Morgan Housel Author and investor who writes about how people behave with money, risk and happiness.

“I almost feel like when you are a lower income, it's called debt. When you are a richer person, it's called financing. And it's viewed like it's called leverage and it's very positive.”

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026

Asked where the line falls between debt that builds something and debt that destroys, Housel pointed to billionaires with multi-billion-dollar credit lines against their stock, who can survive an 80% crash. A lower-income borrower who loses a job, he said, lives in a much narrower channel of outcomes.

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · 2026-10-21 Listen to the episode → More from Morgan Housel → More Tech Strategy & Big Tech quotes →

Transcript

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway Around 12:49 into the episode

Speaker 2

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Speaker 1

…extent, the term debt, you know, you're in debt or you can't get out, it has a very negative connotation. But at the same time, if leveraged well, it's a very powerful tool. What is the line between debt that builds something and the debt that just fills a gap or even destroys parts of your life?

Speaker 3

You're right. I mean, I almost feel like when you are a lower income, it's called debt. When you are a richer person, it's called financing. And it's viewed like it's called leverage and it's very positive. Now, you know, it's true. This has been well documented that if you look at like the deck of billionaires, the centa billionaires, most of them are in a tremendous. Amount of debt. Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, all those people have multi-billion dollar credit lines against the stock that they own, but that's against $100 billion in stock that they own. If Facebook stock fell 80%, Mark…

Speaker 1

written that people's relationship with money is shaped more by when they were born than by what they were taught. Say more?

Speaker 3

If you and I grew up during the Great Depression, you and I would not think the same thing about the stock market that we do today. Both of us, I think, are pretty positive on long-term equity ownership and long-term compounding in a diversified portfolio. If you were 25 years old in 1932, you did…

Speaker 1

Do you think there's any psychology around money when you're living in what feels to be especially tumultuous, volatile times? I mean, this does feel, you always think you're in an exceptional time, but this feels exceptionally insecure right now. How does that relate to your approach to money? I

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

More from The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

“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.” — Morgan Housel, The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

“You can really turn system building into the focus of your life in a way that gets in the way of the only real answer to meaningful productivity, in my opinion, which is to just do the thing. … You turn it into a long-term project, which is often a really neat way, I think, of postponing the difficult bit or the scary bit.” — Oliver Burkeman, The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway