Comment by roenxi

> ...I honestly can’t understand why it’s so hard...

You're pretty close, you touched on all the major points in your comment. You suggested people not to chase status. But a lot of people spend their whole lives and all the resources at their disposal chasing status. All they understand, want or need is status. They are status chasing people.

You try teaching them not to chase status and it won't work. This is also what makes financial literacy so hard - people have these instincts that don't care about longer term material comfort even a little bit. They're calibrated for a world where "capital" is a stick with a rock tied to it and maybe a nice cave. There are these hang-overs from the old times where people's mind and body are strongly conditioned to only be sensitive to their current social status and they're willing to burn their entire bank account to get it now.

Watching such people up close when they are also intelligent is a fascinating experience. They know that they're not doing financially optimal things. They don't care. They'd eat nails and go without sleep if they thought that would make them look better than their peers. Being poor in 12 months time doesn't register as a threat intellectually or emotionally.

Note that even the people who are good at investing usually cheat by using their emotions in weird ways.