Morgan Housel
Author and investor who writes about how people behave with money, risk and happiness.
“We effectively told an entire generation that a bachelor's degree from a flagship university, graduating into a six-figure starting salary job in a nine-to-five office with good benefits ... that that's like your baseline expectation. A house in the suburbs, two SUVs ... And what I just described there is like a top 5% outcome. But we told 100% of a generation that that's what they should expect.”
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Scott Galloway asked how the culture around borrowing has shifted. Housel said debt is the tool people use to close the gap between expectations and reality. He added that household debt as a share of income has actually fallen every year since 2008, partly because young people can't afford homes.
Transcript
When you are a lower income, it's called debt. When you are a richer person, it's called financing.
…designed is designed the way it is. With us is the kind of our Yoda around financial management and approach to money or the relationship you have with or we have with money. Morgan, thanks for being with us today. I'll kick it off. How has the culture shifted in terms of people view borrowing?
…that society and culture has exposed that gap and widened that gap between where you are and where society tells you that you think that you should be, you're going to fill that hole with debt. That's always been the case. One of the things that I think we've done over the past, two generations really, and really in the last generation, and we did it with good intentions and inadvertently, but we effectively told an entire generation that a bachelor's degree from a flagship university, graduating into a six-figure starting salary job in a nine-to-five office with good benefits and a salary and like home by 5 p.m., that that's like your baseline expectation. A house in the suburbs, two SUVs, that's what you should expect. And what I just described there is like a top 5% outcome. But we told 100% of a generation that that's what they should expect. And so filling that with debt has often been the case. Now, one thing I would say, Scott, that's very important here to…
credit card debt at a much higher interest rate, which doesn't build wealth, right?
Right. And so maybe if that, yes, like they don't have mortgages at 3% fixed, but now they have credit card debt at a different level. But I think that is a very underreported story that it's declined every year, every year as a share of income. So not the total amount, but relative to what people…
I think there's some nuance there, and that is so drunk driving deaths and teen pregnancies are at all-time lows. On the whole, that's a good thing, but it also reflects that young people aren't getting out and socializing as much, which is a bad thing. And what I would argue, while an appreciation…
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