MARK RIEPE: I'm Mark Riepe. I head up the Schwab Center for Financial Research, and this is Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It's a show about financial decision making and the cognitive and emotional biases that can cloud our judgment.
As I record this episode, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. In the spirit of the holiday, this episode of Decoder is all about gratitude. That's a special topic, and this is a special episode because we're switching up the format. Instead of having a guest I'll interview, we asked some of our guests from past seasons, plus our podcast crew, some questions about gratitude. We'll share some of their answers, as well as some interesting studies that investigated the link between gratitude and our overall health and well-being.
By the end of the episode, we hope you'll have learned something about the power of gratitude, know our guests a little bit better, and head into the Thanksgiving week in a grateful state of mind. With that, let's get going.
COLETTE AUCLAIR: Hi, this is Colette Auclair, and I'm on the Financial Decoder team. First question is, something or someone from 2024 that I'm particularly grateful for. I'm going to go with a horse.
I've loved horses since I was little, and I never had a horse of my own until I was an adult and could get one myself. So I had a horse for 20 years who I adored, and she died about four years ago. And then this summer, I took a riding lesson, and the instructor told me like, "Go get that little gray mare over there."
And so I went out to the pasture and got her, and she was just a sweet, kind, well-trained horse. She was just really nice. And instructor told me that her owner wanted to give her away because she didn't have time to ride anymore. And so I spent some … a couple months with the horse and fell more in love with her, and now she's mine. So Serafina is someone I'm especially grateful for in 2024.
STACIE SANDS: I'm particularly grateful for my relationship with my adult daughters. They're 23, identical twins, and we've developed such a fun relationship over the past few years. I've really learned a lot from them. I love hearing their perspectives, and they've really shaped me into a different person, and I couldn't be more grateful for that.
NATHAN CRENSHAW: I'm Nathan Crenshaw, a producer of the show. This past year I've been particularly grateful for my family. They've always been my anchor, but their love and support has been especially grounding for me this year. Also, I want to test if they actually listen to the show.
SUSAN HIRSHMAN: Something I'm very, very grateful for this year is I had several people in my life who had really severe and unexpected serious health issues this year. And it just makes you stop and realize how every day is truly a gift, and the importance of love, laughter, and friendships.
MATT BUCHER: This is Matt Bucher, and I am one of the producers of the show. This year, like every year, I'm thankful for my wife, Jordan, and my two sons, Henry and Arlo, and all my friends and family. But this year, I want to recognize a group of people for whom I am particularly thankful for, and that's teachers. Through my work in the PTA and being involved in my kids' schools, I've met hundreds of teachers who work incredibly hard behind the scenes to educate our children every day.
So whether you teach Montessori to four-year-olds or algebra to high-schoolers or you're an adjunct professor at a college, I'm so thankful for the work that you do.
ROB WILLIAMS: Hi, I'm Rob Williams, and I work in financial planning and wealth management at Charles Schwab. And this year I am particularly grateful in a way that was a little challenging with two people, my mother-in-law and my father, who very sadly passed away, both of them in their eighties this year, which is very sad, but I'm so grateful for just the values they put into me and the things that I use in my work in terms of helping people with integrity to work on their financial lives, their wealths, and their future.
They both were very different in different ways and in different personalities, but I'm grateful for the time I had with them. Certainly very sad, but it gives meaning to what I do every day and certainly working at Schwab.
KORY HILL: My name is Kory Hill, and I am the technical producer for Schwab's podcasts. I am particularly grateful for my wife, Chelsea. She has been by my side to guide me through some seriously heavy times this year.
STEPHANIE SHADEL: I'm grateful for my wonderful boyfriend who has been incredibly supportive and encouraging as my work schedule became more complex this year. I've been traveling a lot more for work, almost monthly, and that has been a big change for us. And he's just been great with helping with the dog and making sure she's taken care of. And he's just been really supportive and frankly encouraging when it comes to some of these new opportunities.
NATHAN PETERSON: Hello, this is Nathan Peterson, director of derivatives analysis from the Schwab Center for Financial Research. Today, I'd just like to share that I am grateful for what is. The feeling of gratitude, certainly you can imagine if you're grateful for what is, is nothing needs to change. It may sound a little cliché, and it's taken me a while to get to this point where I can actually feel it.
It's easy to get caught up into this idea that we're looking to the future to feel satisfied and overlooking just what is right now, who we are right now, what we have right now. It's the whole collective snapshot of what is.
MARK: I wanted to interrupt here and mention that several years ago on our sister podcast, Choiceology, Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor at Yale was the guest. She taught a class which focused on happiness and how to achieve it. The episode aired during the heart of the COVID pandemic and explored many proven pathways to improve people's lives during that difficult and uncertain time. Santos mentioned the three gratitudes exercise, which is a simple way to practice gratitude. All you do is write down three to five things you're grateful for.
