Ep632: Anna Rosling Rönnlund – You Don’t Always Have to Buy a Home

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win an investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives and that mission has led me to create the become a better investor community where you get access to the tools you need to create, grow and protect your wealth go to my worst investment ever.com right now to claim your spot. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy and I'm here with featured guests, Anna Rosling Rönnlund. Anna, are you ready to join the mission? I am. So I want to tell the audience a bit about you. Anna is a Swedish designer who with her husband Hola. Develop trend allies trendalyzer Interactive Software for visualizing statistical information in 2005, with statistician and father in long father in law, Hans Rosling, she co founded the Gapminder Foundation, where she serves as vice president for design and usability. In 2016, she announced dollar street, a website that imagines a street of homes to help visualize how people of varying cultures and incomes live around the world. And in 2017, she collaborated with Hans also on the book fact fulness, which is an amazing book, if you haven't read it, ladies and gentlemen, get it or get it in audible. So why don't Anna you take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you bring to this wonderful world?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 01:50
Yeah, no, that's, of course, a very tricky question to answer. But I would say, most likely it is that, together with all enhancing the Gapminder Foundation, we have been very stubbornly trying to understand the world from the, from where we stand. And I think we've done it in a very non academic way, refused to actually go the regular route, and instead, sort of pinpoint the things we got frustrated by and try to solve them. So I think we have been doing things differently. And therefore I think we bring a value in making the world easier to understand. And also making it easier to understand why we are wrong about the world and point out how wrong we are about the world, which I think is a pretty important thing. If you're going to do investments, for instance.

Andrew Stotz 02:46
Yeah. And I was, you know, just taking out some of my notes from from your book, you know, the book faithfulness and the idea of the gap, instinct, negativity, instinct, the straight line instinct, it's just fascinating how many of these, let's say, instincts, or natural reactions to things that we have, can lead us astray. And maybe you could just take a minute to describe, you know, what is the mission? I mean, like, what is it that you really want to accomplish with all of this? I know, I've watched the Ted Ted Talk videos of Hans also, you know, going through the descriptions, which are just amazing. But what is the end goal?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 03:30
I would say, the end goal would be that people and living in high income settings would understand how and in a, how the inequality of the world actually looks, and what it means to live in extreme poverty. That was sort of the starting point, the frustration, that is very hard to understand the diversity on how people live on different incomes, what that really means for everyday life. So I will say that was sort of the starting point. And that has been such a huge project. So it has gradually evolved and gradually taken different shapes, because we have out of frustration, we have realized that the route we started was not the right one, and then we have started another route, and we were still not satisfied, and we've changed and change. But I would say it's all about having people understand the huge inequality of the world.

Andrew Stotz 04:37
Why is it important for somebody? I mean, there's many people that are just living a fine life and you know, why does it matter? That they understand this?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 04:47
I would say in two different ways. I would say the first one is because it's so many people still above 1 billion that live totally, totally bad luck. eyes, you know, I mean, not decent at all. And it would be pretty cheap for the world to actually fix that. Because we don't need to do very advanced stuff just help people get the basics. So I think it's sort of a question about decency . It's not fair that we keep a huge amount of humanity living under so bad conditions. That is one part. And I think the other is that the world if we don't understand what the world is, and how it looks, and how it evolves over time, I do really think that we will make bad decisions. Because when we live in our small bubble, and we think that everyone lives, the kind of lives that we do and share the same kind of problems, I think we we overlook a lot of things that will be important for the decisions we make, that we're simply don't pay attention to. So it's also a question about being ignorant in a way that actually doesn't serve us. Well.

