

[30:17] Farnoosh Torabi: "Some write to me, they're like, I feel icky. It makes sense."

Dinsmore explains that newfound wealth often disrupts social relationships, leading to feelings of guilt and isolation as peers may resent or distance themselves from the wealthy individual.

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Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Farnoosh and John wrap up the episode by emphasizing the importance of understanding the psychological underpinnings of financial decisions. Recognizing how our biases and societal influences shape our spending and debt can lead to more informed and healthier financial behaviors.

[32:05] Farnoosh Torabi: "I love that correlation, which is it feeds my self-interest because I'm here to try to help more women get rich. And I want to say, I want to make the claim that when women make more, the world becomes a better place."

This final insight reinforces the notion that financial empowerment, particularly among empathetic individuals, can have positive ripple effects on society.

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Notable Quotes

• John Dinsmore [04:38]: "I've taken a million finance classes, I should understand this better than most. And yet I still just face planting all the time trying to make the right decision."

• John Dinsmore [07:42]: "Our tendency is to overestimate our ability to pay and underestimate the challenge of being able to handle debt."

• John Dinsmore [12:35]: "When someone of lower means has a status-branded card, they tend to use them more in front of others and spend more as a result."

• John Dinsmore [22:52]: "People who handled $20 bills experienced a rise in testosterone and became less likely to donate to charity."

• Farnoosh Torabi [26:32]: "I want to make the claim that when women make more, the world becomes a better place."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 1828 of So Money with Farnoosh Torabi offers a deep dive into the neuroscience and psychology of spending and debt. By understanding the factors that drive our financial behaviors, listeners are better equipped to make conscious and informed decisions, ultimately leading to greater financial well-being and societal benefit.

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Recommended Resources:

• Book: The Marketing of Debt: How They Get You by John Dinsmore
• TEDx Talk: John Dinsmore’s TEDx Talk on Money and Behavior

For more insights and resources, visit SoMoneyMembers.com.

Transcript

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

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[John Dinsmore]

You're listening to so Money with award.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Winning money guru Farnoosh Kharabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose.

[John Dinsmore]

Of financial inspiration from the world's top.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh herself. Looking for ways to save on gas.

[John Dinsmore]

Or double your double coupons.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to so money.

[John Dinsmore]

If you look around now at credit card offers you will see a lot of like prepaid credit cards or higher interest credit cards for people with lower incomes that are branded platinum and diamond and all these things. And what researchers have found is that when someone has particularly someone of lower means, if they have one of these status branded cards they like to use them more often in front of other people whose opinion they care about, and they tend to spend more as a result.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Welcome to SO Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Ever wonder why we take on debt knowing it's going to cost us? Or why flashing a credit card at dinner with friends can feel like flashing status? It's not just bad math or bad habits. It's biology, psychology, and marketing all tangled together. And in today's episode, we're going to unpack all of that with Wright State University professor and author John Dinsmore, whose new book, the Marketing of Debt How They get you, breaks down the subtle and not so subtle ways that marketers capitalize on our optimism, impulsivity, and desire for status. We talk about why our brains underestimate the pain of future debt, how credit card companies brand products to play on our egos, why having more money can actually make us less generous. John's own research found that simply touching $20 bills increased testosterone and reduced charitable giving. Let's get into it. John Dinsmore, welcome to SO Money.

[John Dinsmore]

Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah. I am so excited for this conversation. I so appreciate when we can marry the world of science with the world of money. And this is an intersection that you have been immersed in for many years as a professor, as a researcher, before we get into it, because you have so much important research you want to unpack about the marketing of debt, the neuroscience behind how we are attracted to sometimes debt unknowingly. And then, of course, you've done other research on how money could potentially change us. I want to talk about that. That's super interesting. How did you, John, arrive at this body of work? Were you the kid, the young adult who was always fascinated by the world of money and an academic? How did. Which came first?

[John Dinsmore]

This is a second career for me. So I had worked in marketing for tech companies and I worked for a real estate company. And then about a week after Lehman Brothers fell, if you remember back then.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah.

[John Dinsmore]

The company I worked for, we had a conference call saying, the good news is you have jobs. The bad news is we can't pay you. So I had always. Right. I mean, that was kind of my take. Yeah. So going back to grad school is never convenient when you're out of a job or a paycheck at least. Right. It's a lot more convenient. And I had always thought I wanted to do this because I'd always just found it very interesting reading different academics and marketing and behavioral Research. So then went back and got my PhD and I gravitated toward financial decision making, I think because it's hard and I've, I have an MBA and a PhD in business and I still find it hard. Right?