This has been shown to significantly bump up your mood in some studies as quickly as within a couple of weeks. It only takes five to 10 minutes a day. Personally, Dr. Santos says she found a tea she loves in the back of her cupboard and listed that. So it can be something small. Anything that makes you feel grateful qualifies. The exercise has two benefits. First, it makes you feel grateful, which can boost well-being in the moment. Second, it causes you to savor things that you otherwise would not have noticed.
Because when you appreciate moments, it can cause you to savor the things that you really care about and appreciate them. There's been other more comprehensive work on gratitude as well. One summary of the research in this area found that gratitude is related to all aspects of well-being, including positive social relationships, better physical health, less stress, better sleep, and the easing of depression. Now let's hear some more from our guests and their experiences around gratitude.
STACIE: I honestly can't think of a time in my life when focusing on gratitude hasn't changed my perspective. Days can get heavy, and things can get busy and very serious very quickly in our personal lives and in our work lives. And it's always been striking to me that if you just take a few moments to focus on the things that are positive and you're grateful for how quickly your perspective can be changed. It's a great daily practice. Highly recommend it for anybody who doesn't do it.
And those who do, I know that they … I'm certain, feel the same way I do, that even in the worst of days, if you just focus on the things that you're grateful for, things are going to get better.
COLETTE: I'm sure this is true for lot of people, but it was the pandemic. You know, we were stuck at home, and all these people were getting sick and dying, and you just heard about these terrible stories. And someone in my family died. But I was reminded over and over how lucky I was. So gratitude changed my perspective over those years and made me appreciate the good things in my life.
SUSAN: I don't think there's a specific time in my life that changed my perspective. I really believe that you learn as you age, that nothing and no one is perfect, and that life is a journey that has its ups and its downs. And no matter if you are up or down, if you embrace the good, the gratitude, you can really deal with the twists and turns.
STEPHANIE: You know, a lot of times the holidays are very, very stressful, and traffic, trying to go to the mall, just all the shopping. And so a lot of times you forget to just be present and enjoy the moment and enjoy the time with friends and family. And that's something I try to remind myself every year.
NATHAN PETERSON: You know, I often would notice as well with that mantra of "I'll be happy when," you set goals, you go out, you achieve. And oftentimes once we achieve that goal, then we're happy, then we feel good. And it tends to be just momentary before the next thought is introduced, the next goal, the next carrot is placed in front of us. And so we go back into the mode of seeking, and it's only a brief moment of goal achievements that actually are allotted to our happiness or our appreciation or satisfaction in the present moment.
So I would just invite everybody for the holidays to slow down, pause, and simply give a thank-you to this moment exactly as it is right now. Give this gift to yourself and, by extension, your family and friends for the holidays.
COLETTE: Can you remember a decision big or small that you're especially thankful you made or didn't make? I'm not sucking up here, but I'm grateful I decided to quit my job four years ago so I could take the job at Charles Schwab because otherwise I wouldn't get to work on Decoder, and this podcast is the favorite part of my job. So that's what I'm … a decision I'm grateful I made.
ROB: It may sound corny, but it's when I joined Charles Schwab and the Schwab Center of Financial Research to work at the time on helping individual investors to use their money in retirement. And it's been almost 17 years since then, and I'm just so thankful for the opportunity it's given to me to work on really interesting topics, but also to help individuals to take ownership of their finances.
NATHAN CRENSHAW: When I started college, I was set on attending my second-choice school far away, rather than try to attend a university in my hometown and continue to live with my parents in order to transfer to my first-choice school later on. In hindsight, I'm really grateful I took the advice of my parents and took the longer route to where I actually wanted to go instead of settle, even though at the time I was the typical moody teenager about it.
SUSAN: Well, about four and a half years ago, I made the move from New York City to Arizona and to Schwab. And I would say that was a pretty big decision. And I am thankful to be now living in the Valley of the Sun and have access to outdoor activities all year long. And yes, even when it's 110 degrees, it's not that bad.
MARK: And now we're back in the virtual psychology lab, this time to look at what researchers have discovered about charitable giving and happiness. The end of the year is quickly approaching, and for a lot of us, that means paying more attention to charitable giving. From a financial perspective, it can have many benefits, but does it make us happier? One Harvard Business School review of studies on giving and its connection to happiness caught my eye. The paper mentions the notion that helping others increasing our happiness is not new.
It dates back as far as ancient Greece. According to this review, a growing body of research supports this claim. One study looked at neural activity when participants decided how to split $100 between themselves and a food bank. It found that donating the $100 to the food bank caused activity in the brain region that usually lights up when we get rewarded or experience pleasure. Another study looked at volunteer activities in Germany and concluded that helping others increases well-being.
Yet another study had people do five random acts of kindness every week for six weeks. At the end of the six weeks, these people were significantly happier than the control group. If you'd like to learn more about this work, look for the Choiceology episode entitled "Happiness." Katy Milkman is the host, and her guest is Michael Norton, who's done lots of interesting work in this area.
