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July 21, 2025 9 mins
You're smart and you work hard, so why do you feel financially stuck? The problem isn't your effort; it's your programming. Your brain is running on ancient, buggy software full of "glitches"—cognitive biases that silently sabotage your financial decisions and keep you poor.

In this deep-dive, we're going on a ghost hunt. We'll expose the 7 most dangerous mental traps that are hijacking your wallet, from the Sunk Cost Stubbornness to the insidious Willpower Myth. You'll learn why you overvalue your own ideas, why you buy high and sell low, and why that pay raise never seems to make you happier. Stick around to the very end for a bonus 8th glitch that nobody talks about—a modern trap that changes how you see every dollar you earn.

This isn't just a list of money mistakes; it's a guide to upgrading your mental software so you can finally take back control.

Timestamps:
0:00 - The Ghost in Your Machine
1:03 - Glitch No.1: The Sunk Cost Stubbornness
1:51 - Glitch No.2: The IKEA Infatuation
2:41 - Glitch No.3: The Upgrade Treadmill
3:42 - Glitch No.4: The "Expert on Everything" Illusion
4:39 - Glitch No.5: The Confirmation Cocoon
5:36 - Glitch No.6: The FOMO Fever
6:33 - Glitch No.7: The "Willpower" Myth (The Master Glitch)
7:43 - BONUS: The Glitch You Won't Believe

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ever feel like you're playing a game you can't win.
It's like you're on a chessboard, but some invisible player
is moving your pieces for you, always leading you into checkmate.
You work, you plan, you try, but you're still stuck.
That invisible player is real. It's a ghost in your
own machine, set of ancient primal glitches in your brain's
code that were designed for a world that no longer exists.

(00:24):
And these glitches are quietly expertly picking your pocket every
single day. Today, we're going on a ghost hunt. We're
going to expose the seven most catastrophic glitches that are
hijacking your financial life. We're going to count them down
from the sneaky to the profoundly dangerous, and trust me,
you are going to want to stick around for number seven.
It's a master glitch, the one that ensures you stay

(00:46):
trapped even when you know you shouldn't be. And for
those of you who stick with me to the very end,
I have a bonus glitch. It's the one nobody talks about,
a truly modern mental trap that affects how you see
every single dollar you earn. You're going to want to
see this. Let's begin glitch number one. I call it
the sunk cost stubbornness. It's the little devil on your

(01:08):
shoulder whispering. But you've already put so much into it.
You bought a stock for one thousand dollars, it's now
worth two hundred. Logic is screaming at you to sell,
but you can't because admitting you lost eight hundred dollars
is a pain you can't bear, so, in a twisted
attempt to avoid that pain, you choose to keep losing.
It's a trap of our own making, a prison built

(01:29):
from past mistakes. The rich their brutal time travelers. They
know the past is a ghost. They make their decisions
from the future, asking one simple question, knowing what I know,
now what I make this choice again. But as bad
as being haunted by the past is, the next glitch
is even weirder. It makes you fall in love with
your own mistakes. This brings us to glitch number two,

(01:53):
the ikea infatuation. This is why that wobbly, crooked bookshelf
you spent a hellish weekend building feels like a priceless
work of our art. Because you bled for it. Your
brain douses it in irrational value, and this infatuation is
a financial nightmare. It's that over complicated budget you designed
that you refuse to abandon. It's that failing business idea

(02:13):
you keep pouring money into because it was your baby.
You're not in love with the results. You're tragically in
love with your own effort. The wealthy or not sentimental,
they treat their ideas like lab experiments. If one explodes,
they don't cry. They study the shrapnel, learn and build
the next one better. So your brain makes you overvalue

(02:33):
your own junk. But what happens when it makes you
undervalue your own happiness? That leads us to the most
exhausting glitch of all, which number three, the upgrade treadmill.
This one feels good, which is what makes it so terrifying.
You get the big rays, the dopamine hits. You celebrate
by upgrading your life, the nicer car, the better zip code,

(02:54):
the bougie grocery store. For a few glorious weeks, you've
made it. But then the newness fades, the thrill is gone,
and your new expensive lifestyle is just normal. You're running
faster than ever just to stay in the same place. Emotionally,
your income screams, but your net worth just whispers because

(03:16):
your lifestyle devoured the difference. The wealthy No, this is
a rigged game. They get a raise and their first
thought isn't what can I buy? It's how much of
my life did I just buy back? They're playing for freedom,
not for trophies. But what if the problem isn't the treadmill.
What if the problem is that you think you're an
expert at running out at That brings us to the