Andrew Stotz 06:07
You know, I was thinking about my two experiences in my life that you made me think about, the first one is I came to Thailand when I was 26. And so I've now lived more of my life in Thailand that I lived in the US, because I've been here for 30 years. And I remember when I first came to Thailand, and even now when I go to villages out in the countryside, you know, they are really subsistence living, I mean, they are living off of the rice that they grow and the vegetables that they grow. But one of the things that I, you know, I saw in those people in those villages was that they were like, happy. And I saw a lot of unhappy people with money in America. And certainly in Bangkok, there's plenty of unhappy people with money. And so it really kind of jolted me a bit. Now, of course, nobody wants to see someone live in slavery, or nobody wants to see someone live in absolute destitute, but I was just amazed. I mean, they had land, so they were growing rice and other stuff on their land. But it was just, that's the first thing that kind of I was just thinking about when you were talking, it woke me up to some kind of simplicity. The second thing was that I went to China for the first time, you know, in, I don't know, 10 years ago, or whatever. And I grew up as an American thinking that China was just, you know, all communist and backward and all that. And then I was, like, blown away. And then I was kind of realizing that, you know, when I went into China, I could look at everything and say, This is bad, this is wrong. This shouldn't be why are they doing this and that, and I really had to look at things through different glasses like, and I started to really enjoy that challenge. And you know, so I'm just curious kind of what your thoughts are on those two experiences that I had that did have a pretty big impact on my thinking.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 08:03
Yeah, I mean, I bet as you are sort of in the investment fair, I think it's a super relevant. So for you, I mean, what brings value to life? And of course, I would say, Money take you a bit, but it doesn't take you all the way. And I think, of course, we have a lot to learn from people living lives that are not so totally. What can you say, we're not just consuming and consuming and consuming in a fast pace, because that might not be the route to happiness. Though, if you look at all these kinds of surveys, where you want to check who are the most the least satisfied with live their lives, you all the times the the people living in low income countries, or people being really poor, are less satisfied with lives than with their lives than people that are wealthier. It doesn't mean that you need to be rich, but you need to have a stable life, where you are not afraid of sort of dying and where you can pay a medical bill and where you can have glasses if you need them. I mean, you need to have those basics set, but you don't need a life in luxury. So I think, I think when we see people living, what we seen what for us seem to be like a laid back countryside live, where they spend time with family and friends. I think we don't really see all the struggles they have. And if we look at the economic growth, I mean, why would people strive to get more in the poor end of the spectrum, if it wouldn't make their lives easier to deal with. So I would say I think When we when we talk about that happiness spectrum, I think the absolutely poorest they need to get richer so that they can concentrate on living rather than sort of stay away from dying. And on enriches them where I bet you and I are, I would say we should perhaps downplay the role of money and consuming because we will not get more happiness out of it maybe. So that, I would say, with my, my main take, and that, I think, in the project on the street that I've been working on, it's all about trying to look at the economic level people live on on a on an international scale that are is, the scale is the same for everyone, basically. And we can see if we look into homes on the same income level, in different countries, and we can see that they are basically having their lives and their things in somewhat the same order and somewhat the same steps. So when you get some more money than you will start investing in sort of the same things, doesn't matter if you're in Asia, or if you're in Africa, or if you're in Europe or America, you will sort of walk the same path as you as you get more income. And I think that is pretty interesting, because I think we try to make sure that we have our lives organized as well as possible. And I think that's a an overall human struggle that is pretty much the same everywhere.

