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The Long View
Nick Maggiulli: Climbing the Wealth Ladder
00:54:27
The author and blogger discusses how financial priorities should change with income and net worth, the money/happiness connection, and why deciding how to spend is just as important as deciding how to invest.
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- [00:00]
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Podcast Announcer
Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.
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Christine Benz
Hi and welcome to the Longview. I'm Christine Benz, Director of personal finance and Retirement Planning for Morningstar.
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Amy Arnott
And I'm Amy Arnott, Portfolio strategist with Morningstar.
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Christine Benz
Today on the podcast, we welcome back Nick Magiulli. He's the author of a new book called the Wealth Proven Strategies for Every Step of your Financial Life. His first book was called called Just Keep Buying. In addition, Nick writes a wonderful blog called Of Dollars and Data, which is focused on the intersection between data and personal finance. In his day job, Nick is the chief Operating Officer and Data Scientist at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He received his bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University. Nick, welcome back to the Longview.
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Nick Magiulli
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
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Christine Benz
Well, we appreciate you being here and congratulations on the book. You know, we often hear that if someone had a successful first writing, the second one can create some angst. Did you find that to be the case that writing the wealth ladder was harder than Just Keep Buying was?
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Nick Magiulli
In some ways, yes. In some ways, no. The only part that was easier was that I had obviously written a book before, so I didn't have that, like, existential dread of, like, will I finish it? What's going to happen? Like, I knew I would get through it eventually. I think the part that was actually harder, it was a harder book to write, all else equal, because my writing process was just very different. When I wrote Just Keep Buying, I had so much prior material from my blog that I was just using again. So, like, I would say 70% of just keep Buying was like old blog posts that I kind of, you know, repolished and like restructured to create Just Keep Buying. But with the wealth ladder. I had to just focus exclusively on one idea. So I ended up writing so much more new stuff. I'd say 80% of the wealth ladder is new material. Like the idea I've talked about previously on one blog post. But it was a very like, hey, here's this blog post, whatever. And then I'm like, hey, I actually have to like, think about this much more deeply and really kind of do a lot more research to bring this idea to life. And so it's much newer. And that's, that's why it was harder.
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Amy Arnott
You also describe yourself as a writer who used to hate writing. How did you kind of get over that hurdle?
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Nick Magiulli
I think you just have to write about what you want to write about. I think that's the big thing. Like I, you know, I think if you guys remember back to grade school and stuff, it's like, okay, you need to write a 1,000 word essay on the Scarlet Letter. And as maybe you guys love that book or you didn't or whatever, you've read a thousand word essay on Catcher in the Rye. Whatever it is, you have to write about stuff that someone else wants you to write about. And I think that makes it very difficult to be passionate about writing when you're writing about something else that you don't, you maybe don't necessarily care for. So once it's like, hey, here's a topic I really like writing about personal finance, investing, etc, I find it's much easier to kind of keep writing and do something that, you know, I used to hate it because I wasn't writing about what I wanted to. Now that I get to write about what I want to, I enjoy it.
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Christine Benz
So a basic premise of your new book, the Wealth Ladder, is that financial strategies that worked for us earlier in our lives don't necessarily work when we've amassed more money. And so to use a simple example, if I have $10 million, I probably don't need to be clipping coupons anymore. So was there a specific catalyst for this thesis? Was there kind of an example or a series of examples in your life that lent themselves to wanting to write a book on this thesis?
- [04:23]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I think, I mean, I didn't realize it at the time, but like, looking back, it's very obvious now. Like in my first job out of college, I was working in consulting and it was a good job. I was getting paid well and everything. But after a few years I was like hitting like kind of a, an upper limit. I was like, hey, okay, now I know that I'm like, okay, I can see my 5% annual raises. I'm going to get this, let's say indefinitely. I'm just pretending to project out my career. I could see what my bonuses would be and everything. And I'm like, this is capping out. Like, you know, early on this was great when I didn't have any money, all this stuff was nice. I was very fortunate early in my career. But after a while you're like, hey, like, there's no real long term potential here. Like, yes, I could just keep getting these nice raises or whatever, but I realized I had to change something up and I needed to do something I was more passionate about and had more upside potential. And so for me, that was like, hey, maybe I should really, like start talking about personal finance, investing, and maybe I should eventually move my career into that space, which is kind of what happened. But it took me a few years to get there. But that was kind of the big catalyst for me was like my old strategy of like, okay, just work, you know, get your bonus reinvested, like, that's fine. It would have still worked. It just would have taken a lot longer for me. I started to realize, like, I had to change my strategy up. I had to start this quote side hustle, which is blogging and writing and all that stuff. So that was the big kind of turning point for me. But, you know, people feel this all the time. You'll see. Hey, this strategy that used to work doesn't work anymore, you know. Another example I give in the book is like, I used to, when I was a little kid, I helped my dad. We'd get cans and we all the cans we drank, we put them in the, you know, garbage bags, we take them down to get the CRV value. So you get like 20 bucks for a bag, 40 bucks for a few bags, whatever. And like, that made sense, you know, at the time, but now it's like, my dad has his whole insurance business. He doesn't have time to do that anymore. Like, it's not. Doesn't make sense for him to go and collect cans. Right? The wage is now worth it, so to speak. So it's all those types of things.
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Amy Arnott
Maybe I was just thinking that we should probably take a step back and give people a quick definition of what the wealth ladder is. Can you kind of summarize the concept and how you came up with that?
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Nick Magiulli
Yeah, of course. So the wealth ladder is just a new framework for thinking about building wealth. And that framework is based on six distinct levels of wealth. And when I say wealth, I just mean your net worth. So that's all of your assets, everything you own, minus all of your liabilities, so everything you owe. So for example, take all the cash in your checking account, that's an asset. Your, your home value, that's an asset, etc. That's on the asset category. Subtract out everything that you owe to others. So if you have a mortgage, student loan debt, credit card debt, etc. That's all your liabilities. You net those two numbers and you get to a number that's your net worth. Right? And you don't need to have it down to the penny. You just have to know the range because that range determines what wealth level you're in. So level one, I say, is less than ten thousand dollars in net worth. Level two is ten thousand to a hundred thousand dollars. Level three is a hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars. Level four is 1 million to 10 million. Level five is 10 million to 100 million. And finally level six is 100 million plus. The thing that makes that framework very easy is once you know one of the levels, because they're all just factors of 10 off of each other, you can kind of figure out the rest. So if you just remember, hey, level three is a hundred thousand dollars to a million in wealth or net worth, then you can figure out, okay, level four must be one to 10 million. Level two is 10,000 to 100,000. Etc. Right? So I find that this is very helpful for a host of reasons because I think it maps onto economic classes in the United States. We can get into that. It maps onto spending behavior, investment behavior, a whole bunch of stuff. And that's what the first part of the wealth Platter the book is about. It's about just understanding this concept and why it's very useful as a framework for thinking about how you spend money, income decisions, career decisions, and then also how you invest your money.
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Christine Benz
So, yeah, let's expand on that, how it maps on to the economic classes in the U.S. can you talk about that? Like, what percentage of the population roughly falls into each of those six bands?