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Dinsmore]

And I think a lot of people get into behavioral research. They're trying to figure themselves out in the process. And I think for me, I was trying to figure out why is this so difficult. I've taken a million finance classes, I should understand this better than most. And yet I still just face planting all the time trying to make the right decision.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

And what I love about this field is that it's relatively new when you think about how long money's been around, how long science and academics has been around. But I think it was maybe not since, I don't know, the 90s there was a Nobel Prize, behavioral economics, Daniel Kahneman. And that kind of brought more attention to this field of hey, maybe we're messing up with our financial decisions not because we're bad people or we can't understand it, but there is actually a hard wiring, in some cases a sort of neuro situation going on. And I want to get to your book, the Marketing of Debt. What inspired you to focus on debt? As your work is broad and it looks at financial decision making. But this piece of it, the debt piece, why now?

[John Dinsmore]

Debt is something that combines a number of aspects of decision making that are prominent weaknesses for people. Right. In the book I try and break down different aspects of the debt decision and it includes things like, all right, looking into the future. So when, because to take out any sort of credit you have to think about in the future, will I be able to pay this off? And there's a lot of. Once we start considering things in the future versus the present, we are subject to a lot of biases and blind spots. We tend to think, even though I don't have extra money now and I never have before in my life, I'm sure in a couple of years I'll be making a lot more money. We tend to think that everything's going to work out, my ship's going to and all these, these are just a lot of things that cause us to make bad decisions.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

So is it to say that having some pessimism is really helpful when it comes to financial decision making? To underestimate a little bit? Although I want to appreciate our optimism, but in the world of money, it doesn't always serve us.

[John Dinsmore]

Optimism is definitely helpful for us to just keep on living our daily lives or getting through Any sort of hardships, but it can be expensive when we're thinking about what we think our finances are going to be like in the future. So our tendency is to overestimate our ability to pay and underestimate the challenge of being able to handle debt.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

And marketers know this.

[John Dinsmore]

Marketers know this. Right. It's. While there's probably some aspects of the book that can feel a little conspiratorial, I don't think that banks or marketers at banks are always trying to think about how they can manipulate us. But there's a lot of common marketing appeals that play into some of our worst instincts and impulses when it comes to these decisions.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah. And I've often heard from people that for me, I grew up in a cycle of debt. My parents were always using debt as a lifeline and they believe, they truly believe that debt is just part of life. And what would you say to those folks? Like, they are actually doubtful. They're not optimistic that they can break out of the debt cycle.

[John Dinsmore]

Debt is a part of life in the sense that sooner or later. One of the things I look into is people avoid learning about interest rates and debt in general as much as possible. The same way they would want to avoid learning about, like nuclear physics. Right. It's complicated, it's over my head. But the difference between debt and nuclear physics is that you're going to be forced to deal with debt at some point. Right. I agree with the notion that you're going to have to deal with it. Debt is part of life. Student loans, mortgages, car loans, all these things. Right. But you don't have to surrender to just, I'm going to live my life under the thumb of the banking industry. It's, you don't have to be an indentured servitude. There's things you can do to make better decisions and reduce the cost of debt.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Are there red flags to look out for when you are taking on debt? Especially for a young person to really get, get a grip on this, because it might not be. It's all new to them.

[John Dinsmore]

It is. And unfortunately I talked about optimism and research shows that the younger you are, the more optimistic you tend to be. So you take that, there's very high levels of optimism and then you put them in front of when we're talking about student loans, making long term financial commitments, about going to college and all right, I'm going to invest this much money in an education, but I'm not sure what I want to do or if I'll be good at it or if I'll like it. It's a rough proposition for a lot of college students. Part of it is the cost of college, but the other part of it is it's ridiculous. I think that we're asking an 18 year old, say, take on $100,000 with no credit history.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Right.

[John Dinsmore]

And to try and learn something that you don't know if you're going to want to do it for any period of time.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

There's no collateral, there's no guarantee of a return. And often it brings the parents or the caregivers into the fold because then they have to co sign and then it's making this other generation vulnerable and on the hook for this debt.

[John Dinsmore]

So I will be 53 in June. I just paid off my student loans. No way.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

But you went to grad school later, in fact.