Andrew Stotz 11:42
You know, one of the other questions I had is, how do you reconcile, like, you know, if I look back in America, it's so much has changed in America compared to when I was there. But you know, they talk about inclusivity. And they talk about, you know, treating people, you know, fairly and nicely and all that. And then when you see what's going on, for instance, in Ukraine, and then you see the fact that, you know, from the US side, the most powerful force in the world could stop this really fast by talking, you know, like, negotiating, discussing having a dialogue. And they just refuse to do that, at least up until now. Obviously, you know, on the Russian side, they could stop this by, you know, stop doing what they're doing. But the US, ultimately, is the major power, in this case, compared to Russia as an example. And then you see, after all that talk of inclusion and all of that stuff, then you see Africa, is just getting decimated by a lack of food, the higher you know, fertilizer costs, and all of these things that are kind of secondary effects of what's going on. And sometimes I feel like, it's hard to really make sense of, sometimes it seems like it's inclusivity. But other times, it seems like, No, you're my enemy, and you're gonna suffer or No, I don't care what the consequences are to other people around the world. How do you make sense of all them?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 13:11
I don't think I do. I mean, it's pretty hard to make sense of the world, I would say as a whole, of course. But I think I tried to stay sane by actually looking at the statistics that we do have, especially longer time series, and data concerning global trends and global proportions. Because I think that is maybe what we usually miss, we watch the news. And in the news, we see all the bad stuff happening, and that it sort of adds up. And it looks like everything is gloomy, even though I mean, I can't, I can't say that everything is good, because it's not Ukraine, we have the climate crisis, we just have the pandemic, I mean, we do have a lot of really big heart issues. So it's not that but if you look at the data, you can also see that during the last 100 years, we have improved the Human Development immensely. And we can see life expectancy has increased and fewer children are dying. And we have fewer people dying in natural disasters, and we have more kids being educated, more people get vaccines, I mean, we do have a lot of good things happening. So I think we need to balance it not to say that we shouldn't just listen to the news because we shouldn't we need to keep following the news. But we need to put it in the global context and in the perspective of everything that has happened over time so we can keep the proportions.

Andrew Stotz 14:52
I think I was just thinking that maybe you can borrow the terminology we use in the world of investing which is the trend is your friend. Yeah.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 15:04
I haven't heard it, but I will definitely use it. I like it.

Andrew Stotz 15:07
The trend is your friend. That's what we say like, you know, go with the momentum or whatever. But yeah, when you look back over time, I mean, the progress that's been made is just phenomenal. And my great great great grandfather went came from Germany in 1839 to America, and the struggle that they went through as immigrants and trying to build something without education and nothing and no skills, and then slowly building it up and what they were able to build, you know, over time, you can see definitely the the life I lead was much, you know, better than the life that, you know, my great grandfather led, let's say, so, yeah, you can see that development. And I see a lot of that development here in Thailand too. Well, it's fascinating, and what's the best way for people to learn more about what you're doing? Where should they go? What should they do? What would be your recommendation?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 16:01
And so I definitely would recommend checking out the dollar STS. I mean, it's a free website. But basically, what you can do is that you can, you can base it, around 500 households, I think, in 62 countries or something like that. It's always ticking up. So but I think it's around there. And basically just check out because we've captured everyday items in homes all over the world on different income levels. And you would see that you have bigger similarities between people at the same income level across countries than you might have within a country on different income levels. So I think it's pretty interesting to look at the everyday objects, like toothbrushes and toilets and stoves, and beds, to get an idea about the diversity when it comes to how we live our lives on different income levels that I would definitely recommend. And then I would also recommend that you go to our new service, we call the upgrade or the worldview upgrade, and you find that the Gapminder website as well. And what we've done there is actually that we have for the past five years, we have been asking around 17,000 fact questions, ABC questions to the general public in 39 countries? I think it is. And what we're doing is that clear, we're actually looking for misconceptions around basically everything that is happening in the human development and in the economy, society, Environment and Climate, trying to figure out where people are most wrong about the world. And we kept only the questions where people are usually scoring pretty badly. And we created quizzes on different topics to sort of have you realize how wrong you probably are, if we had used those tests to test the general public, but we also tested expert communities. And pretty recently, it was a investment bank in the US or with tested entrepreneurs in Europe or, or began and about the CEOs in different bigger big companies and so forth. And what we see is that they are also scoring pretty badly. And what I think is interesting, it's not so much to for you to see how bad you are to that you should feel ashamed. No, but I think it's important that you test yourself to actually realize that the things you think you know about the world might be wrong, and then do the next thought. If I think I am right about the world, and I do not update my knowledge, then when I make decisions, most likely those decisions will be pretty bad. Because I don't understand the world I'm living in. And even worse, the others that I collaborate with, they don't either. So it's like we have an idea about the world we live in. That is pretty systematically the same among the people we have tested even though they have been in different countries, we seem to have a pretty similar worldview. But that worldview seem to be pretty wrong. And when it comes to human development is very, very negative. So I just think for anyone who is actually into investments, it might be a good idea to before making a big decision actually check the data and be humble and curious because most likely you will be as wrong as all others even though you might be a super smart guy because that is the pattern that we have seen over and over again. But most people are pretty wrong about the world. And that includes me as well. Of course.

Andrew Stotz 20:05
Yeah, be humbled. I tell my students about the stock market be humble or be humbled.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 20:11
Yes. That's pretty Correct. Yeah,

Andrew Stotz 20:15
the market will take you down. Well, yeah, that's, it's fascinating. And we'll have links to all that in the show notes. So ladies and gentlemen, definitely go check it out. There's so much that you can learn well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment, thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 20:38
So I have been thinking about this about what could have been my worst investment. And I most likely it is actually when we moved to the US and we bought a house. And we did it just before the market crashed, and then we moved back to Sweden, just when it had crashed. So we lost, we lost quite a lot of money, actually. And if we would have waited and sold later, it was actually a few miles away from from where Facebook, we're building their new headquarters. So we would have gained quite a lot if we had kept the house for a year or two more. So that might have been like, one of the biggest missed opportunities, I would guess,

Andrew Stotz 21:29
and what drove the decision to buy when you move there.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 21:34
So that was pretty, pretty easy, I would say we both me and my husband, we started working at Google, and we were looking for a place to stay close to the office, and we had sold our apartment in Sweden. So we did have some, some cash to put in. And we did have the opportunity to borrow. And I would say we are we have been very good investors in the sense that we were sort of thinking that if this becomes nice years, we will have here, maybe we will stay here forever, then let's go for it. And if it goes badly, then we will forget about it. So I think we are not driven by the will of doing good investments. So we are not investing that much. And I think maybe that goes through the whole of our my work life because I don't think I have any regrets when it comes to anything else. Because I have never been driven by the will of making good investments. Because I have been driven by doing what I love to do, and hope that it will work for now. And let's see what I have to do if it fails. Okay. And then I have to my surprise, several times ended up in situation where I have gotten opportunities that I would have never had dreamt of. And I've gotten paid in a way that I never expected and never went for. So I think I feel I came from a home with a limited, limited economy. And no one invested anything I would say we owned our house. But that's it, you know, right? So I think everything that is beyond surviving here, and now just sort of puts some happy glow on my life now, but it's not something that I'm expecting, will grow and that I will have my whole life. So I'm sort of enjoying what I have here now. And I'm not very bitter. And I think in my own work life, I've been driven by that. So basically, I don't feel disappointed that I've been striving to get a stable, secure and well, well funded life. Rather, I'm surprised every time something goes my way.

Andrew Stotz 24:30
So are there any lessons that you would take away from that experience?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 24:36
I don't know if it's a good lesson, but I can't imagine trying to do something I don't like I think I think it's important to start from passion, right? And then be grateful for whatever goes your way. And if your passion route doesn't work, then you might need to take a step back and try to modify but how Hopefully you can do something close to what you were dreaming about. So I would say start by going for your dream. And then gradually, you might need to down downplay if it doesn't work. But I think very often we do the other way, we start by going for something stable and something secure and something prestigious. And then we're stuck in something where we're good, have a good pay. And it's hard to take a step back, because you will lose so much that you have gotten comfortable having. So I think going the other way is better, because then you will be happily surprised when you earn something. Rather, yeah,

Andrew Stotz 25:46
maybe I'll share a couple of things that I'm thinking about. I mean, I think that one of the things that I've done in my life is keep my costs really, really low. So that I never got kind of trapped into a situation where I couldn't, you know, just walk away. Yeah. And because I feel the same way that I want to be doing the things that I'm passionate about, I want to be doing, I want to be living the life that I wanted to live. And I know, when I was younger, I was not satisfied. And I kept searching. And as I started to find the things that I wanted to do, you know, life took on a whole new meaning. So, you know, I think first pursuing your passion is one thing I take away. And the second thing on my side, one way to protect myself is just to keep my costs really low, I live in a simple place, and I rent the place, I've rented it for years, and I live here with my mom. And that brings me to the second point, which is you don't have to buy. You know, and I think that that's one way that you know, you can sometimes you know, deal with the situation, particularly when you're moving and you go into places like the American Dream is buy a house. And so I know that. So that's and then my third thing that I would say about property that's pretty true most places is that property eventually comes back, it's not like property, sometimes you buy something, they can just collapse in value, like some kind of cryptocurrency or something. But with property, what you see is that it doesn't really collapse for a long time, it can fall. And you can lose for a while. But in the long run, you know, land is scarce property is somewhat scarce. And so I like to think of it just a little bit differently than other types of assets, you know, if I can sit on them. So anything else you would add to that?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 27:39
I think I agree. I also think if you can keep her costs slow, but still enjoying life, making sure that you do things you like. And that doesn't have to be things that cost a lot. But spending time doing things you love, I think is the number one thing to do,

Andrew Stotz 27:59
shall we say the best investment ever?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 28:02
Definitely. The only one worth striving for? I would say yeah,

Andrew Stotz 28:08
yep. So let's, let's imagine somebody in your same situation like yourself and your husband going there to the US. And based upon what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn what is there an action that you would recommend that they take to avoid suffering that situation?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 28:27
I will do? Of course, I mean, it's why by? But I mean, that is a very obvious one. And the other one I would say is, I don't think you should be too upset because as you were saying, homes go up and down in value, and most likely over a longer period of time. It's going to be okay, so you don't have to be that word, even though you might lose, here and there. I think in the long run. It usually pays off. But I mean, it's not. It's not something impressive. But it's a it's I would think it's sort of decent way of if you're gonna invest in things, just having the home you live in, it feels like a reasonable thing. It's not so much speculation, it's a home. But I think for the most important thing with the home is that it's a place you live and it's a place where you're supposed to have decent days with the family and friends and if it's an investment or not, I think shouldn't be that important because it should be a place where you can relax and

Andrew Stotz 29:52
rewind. Yeah, like that's the real value of a home.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 29:55
Yeah, so yep, yep.

Andrew Stotz 30:00
And let me ask you, what's a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 30:06
Well, I, I have to say that if you haven't read factness, I think you should, because it's all about how we can make sense of the world and how we can make sense of the stupid ways we in different ways misunderstand it. Because I do think it's important for all of us to have at least a general overview of the biggest trends and proportions to make better decisions in life and work life. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 30:40
Read the book, ladies and gentlemen, I'll have the link in the show notes. And you'll see on Amazon so many, you know, five star reviews and you know, so much great feedback. So, you know, that's well done. I that's not an easy thing to do. So well done. Last question. What's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 31:02
Wow, that was a good one. Now I'm sitting in Sweden and snow has just arrived and the really dark season. So the few things I can think about now is getting away getting out of this. But that always comes in this part of the year. So no, we are actually finalizing a lot of the questions that we have been asking to the general public and adding them into the tools. We're working very much on that. And what we're what we've started working on now is actually adding a layer of, you can say small, interactive video led courses that will take you through portions of it. So you can say that in the end of the book, fact fulness, we say we said something about now you need to sort of do the fact fulness in practice, by actually being humble, being curious, checking the global trends and proportions. And I think the two we're developing have developed now the worldview upgrader tries to be sort of the in practice thing, where you can actually check your knowledge and you can upgrade your worldview. And now when we're adding the sort of small, coarse layer on top of it, I think that can be a very valuable place to actually stay updated.

Andrew Stotz 32:32
I think you're gonna have a very busy 12 months.

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 32:35
I think so too. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 32:39
Hopefully with a little bit of sunshine, well, listeners, there you have it. Another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet joined the become a better investor community, just go to my worst investment ever.com Right now, as we conclude, and I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Anna Rosling Rönnlund 33:09
Good luck with your investments and make that good decisions based on data.

Andrew Stotz 33:16
And that is great advice. And it's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.