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Nick Magiulli
Yeah, so once again, I'm going to just give you the rough percentage is the exact percentages are in the book. It's just easier to give you, like, so roughly 20%. Remember, this is household wealth. So if you, you know, this is your household. So if you have a partner, obviously you include their wealth. Right. 20% are in level one. That's less than $10,000. Roughly 20% are in level two, which is 10,000 to $100,000 in wealth. And that would probably be like, you know, lower middle class, working class. That's what level two is. Level three, that's a hundred thousand to a million. That's about 40% of the U.S. so that's your, that's middle class. Right. That's like where most, Most Americans are. 40% of the U.S. and then level four, which is 1 million to 10 million, that's millionaires. That's going to be about 16% of the U.S. right. So I' saying 20 because you'll see why in a second. So roughly, you know, 16 in the U.S. actually, let's just say 18 to make the math a little bit easier. 18 of the U.S. is 1 to 10 million. And then the last two, like level 5 and level 6, that's the last 2% of the United States, more or less. So that's an approximation of where everyone is. So it's 20% level one, 20% level two, 40% in level three, and then roughly 20% in everyone above level four. And most of that is obviously in level four, which is 1 million to 10 million. So, and this is actually a big change because level four, that 1 to 10 million bucket, has grown significantly since, especially since COVID Like you look at the snapshot Data, and in 2019, it was not as large as it is now. So that, that cohort is getting bigger and bigger. And that's what I call the upper middle class. I know 10, you're saying $10 million upper middle class. Like, no, most of the U.S. it's definitely not. It's definitely upper class. But in parts of the US if you have like $6 million, like you're probably upper middle class in a very high cost of living city. I know that's shocking to some people, but that's, I think that's the, the truth of it.
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Amy Arnott
And the data source for a lot of this data is the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer finances.
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Nick Magiulli
Yep. The 2022/20. It uses some 2023 data as well. A quarter of the surveys are in 23, but yeah, it's the, it's the SCF. So the federal Reserve runs this data, the snapshot, every three years. I'm very interested in the 2025 data, which will be released next year in 2026, but we have to wait for it. It's like every three years we get this, this treasure trove of information, and it's very interesting to see it kind of how it plays out.
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Amy Arnott
Yeah, definitely. Can you talk a little Bit about the composition of wealth within each of the bands. So how does it break down between cash holdings versus real estate or retirement accounts, other accounts, things like that?
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Nick Magiulli
Yeah. So I'll just say in general, I mean, I don't have all the numbers memorized off the top of my head, but I'll say in general those in the lower half of the wealth ladder, so let's say level one, level two, level three, you see a lot more assets in cash, in vehicles and in your primary residence, so your home. And then those in the upper half of the wealth ladder, level four or five and six, you see most of their assets are in, you know, retirement accounts, individual stocks, stockholdings and some sort of equities and then individual businesses. So like personal business investing. Right. And so like those in Level 6 with $100 million plus in wealth over half on average of you took all the people in that bucket. I mean there's not too many in the data, but what they have, they do their best to sample. Over half of their wealth is in individual businesses. And which makes sense. Like you think of all the billionaires out there, like almost all of their wealth is going to be concentrated in like one big business. Right. Like you know, Jeff Bezos has Amazon, you know, Bill Gates for the longest time had Microsoft. He's now very diversified. So that's a whole separate discussion. But like if you're trying to figure out like what's the difference in the assets between those lower on the wealth ladder and those higher on the wealth ladder, it's really just a shift into income producing assets. If you look at the assets held by those lower on the wealth ladder, those assets don't produce income. Cash vehicles, your primary residence, none of that is kicking off an income stream to you. Then you compare that to those in level 4, which is 1 million to 10 million, etc. Or above. All those people in levels 4 and up, most of their assets are in income producing assets. Things like stocks, you know, things in your retirement account, bonds in businesses, etc. So it's just, that's the big shift I see. And so like it's even kind of ironic because in my first book, Just Keep Buying, you know, the mantra is the continual purchase of a diverse set of income producing assets. And that still holds. Like now that I've looked through the data across the spectrum, that is still the case. I still believe that. It's just interesting that you can kind of see that type of pattern happening as individuals acquire wealth.
- [12:40]
Christine Benz
I want to home in on that Level four, which you said is growing. And my guess is that if we're to think of the composition of the audience listening to this podcast, I'm thinking a lot of them would probably be in that band or their clients would be in that band. It's a big range, 1 million to 10 million. And it seems like you could argue that being at the top or bottom of the range could really make a material difference in someone's lifestyle and their level of financial security in retirement. Do you encounter a lot of people who don't really aspire to be in level five or six, but probably want to be further up within level four? What's your take on that?
