Understanding Your Financial Roadmap (with Nick Maggiulli) SB1712

What do your financial priorities look like when you’re just getting started… or when you’re sitting on $100 million? If you’re still stuck trying to figure out how to max out your Roth IRA and also afford dinner, this episode’s going to walk you through what might be coming next—without promising you a yacht by Tuesday.

This week on The Stacking Benjamins Show, Joe Saul-Sehy, O.G., and Doc G (Jordan Grumet) are joined by Nick Maggiulli, Chief Operating Officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of Of Dollars and Data, to talk about lessons from his new book: The Wealth Ladder. Nick breaks down the six wealth levels, from scraping together your first emergency fund to navigating the complexities of generational wealth.

They explore:

• Why increasing your income early on trumps frugality (sorry, coupon clippers).
• What “wealth plateaus” really look like, and how to recognize when your strategy needs to evolve.
• The hidden trap of goal obsession, featuring a cameo from world #1 golfer Scottie Scheffler.
• The true cost of career choices, and why opportunity cost might be the silent killer of long-term growth.
• Why content and code are two of the most powerful wealth-building levers available (especially when they scale without needing a lunch break).

Whether you’re stuck in Level 1 or fantasizing about Level 6, this episode has practical, perspective-shifting advice on building wealth—and more importantly, how to enjoy the process without losing your sense of purpose along the way.

Stackers don’t just want to make money—they want to master it without letting it become their master. This conversation bridges income, investing, identity, and intention in a way that gives you both clarity and confidence.

You might even stop worrying about skipping that $5 latte… or realize it’s time to start coding that app you keep talking about at parties.

FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/invest-differently-and-move-faster-1712

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

---

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

---

---

Our Headline

• World’s #1 Golfer may or may not be a Neighbor Doug fanboy (Facebook Video)

---

Doug’s Trivia

• In 2000 on today’s date, an American cyclist won the Tour de France for the second time, asserting some dominance in the sport. Who was he?

---

---

Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?

• Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).

---

Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when we’ll talk about what’s holding you back from climbing the ladder with three experts in this very field.

---

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: How to Climb the Wealth Ladder (SB1711)

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] opener: In a world where overspending debt and keeping up with the Joneses rules us all, with the voices from the merchants, restaurants, and credit companies, Lord, over the common man, out of the darkness, like a beacon of hope comes a new voice. A voice that’s rich and creamy, like your favorite butter and delicious like cheeseburger pizza on your diet cheat day.

[00:00:31] opener: It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:41] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:55] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And how’s your trip going? As you move up the wealth ladder? Today, we’ll help you move faster with a guy who’s gonna explain how we should invest differently depending on where we are in life. The man behind the Popular of Dollars and Data Blog, and the COO of Riol Wealth Management.

[00:01:15] Doug: Nick Majuli, in our headline segment one golfer reflects on the big moments in life. What does that have to do with your happiness? We’ll share. And then I’d step into the shower if I were you, because I’ll probably make your head explode with my incredible trivia, you know, ’cause it’ll be easier to clean up later.

[00:01:34] Doug: Anyway. Now three guys who think diversification means separating the snacks into multiple drawers down here. It’s Joe OG and Doc G. That feels wrong. 

[00:01:50] Joe: Hey there, stackers. Happy Wednesday. We’re so happy you’re here with us. You made it. You found us. Sit back and relax because man, we’ve got some goodness.

[00:02:00] Joe: Nick Majuli is coming down to the basement, but as you heard, we have a special guest co-host with his year, og. How are you my friend? 

[00:02:08] OG: I’m not a fan of, um, new Nick. 

[00:02:11] Doc G: I thought he was gonna say he’s not a fan of the co-host, but 

[00:02:14] Doug: the new intro. The new, oh, the new intro being, uh, doc Jaji. Oh, it’s like nails on his chocolate.

[00:02:21] Doug: I was wonder where he was going, like, what’s new? I thought he hated his own ji. I thought you’d be happy to, to get this place. He doesn’t like somebody else 

[00:02:29] Joe: stealing the thunder. Doug. Oh, that’s a 

[00:02:31] Doug: little love. He OG just showed me some love and I didn’t even 

[00:02:35] Doc G: Wow. You’ve got old G 

[00:02:37] Joe: and Gie and that voice that you’re hearing is the Doc G himself.

[00:02:43] Joe: He’s the host of Earn and Invest and the author behind super bestsellers taking stock in the Purpose code. Mr. Jordan Gruman is here. Dr. Jordan Gruman is here. How are you man? I’m good. Just, just don’t make me a answer. Any trivia questions, please. No more trivia. Well, the fact that, oh gee, you should be giving him a hug because this guy has won so many trivia contests on your behalf this year.

[00:03:06] Joe: Uh, I think it’s been a two man team propelling you to first place on our Friday trivia. 

[00:03:11] OG: You think so? Okay, well, let’s, uh, talk about some 3 1 2 quarter team. I’ll take that 

[00:03:15] Joe: team G. Team G. Team G. Let’s talk about something that’s not trivial, which is this appearance by Nick Majuli. We, on Monday, dove into this idea of the wealth ladder and the fact that when you’re just starting out, there’s nothing really that is trivial.

[00:03:32] Joe: You’ve gotta pay attention to all the little things to make sure that life, life goes well for you. And then when you get up the wealth ladder that now you can start making some decisions that you could make before. Get the wine with the the meal at the restaurant. It’s no big deal. Pay a thousand dollars or more to upgrade your seat and on the airplane, no big deal.

[00:03:53] Joe: It’s not gonna affect your net worth. And I guess a question for you, Jordan, is, you know, in your first book taking stock, you talk about when people pass away. Have you found that as people are further up the wealth ladder, that their end of life feelings about their life change, they feel more fulfilled as they go up the wealth ladder?

[00:04:12] Doc G: I actually have found that generally people complain of the same things and they have the same regrets, and it doesn’t really matter where you are on the wealth spectrum. So yes, people who are incredibly poor might talk a little bit about money, but other than that, really people talk about they regret not doing the things that were the most important to them or the relationships that were the most important to ’em.

[00:04:35] Doc G: And so a lot of times it isn’t someone saying, boy, I wish I made more money. It’s almost always, boy, I wish I had the courage to do this thing that was important to me. Or, boy, do I wish I fixed that relationship. And this is why I think 

[00:04:47] Joe: og this idea of the wealth ladder is important, is it’s not, it isn’t just growing your net worth.

[00:04:51] Joe: It’s about not stepping in it so you can continue to just do the things that are truly important. You know what I mean? In the beginning, we talked about a Monday maybe being too conservative on one hand by over diversifying into bonds or, or, uh, ridiculous investments. Uh, your brother-in-law’s restaurant, you know, maybe doing things like that which are not great.

[00:05:13] Joe: But on the other side, not being conservative enough by foregoing insurances or having too much money sit in cash. Like, it’s as much about not stepping in it as it is about growing your net worth more quickly. 

[00:05:26] OG: You still have to have a plan for what all of this is gonna turn into. I mean, Joe, you’ve talked to a lot of people in your life.

[00:05:33] OG: I talk to people every week, Jordan, you’ve talked to tons of people about money and health and life planning basically. And it doesn’t matter if you have a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars or $10 million if you don’t have a plan for what you wanna do in your life, or if you’re generally not content with what things are, there’s no amount of wealth or income that’s gonna solve that.

[00:05:56] OG: And if you just think that, well, all I need to do is a little bit more, then finally I’ll insert thing here. You’re not gonna do that. You know, we famously say it quite often on the show, if you, if you don’t, you don’t donate 10% of your income to charity. When you make a hundred thousand dollars a year, you’re not gonna donate 10,000 or 10% of your salary when you make a million.

[00:06:17] OG: And a lot of times people think that they go, well, you know, right now I can’t. But if I could just make insert thing here, then I’ll be able to do the thing that I want. Sometimes doing the thing that you want isn’t necessarily, uh, writing a check type of experience, right? Being good to your spouse or developing relationships or hanging out with your kids and going to a ball game or whatever it is, isn’t necessarily about like, I need to make twice the net worth.

[00:06:41] OG: ’cause you can go to the, the Rangers game for 15 bucks a ticket if you want. They’re not box seats, you know, in the suite, but is it that much better? I don’t know. But it’s a sweet standing room ticket. See what you did there? So having double the money or double the net worth doesn’t necessarily solve your problems if you’re still only thinking that I don’t have this life plan.

[00:07:06] OG: I’m gonna figure this out later. So I think you need to be who you’re gonna be, understand what you’re shooting for, and then use the money and the, and the building of your wealth to free up the time necessary to do the stuff that you want to do. And if you do that. It doesn’t matter how much money money you have, and that is the perfect 

[00:07:24] Joe: introduction, og, because I think Nick Majuli is the best guy to talk about this.

[00:07:30] Joe: He is a data scientist who created this amazing blog called of dollars in data. Because if you’re gonna go down a road, it’s best to find out who’s gone down this road before you and how did they find success. We talked on Monday a little bit about Alex Hermo early in the year saying that you, you pay an ignorance tax.

[00:07:48] OG: Well, you pay the ignorance tax. You don’t, I wa No, you do. No, you pay it. You pay 

[00:07:53] Joe: it. I don’t pay you pay it if you don’t do this type of research. So Nick has, has already done a ton of the research around how people have gotten wealthy. He’s the Chief Operating Officer in data science at Ri Holt’s Wealth Management, one of the top money management firms in the nation.

[00:08:08] Joe: Author, as I mentioned earlier, of the very, very highly regarded and, uh, must read blogs on the internet when it comes to money of dollars and data where he focuses on the intersection of data and personal finance. You’ve seen him all over the place. Today he’s gonna be mentoring us on climbing the wealth ladder.

[00:08:26] Joe: But before we get to that, we’ve got a couple of sponsors who make sure we can keep on keeping on. And you don’t pay for any of the amazing mentors, not just Nick, but Jordan OG Doug, me. You don’t, you don’t pay for any of this. Goodness. We’re gonna hear from them. And then Nick Majuli coming down to mom’s basement to talk about climbing the wealth ladder.

