620 | Book Club: Happy Money — When Is Enough, Enough? | Jillian Johnsrud & Ginger

ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast

Ginger and financial coach Jillian Johnsrud dissect Ken Honda's *Happy Money*, moving past initial frustration with its structure to extract profound insights about money psychology. They

Key takeaways

• Ginger introduces a cognitive shift from moving 'negative to neutral' to 'negative to positive,' reframing unexpected setbacks as opportunities for unimagined joy.
• Jillian explains that spreadsheet numbers and emotional security operate on completely different tracks, citing wealthy clients who remain paralyzed by spending anxiety despite growing portfolios.

Main topics

• Financial Independence vs. Emotional Security
• Money Mindset and Inherited Beliefs

Notable quotes

"Your phi number is a calculation and enough is a feeling."

Conclusion

Listeners gain a practical framework for decoupling financial progress fro

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) It's here! It is book club day. Today we're talking about the book Happy Money by Ken Honda. I'm Ginger and I'm joined today by Jillian Johnsrud, someone you all know because you read her book Retire Often and immediately started hoarding cash for your mini retirement in the future. Or was that just me? Speaker 3 (0:22) I want Speaker 2 (0:22) to share a little bit of an unhinged, as they say, mental framework that I've been working with lately. And Jillian, you can tell me what you think about this. And I promise you guys, this is all going to come together here. And then we're going to talk about the book. Okay. My new way of thinking about things when something happens that's like not how I want it to happen is that I'm trying to move from negative to positive instead of my old way, which was moving from negative to neutral. So let me give you an example. Let's say you're going to a party. Does anyone go to parties anymore? Let's say you're going to economy. Speaker 2 (1:07) And you're really excited about going to economy and you have all of these friends that you're going with. And right before the event, all of your friends who are going tell you they're not going to go. They can't make it. And you are going to be the only one. You're not going to know anyone there. So before I might be like, this could be okay. Like this does not have to be horrible, right? It's not going to be this great thing that I was envisioning, this wonderfully fun social event, but like it could be okay. So my new thing is. Speaker 2 (1:40) this could be great. This could be the most fun social event, actually, because this thing has changed and I don't know what's going to happen. And this could bring all sorts of different possibilities that I hadn't envisioned. I have had some luck with this. I think it has made my life better. And so as I was thinking about book club today, I was a little worried because I did not love this book. And also, it did not occur to me, honestly, it did not occur to me that I should read the book before I recommend the book. Speaker 2 (2:25) Two thousands of people. Because I have read so many books in this genre. They're all fine and great because even if they're not my favorite, I really learn something or like it gives me an opportunity to just see someone else's perspective or someone else's story. And so I'm like, I can get something from almost any book in this genre. So you know where I was coming from. So I saw this book on the list of like, what are the best personal finance books? I'm like, this is going to be great. We're going to, because I'm going to learn something from it. And then I read it and then I started to read it and I started to get really nervous because. Speaker 2 (3:06) because I don't know if there is a lot of really useful content. It is like the definitionally, like it is wide, but not deep. He talks about a lot of things with not a lot of depth. So I really started worrying that I had asked a bunch of people to read this book. And then I started worrying about like, what are we going to talk about, about this book? But you guys, let's use the new framework because I think maybe this could be the Best. Speaker 2 (3:37) Book club episode ever. And with that, welcome to Cheese FI. Speaker 1 (3:47) Before we get started, I keep this podcast entirely ad-free for two reasons. First, this is a FI podcast and I don't want to promote products that I don't want you to buy in the first place. And second, I really like the clean listening experience of a show where you don't have to fast-forward ads. To keep it ad-free, all I ask of you as a listener is the next time you open a Travel Rewards credit card, go to choosefi.com slash cards. And with that, on to the show. Speaker 2 (4:16) Jillian, how does it feel to be on the greatest episode of Choose Fi that has ever happened? I think I'm ready for it. I feel so prepared to just Speaker 3 (4:27) make it the greatest. Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:29) you are the right person to bring on the show for this. So you just heard my first impressions. I want to hear your impressions, but maybe we should give a brief little overview for the people who were wise and did not pick up the book Ginger recommended, who did not read the book. What do you think is the thrust here? What's the thesis of this book? Speaker 3 (4:55) There are lots of things I like in the book. Not all of it, but there are things. If you tease them out, I'm like that, maybe not the sentence, half of that sentence, I'm totally on board with. But this book is called Happy Money. And it's really about, I think the premise is our emotions and how we feel about our money, how we feel about the money coming in, how we feel about our debt, how we feel about earning, how we feel about spending. What kind of emotions does this create? And then the second half of the sentence that I usually. Speaker 3 (5:37) somewhat disagree with was like, if you feel great about your money, great things will happen with your money. Yeah. Speaker 2 (5:46) Those are Speaker 3 (5:47) two separate books. I think how to feel great about your money is a fantastic idea. And I loved it. And I'm even in like the work I do. That's such an important Speaker 2 (6:00) part. Speaker 3 (6:00) Yeah. Our emotions around our money are super important. How to get more money, I think, is a whole separate task. But he fuses those ideas together. If you feel great about your money, you'll have more money. Speaker 3 (6:17) Maybe. Speaker 2 (6:18) It's so funny hearing you when you were talking about the first part. You were like, oh, it's connected to our emotions. And you were so articulate. And I agreed with everything you said. And I thought, I want to read Jillian's book about this. Because you're right. There is