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Nick Magiulli
I mean. Oh, for sure. I think the. It brings me back to that quote from Rockefeller was asked by a journalist, how much money is enough? And the. And he answered just a little bit more. And so I think that's always the case. Like, we're always kicking the can down the road. Like, people have their fire number, oh, once I hit $3 million, then I'll have enough income to never have to worry again. But then, oh, well, inflation went up, so maybe I need 4 million or, oh, this happened. Maybe I need this. And, oh, like, it's easy to keep. And some of these are justified. Like, you know, prices change, things change. Like, it's fine to change your mind over time, but I think it's very easy to kind of keep playing that relative game and keep, you know, kicking the can down the road. In terms of what's enough, I think it's a tough thing. It's not easy to come up with what's enough. Or yeah, is. Is it better if you had 2 million, would you probably feel more comfortable with 8 million? Yes, probably. You know, and that's why I said some with 8 million is probably closer to the lifestyle of someone in level 5 than somewhat 2 million is. But they're more similar in a lot of ways than meets the eye. So in terms of just thinking about that, yeah, I agree. Like, people obviously feel like they need more. At the same time, I think. I think the big shocking thing is, like, you know, once you get to that level of wealth, once you're in level four, like, even a significant amount of money to most Americans is not going to fundamentally change your lifestyle. You know, if you have 5 million bucks, an extra hundred thousand dollars is going to basically do nothing for you. Even though, like, you could go on a bunch of vacations with that. That's like, I know that sounds so out of touch, but, like, it's not like that extra hundred thousand is going to allow you to go fly private all the time or you're going to have a, you know, a full time butler for the rest of your life. You know, there's just, it's not enough wealth to fundamentally change how you live your day to day, but it just goes to show the value of money changes as you have more of it and it just becomes, I would say, less useful at some point over time.
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Amy Arnott
What about people who might not feel wealthy or free to spend at each of those levels? For example, someone in level four with between 1 million and 10 million who still wants to skimp a lot on airfare and travel, things like that, hotel expenses. Do you think it's common to have disconnects like those?
- [15:24]
Nick Magiulli
I think there's a few things to think about with this. First is like, how is your wealth comprised? You know, if you have, oh, hey, I have a net worth of $4 million, but 3 million of that is in my house, you know, which I bought a long time ago, now it's worth a lot. That's going to feel very different than oh Yeah, I have $4 million and it's liquid, you know, or I have a $500,000 house, which I love, and I have another $3.5 million liquid. It's just a different feeling in terms of the amount of cash you have. So I think composition is a piece of it. The second piece of it is, you know, all the money formulas, rules, spending rules, etc in the world can't overcome human psychology in a lot of cases. So some people are just going to feel like, hey, I, I should never pay that much for this. It just feels like a ripoff to them, even if they could easily afford it. Etc. Right. And for the record, like when I think about these spending rules and how to think about spending money, like with the wealth ladder, like once you hit certain levels, I kind of think like you start to get a certain amount of quote, freedom in a certain spending Catego. So level four, one to 10 million. I consider that the beginning of travel freedom. So you can start to upgrade, you know, your seat on an airplane. You can start to say, hey, maybe I can stay in a slightly nicer hotel, etc. By the time you get to 10 million, you can basically do anything besides fly private. I think, you know, you can stay at basically any hotel. You can, you know, always get first class if you want to. Right. But it's kind of that slow progression that happens over time. And so your, your points. Well, Taken in that, you know, having 1 to 10 million that, you know, you could have 5 million bucks and still not feel comfortable upgrading to first class, and that's completely fine. It's really up to you. But you, I do think a lot of it is a psychological thing.
- [16:54]
Christine Benz
So in the book, you note that falling down the wealth ladder is actually quite rare. But it seems like there are a lot of examples of people who have fallen down the wealth ladder where, you know, their net worth is lower over time. What are some common reasons that might happen and why do you think it doesn't really happen that much?