[00:08:49] Joe: And I’m super happy he’s back in the basement. Nick Maglis here. How are you my friend? 

[00:08:53] Nick: Doing good. Doing good. Thanks for having me on again, Joe. Appreciate it. 

[00:08:56] Joe: Dude, I feel like the re holds people just taking over our podcast. Can we just call it, we just had Barry here, we had Josh here. We get Nick twice this year.

[00:09:04] Joe: Like, what the hell’s going on? 

[00:09:06] Nick: Hey man, we’re just out there putting out content, trying to help people as much as we can. 

[00:09:09] Joe: Ed, you guys totally are, this project is interesting and I wanna start where you start. You played chess as a kid? 

[00:09:17] Nick: Yeah, I played a lot. My dad taught me when I was like four or five years old and.

[00:09:21] Nick: I start playing his friends who didn’t really know how to play. So I beat them and they would be shocked when like a little kindergartner plays, you know, it wasn’t like a prodigy. I was just good enough to beat them, which is all you needed. You a pretty low bar. Yeah, it was fun. I played a little as a kid, then my parents divorced.

[00:09:35] Nick: I didn’t really play as much. Then I kind of got back into it in high school and it was just a fun journey. And there’s really a lot of analogies between chess and building wealth and life and a lot of stuff there. Which, you know, if you really think it through, it’s actually kind of interesting. 

[00:09:46] Joe: Well, I wanna ask you about that analogy in a second.

[00:09:48] Joe: But I remember I, I was okay at chess. I like board games in general, but I read Bobby Fisher’s guide. Did you read Bobby Fisher’s guide? 

[00:09:56] Nick: I did not read Bobby Fisher’s Guide, unfortunately. 

[00:09:58] Joe: So Bobby Fisher’s guide really cool because it just gives you a scenario like it, it shows you the chess board in a scenario.

[00:10:05] Joe: Yeah. And then it tells you to solve it, and you turn the page and it gives you the answer. Mm-hmm. And then you get done looking at it this way, and then you turn the book over and the second half is just more advanced, uh oh wow. Of things going on. So it, it was really neat. And my opens got really good.

[00:10:21] Joe: So I was super good at like the first 15 minutes of a game. If I hadn’t blown you outta the water in the first 10 minutes by not making stupid mistakes, Nick, you’d, you’d have your way with me. Like I was, I was absolutely horrible. But when I was reading your introduction, you had kind of the same lesson when you came up against some better chess players.

[00:10:40] Nick: Yeah, same thing. I literally just memorized openings, got very good at that. So I knew my openings well. I knew kinda how to respond to most things, but you’re right. As soon as it started. Going into a territory I wasn’t familiar with, I would’ve lost the same thing. I think that’s how a lot of people learn chess.

[00:10:54] Nick: Like it’s like, oh, just learn how to do the opening. Learn how to trick people, mate them early. Like I knew the four move, checkmate, all those things. It doesn’t work against a real chess player. Like they know all that already, right? Because they learn that already. So it’s just fun to kind of the thinking through those things.

[00:11:08] Joe: Yeah. I remember you saying, well, you know this guy, sometimes he would play along with you, sometimes he wouldn’t. Every time you mm-hmm. Would look at his open, he would do something totally different. You’re like, how the hell do I even learn anything from this? So speaking of learning something from this, what’s the point here?

[00:11:21] Joe: What does this have to do with building a quote wealth ladder? 

[00:11:24] Nick: Well, I think the idea in chess, and I think everyone who’s played chess has kind of had this moment happen to them at least once a game, if not more. At one point in time, a certain strategy may look like it makes sense, but then in the future, literally one move later, it’s like, actually that doesn’t make sense anymore.

[00:11:40] Nick: Or a new possibility’s been opened up. And I think the same thing is true when we think about building. What you used to do for money may not make sense what you do for money today, right? That’s in terms of the income side. We can think about that in the spending decisions. We can think about that with your investment decisions, et cetera.

[00:11:55] Nick: And so as you build wealth, you kind of need to change your strategy, and that’s kind of the main idea here. Just like a fitness coach would give different exercise advice to a morbidly obese person versus a well-trained athlete, I think we need to do the same thing with our financial advice, where it needs to change a little bit depending on where you are and more importantly, where you want to go.

[00:12:14] Nick: So that’s where I’m coming from here. 

[00:12:16] Joe: You and I had this, uh, discussion when we were in New York a few months ago that, you know, it, it’s like people in their twenties spent a ton of time thinking about this hardcore diversification, Nick. Mm-hmm. When that’s not a strategy for a level one. Mm-hmm. That’s a strategy for somebody who’s further along the path.

[00:12:32] Nick: Yeah, exactly. So depending on how much wealth you have and how much your wealth can generate in terms of income, that’s really the big thing to kind of take into account Here. 

[00:12:40] Joe: You’ve got this cool number, this cool rubric to think about what’s a trivial amount of money for you? And it’s 0.01% of the wealth you have is generally a rule of thumb of that’s the number that is, that you think of.

[00:12:56] Joe: Oh yeah, okay. I’ll make that decision. That’s fine. So as an example, if you’re a stacker out there who’s hit the million dollar mark, that means a hundred bucks to you. You’re like, whatever, a hundred bucks is no big deal. 

[00:13:08] Nick: Yeah. So that’s called the 0.01% rule, which is just great name by the way. Your wealth, yeah.

[00:13:12] Nick: Your wealth times 0.01%. Or you can divide by 10,000, whatever’s easier for you on the calculator. Yeah. So if you’re a, you said a stacker worth a million bucks, a hundred bucks to you, no big deal. It’s, it’s a trivial amount of money. And so I think that’s a useful metric to use your net worth or your wealth because.

[00:13:29] Nick: It allows your lifestyle to creep, but only after you’ve shown financial discipline, after you’ve built the wealth, then you can get your lifestyle creep, seeing a raise in income. You could let your lifestyle creep, but you could lose that income. It’s really, there’s a lot of unknowns. Income can be fickle.

[00:13:45] Nick: I think with wealth it’s like, look, I’ve proven I can do this. I can save money, invest, build my wealth. So now I can spend a little bit more, you can kind of allow the purse strings to loosen up a little bit. So that’s kind of my thinking on it. But obviously that depends on every wealth level and we can get into that.

[00:13:59] Nick: Once I provide the framework, I think it’s a little bit easier to understand. 

[00:14:02] Joe: Yeah. Well let’s do that right now. So you have these different levels on the ladder that people are, are at, and really what’s a good move for level one different than a good move for level five? So, mm-hmm. Let’s walk through them.

[00:14:14] Joe: Level one you call paycheck to paycheck level. What level of wealth is that, Nick? 

[00:14:19] Nick: That’s less so, by the way, this is all net worth. So all of your assets minus all of your liabilities. So that’s gonna be obviously, you know. Your car, your home stocks, cash in a bank account, that’s your assets. Subtract out your liabilities.

[00:14:30] Nick: That’s gonna be like your mortgage debt, credit card debt, student loans, et cetera. You get that number. Hopefully it’s a positive number. Hopefully it’s a large positive number, right? Level one that’s less than $10,000 in wealth. That’s about 20% of US households. Level two, that’s 10,000 to $100,000 in wealth.

[00:14:47] Nick: That’s also about 20% of US households. Level three. Can we talk about the 

[00:14:50] Joe: decision on these of course, before we move on? Yeah, of course. Because your first 10,000 paycheck to paycheck, just going back to that 0.01 

[00:14:57] Nick: mm-hmm. Rule. Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:59] Joe: Every single decision a paycheck to paycheck person makes, there is no trivial amount of money.

[00:15:03] Joe: There is truly no such thing for this person. Level two, by the way, which you’re getting to, you call grocery freedom and that’s because these $10 decisions can be trivial. Do do you go with the more expensive milk or the less expensive milk you can go with? Maybe your favorite and it’s gonna be okay. 

[00:15:21] Nick: By the time you get deeper into level two, which is anywhere from 10,000 to a hundred thousand dollars is the end of level two.

[00:15:27] Nick: That’s exactly where you have that grocery freedom. And then once we get into level three, that’s what I call restaurant freedom, and that’s 100,000 to $1 million in wealth, and that’s gonna be about 40% of US households. That’s your, well, I’m gonna call the typical middle class, right? That’s about, I know it’s gonna say that’s middle class up to a million, but with real estate prices, retirement accounts, and everything where they are today, a hundred thousand to a million really is like middle class in most of the United States.

[00:15:51] Joe: Sure. And you and I have had this conversation before you, like a glass of wine. Mm-hmm. I like a glass of wine. Everybody knows a glass of wine at a restaurant is a ripoff, but you call it restaurant freedom ’cause you can order the damn glass of wine and who cares. 

[00:16:04] Nick: Yeah. Once you’re, you know, as I said, if we use the 0.01% rule, and let’s say a glass of wine is, let’s say $15, $20, your net worth has to be somewhere in the 150 K to $200,000 range.

[00:16:14] Nick: And really, if you want to be specific here, you should use your liquid net worth. ’cause like you could, you could own a home for, you know, two, you could have a $200,000 home. And if you have no cash in your bank account, good point. Point. Obviously you shouldn’t be spending that much on a wine. Just assume your liquid net worth to take out retirement accounts, take out your home equity, anything like that.

[00:16:30] Nick: And that’s a good metric to use there. So that’s up to a million. Then level four. Level four is one to 10 million. That’s what I call travel freedom. And that’s where you can start to get a nicer seat on the airplane, stay at a nicer hotel, et cetera. You can’t fly private yet. That is actually level five.

[00:16:45] Nick: That’s the true, that’s the highest form of travel freedom. But you know, in general, we don’t see people flying private until they either have $2 million in annual income or $20 million in wealth, which is, that is just a, A lot of money. A ton of money. So it’s very rare. Yeah, 

[00:16:58] Joe: I was about to call it a good start, but you can’t live on it.

[00:17:00] Nick: Yeah. 

[00:17:03] Joe: Level six you call then impact freedom to your point. Yeah. 

[00:17:06] Nick: Level five is, I’m sorry, so level five is 10 million to a hundred million. That’s what I call house freedom. You can kind of buy a house basically anywhere you want. And then level six is impact freedom, which is a hundred million plus. Now the nice thing about these levels, if you just memorize that level three is a hundred K to a million, you can back out all the rest.