something really useful and powerful there in terms of this is a uniquely emotional subject that hits on so many different aspects of our lives. And it is worth looking at that. And that does have repercussions, right? And so there is a part of this that can be useful. Speaker 2 (6:59) Sorry, I'm laughing because you guys aren't seeing Jillian's face. But like, here is my goal with today. So as I was reading this book, you know, I'm always saying on the show, I'm like, oh, I like homework. Give me homework. No, I don't like homework because homework is the thing that like someone else makes you do and you don't want to do it. What I mean when I say I like homework is like, I like to read things that I like to read. So I was having... I was having this experience while I was reading it and I was kind of like mad that, oh, I need to actually read this. Again, the teacher's me. I closed the book and I set the deadline, right? But I was like, I felt like I was forced to read it in that if I wasn't doing this, I wouldn't have continued reading. But then I thought, you know, there is real value, not just in like what this book, right? But in reading something that you're not super comfortable with. And in reading something where you are kind of forced to. Speaker 2 (7:59) pull something useful out of it or to see is what he's saying. Is there some way in which I can connect with that? That could be meaningful to me. That is part of my goal today. Like that is what I consider the work Speaker 3 (8:13) here. Speaker 2 (8:14) And then let's also talk about the things like you said, that didn't really ring true or that maybe even seemed sort of harmful. Let's talk about those two. I'll preface. I think both of us, one Speaker 3 (8:27) of, Maybe if you read the book and you trusted Ginger and you picked up this book and you read the whole thing, especially for people in the FI community, I think that we're a little bit like our thinking tends to be a little bit organized and system like process based sequential steps. And I found like when I was like feeling slight irritation, I think part of the irritation in the book isn't necessarily content. It's how it's presented and Speaker 2 (8:59) that Speaker 3 (8:59) we're going to present this idea. an inch deep 300 times. We're not really going to progressively sequentially dive into the mechanics of it so much. We're just going to keep reiterating the premise. And when I was feeling my way through it, I'm like, I think that's part. I think if it was like same idea, even same words, but like a very, a progressive strength training program that made sense in my mind instead of just. we're going to float around and kind of like nibble on this idea in lots of different little ways. I Speaker 2 (9:37) had the same experience. And it was so wild that I spent some time really thinking about it because I'm like, what is happening here? Yeah, my first thought, and I hate that this is my first thought now. And I'm so sorry to the author who I'm sure is listening. But my first thought was like, oh, did AI write this book? Is this a chat GPT book? Because it felt so like what you were saying, where it's just like these little blurbs that are not really tied together in a meaningful way. Well, that's definitely not what happened because then I was looking it up because I thought there's some mystery here. And this was published many years ago before chat GPT was a thing. So that's not it. But I do think maybe another part of the puzzle, again, I was trying to solve is did you notice when he said that he's written 50? five zero books. Yeah. So he's a different kind of writer than me who has published zero books, right? Where I'm very tortured about all of my sentences and all of my research and every, you know, and he's like, can I bang this out this weekend? I think I can. And he did. That is awesome in a way. It's just maybe not the book that I want to read. But I think it was probably written very quickly. And someone said, and his publisher said, you are so good at selling books. Why don't you write down every single thought that you've had about money? Speaker 3 (11:06) And Speaker 2 (11:07) let's see what happens. Ginger will buy it. Speaker 3 (11:11) If you read it that way, it's kind of lovely. If you read it like a paragraph at a time, lovely little meditations, like a daily meditation. If you want a sequential, I actually want to improve this part of my life. I need a process and a system. This is more like, these are meditations on thinking good feelings about your money. And so if you, not that you'll ever read my book, but if you read it, like that kind of makes sense, like how my brain works. It's a lot of system. It's a lot of process. It's like, let's dive into the weeds. Let's get through all the technical details. Like let's go step by step is how my brain works. And this is a very different vibe. And if you want, like, I just need positive money vibes to like reflect on that. This will give that to you. And that's not bad. No. Half of it wasn't bad. Speaker 2 (12:09) I'm going to read a positive money vibe. Okay. Speaker 3 (12:11) Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:12) So one of the sections, he talks about the six reasons people want money. Speaker 3 (12:18) Okay. Speaker 2 (12:19) One of them is to find freedom. Yeah. That's what I want. Okay. So here's what he says about that. He says, freedom can't be bought with money. Even if you have all the money in the world, if your mind is not free, you lose the real advantages of that wealth. Unless you're able to find freedom in the present moment, you will always come back to the same emotional states, even after you win the lottery or get a huge inheritance. Money can buy things that will make you feel happy temporarily, but without true fulfillment that comes from within, true freedom will escape you. You probably don't need more money in the bank to free yourself. Speaker 3 (12:57) Yeah. And Speaker 2 (12:58) there he talks about like the thing that's really useful. I think a lot of us can get in the mindset of, you know, once I have this thing, I'll have ultimate freedom. Speaker 1 (13:08) And Speaker 2 (13:08) he talks about like, here's one place where he did actually kind of give the next. piece of that, which is we have more options now than we think that we do. And I can definitely fall into that where I kind of get my blinders on and I think this is what has to happen or this is what I have to do. And those things are not true. Speaker 3 (13:30) And Speaker 2 (13:30) there are a lot of ways that we can be free and feel free now. We don't have to wait for this magical number. For sure. Speaker 3 (13:40) I think that's the premise of the book that I really loved and appreciated because it's something I see so much in my work. Like I do