We've got one more segment from our past guests and team here at Financial Decoder. But before we run that, I want to highlight a couple of resources on Schwab.com that you might find helpful. The first is an article entitled "Charitable Donations: The Basics of Giving." And the second is "12 Tax-Smart Charitable Giving Tips for 2024." We'll link to both in the show notes. Now let's get back to the last segment.
COLETTE: As for a favorite holiday movie? My favorite holiday movies are two. If we go for a really old one, it's It's A Wonderful Life, and I know almost all the lines, and a newer one would be Elf.
KORY: The crown for my favorite holiday season movie has to go to Home Alone. It just oozes Christmas spirit, and John Williams' memorable score elevates the film to S-tier for me.
SUSAN: I have two, and they're really, really old school. So the first is the original Miracle on 34th Street because it shows New York City back in the day, and as a New York City girl, you just have to love it. And then White Christmas because my sister and I to this day still sing to each other, "Sisters, sisters …"
STACIE: My favorite holiday season movie is A Christmas Story. There is nothing that says Christmas to me more than watching a movie about a 1940s young boy named Ralphie convincing his parents and Santa Claus, of course, that he must have a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. For some reason, it's just a hilarious story to me. It has that Christmas vibe. It's that childhood feel that everybody wants to feel at Christmas, and it is absolutely our favorite, and it is a family tradition to watch it every Christmas Eve in our house.
NATHAN CRENSHAW: My favorite holiday season movie is It's a Wonderful Life. Perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the season to me. George Bailey's story taught me early in life that living to see others thrive will always lead to the greatest and most unpredictable successes over pursuing stuff like selfish or superficial ambition.
ROB: One of my favorite holiday movies, or just movies in general, is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. And if you remember John Candy, who was trying to get home to family and hid that there really was no family to come home to. And not only was it a light, funny movie, but also touching, and really to me, one of the best of the holiday movies for me.
MICHAEL TOWNSEND: This is Mike Townsend, host of Schwab's WashingtonWise podcast. I wanted to share one of my family's favorite holiday traditions, watching the Jimmy Stewart classic It's a Wonderful Life. We have watched as a family a couple days before Christmas every year since my children were born. Always the black and white version, never the colorized version. Now, as my children have grown, one out of college, one about to graduate from college, one approaching the end of high school, we wait until everyone is home to watch it.
Yes, it's kind of a corny movie, but the messages about being grateful for the things you have and about appreciating the way an ordinary life touches so many other ordinary lives in countless ways, big and small, still resonates in my family. And I'd say the travails of the Bailey Building and Loan is one of the first lessons about how the financial system works that my children ever absorbed. So as we head into the 2024 holidays, we'll be gearing up for another family viewing of It's a Wonderful Life in December and another reminder of the importance of gratitude. Happy holidays, everyone.
COLETTE: And a fun holiday season tradition that I participate in, I write and illustrate a holiday letter every year, and it causes me great strife while I'm trying to figure out what to do, but people seem to like it. So I enjoy praise quite a bit, so I keep writing it. And that's my holiday tradition. Thanks.
KORY: Every year my family makes my late grandmother's gingerbread recipe. It's not anything fancy. I mean. it literally came from a children's cookbook. But she always added a secret ingredient that made them unequivocally her own. And no, I won't be sharing the family secret.
STEPHANIE: When I was little, we spent every other weekend and part of Christmas Eve with my dad. We had a tradition of watching the movie Scrooged with Bill Murray every Christmas Eve. To this day, I watch it at least once during the holiday season. My dad and I also exchange the same gifts. I give him a boxer puppy calendar, and he sends me an adult boxer calendar. And we've been doing this every year since I was in high school.
SUSAN: Every Thanksgiving my family has a tradition of delivering meals to people in need. And then we like to adopt a family for the holiday season to provide food and gifts and possibly a little hope and joy to that family. It's not necessarily something fun, but it does bring a feeling of warmth, connection, and joy to all of us.
NATHAN CRENSHAW: A fun tradition for Thanksgiving in my family is my sister and I always make our acclaimed turkey recipe, and my mom always makes a peppermint ice cream pie for dessert.
STACIE: In my family, every December we make a date, a family date, and we go to the same restaurant for that family date. It's a little fondue place, a local area with beautiful decorations and divine food. This meal takes hours to have. And that's the best part of it, is it gives us a great opportunity to sit down during a really busy time of the year and just enjoy each other's company, spectacular food, and laugh and laugh and laugh.
MARK: OK, that's it for the gratitude episode of Financial Decoder. I hope you enjoyed it and are a little happier because of it. From all of us here to all of you, we're grateful that you make time to listen to the podcast. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can follow me on my LinkedIn page or at X @MarkRiepe, M-A-R-K-R-I-E-P-E. If you liked the show, we would be grateful for a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or comment on the show if you listen to it via Spotify.
We always like new listeners, and if you know someone who might like the show, please tell them about it and how they can follow us for free in their favorite podcasting app. For important disclosures, see the show notes and schwab.com/FinancialDecoder. Have a very happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