[00:17:21] Nick: You just multiply by 10 to go up or divide by 10 to go down. Right? So once you kind of get the, the hang of this, I’ll start saying the levels and I won’t have to repeat the net worth values all the time. And it’s just very easy at that point. 

[00:17:31] Joe: You know, and as you’re talking, I’m thinking about the Millionaire Next Door and you brought up the way that you fly, like, you know, you, you can’t identify a lot of the time Nick the Millionaire next door because this person has millions of dollars, but they’re still flying economy.

[00:17:43] Nick: Yep. 

[00:17:44] Joe: Why is this? Is some people that are level five, level six still spend money, like their level two. 

[00:17:49] Nick: Some people in level five just don’t want to spend, you know, they don’t want, they think it’s a ripoff to spend $10,000 an hour or something to get a private plane. Right? To rent it temporarily. And that is quite expensive.

[00:18:00] Nick: I mean, a business class flight, I mean, I guess it depends. Like if you have four people and you need to put ’em on a business class flight across the US and it’s $2,500 each, do I wanna spend that much or do I wanna spend, you know, let’s say you have four people, you’re gonna spend 10 grand on that, or you know it’s a four hour flight or something, you’re gonna be spending 40 grand.

[00:18:16] Nick: I don’t know, it’s a question. Is that worth it for you? Right. These are the types of questions and not, not a question I ever have to deal with and most people never have to deal with, but it’s something I have to think about at that level. 

[00:18:26] Joe: I think on this side, as I was reading your words, I also thought that.

[00:18:29] Joe: It isn’t about spending less if you choose to spend less, it’s like some people that are level two are looking at people level five and they’re making these, you know, somebody pulls up next to you, Nick, and they’re driving a Lamborghini and you’re like, oh, this guy thinks he’s hot. Well the Lamborghini to him, if he’s level six might be an afterthought.

[00:18:46] Joe: Where to you at level two that’s, you know, that’s gonna not only eat up your whole paycheck, you might as well live in it. 

[00:18:51] Nick: You’d have debt too. Yeah, you would’ve debt at that point as well. And once again, you can’t really know, like obviously the people in level five and six who can’t afford those supercars, many of those people don’t even own those.

[00:19:01] Nick: Like that’s just not something they do, which is ironic. And some of the people that have those just have ’em on debt. They’re borrowing ’em, they rent ’em for a day. I mean, all sorts of stuff. You know, social media, influencers, rent houses and stuff to look rich when they actually aren’t. So it’s very interesting how that works.

[00:19:15] Joe: Let’s do a quick case study. Who is.

[00:19:22] Nick: I think I got that. No, that’s how we would say it as English speakers, as mata. Like I don’t, it’s very difficult. I had to do all this in the audiobook. I think 

[00:19:28] Joe: I pronounced that like a, like a natural. He was 

[00:19:30] Nick: the founder of Panasonic and his story’s really interesting and it’s actually a really good parallel for thinking about the wealth ladder because he started working when he was nine years old.

[00:19:39] Nick: He eventually got an internship, started working in the electrical industry right when electricity was coming out. Then he started working at this company, worked all the way to the top of the company, you know, at least for his position. By age 22, he couldn’t make any more money. He was maxed out. He started inventing other things.

[00:19:53] Nick: He invented this bicycle lamp and he brought it to a supervisor like, Hey, this could sell a lot, and the supervisor told ’em, no, this is silly. Stop doing this. Just do your job. So he is like, you know what, I’m gonna take this out to market. Started his own business, started selling them, was running, doing everything for the business.

[00:20:07] Nick: At some point he was getting too busy. He hired someone, right? So he, he went through all these stages, which are very similar to like levels on the wealth ladder, except with his career. You know, at one point he was learning from someone. At another point he kind of learned everything he could learn was maxed out at his job.

[00:20:22] Nick: Then he realized to get to the next level, he had to go create his own business. And then to get that business to get bigger, he had to hire people and create divisions. And by the time of his death, it was like the largest electronics company in the world, right? In like the late eighties. And so he was called the god of management ’cause he realized how to manage people, create, you know, autonomous divisions and really was, was great for Japan and, and a lot for corporate strategy.

[00:20:42] Nick: Did a lot for that in that country. 

[00:20:44] Joe: It was funny. I was talking to my son about, about him and about some of the lessons. Like I remember this thing, I tried to teach my kids when they were little and he’s 30 now, and we just went to lunch together. And I said, a mistake I kind of made was that, you know, my dad was a blue collar guy and he said, you know what?

[00:21:05] Joe: We might not always be the smartest people in the room, but we won’t be outworked. 

[00:21:09] Nick: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:10] Joe: And I worked hard to teach my kids that. And a mistake that I made in my career was that because of the fact that my dad was a strong part of my life, I held onto that into level three and into where I’m like, yeah, you might be smarter than me.

[00:21:23] Joe: And there were some things I did that were completely stupid because, because I was working harder than you at something that was completely irrelevant. So I love this idea of him at Panasonic and the fact that what you focus on, depending on the level you’re at, 100% matters to the game you’re playing.

[00:21:44] Nick: I think people realize this. I mean, maybe eventually too late, but it’s not just your effort that determines results. There are people out there in this country that are working more hours, working harder than CEOs at other companies, and they’re making a fraction of their pay. And so it’s not, I think people know this intrinsically, it’s not just completely linked to effort, it’s what you work on, the types of things you work on, what you say no to.

[00:22:05] Nick: And of course, effort matters. I don’t wanna say that, oh, every person that’s doing well didn’t put an effort. No, there’s usually a lot of effort, but it’s where you direct the effort, how you guide it, et cetera. So I completely agree with that. And I think the reason this happens is people get caught up in their habits.

[00:22:18] Nick: If you do something, you get very good at it, it gets easy, it’s automatic. You just keep doing that thing. But if you just keep doing the same thing over and over and over again, you will get better. But at some point, like you’re getting diminishing returns, you’re not really, you know, extracting or you’re not learning more, et cetera, and then you’re not progressing.

[00:22:32] Nick: And so sometimes you need to try something new, change things up. And that’s kind of, that’s what this book is about. It’s trying to be like a wake up call for those people that feel like they’re stuck in a certain financial level in their life. 

[00:22:43] Joe: I love the idea that sometimes you gotta break the habit.

[00:22:45] Joe: The habit’s not great. In fact, I think you should tweet that to James. Clear. Hey, James. Sometimes these atomic habits aren’t, aren’t No, I, I’m kidding. You frame this around this concept of opportunity cost. I’m assuming a, a lot of our stackers have, uh, understand the idea of opportunity cost, but can you go through how examining whether something is gonna make sense career-wise, and if you’re thinking about making money, how opportunity cost is a piece of this equation?

[00:23:13] Nick: Yeah. So it’s like, what else could you be doing with your time? That’s always the question. And I, I don’t want you to think about this like, throughout the rest of your life and drive yourself mad with like, oh, I can’t spend time with my kids. I should be, you know, earning more money. Like, don’t, but then it’s paralyzed.

[00:23:25] Nick: Yeah. I don’t want you doing that either. I think there is a question of, okay, what am I doing with my time and does this make sense? The example I give, you know, I’m, I’m actually right now I’m in Southern California. I at my father’s house. When we were young, we would, all the cans we would drink out of, we would collect all those cans, put ’em in a thing and take ’em down.

[00:23:41] Nick: You know, get a bag or two and get about 20 bucks per bag. Maybe now it’s a little more, I don’t actually know, they haven’t changed the C rv, so it’s the same price today you get a couple 20 bucks per bag or something. My dad doesn’t do that anymore. Neither do I. ’cause it’s not worth our time. He could be calling a client, he sells insurance and stuff.

[00:23:55] Nick: So there’s so many other things we could be doing that even that little thing like yes, we still recycle, but we’re not gonna go put ’em in bags, take ’em down and separate ’em. Like it’s just too much work for not a lot of effort. And I think that analogy, maybe it’s not collecting cans, but in your career you’re still collecting cans and you need to be doing something else and figuring out what that is.

[00:24:13] Nick: I can’t answer that for you ’cause it’s a very case by case thing, but figuring out what can I be doing to grow my wealth in a different way? And that’s kind of where the thinking comes in. 

[00:24:22] Joe: Let’s go through some of these. You say though, at level one to get to level two, hourly jobs are fine. Like working your ass off.

[00:24:27] Joe: You can go from level one to level two by working your ass off and it’s not a bad lesson to learn. 

[00:24:31] Nick: Exactly. It’s definitely true. Like odd jobs doing all sorts of stuff. I don’t think there’s, you know, if you don’t have wealth and you’re like in a tough situation, like there should be almost nothing beneath you unless it’s like obviously like dignity or something bad to your family or something outside of that.

[00:24:44] Nick: If it’s like, hey, hard work’s, hard work and you gotta work to get somewhere. 

[00:24:48] Joe: If you’re trying to go from level two to level three, and again this is from a hundred thousand to a million. Mm-hmm. If you’re trying to go there, you really need to start thinking about highly skilled work or spending time on the right things.

[00:25:01] Joe: Level three to level four, think about career advancements. Why do you’ve side hustles at at level three? Is it because finally you have a little bit of time independence when you get to level three? 

[00:25:11] Nick: Yeah, I think that’s a piece of it. You need to have some main, I don’t wanna say main hustle. You need to have some main thing going that’s doing decently.

[00:25:20] Nick: Before you can necessarily do a side hustle and, and obviously it really depends if you, let’s say you’re young, you can live with your parents, you have very low cost, then yeah, you can start your side hustle whenever. But if you have a lot of costs, you have to pay rent, you do all these things and you don’t have a lot of money, you need to have some stability in your main job before you can start doing a side hustle, right?

[00:25:38] Nick: And so of course some people don’t do that. They just skimp by and they figure it out and they end up doing really well. But I think security is the most important thing, especially level one, level two, getting to that first base level of security, do that, then go and venture and do all this other stuff.