[John Dinsmore]

Later. Right. So I went back. I was like 37 when I went back to school to get my doctorate. But at the same time it's still. Wow. If I. So yeah, I think it is. It's a big strength placed on people and I think unnecessarily so. Right. So a lot of times we think making good decisions is just about being smart enough or knowing enough. And the truth is it's about a lot more than that. Right. We have to be in the right state of mind, we have to have the right information and we have to be in a situation where it's optimal for decision making. Right. And all those factors rarely align and the younger you are, the less likely they are to align for you to make a good financial decision. And yet we're asking 18 year olds to make huge financial decisions.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah. And talk also about debt in the context of status building. So debt has often been looked at as a tool to get further along in life and heighten your status, whether that's because you want to get the college degree and heighten your status in the professional world. You want to take on a mortgage to buy a bigger home, you need a car loan to look good in your car. So I think there's also that. And I wonder what your. What the science talks about our need as humans to feel at a certain status level. It's like what we say, like keeping up with the Joneses and we'll do it at any cost, even if it means indebting ourselves.

[John Dinsmore]

So where status building is concerned, it makes me think of a couple of things. So one of the chapters in the book is on status branded credit cards.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah.

[John Dinsmore]

And there's a lot of Research to show that we're. If you go back to the original American Express gold card, when that came out, that was a credit card that was status branded, but legitimately for people of higher means. And it was something. If you flashed a gold card and later a platinum or a black card, it was like a neon sign saying that you were rich, had resources, whatever. But if you look around now at credit card offers, you will see a lot of like prepaid credit cards or higher interest credit cards for people with lower incomes that are branded platinum and diamond and all these things. And what researchers have found is that when someone has particularly someone of lower means, if they have one of these status branded cards, they like to use them more often in front of other people whose opinion they care about and they tend to spend more as a result. Now was this originally the idea of the credit card companies? I don't know. But over time it's your job as a marketer to say, hey, which cards are doing better than others and with who? And then on one other thing it made me think of. There's the notion of evolutionary psychology, right. It goes back to when we were. What behaviors and biases do we have today that trace back to when we're living in caves and trying not to be eaten by T. Rexes. And so there have been some studies about how do people behave in front of others when it relates to status. Right. And so when people, it's. It's not just when using a certain type of credit card, but there was a study with men and in the presence of women wanting to buy more status branded goods, we are hardwired to try and find a mate to try and impress a prospective mate. And so people, it results in preferring higher end brands. Sure, driving a Porsche is nice and I'm sure it's a great ride, but at the same time it's doing a lot more for you than just getting you from point A to point B. Yeah. It's sending a message to a lot of people.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

At the same time do we have this trend of quiet luxury? So it's so confusing to know if you are someone who's seeking status, what are you doing, you know, so well.

[John Dinsmore]

And so you say the trend of quiet. Could you explain that to me?

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Oh, sure. So this kind of came out, I would say. Do you ever watch Succession?

[John Dinsmore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

So there was a lot of fashion analysis on that show as they represented the top echelon of rich people in the world. And what they found was that they wore a lot of muted colors. Especially the women, the sis, the young, the daughter in the show who wore a lot of taupe and beige and no labels. Like you didn't see them walking around with Gucci or Louis Vuitton. Like they were very discreet. They were almost above it all. They were above the labels, but they still insisted on wearing $300 T shirts. And it has actually trickled down to the mass market where if you look at what's popular right now, at least in women's fashion, it's a lot of muted colors, taupes, whites, basics. I think because of the influence of that quiet luxury, that again, it's like there is almost like a backlash now to wearing a lot of the brand names out loud. So anyway, that's just the background on that. And I wonder, as someone who's navigating all this, it's gotten to be like quite confusing. What am I supposed to do if I want status? Do I do this, do I do that? If that's your goal, obviously.

[John Dinsmore]

So I would think those. There are brands of what, cars and handbags and all these things that, I mean, to someone like me, I have no idea. A Ferrari is going to send a loud and unmistakable symbol. But I forget the brand of watch that Mark Zuckerberg did some interview.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

I couldn't. I know what you're talking about. I don't remember the name brand.

[John Dinsmore]

I never heard of and I couldn't tell just by looking at it that it was expensive. But if you were in that club, you knew that was like a million dollar watch.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

They're impressing. Not us. They're impressing, sort of. They're a small group of billionaires. Fellow billionaires.

[John Dinsmore]

Yeah. I think they're trying to avoid attention from maybe a crowd that they don't want to affiliate with, perhaps attract attention with people who are in the club.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Was it Jay Z? I think it was Jay Z who said there's always another level. And you mentioned the gold card, but then there was the black card and it just like goes on and on. I don't know what's next, but they'll figure it out, the marketers.