(03:37):
most arrogant and therefore most dangerous glitch a human mind
can have. Glitch number four, the expert on everything illusion. Oh,
this one is a classic. It's the Dunning Kruger effect,
and it's like a reverse superpower. The less you know,
the more you think you know. In finance, it's the

(03:57):
guy who got lucky on one meme stock and now
thinks he is a Wall Street titan, handing out advice
like he's Jim Kramer. His tiny island of knowledge has
made him completely blind to his vast ocean of ignorance.
Be in that ocean there are sharks. This illusion is
the number one killer of amateur investors because it stops
you from learning and makes you bet everything in your

(04:20):
own flawed genius. The truly wise are not confident in
their knowledge. They are confident in their curiosity. They are
obsessed with finding out how they might be wrong. And
this illusion of expertise makes you vulner It primes you
for the next glitch, the one that builds a comfortable,
padded prison cell around your mind. Glitch number five, the

(04:40):
confirmation cocoon. You want something, a new phone, a new investment,
a new car. The decision is already made in your heart.
Now your brain becomes a biased private detective, sent on
a mission not to find the truth, but to find
evidence that supports your feeling. You'll seek out the five
star reviews and dismiss the one star warnings of haters.

(05:01):
You're not researching. You're building a warm, fuzzy cocoon of
validation around yourself. Feels safe, but you're sealing yourself off
from reality. And when your investment cocoon is built on
a weak branch, the fall is catastrophic. The wealthy fight
this by paying people to tear their cocoons apart. They
seek the storm. They know that a belief that can't

(05:21):
survive a challenge is a liability. So you're trapped in
your cocoon of rightness. What happens when everyone else is
in their cocoons two and they all start moving in
the same direction. You get a stampede. It's as glitch
number six, the fomo fever, the fear of missing out.
It's our ancient, primal herd instinct, and it is financial poison.

(05:44):
A stock is soaring, the news is screaming, your friends
are getting rich. The pressure is immense. It's a physical ache.
So you jump in right as the smart money who
started the stampede is quietly slipping out the back door.
When the herd turns panic selling, so you sell to
locking in devastating losses. You've become a puppet, perfectly manipulated

(06:06):
by the market's emotions. The rich see the herd not
as a guide, but as a contrary indicator. Ac fomo
is a giant flashing sign that says the opportunity here
is over. To wait for the panic, the silence, the fear,
because true wealth is built in the quiet, not in
the riot. But even if you master all six of these,

(06:27):
none of it matters. If you fall for the final
most insidious trap, the one I warned you about, the
master glitch. Glitch number seven, the willpower youth. This is
the most dangerous lie of all, because it's the one
we tell ourselves. I have self control. I'll just have
the credit card for emergencies. I can resist. No, you can't,

(06:50):
and that's okay. Relying on willpower to manage your complex
financial life is like trying to stop a tidal wave
with a fork. It's an act of such absurd arrogance
that failure is the only possible outcome. The wealthy know
that willpower is a myth. They treat it like a
muscle that gets tired, so they don't use it. They
build systems, They build fortresses. They automate their savings so

(07:12):
they never have to decide to save. They create rules
and waiting periods that protect them from their own worst impulses.
They don't win by being stronger than the win by
designing a game they can't lose. So those are the
seven primary glitches. The stubbornness, the infatuation, the treadmill, the illusion,
the cocoon, the fever, the myth. If you can master

(07:36):
just these, you're ahead of ninety nine percent of people.
But as promised, there's one more, a bonus glitch for
those of you who made it this far. This one
is a product of our digital age, and it's called
the mental accounting glitch. This is your brain's bizarre tendency
to treat money differently depending on where it came from.

(07:56):
One hundred dollars you earn from eight hours of hard work,
you protect it like a dragon guarding gold. But the
one hundred dollars you got as a birthday gift or
a small tax refund or a lucky scratch off ticket,
your brain labels that fund money or found money. It
feels less real, so you spend it on something frivolous
without a second thought. But here's the truth. Your brain

(08:18):
refuses to accept a dollar is a dollar. Doesn't matter
if it was earned through blood, sweat, and tears, or
if it fell from the sky. It all has the
same power to buy your freedom. The wealthy understand this.
They don't have work money and play money. They just
have capital. Then every single dollar is a soldier sent
out with one mission to come back with more prisoners.

(08:39):
So now you have it, eight invisible puppet masters that
dictate your financial life. But the good news is now
they're not invisible. You have the map. You can see
the glitches in the code, and the moment you can
see them, you can begin to rewrite your own program
and reclaim your financial free will. If you're ready to
keep unplugging from the system and upgrading your mental software

(09:00):
with us, make sure you hit that subscribe button. The
real work is just getting started.
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