[00:25:52] Nick: ’cause if you don’t, you could end up in financial insecurity for a very long time. You know, half of 50% of the financial distress events in the United States, bankruptcies, delinquencies, et cetera, are experienced by just 10% of the household. So it’s a small percentage of people that get caught in these spirals and they almost never get out.

[00:26:08] Nick: And that’s, it’s a tragedy. It really is a tragedy. But that’s what I’m trying to prevent here. And so I’m like, hey. Whatever you can do to get to some level of safety, then you can start experimenting. It’s the same thing Machu did. He didn’t go and start, I’m gonna start my business, you know, before I know how to even do this.

[00:26:22] Nick: No, he waited until he worked his way up and then he made that decision. I think his life is a perfect example of how you might want to do your career, right? In terms of knowing when to make those jumps. 

[00:26:33] Joe: I think about people like Bill Gates. You know, I listened to the acquired podcast, so you always hear about these founders and how they started young.

[00:26:40] Joe: They didn’t wait until level four to start a business. Mm-hmm. These people outta the womb are starting businesses, and to your point, it could be huge win or huge loss. How do you think about this? If somebody’s 25 and they’re really excited about being an entrepreneur, somebody like Cody Sanchez, who is teaching people how to buy businesses versus buying a mutual fund or an exchange traded fund, which is gonna be much safer.

[00:27:05] Joe: There’s a lot more liquidity events, it’s easier to analyze a mutual fund versus starting a main street business. 

[00:27:12] Nick: I think you don’t have to be in like a level four before you start a business. The lowest risk way to start a business and be fine is starting in level four where you have resources, have time.

[00:27:23] Nick: If you actually look at the data, most of the entrepreneurs are in their forties, not their twenties. So that’s one thing. Why? ’cause they have money and experience two things that are very helpful 

[00:27:30] Joe: and that’s a hundred percent Nick. A myth that people have is that it’s young people starting businesses.

[00:27:35] Joe: Yeah. They just get 

[00:27:35] Nick: the media attention. Yeah. That’s it. You’re right. Exactly. 

[00:27:37] Joe: Most of the successful businesses I remember like, you know, the downsizing of General Electric and IBM and all these companies over the years. Mm-hmm. And you see the engineers that come out of these businesses, these are people, forties, fifties, even sixties, that have liquidity.

[00:27:51] Joe: They know the who’s, they know the people that will back the company. They are rock stars versus somebody that, you know, how many times have you seen somebody who’s starting a restaurant and they’re working off their last 30,000 bucks? 

[00:28:03] Nick: Yeah, it’s really tough. And so I think thinking through that, you don’t have to be in that level.

[00:28:07] Nick: It just de-risks a lot when you’re in that level and the data shows that those people that have more experience, age, et cetera, they’re more likely to succeed, right? All else equal. You don’t have to be in the level. You can have that level through extension. For example, you bring up Bill Gates. Bill Gates was not in level one, even if it’s like, well, his net worth was zero, but like through his family, his connections, his education, like I would never say I was in level one, despite the fact that my net worth wasn’t over $10,000 for I think the first eight to 10 months when I was working, right?

[00:28:35] Nick: Like it took me a while to get there, but because the family extensions my education, I never was in level one. And so I would argue that Bill Gates has been in his whole life in level three, maybe even level four through proxy. So he kind of was there in the sense that he had that family wealth and he had those connections through his family and stuff.

[00:28:51] Nick: So once you think of wealth in a little bit of a broader definition, I think you can realize, oh yeah. A lot of these people that start these companies, they’re not like super, super loaded, but they don’t come from poor families either. Like Zuckerberg’s not from a poor family, Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s not from a poor family.

[00:29:06] Nick: Bezos isn’t from a poor family, right? Like there are some that are, but for the most part, just generally not true. 

[00:29:11] Joe: Bill Gates, to your point, I never knew what a rockstar both of his parents were. Dad, one of the top lawyers in Seattle, and even before Bill was anybody, everybody knew Bill Gates Sr. Mm-hmm.

[00:29:22] Joe: As a real badass, you make this point, I had somebody actually write me a friend of mine, Becky Becky’s probably listening right now. So Becky, I’m talking about you in the conversation, Becky, you and I had in Denver, she was telling me, Joe, you concentrate on income a ton and you always talk about building your income to build your net worth.

[00:29:39] Joe: Becky was all about, you can build your net worth without having more income. I think you prove through a lot of data in your book that yes you can, but it’s not as likely as, as if you just focus on building your income first. 

[00:29:54] Nick: Yeah. It’s tough. The only way you can do that, you just need more time. And so it’s, it’s a question of timing.

[00:30:00] Nick: If you’re just like, oh, I can save this much amount per month, okay, to build wealth, it’s just gonna take longer. Right. It’s much easier when you have that income. ’cause if you look at the data on average spending rises with income, but it rises much more slowly than income does, which is that creates this wedge, which is basically your savings, which you can invest.

[00:30:17] Nick: And if you invest that in income producing assets, that’s kicking off more income so your income grows even more. And then you have this flywheel going where your money’s even earning more than you are at some point. And that’s where you start to get into real, real wealth building where your money’s earning more than you do from working.

[00:30:31] Nick: And then you’re like, what the heck’s going on here? Is my job a side hustle? Like it’s a funny, funny joke, but it’s very true. What was the stat you shared about Elon Musk? How quickly, so between 2020 and 2021 was the fastest growth in wealth in human history. I think he made like a hundred million dollars a week or something on average between like the low and 20, obviously I’m picking like March, 2020 ’cause it was the low or whatever.

[00:30:53] Nick: Sure. Low was for Tesla, but still up through 2021 when Tesla just shot up and became super popular and Musk got even more popular and like over that period, you know, he was making like $6,000 a second I think, if I calculated that correctly. Which is insane to think about. And of course it’s not like liquid like paper, you can just take it out.

[00:31:09] Nick: It’s like on paper. But you get the point that I’ve never seen anything like that and it’s just crazy. And, and we, we may see something like that again, but in who knows how long it’s gonna take. 

[00:31:19] Joe: I think you mentioned that his net worth gain during that timeframe would’ve put him on something like the top 10 richest people.

[00:31:27] Joe: Just the gain alone. Just like 

[00:31:29] Nick: the, like the, yeah, the gain puts him on the Forbes list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, okay, what did I say? The increase in, in Musks wealth in a single week would’ve qualified for the Forbes 400 list on its own. Yeah. Every time he went to sleep, he woke up a hundred million dollars richer.

[00:31:41] Joe: This is what a ninja Nick Majuli is. Everybody, for those of you not watching this on video, he just picked up, turned to the page and he’s got it right there. Yeah. That’s called Knowing your book. Nick, let’s talk about leveraging your income because depending on what level you are, if you’re level one, it probably makes sense to do everything yourself and did not use leverage and to just build that muscle and build the foundation.

[00:32:02] Joe: Let’s talk about the oldest way people have started to get ahead, and this is hiring other people. I remember when I got to the point as a financial planner, where my time was worth more than the money I was spending. So hiring people to do stuff for me made a hundred percent sense. I remember calling my local grocery store and I told them, and this is by the way, probably 19 95, 96, Nick.

[00:32:25] Joe: Mm-hmm. And I said, here’s what I wanna have happen. I want somebody to buy groceries for me. I want them to go through the grocery store and buy all these groceries for me. Nick, they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. Like they, they, they’re like, yeah, we can’t do that. I’m like, no, no, no. I really don’t have time to buy groceries.

[00:32:38] Joe: I want somebody else to do that. If only 

[00:32:40] Nick: Instacart, I had got bigger. Yeah. If you just said, wait, 

[00:32:42] Joe: I 

[00:32:42] Nick: make that the idea has been there, but without the infrastructure for it, you can’t do it. It’s a great point. Like you knew like, I just need someone to do this. I’m willing to pay them whatever to get this done.

[00:32:52] Joe: Yeah. So hiring other people as leverage, what’s the upside? What’s the downside? 

[00:32:57] Nick: The hiring of other people, especially if, obviously in the case of running a business is, you know, they’re freeing up your time to do hopefully higher value generating activities. I’m guessing that’s revenue generating in your case of you’re a financial planner, maybe you’re calling prospects, et cetera, and buy back your time.

[00:33:11] Nick: There’s a book out there that’s actually really cool. It’s just like, yeah, just buy back your time. As soon as you realize you’re too busy, find ways to buy back your time and you start doing that throughout your business. That’s the upside, right? It’s like you’re paying someone less than the value they’re generating, so you as a whole make more money.

[00:33:25] Nick: The downside is you have to deal with people and people can be difficult to deal with. It’s not like a machine or a computer that’s just gonna do the same thing every time and do exactly what it’s told. It’s someone that has emotions and feelings and things happen in their life, and so that can be difficult.

[00:33:36] Nick: Some people love that, some don’t like that, and so that’s kind of one of the pluses and minuses is dealing with people. If you get good at it, obviously it’s very valuable skill to have working with people and all that, but it is one of the difficulties of using like labor as a form of leverage. 

[00:33:50] Joe: It doesn’t seem like a great level one, level two strategy.

[00:33:53] Nick: Well, first off, you don’t necessarily have the money to even do that, so it’s not even possible for a lot of people in those levels. I think you really have to have some resources. Once again, goes back to our old point, like you need some resources to start a business or something like that. Unless you have people that are willing to work for free or something, which doesn’t really happen, then that’s your only choice, 

[00:34:10] Joe: and that’s the bummer.

[00:34:11] Joe: People won’t work for free. Yeah, I hate that. Uh, second way you can leverage you, right, is deploying your money. I remember reading Rich Dad, poor Dad, right? Mm-hmm. My favorite part of that book is the fact, the big aha that I got, Nick, that I could go to work, but my money could have a lunch pail. Remember that analogy?

[00:34:29] Joe: My money would take a lunch pail and it would go to work, but it would work 24 7 and wouldn’t demand a break. Like that was pretty badass. I was like, bam. What’s the upside and downside to deploying your money to work for you? 

[00:34:40] Nick: The upside is, yeah, you’re right. It keeps working for you, right? You can use money to buy income producing assets.