[John Dinsmore]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Louis Vuitton. Right. It's amazing what they. Now I'm cheap so it's never going to make sense to me. But you see the prices that they get. Yeah, I would not think it's a good idea. But Louis Vuitton, you're not paying, always doing well.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

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[John Dinsmore]

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[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Okay, this transitions us nicely because we were talking about status and even cavemen, which kind of parlays us nicely into a TEDx talk you gave two years ago on the topic of how money changes us. Tell us first the research behind this and then the thesis that you ultimately came up with. But how did you go about exploring this dynamic?

[John Dinsmore]

I had become friends with someone who did research in the field of the evolutionary psychology. And so I read a study that he did that showed that if you accept the premise that we're designed to pursue a mate and procreate, at some point he decided to look at women's ovulation cycles and their choice in wardrobe and found that when women were ovulating, they were. They tended to wear brighter colors to attract more attention. And they were completely unavailable when we were doing this, Right? It's crazy, right? And then the other thing that I had read that made me think of doing the study we did was someone did a study where they would have one group, if you remember that old game Mousetrap, right, Has the very elaborate all the pieces. They would have one group assemble a the game Mousetrap. They would have another group disassemble and assemble a gut. And. And then afterwards they would ask each group, hey, someone who was here before you left, a shot glass of water with some amount of hot sauce in it, right? So drink the shot of hot sauce and water, and then we want you to put hot sauce in for the next person, right? And so the hot sauce was a proxy for aggression. The more hot sauce you would put in it, the more you wanted to mess with the next person who would come. And so what they found was the people who handled the gun had put a lot more hot sauce in the water than. So in my mind, I thought, what is a gun about? To me, I think power is at least one of the things that it's about. So I thought, if a gun will do that, money is also about power. I got together with my friend who did the ovulation study and said, let's look at handling money and see how it changes people's behavior.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Okay?

[John Dinsmore]

So we looked at hormones, we Just did men. And I won't bore you with all the reasons. Women do have testosterone, but in different levels and so on. But so we got all of these men, and some were given stacks of blank paper in the dimensions of dollar bills. And so they had to handle that and do different things with it. And then other people were given stacks of $20 bills. Right. And then we actually did another group with stacks of $1 bills. And so what we found was. And then afterwards, we asked them to, Here is your compensation for doing the study. Would you like to donate any of it to charity? And so what we found was the people who had handled the $20 bills were less likely. First, they experienced a rise in testosterone. When they came in. We had everyone drool into a cup so we could get their saliva to test for testosterone. And then after they did all this, we had them give a second sample. So what we found was people handled $20 bills, their testosterone went up, and they became less likely to. To donate to charity. They became less generous versus the people who handled the paper or even people who handled the $1 bills. It was an effect contingent upon a significant amount of money. From that, you can say that when people experience a rise in status, they often become less generous. So, yeah, and that's in going back to the caveman context, we were able to evolve as a species not because we competed with each other, but because we cooperated with each other. We needed each other to survive, to share resources, food, shelter, animal skins, whatever. But the higher up in status you became, the less you had to cooperate with people because those resources were flowing to you. So if you accept that dynamic. So today, instead of we're all not hunting for our food, but money is the gateway to all these resources. So when we start to acquire more resources, we become less concerned about sharing with others. Not always. Not every person, but on average.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

That's really interesting. So were you surprised by the findings? Did it. Does it track with your life experience? I'm just curious how off or on target it was.

[John Dinsmore]

In my life experience, I've known people with significant means. Some were generous, some were not. As one of the things. One of the limitations of the study is we were doing this all with poor college students. Right. So we were dropping a bunch of money in the hands of prefrontal cortexes.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Aren'T all developed fully, let's just say.

[John Dinsmore]

Right, yeah, there's that 10. So we were dropping status and resources on people who had been deprived of it. It could be that maybe if people grow up with it and they're more acclimated to it, maybe they're more likely to generous. I mean, in my experience, if you look at the statistics on charitable contributions, typically the people with the most resources as a percentage of income donate.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

That's charitable and that's usually met. I love that statistic only because it shines a light on one of the strengths that women have in terms of their generosity. And I love that correlation, which is it feeds my self interest because I'm here to try to help more women get rich. And I want to say, I want to make the claim that when women make more, the world becomes a better place. And that's not just hyperbole. Like we actually have the science and the data to show the science and also the research of charitable contributions to show that actually is generally true. Would you agree?