- [17:12]
Nick Magiulli
It depends. So how you fall down the wealth ladder depends on where you start. And let me. I'll give a quick example of this. So let's say you're in level two. You have somewhere between ten thousand, a hundred thousand. If you told me someone was in level two today and then five years from now they're in level one, My guess is what happened to them is they kind of got unlucky, all else equal. Like, I don't know anything about their life, but they probably got unlucky in some way. Maybe they had some really bad medical issue, maybe they lost their job and as a result had to start pulling down out of their 401k or out of some cash they had. Right. So usually, like, if you're in a lower wealth level and you happen to fall even lower than that, like, it's probably from some form of bad luck. That's usually my take. I mean, of course, spending, etcetera, that can happen. But that's not what I see in the data. Overall, like, what I see in the data is most people, like, aren't really bad spenders. So that's the first piece, is like, probably bad luck. Now if you're in, let's say, level five, you have 10 million to 100 million. And you told me, hey, five years from now, this person is going to be, you know, in level four, you know, 1 to 10 million or even level three, less than a million. Like, what happened. It's also a form of bad luck, but it was probably because they had an investment that went bad or they were not diversified. You know, so when you talk about people that have really, really high amounts of wealth that end up bankrupt or, you know, close to zero or just, you know, a much lower wealth level in the future, it's usually because their business went under, they had an investment go bad, they were way too concentrated. We hear stories about this all the time in the financial media of a Hedge fund manager that blew up and now they're bankrupt. It's like, how does that happen? How you can be that rich and you still lose everything because they just weren't diversified. It's that simple. Like, so the types of things that make some person fall down the wealth ladder are going to vary. There's some form of maybe luck in some way if you want to think about it. But some, it's like things like that affect you as an individual, like oh, I got sick, oh I lost my job. That's going to be probably someone lower on the wealth ladder. As you gain more and more wealth, it usually has something to do with your actual assets. Like something really bad happened to your assets that caused you to lose your fortune. So that's what I would, I would say to that.
- [19:09]
Amy Arnott
How much does our socioeconomic status at birth determine where we end up on the wealth ladder? And have there been any changes in economic mobility over time?
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Nick Magiulli
Yeah, so parental wealth is highly correlated with economic outcomes. You can, I mean obviously there's a lot of, you know, anecdotal examples, you know, explains why many of the most successful entrepreneurs came from, well to do families like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc, they all came from like wealthy families. And of course these weren't like ultra, ultra wealthy families, but they were wealthy enough. So I think there is a big correlation there between where you start and kind of, or where your parents start, I guess, or where you start in that sense and where you end up. I think it kind of sets a floor on your future wealth level. Like if you grew up upper middle class, it's very unlikely you're ever going to be in level one. Something really crazy would have to happen like for your family to even allow that, you know, so when I think about that, like there's this sort of floor that doesn't obviously guarantee that you're going to have the same financial success as your parents, but I think it means that your wealth level is likely to be similar to theirs over time. And so terms of talking about mobility, they actually just did a study and they found that incomes are still going up as you're saying. Well, that can't be true, Nick. Like I, I know for a fact that like millennials and Gen Z, their income isn't higher than like their previous generation. That is actually true. Their income isn't higher. But how's their income higher? Like what are you saying, Nick? It's because there's now more transfers from parents. So parents are giving their kids there's something like 50% of. Of millennial and Gen Z are getting some sort of financial transfer from their parents. Whether that's a monthly stipend, whether that's a down payment on a house, help with the down payment on a house, things like that. So when they actually just measured incomes without looking at where the source of income was coming from, you'll see that, like, incomes are actually still going up in some way. And so there is still some economic mobility, but there's a transfer that's going on. So maybe that's not a fair. It's not fair to say economic mobility is going up when that's coming from transfers. But it's a new world we're in now where this is the first generation that they're relying more on their parents for the economic help, and they are still doing okay. So it's a. It's a weird. The data is still coming out. And so I want to see how this plays out, especially as, you know, all the boomers start to pass on and that wealth gets passed over. That's going to take another 20 or so years. Right. Like this. This is going to take time to move through all this stuff and seeing how that ends up and where. Because I remember for a long time, everyone's like, oh, millennials are the poorest generation ever. And now they're all backtracking all that stuff just because it just took us a little bit longer to get there. And once again, there's more transfers of this sort that are happening that are kind of changing the data in a way.