[00:34:45] Nick: Those will create income. The downside is sometimes those assets go down in value and so it’s not making as much money. It could actually lose you money. So some of your wealth, which would’ve been okay in let’s say a US treasury bill, assuming that treasury’s solvent and everything could lose you money in a riskier asset class or, or an individual asset like buying an individual company versus a diversified basket of stocks, for example.

[00:35:06] Nick: So those are the risks there and things to think about when you’re deploying capital. 

[00:35:11] Joe: You talk about two other strategies to leverage as well, content and coding. Uh, I remember, uh, mark Cuban once talking at a event I was at about how coding looks hard, uh, to people that don’t do it. He said, but it’s like learning a language.

[00:35:27] Joe: Once you know how to do it, it’s far easier. So there’s this barrier to entry where you and I nick think that it’s like I hear people coding, I’m like, oh God no. I can’t do that. Mm-hmm. Content seems very easy to me ’cause it’s what I do every day. Content and coding. Who are these best for when I’m trying to leverage income into more income?

[00:35:47] Nick: So on the coding side, it’s just for anyone who wants to be technical and you can use code to get a job. Obviously now with AI and AI can do so much programming. It’s changing the labor market quite a bit, but at the same time, you still need to know how to code. So I’m a data scientist by training and so I know how to code a little bit.

[00:36:05] Nick: I’m not like a full on full stack software developer, but I know enough to be dangerous. And now with an AI tool, I can do even more. So I’ve built like these calculators on my website where it’s like people wanna look up the historical returns, the s and p 500, and that is something AI still can’t do, thankfully.

[00:36:19] Nick: And so for now, if you want like, oh, I want the dividend reinvested, inflation adjusted return from, I don’t know, January, 1980 to December, 1989, I can give that to you, right? Or I can do it if you’re buying over time. Like, so that’s an example of using a piece of code to create something and now people visit that website and then I run web ads and so I get, you know, a penny or something every time someone goes there.

[00:36:38] Nick: That’s an example of using code and leverage. And obviously I have an audience so people know who I am. If, if you created, they’re not you, but just someone without an audience created this and they can put out the calculator unless it’s way, way better, most people. Probably aren’t gonna hear about it and use it, right?

[00:36:51] Nick: So that’s code on the content side. You obviously know that very well. That’s putting out content where a lot of people, we’re gonna spend whatever, let’s say an hour talking about various things on this podcast, but that’s gonna be replicated over thousands and tens of thousands of times. Every time someone downloads and listens to this conversation, right?

[00:37:07] Nick: I don’t have to go and, Hey, let’s get them on a three-way call. Let’s have this convo, let’s do it again. And then the convo is different next time. And, oh wait, did we say that last time? It would take us the rest of our lives to have this one conversation with every person that’s gonna download it, if you really think of it that way.

[00:37:20] Nick: But we only have to do it once. So one hour of your time is now being replicated thousands of times. That’s because of the internet and the content distribution system and everything. But that’s why it’s so useful. And that’s true with books, it’s true with podcasts and many other things. That’s why it can be very helpful.

[00:37:34] Joe: The limits. You talk about, to your point, you already said that, uh, coding is a technical thing, so that’s gonna be difficult for a lot of people. Content really gets you from level two to level four. It’s not gonna get you past level four. Is that just because of the amount that it pays? 

[00:37:48] Nick: In general, unless like you have to write atomic habits or psychology of money, you have to write like one of the biggest books of the decade to get out of level four.

[00:37:55] Nick: Like even if you sell a million copies of a book, don’t get me wrong, that’s a lot of money, but let’s say you made 2 million bucks pre-tax. Okay? After tax, you made a million dollars, that’s not gonna get you past 10 million, right? So it’s still not there. You need to sell either a lot more or you need to use that content to leverage and sell a higher value product or something that’s like a, a higher value business.

[00:38:14] Nick: And once again, that requires another form of leverage. And the difficulty with content and code is just, there’s so much competition, especially now with. AI can write code for you. Content can be mass produced, writing can be mass produced, all these things. Because of that, it’s just the bar’s higher and so competition, it’s harder now to stick out and so you have to have even higher quality stuff to really win over people and and win their attention.

[00:38:36] Joe: I was fascinated by the third chapter of your book, which is where you look at investing and I, and I wanna touch on this before we say goodbye, because you looked at these seven different assets, cash vehicles, primary residence, retirement funds, real estate investments, mutual fund stocks, and business interest.

[00:38:53] Joe: What did you find was different based on the different level people were in when it came to these seven different assets? 

[00:39:02] Nick: So in general, people lower on the wealth flatter, and I’ll just say that’s levels one, two, and three have most of their assets in cash, their vehicle and their home. And then people higher on the wealth flatter, that’s levels four, five, and six have most of their assets in.

[00:39:15] Nick: Stocks, bonds, retirement accounts, real estate, and their own businesses. So in general, the, the takeaway from that is people lower on the wealth flatter don’t own a lot of income producing assets. People higher on the wealth flatter own a lot of income producing assets. And in each wealth level, the average percentage in income producing assets goes up.

[00:39:33] Nick: On average levels one to three have less than 25% of their assets as income producing ones. So like stocks, bonds, et cetera. In levels four through six, it’s over half of their assets are income producing assets. The takeaway is it’s more income producing assets all the way up. The wealth flatter and, and it makes sense if you have a hundred million dollars, very unlikely.

[00:39:51] Nick: Someone’s like, oh yeah, I just sold my business and I just own my home now. Like, no, they’re probably gonna own another business. They’re gonna diversify, they’re gonna have all sorts of stuff they’re gonna do with that, or they may still retain their business. And if you actually look on the wealth ladder, people in levels five and six have more of their assets in an individual business than any other wealth level because that’s how it works.

[00:40:08] Nick: They usually start a business that they own a lot of, and that’s how they build their wealth in the first place. 

[00:40:14] Joe: Some of the things that struck me just from a financial planning standpoint, level one people holding cash makes a bunch of sense because if every decision matters, if I’ve got that cash cushion, one bad break isn’t gonna screw me.

[00:40:28] Joe: And the second thing is it also strikes me that looking at the huge levels of debt to net worth ratio for people in level one makes sense. You haven’t built assets yet. Minimizing that debt as much as possible really has an outsized return on that investment and minimizing debt because if you minimize debt, you’re getting the level two a bunch easier than somebody goes from level two to level three or level three to level four if they minimize their debt.

[00:40:57] Nick: Yeah, I think it just has a bigger impact, obviously lower on the wealth flatter because. It can impact your financial security amongst a bunch of other things. So yeah, I agree with you. People in level one don’t have a lot of assets, so I can’t have 90% of my assets in a business when I don’t even have that much.

[00:41:11] Nick: I mean, what business is worth only $9,000? Right? You see what I point? It’s very unlikely unless you basically just came up with an idea in a garage. I think that’s another piece of it as well. It’s just they don’t have as much an asset, so what they have is their vehicles. Some cash, maybe a home or by level two and level three.

[00:41:26] Nick: Definitely the home makes up a bigger portion. 

[00:41:29] Joe: It was funny looking at receiving for retirement. I get on level one. You’ve got a bunch of day-to-day priorities. Level two, 10,000 to a hundred thousand retirement plays a little piece. I would’ve thought in level three you’d see a big jump up in retirement accounts, but it’s truly Nick, not until somebody gets to level four, like why is this a level four strategy and not as much a level three or, or is the point it should be level three, but the way it is now, it just happens to be level four.

[00:41:58] Nick: The issue is, if you look in level three, I mean, most of their assets are in their primary residence, so they buy their home, they have some retirement accounts, they don’t have nothing, but the people in level three that are doing that, they’re not maxing their retirement accounts. They’re putting in the the, they’re getting their match.

[00:42:12] Nick: They’re doing their thing. And if you do it over a long time, it ends up being a small portion of your assets, but it’s not gonna compare to your home, which you’re putting in a much larger payment every single month. I think that’s what’s driving the difference. And you can see like over time, that really builds into those in level four are probably maxing or they’re close to maxing and they have stocks on the outside.

[00:42:30] Nick: Maybe they own other real estate, and so that makes the difference there. 

[00:42:34] Joe: Okay, so if somebody is level three, ’cause that’s a huge part of our audience, right? Mm-hmm. People with a hundred thousand to a million dollars, big part of the Stacking Benjamins community, what’s the strategy then, is it to invest less in that?

[00:42:47] Joe: Primary residence initially, so I can sock more away into my retirement and solidify that earlier. Get financial independence earlier, or is it just a natural prog, or do I work more on the income side? Right. It more it’s income side. It’s the income side. 

[00:43:01] Nick: Yeah. If we looked at, and it’s actually funny, and I look at the panel study of income dynamics, it’s from the University of Michigan.

[00:43:07] Nick: It follows the same set of households over time. So I can see, hey, this person started here and here’s their income in all these years and here’s their spending and I can follow people. So I basically said, Hey. What’s the difference between people that start in level three and make it to level four over, let’s say 10 or 20 years, versus those that start in level three and stay in level three over 10 or 20 years.

[00:43:27] Nick: Now, the people that stay in level three, they still build wealth. They’re still doing fine. Yeah, they’re 

[00:43:30] Joe: gonna be okay. 

[00:43:31] Nick: But the people that make it to level four, the biggest difference is their income. The income’s just higher. They’re starting income’s higher, so it’s just they needed just more time to get there.

[00:43:39] Nick: And so focusing on that income, getting that higher, and then it makes it much easier to save and put more into income producing assets and have a bigger retirement account, et cetera. So I think that’s really the wedge. And I know it’s like, oh yeah, I wish we all had a magic wand and we can all raise our incomes.

[00:43:53] Nick: Doesn’t work that way, obviously, but realizing that, looking at the data, that is most of it. That’s most of the difference there. 

[00:43:59] Joe: And for our community. That’s just starting out. Nick, going from level one to level two, just people that are on the beginning end of becoming a stacker. Mm-hmm. What are some of those biggest keys?

[00:44:10] Nick: I think you should think about wealth a little more broadly than just money. Obviously, like you’re tracking dollars and cents to get outta level one. That’s gonna be the biggest impact you’re gonna see from money is just having that base level of security. Who else can help you think about friends, family, network, anything you can do to kind of start that journey and get you out of level one so then you can help others in the same situation as you to help others up.

