Also, Stephen Clapham continues to impress, with interesting perspectives. I must read his new book, The Smart Money Method.

I’ve got some good news. You’re not crazy.

That’s the message of one of my favorite books of 2020, “The Psychology of Money,” written by Morgan Housel and inspired by a popular blog post he wrote in 2018. It’s a compelling read and the book offers many great lessons, but I thought this particular encouragement was worthy of the fresh slate afforded us all by the start of a new year:

“We all do crazy stuff with money, because we’re all relatively new to this game and what looks like crazy to you might make sense to me. But no one is crazy—we all make decisions based on our own unique experiences that seem to make sense to use in a given moment.”

This isn’t the first time that Americans have faced difficult times. As my former Motley Fool colleague and best-selling author Morgan Housel wrote last year, we’ve always found a way to overcome our deepest difficulties. Citing a Depression-era diarist and his experiences of arguably the most economically devastating era in U.S. history, Housel’s lesson was simple: We’ll get through this.

This is a must-read book for anyone hoping to achieve financial independence. People make investment decisions based more on their personality, behavioral traits, and the circumstances under which they grew up than on excel sheets.