- [21:39]
Christine Benz
You share a bit of your personal story at the beginning of the book and really throughout it. And you just mentioned the can collecting example, and the gist is that you did not come from money. I'm wondering if you can talk about how your lived experience has affected how you approach personal finance.
- [21:56]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I think it's just. It provides a different perspective. I mean, my biggest cultural shock was going to Stanford, where I just got to meet people from all walks of life. You know, many you came from much wealthier families. And, you know, now looking back, I truly believe that the more wealth levels you've lived in, more people you've lived around, the more you can just relate to people from different economic backgrounds. Like, I know what it's like to have, you know, parents that went bankrupt. I know what it's like to live most of my life in level two. Like, I know what it's like to now actually build some wealth. Right. And so I now, you know, I work At a wealth management firm where I talk to advisors, we talk to clients that have very different problems than the problems I had growing up. And it's just. It's interesting to see that. And I just try to bring that varied experience to my writing. That's the whole goal is like, I think because I've seen little bit of both sides of the economic spectrum, I can kind of write about it in a way that maybe someone that hadn't grown up like that would have written about it.
- [22:48]
Amy Arnott
You devote the first part of the book to talking about spending decisions, and I'm wondering if you can talk about how people can decide if what they think is a high ROI expenditure is actually wise and going to pay off from something that isn't really worth it.
- [23:08]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I think it just varies from person to person. Like, I personally don't like spending money on fancy clothes, but I have no problem spending a lot of money at a restaurant. Like, that's just what I value. I value like, the experiences, especially food experiences. You may value a nice car. You may value, you know, really high quality electronics, whatever. Everyone's different, right? And so the only way to know what's high ROI is to determine what you really value in life and then spend money accordingly. I think that's the hard part, though. Like, what is like, it's like know thyself. This thing we talked about, you know, it's been talked about in, you know, Greek philosophy for thousands of years. But that's really the answer is like, what do you really want? And that's what's the high ROI stuff is like, where you're going to get the highest return on investment is on the things that you actually value. But the hard part is figuring out what you value.
- [23:54]
Christine Benz
You share what you call is the 0.01% rule. Can you talk about what that is and how it can aid with decision making about, you know, doing spending and what expenditures to stress out about and which to not stress out about.
- [24:09]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah. So the 0.01% rule basically says that you can spend.01% of your wealth or just another way of looking at it's 1 10,000th. So you could call this the 110,000th rule as well. You can spend 1 10,000th of your wealth on a daily basis without having to worry about anything. And so I'll explain where that comes from. So let's say your net worth is $10,000. You're basically right on the cusp between level one and level two. That means you can spend an extra $1 per day without any worry about jeopardizing your future wealth, right? And where that $1, that 0.01% comes from is, you know, on an annualized basis, if you've got a return of 0.01% a day, that's like a little bit under 4% a year. It's like 3.7 a year. It's very conservative return, right? So every day your wealth is generating that much money, right? So that extra. If you have $10,000 in wealth every day, in theory, like you're generating an extra $1 a day without doing anything. So in theory you could spend that $1 and not jeopardize your future wealth. So if you have a hundred thousand dollars in wealth, you could spend $10 a day. If you have a million dollars in wealth, you can spend 100 a day. Etc. Now obviously this isn't like your total spending. No. 1, you know, it's, it's. If you live in the United States, you're not going to survive on $1 a day. This is the marginal spend, right? And I think that's where everyone's making a spending decision. You're making it on the margin, right? Like when you go to buy a car, like you're not saying oh, should I get a Toyota Camry or a Maserati? Like you're, you're debating between the Camry and the slightly nicer Cam, right? It's like that's what I'm saying. You're always doing it on the margin. Like when you sit down in a restaurant and you're like, do I want to get the burger for 20 bucks or the salmon for 30? Like that marginal difference is $10. And so my argument is that once you have like a hundred thousand dollars in wealth, that extra $10 you can spend that every time you go to a restaurant without worrying about it, right? And