[00:44:34] Nick: The well flatter. I just think that’s the most important thing, because the amount of stress that’s reduced once you’re in level two and you’re like, Hey, I don’t have to worry about my rent and I don’t have to worry about my food at the grocery store. You’re good at that point. I mean, it doesn’t mean you’re set for life, but the stress levels just drop dramatically after that point.

[00:44:49] Nick: I think you can look at just what happened during COVID. There were so many people that got these COVID checks and said, oh my God, I’ve never had excess money like this before in my life. And that was from one $1,500 check or 1-800-DOLLARS check. Imagine having 10 grand sitting in an account and being like, yeah, I’m, I’m feeling really comfortable now.

[00:45:06] Joe: I remember the first time I got a comment in my check and I thought that was the most badass thing. When there was a comment and I was making more than a thousand bucks, I was like, oh my God, what am I gonna do with all this money? The, the book is called The Wealth Ladder, proven Strategies For Every Step of Your Financial Life, and it was available yesterday.

[00:45:23] Nick: Yeah, it’s out now. So thanks for having me on. This is great timing. 

[00:45:26] Joe: Congratulations on your recent marriage. 

[00:45:29] Nick: Thank you. You’ll 

[00:45:29] Joe: notice, Nick, that I have less hair every time we talk, so just But that’s not marriage, that’s kids. 

[00:45:35] Nick: Oh, that’s okay. Okay. So gimme a few years. We’ll come talking. My hair’s already, it’s already starting.

[00:45:40] Nick: We’re starting the journey there, but gimme a few years. 

[00:45:43] Joe: I think that’s your role at Ritholtz that does that. 

[00:45:45] Nick: Yeah, possibly. Who knows?

[00:45:51] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today let’s go all the way back to the turn of the century. Turn of the century. That long ago. Yes, I’m talking about the year 2000. Heck, were there even cars back then? Doubt it. Because on today’s date, in that year, one cyclist proved his dominance in the sport of bicycle racing.

[00:46:13] Doug: By winning his second tour Defra an unusual feat for an American cyclist. He probably bicycled fast because they weren’t even phones back then were there. Maybe he had to bite quickly to get to a place where he could fill out his wordle, since he couldn’t do that online. Regardless. Here’s today’s question.

[00:46:32] Doug: Who was this cyclist? I’ll be back right after I go practice the unicycle. Oh man. What if he rode with just one wheel? That’d be impressive. Anybody can do it on two.

[00:46:53] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m unicycle, Tryer outer and guy who banged up his knees. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, way back at the turn of the century, AKA, the year 2000, or Y 2K for all the hipsters who were calling it that back then, they were just coming online with a new dance craze like the Carlton and music like Britney Spears.

[00:47:14] Doug: They must have listened to that on their Victrola, didn’t they? Also, in 2000, on today’s date, an American cyclist won the tour Defra for the second time. That’s how you say it. I mean, it’s not, I’m not making that up. He won it for the second time, asserting some dominance in the sport. Who was he? Well, sadly, many of those accolades were later taken from him as he finally admitted to cheating.

[00:47:38] Doug: That man was none other than cyclist Lance Armstrong and now three guys who could cheat all day and they would still lose the Tour de France, Joe OG and Doc G. 

[00:47:50] Joe: Yeah, I don’t think we’d ever p What’s funny is though, Jordan, is it turned out that not just Lance was cheating. Uh, pretty much most everybody in the Tour de France was team pretty much 

[00:47:58] Doug: everybody.

[00:47:59] Doc G: And the thing, of course, Joe, is I would’ve got that answer right. How come you don’t do that on a Friday? I would’ve got that one. There’s two 

[00:48:05] Doug: American cyclists we can name. I 

[00:48:07] OG: just wanna know, is it cheating if everybody’s doing it? 

[00:48:09] Joe: I know, right? That is a hundred percent my question. If everybody’s doing it, is it then cheating or is it that the def facto rule?

[00:48:15] OG: Speaking of cycling, I have a friend of mine who, uh, just celebrated a milestone birthday, speaking of milestone birthdays from our, uh, thing on, on Monday she did, I think it’s called the Triple Bypass. She and some friends, uh, you start in Littleton, Colorado and go to Avon, Colorado. 

[00:48:33] Doc G: And what does that have to do with heart disease?

[00:48:35] Doc G: Because as a doctor, triple bypass is usually something we do for people who are having heart attacks. 

[00:48:38] OG: I think it’s what you wanna have after pedaling your bike 110 miles up a mountain 

[00:48:42] Joe: through three different passes, apparently. 

[00:48:44] OG: Yeah, I think so. Duh. Yeah. Yep. That sounds tough. There you go. That’s what it’s about.

[00:48:52] Joe: Well, congratulations to her. That’s, uh, quite an accomplishment. Big thanks to Nick Majuli for coming down to the basement. And the, the thing that strikes me OG is again, this idea that yes, you can make it to a hundred thousand dollars. You can make it to a million dollars, maybe not 10 million, 

[00:49:12] OG: not that attitude, 

[00:49:13] Joe: but you can make it very far up the well ladder without making a significant amount of money.

[00:49:18] Joe: But it does make it a lot harder. It makes it a lot harder if you don’t think about how do I just earn more? I think that we underplay that a lot in this community because we’re so passionate about how do we save money and how do we focus on the things in our life that actually truly light us up?

[00:49:36] Joe: Right. We’re big into Vicki Robin and this idea of not, um, really thinking through our consumerism. 

[00:49:43] Doug: Not 

[00:49:43] Joe: all of us, but I think we also then, well not everybody, but I think it detracts from what Nick said. Yeah. Which is it’s exponentially e all the data shows it’s exponentially easier to get there if you just make a few more dollars.

[00:49:54] OG: You have so much margin of safety for screw ups. You know, he talks about these different levels of where money. Decisions are impactful, right? A hundred thousand dollars, you know, you can, a hundred dollars is impactful. A million dollars, $10 million. You can, like how, what your fudge factor is. I think about it like in terms of a little bit of income along the way here, and I don’t have any science behind this.

[00:50:16] OG: I’m not a data scientist. I just have 27 years of talking to people about money. But I kind of think there’s a couple of different bend points in income where it matters around 80 k or everything below a DK of income for a normal household, right? One or two people, everything counts, right? You’re paying attention to your grocery bill.

[00:50:35] OG: You, you know where the cheapest gas is. If you say, Hey, I need to get gas, my mom doesn’t make a lot of income, she’ll say, oh hey, if you go down another block and then turn right, that’s the Clark station. They have the cheapest fuel. And for people that make over 80 k, a lot of times you go, I need gas blinker.

[00:50:52] OG: Turn in. You know, you know, you’re not gonna make the choice. Like if it’s like literally the one across the street that’s less expensive, you, you, you might make the choice of. How do I get in and out of this without having to do two left turns, you know what I mean? Like you’re gonna go to the one that’s most convenient.

[00:51:05] OG: Yeah. I think at 150 k of income, maybe it’s 170 now, you really stop paying attention to grocery bills. I think you just go to the grocery store, you buy what you want, you buy what you need. You know, you’re not substituting beef for pork or pork for beef, depending. But below that, you’re making a little bit more educated choice.

[00:51:23] OG: And I’m not saying that you’re not shopping smart, but you know, if you want cherries today, you’re buying cherries today, you don’t care if they’re in season or on season. But before that, maybe you do. And I think around 300 K, you stop carrying how much it is to go out to eat. And I think if you expand on this a little bit more, you think about like the impacts of of income and how you can really screw up with a lot of income and still save 50 grand a year.

[00:51:50] OG: If you make half a million dollars a year, you can piss away 300,000. You know, you can just light on fire 25 KA month and still save 50 grand and go pay the, pay your $150,000 in taxes. 

[00:52:04] Joe: This is what’s amazing to me about Nick’s work is how often though og those numbers of income correlate to net worth?

[00:52:11] Joe: Like he’s a hundred percent they do. It blows me away. ’cause you know, for me, I’m like, no, no, no, there’s not a lot of correlation. Nick’s like, yeah, you wouldn’t think so. But there is. If you make $300,000 a year, you probably are the same person who has $2 million in your whatever investments, and if not, you’re gonna get there fairly quickly.

[00:52:28] Doc G: What is great about Nick’s wealth ladder is what you’re really talking about is toggling on the continuum of margin versus impact, right? So when you’re at the beginning of the wealth ladder, when you’re at the first rung, you have almost no margin. But then little things have a big impact. Like not buying that latte once a week has a big impact because you’re on the lowest level of the ladder.

[00:52:51] Doc G: On the other hand, once you start going up the ladder, you have a heck of a lot more margin. But then it’s also harder to have an impact, whether that’s spending or even whether that’s making, you gotta make a heck of a lot more for it to have an impact. Yeah. But you’ve also gotta spend a heck of a lot more, it’s trivial both ways.

[00:53:07] Doc G: An impact. Interesting. Yeah. So again, it’s margin and impact and it’s just changes depending on where you are in the wealth ladder. And that’s why I think actually it’s pretty brilliant. Yeah. You’re gonna pass up the thousand dollars. 

[00:53:17] Joe: I can make a thousand dollars quick opportunity because those are a dime a dozen.

[00:53:20] Joe: When you’ve got, you know, $10 million, you’re like, oh, a thousand no pass. I’m gonna spend that same time on the, you know, a hundred thousand dollars opportunity. 

[00:53:30] OG: Yeah. I, I was gonna say it. I think it also makes me think about the, I don’t know the, the business that we’re in, but the, um, the world we live in as it relates to online financial advice and, and, or.

[00:53:46] OG: Making commentary on other people’s lifestyle choices, financial goals, the things they do or choose not to do because everybody’s in a different spot. And I think this also illustrates like how these different things have different impacts for people based on where they are in their financial life. I, I can remember this story and maybe this is a little too far out of bounds here.

[00:54:11] OG: My brother and I were talking about socks. Steak brother. He famously, the reason we call him Steak Brothers ’cause he ordered the most expensive steak on the menu. Not knowing that special. The Chef special was not Blue light special, a la Kmart, but rather the most expensive thing. 