[John Dinsmore]

We didn't include women in our study because it's very expensive to get testosterone levels on people. And so we couldn't afford to do enough men and women. But I will tell you, the research on women, one of the things I've read, if you think women are more empathic, not just more willing to consider the other person's position, but more capable of it, research backs that up. On average, women are much more empathic and think about others more so than men. And if you. From like a neurochemical perspective, testosterone is considered like the chemical fuel for competition. Right. And men, I could see the argument of testosterone leading to. When you get lots of money, your testosterone goes up. And so especially for men, maybe less considered or less willing to do that. We were talking before we started this about MacKenzie Bezos now.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yes.

[John Dinsmore]

And she's doing amazing things, is giving away incredible amounts of money. And Jeff Bezos has done some really nice things out there, but is not nearly on the same scale as him. Now, is that just a typical gender difference? It's a sample size of two people, but it's. It could be an example of that.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah. One thing I've said often on this podcast is that money makes you more of who you are. More money makes you more of who you are. And that's not to say it makes you happier or sadder. Those are states of mind. But actually at the core, if you are, for example, more a generous disposed to generosity, more disposed to being empathetic or a helper. And contrastly like not a helper, greedy. I think that money can be a tool. As I've seen it 20 years of working with people and studying money, that it can has the tendency not Always to amplify who you are at the core. And at the end of the day, that's your choice. Right. It's not a subconscious thing. You can choose better or worse with your money. But there is that potential because like with Mackenzie Bezos, like, how is that. Whereas her husband is not maybe as publicly generous as, let's just say, I don't know, all of his philanthropic portfolio. But could it be that prior to becoming rich, she was someone who was generous with her time, with her advice, with her patience, and now with money, there's just another way to express that generosity? I don't know. I would put money on it though.

[John Dinsmore]

And we were talking about before, right? Amazon would not exist without her. The non spouse will say, you know what, honey? Quit your job, follow your dreams. I will make it work while you do that. So there's. That's suggestive of someone who's fairly generous and thoughtful about other people. Yeah, I think another thing, another example just can popular culture that pops into my head is what most lottery winners end up broke in a few years. So part of it is a lot of these folks are not very experienced in how to manage money and that sort of thing. I think the other part of it is there's probably a lot of naivete and trying to help people, right. All of a sudden, all the people they know, they want to help. And whenever I read stories about people in that situation, they would hear about someone in town that they knew who needed open heart surgery. So they wrote the check.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

And it's guilt also associated with getting rich fast. Not to interrupt you, but I think part of it, they feel guilty. They're guilted into it as well as they want to be helpful. But I often hear from people who, especially the get rich quick folks who weren't looking, they weren't expecting to get wealthy. They won a lottery or they, their company IPO'd and now they have millions in the bank. Some, not all. They write to me, they're like, I feel icky.

[John Dinsmore]

Oh, wow.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah, I feel, I mean, it makes sense.

[John Dinsmore]

It's like a survivor's guilt, right?

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah, yeah, I think because again, survival is relative, right? Survival in your world. Right. So if the woman, for example, she actually wrote an article about it in New York Magazine, her company IPO'd, she was having a lot of guilt and bad feelings about being suddenly rich overnight. Why? Because for. In front of the people she cared about most, her family, her parents, they were making her feel bad about it. Oh, you think you're better than us now. Oh, you think? And she's. It feels weird to be wealthier than my parents. That's never happened generationally like. And I don't know how what to do with this money. I want to give it all away. And it took everything in me to not find her address and look her up and go to her house and tell her that she, she has every right to keep this money. And it's not. She doesn't have a money problem. She has a family problem.

[John Dinsmore]

And again, it's going to depend on the person and the situation. But I think probably something that's very common, even if it's not extraordinary wealth or something like that is if someone becomes very successful, they start getting pushback from people.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yeah.

[John Dinsmore]

You think you're financial success, but they start moving on to other things and maybe they look like they're on an upward trajectory. I think there's a lot of people experience pushback from those close to them. Right.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yes.

[John Dinsmore]

Hard to see someone do better than you.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Yes, it is. It is in again, a competitive world. This is such a fascinating conversation and thank you for ping ponging with me and going in a bunch of directions. But John Dinsmore, great work. Your book everyone. Check it out. The marketing of Debt, how they get you And I'll put the link also to your TEDx talk. I thought that was super fascinating. Congrats on the book and thanks for coming on so money.

[John Dinsmore]

Thanks. Pranish.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Foreign.

[John Dinsmore]

Hi, it's Paige from Giggly Squad.

[Farnoosh Tarabi]

Let's be real.

[John Dinsmore]

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