so the 0.1% rule works in that way by just, it allows you to have some lifestyle creep because you've shown financial disciplines like hey look, I've reached this level of wealth so I can now spend more on certain categories. But until I reach that level of wealth, I going to do that. And so like in my example, like I still to this day I don't have basically any travel freedom when I go to a restaurant, I'll buy whatever I want, I don't care. But I am still getting the coach seat. Maybe I will upgrade my seat to a slightly nicer seat, not a first class seat, but I'll go like get something with more legroom. That's where I'm at in my wealth journey, right. Like one day, if I do well, if things go well for me, I will maybe always, you know, get a first class seat. But that's not in the cards for me right now. And so I'm spending according to my wealth level and I'm very strict about that because the extra whatever 100 bucks or whatever it is is not enough to upgrade to first class every time. So I can't spend that money. That's how I work through it.
- [26:39]
Amy Arnott
You also write that housing is really a consumption good and not an investment. Why is that? And are there any levels where housing is more important in building wealth and getting to the next level?
- [26:53]
Nick Magiulli
I think housing is important for most Americans because it is the primary way in which they build wealth, even though it is a consumption good. But when you pass on and you pass that property on to the next generation, that's when it becomes a non consumption good at that moment of time, right? So if you assume, oh, I have children, they have their own house already, when you pass and you pass on your property, that's the moment when it's no longer a consumption good. Now it's an asset for your family, right? So it really depends on when it's like when you're thinking about it throughout your life cycle. Like yeah, for you it's a consumption good, but for your, you know, offspring and etc won't be a consumption good. So I think primary residence is, you know, once again the homeownership rate is still like 66% or something like that. In the US most households have a home. I don't expect that to change in any drastic way. It's going to be anywhere probably between 60 and 70% probably throughout the rest of my life. And it is a way to build wealth because, you know, you own this thing. The property prices don't change too much. I know in recent years they've gone up a ton, but I don't expect them to move a lot for a host of reasons. There's, you know, whether we call it NIMBYism or whatever, people preventing other houses from being made, etc, I don't expect major changes in house prices going to the future. Does that mean that they're going to keep growing at the same rate? No. And so we could get into a discussion about the future of real estate prices, but generally it's been a pretty stable asset class. And I think there's a lot of entrenched political and cultural reasons why it will remain a relatively stable asset class. Now, does that mean it's going to be the stock market or whatnot? I have no clue. That's why I say you got to diversify, diversify.
- [28:26]
Christine Benz
So you write in the book that people can get into overspending trouble if they have high incomes, but not necessarily high net worths. But you point out that income can be fickle. So you believe that people should use their net worth to guide how much they can reasonably spend. Can you talk about that?
- [28:45]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah. So they've done studies on negative income shocks among US households and something like 10% of households are going to see a 50% or greater decline in income over the next two years. So like 1 in 10 households are just going to have a massive hit to their income in the next two years. And that's. What does that mean? Usually that means most households are two income earners. All that just means is one earner is going to lose their job in the next two years. It's not unreasonable that one person might lose their job in two years. Right. So one in ten, that is. Right. So because of that, like that's why I think income's fickle and more importantly among high earners, like negative income shocks tend to be persistent. Right. So in other words, if you have a very high paying job and you lose it, it, I wouldn't expect to get back that old income. You had that higher income anytime soon. And I, trust me, I have friends where this has happened, like, oh, I lost my high powered job doing this and I got another job, but I took a 40 pay cut or I took this, it's like, it's like almost starting. Unless you can get a job right away back in the exact same role you were doing, it can be tough for people. So that's why I think you have to spend based on wealth, not income. Because as volatile as wealth can be, it is far less fickle than income. Wealth is a little, has a little bit more staying power. You know, of course there's things like the Great Depression where wealth dropped off a cliff quickly, but that's usually not the case. And so your wealth will be a lot more stable than your income will be over the long haul.