[00:54:26] Joe: Everybody in the back is high fiving themselves.

[00:54:28] Joe: High fiving, like we got one, we 

[00:54:30] OG: got a live one and the bill came out. It was $150 for his steak. And magically his arms got really short when the bill came. You know, T-Rex arms. But anyway, so we call him Steak Brother. He and I were talking about, so I don’t know, you know, as brothers, do you know, talking about what kind, what, what kind of socks are you wearing these days?

[00:54:45] OG: I talked about the socks. I was like, oh, I these great socks, man. They’re awesome. They, you know, and they come in these, it’s a 12 pack and dah, dah, dah. I said, here’s the link. And he sent to me, he goes, are these things a hundred dollars for a 12 pack? And I’m like, I, I, I honestly don’t even know. I just was researching socks and I found these to be the best.

[00:55:03] OG: And I sent him, he is like, God dang man, I, I hope one day I’m like you, that I get to you just blow a hundred dollars. And he wasn’t being a jack wagon about it or kind of throwing my face in it. But it did remind me that the decisions that we make at different incomes and net worth are really. You know it, it’s not fair to compare them to other people, you know, because Yeah, the a hundred, like some half the people listening to this right now are going a hundred dollars for socks.

[00:55:28] OG: What the heck is wrong with you? Well, and half the people are going, yeah man, those are great socks. 

[00:55:31] Joe: Yeah. Og, let’s put this into context. A lot of our stackers that follow the show closely know, which is frequent contributor. Paul Pant is spending a ton of money on, oh boy. Chemo for her cat. Oh boy. 

[00:55:44] Nick: Oh boy.

[00:55:44] Joe: Well, which is something that you and I have already talked about this we wouldn’t do. 

[00:55:48] OG: Yeah, 

[00:55:48] Joe: but, but still getting judgy about that, not knowing. Sure. Absolutely. What’s going on? She’s in a different 

[00:55:53] OG: spot. 

[00:55:54] Joe: Abso a hundred percent in a different spot. I’m like, I got Cooper sitting next to me right now. Sorry dude.

[00:55:59] Joe: You would be gone. Yeah. 

[00:56:03] Doc G: I think this is also one of the problems with gurus. 

[00:56:05] OG: Yeah. 

[00:56:06] Doc G: Often people are listening to gurus who are at a very different place in the wealth ladder than they are. So like Grant Cardone, if you’re listening to grant card. Yeah, I was gonna say, if you’re listening to Grant Cardone and you’re at the beginning of the wealth ladder and you’re at stage one and you’re just trying to make it to zero at $10,000, he’s singing a song that doesn’t fit for you.

[00:56:26] OG: Yeah. You gotta be careful with that stuff. And I think it’s also important to recognize a all advice is not the same. One size does not fit all. You are where you are. And if you catch yourself, to your point being a little judgy about like, I can’t believe OG spent a hundred dollars on socks. What a waste of money.

[00:56:46] OG: It’s okay. Like I recognize that I don’t owe you an explanation for how I choose to run my life, nor do you owe me one how you choose to do yours, and that’s perfectly fine. Right? Wanting what one wants is a rightfully selfish process. We got that from our. Fearless leader many years ago. Absolutely.

[00:57:05] Joe: Definitely. And we did talk about this before when we, when we dove into consumerism the week that Katie, uh, Gati Ssen was our mm-hmm. Mentor that you do owe yourself an explanation though. Like if I’m on that first No, no. If I’m on that first round, I don’t owe you won. Agreed. But if I’m on that first rung of the wealth ladder and I am, I’m investing in my brother-in-law’s restaurant, and I have less than $10,000 to my name, I gotta be explaining myself where that actually fits.

[00:57:32] Joe: I wanna talk to you, Jordan, because initially we were talking about the amount of money that you make. You know, you and I have talked about this, that you don’t keep a dollar by dollar budget. And it just seems to me that in your life, that zero to 10,000 because you chose a higher paying career, that first rung in the wealth ladder for you was a blip.

[00:57:53] Joe: It was maybe a very short point in time and you were over the $10,000 mark. 

[00:57:57] Doc G: And let’s be honest, I also grew up in a relatively wealthy family. I really didn’t have that time. Even if you didn’t 

[00:58:03] Joe: have 10,000, you had access to 10,000. Yeah, 

[00:58:06] Doc G: and I had grandparents who passed away and left me little bits of money here and there too.

[00:58:09] Doc G: So that really wasn’t part of my experience. Eventually I was tracked also educationally into a place that I was going to make a lot of money. Now, granted, I also worked, I started working about 14 and ended up, you know, making a lot of money in high school because I was just a fairly driven person. So I always kind of had money around.

[00:58:30] Joe: You worked with, uh, juvenile delinquents. You stood on the corner and told ’em when the cops were coming, 

[00:58:34] Doc G: that that was it. That was it. I was the, I I was the lookout. You were the lookout. Let’s do our headline. 

[00:58:40] headlines: Hello Doling. And now it’s time for your favor. Part of the show, I was Stacking Benjamin’s headlines 

[00:58:46] Joe: last week.

[00:58:47] Joe: We talked about goal setting and achievement, and I posted in our Facebook group a meme from Henry David Thoreau, that’s always spoken to me. It said, what you get from achieving your goals is not as great as what you become from achieving your goals. And this idea that it’s not about. The end goal that most of us think that it is, it’s actually this work that we do toward the goal that ends up becoming the big thing.

[00:59:14] Joe: It’s funny because when I posted that I was immediately supersized by two stackers, David and Philip who sent this in. I wanted this to be our headline for today, guys, and this is a little bit long, but I hope you stick with it ’cause it’s an important message that came out just last week from the number one golfer in the world, a guy named Scotty Scheffler talking about this attainment in golf of the highest rung or winning a tournament.

[00:59:40] bit: I think I said something after the Byron this year about like, it feels like you work your whole life to celebrate. Winning a tournament for like a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes. That kind of euphoric feeling like to win the Byron Nelson Championship at home, I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf, to have an opportunity to win that tournament.

[00:59:59] bit: And you win it, you celebrate. Get to hug, hug my family, my sister’s there. It’s such an amazing moment. And then it’s like, okay, now, now what are we gonna eat for dinner? You know, life goes on this, I, is it great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf yet, I mean, it, it brings tears to my eyes just to think about because it’s literally worked my entire life.

[01:00:20] bit: To become good at this sport and to have that kind of sense of accomplishment, I think is, is a pretty cool feeling. You know, to get to live out your dreams is very special. But at the end of the day, I’m not out here to inspire the next generation of golfers. I don’t, I’m not here to inspire somebody else to be the best player in the world because what’s the point?

[01:00:36] bit: You know, this is not a fulfilling. Life. It’s, it’s fulfilling from a sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of like the deepest places of your heart. You know, there’s a lot of people that make it to what they thought was gonna fulfill them in life. And then you get there and all of a sudden you get to number one in the world.

[01:00:52] bit: And then they’re like, what’s the point? And I really do believe that because, you know, what is the point? You’re like, why, why do I wanna win this tournament so bad? That’s something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. It’s like showing up at the Masters every year. It’s like, why do I wanna win this golf tournament so badly?

[01:01:06] bit: Why do I wanna win the open championship so badly? I don’t know. Because if I win, it’s gonna be awesome for about two minutes. It, then we’re gonna get to the next week and it’s gonna be like, Hey, you won two majors this year. How important is it for you to win the FedEx Cup playoffs? And it’s just like, we’re, we’re back here again.

[01:01:21] bit: You know? So we really do, we work so hard for such little moments and, um, you know, I’m kind of a sicko. I, I love putting in the work. I love being able to practice. I love getting out to live out my dreams, but at the end of the day, sometimes I just don’t understand the point. 

[01:01:34] Joe: It’s pretty wild dear. The number one golfer in the world mentioned that, that, that Jordan, it truly, I mean this is kind of the point I think of the purpose code and, and also I was about 

[01:01:43] Doc G: to say, do you have Scotty Scheffer’s address?

[01:01:45] Doc G: Maybe we should send him a copy of my book. I got it. I think you would clear it all up for it. One second. 

[01:01:50] Joe: And your new book about, meaning that I know you’re working on right now, that your research, a lot of research on meaning, but it truly isn’t like, I’m gonna show up there and it’s all of a sudden unicorns and rainbows.

[01:02:00] Joe: ’cause you’re gonna celebrate for three minutes, it’s a great three minutes and then you’re on the next thing. 

[01:02:04] Doc G: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s the real big difference between what I call big P purpose and little p purpose, big P purposes, goal oriented. And what Scotty Scheffler right there is talking about is he’s talking about goal oriented purpose as opposed to what I call little p purpose, which is process oriented purpose.

[01:02:18] Doc G: And here’s the issue, if you set your sense of happiness on Big P purpose, goal oriented purpose, one of the few things happen. First of all, because it’s big p purpose, it’s hard. Like not everyone can win a majors the way Scotty Shuffler can. So if, if that’s your goal of purpose. First of all, 99% of the time you’re gonna fail.

[01:02:36] Doc G: So automatically, it’s kind of a losing proposition. But let’s say you’re like Scotty Scheffler and you succeed. Well, one of two things happens once you succeed. There’s this thing called hedonic adaption. We have a happiness set point, and the problem is when you do something like win a major, your happiness goes up briefly.

[01:02:53] Doc G: But we tend to, hed sonically adapt or what’s called habituate back to our baseline level of happiness. So even if it does make you happy, it’s brief and you fall back down. And so if you’re not thoughtful about it, it’s like, well, what’s the next thing? How am I gonna double down and win yet another one so I can bring back this good feeling?

[01:03:14] Doc G: That’s part of it. You know what the other part is? The other part is loss aversion. Once you hit that high, you become petrified that you’re gonna lose it. I don’t know if any of you guys saw Swamp King on Netflix, urban Meyer, Florida. Gators missed that one. It’s a fantastic series and, and a perfect version of loss aversion.

[01:03:34] Doc G: Season one is all about his first season with the Florida Gators. He talks about the trials and tribulations. He finally gets to the national championship and they win it. And at the end of season one, it’s like the last minute of the last episode of season one, and he’s like, and I was on such a high.

[01:03:49] Doc G: And then he looks at the camera and he says, and little did I know I was about to have the worst next year of my life. Why was the next year the worst year of his life? Because he had all the pressure of trying to win another championship and he didn’t get there. And so we’re petrified that once we even get to that thing we’re striving for, we’re going to lose it.

[01:04:10] Doc G: And so if your version of happiness is all based on Big P purpose, the likelihood is you’re gonna spend a lot of your time doing stuff that you may or may not like. That’s the process part. To get to this goal, which is fleeting. A better version is to really love what you do. And, and Scotty Shuffler actually is a great example of someone he probably loves playing golf.

[01:04:29] Doc G: He probably loves the comradery, he loves the relationships he’s formed. He probably loves even getting out and practicing. So he doesn’t, maybe doesn’t love every minute. I would actually, he’s, he’s describing process oriented purpose. It’s just the goals sometimes get in the way. 

[01:04:42] Joe: Well, and I would attest that’s why Scotty Schuffler is the number one golfer is ’cause he loves the process.

[01:04:46] OG: Well he said that and I think he was answering a question where somebody was basically asking the question of like, how important is it to you? And he was like getting around to the point of like, none of this matters to me, the thing that I enjoy most. And he says at the very end, the thing I enjoy most is being on the range and grinding.

[01:05:03] OG: And that translates into what you guys think is the win, which is, you know, winning. But he is like, I’m, I’m good Jordan. I was laughing there for a second ’cause you asked if I watched the show. Swamp people or whatever you’re talking about Gators Swamp. That’s what I’m thinking. Yeah. And I’m like, I’m going, yeah.

[01:05:16] OG: I would never watch a show about Gators. Then I realize you’re talking about a football game, and I’m like, oh wait, actually, how come I haven’t watched this? I might watch that 

[01:05:21] Doc G: actually. Yeah. Urban Meyer, right? Urban Meyer. I think it, oh, then I’m definitely not watching it. 

[01:05:27] OG: Yeah. 

[01:05:28] Joe: But OG you’ve talked about this in the past, which is, uh, this idea of living in the gain and not in the gap, I think also pertains to this.

[01:05:35] OG: I mean, constantly striving for an impossible horizon, the infinity. And it’s not possible. You know, the only way that you can measure yourself is you can only measure backwards. Right? You can dream forward and that’s fine, but when you measure, you have to measure backwards. And the other thing that Doc g said that I thought was really funny was basically he explained my resting B face as being my normal, my normal, uh, status in life, which I also thought was pretty funny.

[01:06:02] OG: I was like, oh, so that’s just, I’m okay the way I am, doc. I, I appreciate that man. That, uh. You know, me getting back to my resting B face is, uh, is kind of my normal status. 

[01:06:12] Doc G: I, I wish, I think there’s one other thing that we should be careful not to miss here, and the point is a lot of people strive for these wins, these big audacious goals because they don’t feel very good inside.

[01:06:26] Doc G: And they’re like, well, if I can just reach this big audacious goal, if I can just feel good, get to this, then I’ll feel good. And it never works. It never works. So purpose is kind of what I think is doing the things that light us up. But I often talk about the difference between meaning and purpose and meaning is that kind of feeling enough of enoughness, which hopefully we have from dealing with our traumas and problems of the past, right?

[01:06:48] Doc G: You look at your childhood and when you were growing up and you had all these hurdles to get over, and hopefully you overcame them and can tell yourself a story about your past where you’re like, wow, I had this really tough stuff happen to me, but I overcame it and I was enough. And so I don’t really have to prove myself anymore.

[01:07:04] Doc G: Like I don’t have to win the championship to be a good person. If you can’t deal with that past enough to feel good about it, you get on this achievement treadmill of, of trying to keep on achieving your way to enough or achieving your way to feeling purposeful, and that, that doesn’t work real well.

[01:07:20] Joe: Doug’s trauma is, is that we’ve cut him off three times in a row. 

[01:07:24] Doug: I’m still dealing with it. I’ll, uh, I’ll eventually get out of the fetal position in the corner that I’m in right now, but I got so excited when I first heard this clip from Scotty Shuffler because, and I used to talk about this with project teams.

[01:07:38] Doug: Often about the comparison of sports to the rest of our lives. I think we love sports and movies too, but we love sports because it is in, in three hours. It is life contained. You have a beginning and middle and end. You have an outcome. Hopefully it’s the one you’re hoping for, that your team wins and you get that rush of endorphins of some kind of success, but it’s so compressed that it’s easy to identify success and failure, whether you know you were in the game or you’re just rooting for your team.

[01:08:07] Doug: You get that rush. But the problem with the rest of our lives, whether it’s our work life or our home life or anything else, is it’s very slow and it’s very difficult to recognize when you’ve crossed that milestone and to feel that rush because it took so long to get there. Even if it’s over the course of three days, it took too long to get there to oftentimes feel that rush.

[01:08:28] Doug: And so I used to talk often to project teams to say, look, we set up this plan and we’ve talked. Ad nauseum. That sounds bad, but we talk almost every week about set up your plan, your financial plan, your life plan, set that plan up and stick to it. If you set that plan up and you have milestones along the way, you have to make sure you force yourself to celebrate those milestones that you’ve reached.

[01:08:52] Doug: In the same way you would celebrate the Lions winning the NFC Championship. Yes, it’s gonna happen, but you’ve got to make celebrations out of those things so that you know when you’ve hit them and you get that excitement out of it. It’s the only way you’re gonna build the momentum. But we just instead, it’s easier to turn on the TV on Saturday or Sunday and watch a, watch a golf tournament or watch a football game.

[01:09:13] Doc G: You know what’s a really great model for this? The amazing series, Ted Lasso, right? Ted Lasso, if you ever watch the series, right? He comes in and he starts coaching soccer, right? And he’s never been a soccer coach before. But he doesn’t become a soccer coach by winning a championship. If you watch the show, he actually fails off and his teams fail often, but he truly becomes what he wants to be a soccer coach by the day in, day out process of doing it.

[01:09:43] Doc G: And that’s why, in fact, one of the wonderful things about that series is it’s a beautiful version of purpose and happiness and it has almost nothing to do with the wins. Because if you watch the show, they lose more often than they win. 

[01:09:57] Joe: It’s this inside out transformation. We go from thinking that we suck ’cause we don’t win very much to.

[01:10:02] Joe: We’re, we’re good enough. We are good enough. Yeah. You 

[01:10:04] Doc G: become the thing by doing the thing, not by reaching the goal. 

[01:10:08] Joe: Yeah. And then they start winning. It’s a great conversation and I love that, uh, this idea of the wealth ladder and where does it sit, certainly makes life easier. As you’re chasing your purpose.

[01:10:19] Joe: But if, if your purpose is to get to $10 million and then you’re gonna be happy or a hundred million dollars and you’re gonna be happy, well we’ve got some news for you. That’s not the thing. And again, big thanks to David and Philip for also sharing those in our community. Speaking of community, we’ve got one big thing, Doug, in the neighborhood, and I see it right here, so I’m just gonna run with it, if that’s all right with you.

[01:10:40] Joe: Prices going up on our guides. First of all, before I get to Prices Rising, our new college planning guide is going to come online on August 1st. Everything from how to plan together, uh, with college, about college is a family, prioritizing that kind of the rubric to think through the college decision and also success in college as well as of course, the idea of how to pay for it.

[01:11:02] Joe: Everything from 5 29 plans to filling out the FAFSA form. And more that will be coming online in, uh, what, just over a week. But at the same time, all of our guides are going up in price. That includes our tax time guide and our HR guide. And with hr, with, it’s just about benefits time. If you think you’re gonna need some help with your benefits, no time like now to buy it before the price goes up.

[01:11:29] Joe: Stacking Benjamins dot com slash guides gets you there. And, uh, we want to tell our longtime stackers who listen to us now that the price is going up and you buy it one time and every month we update it. In fact, I can’t say anything today, but I’m very much hoping when the July update drops that I have maybe the most exciting announcement about the update this month.

[01:11:52] Joe: And if not, it’s, it’s coming fairly soon. Yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t have even said that, but, but I put some exciting, some exciting updates coming to the, coming, coming to the guide that I just can’t talk about, 

[01:12:01] Doug: but, and, and prices going up to like, what, 12,000. 

[01:12:05] Joe: Yeah, 12,000 or $120, whichever one’s lower. So $120 by at one time.

[01:12:11] Joe: Never buy it again. We updated every month. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash guides. Yeah. 12 easy payments of a thousand dollars each. No, definitely not. Somebody half listening is gonna think that we’re, that’s really is the price. That is, that is not the price. All right, that’s gonna do it for today. Uh, Jordan, 

[01:12:29] Doc G: what’s coming up at Earn Invest Man, we continue doing our Monday 10 things episodes and our Thursday interviews.

[01:12:37] Doc G: We’re about to do an Ask Me Anything episode for our community episode this month. So lots of stuff going on. 

[01:12:45] Joe: Awesome. And that’s it. Earn and Invest our Brothers show. So pause this, go subscribe to Jordan’s podcast. Thanks for riding along with us today, my friend. Thanks for having me, Doug. Take it from here, man.

[01:12:56] Joe: What’s on our to-do list for today? 

[01:12:58] Doug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from Nick Majuli, when you’re starting out, keep a cash cushion and sweat the small stuff, but most of all work on earning more money that makes the road easier. Second, achieving goals come on. How many times do we have to say this? It’s about the journey, not the outcome, but the big lesson.

[01:13:20] Doug: These neighborhood kids are SAPs. They challenge me to a bike race without realizing I’m rocking an e-bike. I totally left them eating my dust on the uphills. What losers. Thanks to Nick Majuli for joining us today. You’ll find his hot new book, the Wealth Ladder, wherever books are Sold, but also using the link in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com.

[01:13:44] Doug: And finally, thanks to Doc G for joining us today. Looking for in-depth money discussions on diverse topics. Visit Our Brother Show, earn, and invest wherever you are listening to us today. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets some help from a few of our neighborhood friends.

[01:14:07] Doug: You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.

[01:14:26] Doug: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.