- [30:04]
Amy Arnott
You also note that income earning activities that made sense for us at one stage in our lives wouldn't necessarily make sense as we move up the wealth ladder. Can you talk a little bit more about that and maybe share some examples?
- [30:20]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I mean you guys gave the extreme example earlier of the person with $10 million clipping coupons, right. Like at some point in your financial life, like certain income generating tasks won't make as much sense. I think in the formal way that like economists talk about this, they call this your opportunity cost. An opportunity cost is just what you have to give up when you do something. So if you work for an hour, your opportunity cost is anything else you could have done besides work in that hour, right? So you're like, oh, I could have gone to the gym, I could have done this, whatever it is, that's your opportunity cost. Right. So your opportunity cost is still can have an income. Like if you go and do something like hey, this was a great income generating activity, but now that my income is so much higher or that I have more skills or you know, whatever it is, like that old income generating opportunity may not be worth it anymore. Right. So as you gain more wealth, your opportunity costs typically increase. Right. Like when I first graduated college, I didn't have a problem working, you know, 60 hour weeks. You know, if I had to, my opportunity costs were relatively low. You know, I didn't have as much else I could be doing with my time. Yes, I could see friends, family, but that was about it. I didn't have a wife, I didn't have, you know, all these other things that now take up more of my time. But as I've gotten older and I've built more wealth, like every additional hour means more to me than just like the additional money does. Right. And so I think you, you'll see that with time. That's what I, I've found most people I've spoken with, that's how it changes over time. Right. So like I could spend more time going to work out or going to see friends instead of just working an additional hour because at some point, you know, the money's not worth it anymore. And so that's where you know, that transition slowly happens over time. But that's kind of the thinking there with the wealth ladder.
- [31:53]
Christine Benz
Your book is about money. It's not really a self help. But as we ascend the wealth ladder, should we give ourselves more freedom to say no to some work activities that we don't enjoy and yes to perhaps some that are less remunerative but maybe more enjoyable. Wondering if you can talk about how you can square your desire to ascend the wealth ladder with your desire to spend time in a way that's agreeable?
- [32:20]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah. I think you have to ask yourself like, like what are your priorities and why, like what does getting to a particular wealth level mean to you like would it give you more time, more freedom? Like what are you actually looking for? Like the real question is like what will you do once you get there? Like I think you have to imagine kind of like oh here's where my life would be great and then like back out from there. Because if you know that, then you can determine whether you actually need to get to that spot. Because a lot of people, I don't know if they always think about that end state and they just say oh, once I have X dollars then I will be able to do all this stuff. And sometimes that's true, but for a lot of people they can actually do that without getting to that level of wealth, right? So I think like people can live very fulfilling lives in level three and four completely. I'm 100 convinced of that. But I'm also convinced it's easy to persuade yourself that that's not the case. It's easy to preserve yourself like oh I need to, I need to have 10 million plus to, to really have made it, to really have happiness. And you know, at some point, once you have enough wealth, it's all the other things in life that impact your day to day happiness and well being. And you don't realize that until you maybe get to that point where like oh wow, that didn't matter as much. But it's one of those things that I just, I think about a lot and I think it's something that's very overlooked in the wealth space in volatile markets.
- [33:29]
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- [34:24]
Amy Arnott
We also wanted to talk a little bit more about some specific questions for each level and looking at level one. I think a common question with people who are basically living paycheck to paycheck is what to prioritize if they do have extra funds. So should they pay down debt or build an emergency fund or try to invest. What kind of advice would you give someone in that situation?
- [34:51]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I would say emergency fund all the way. Because once again, in every wealth level, some part of your life gets amplified. And for those in level one, it's bad luck. Because if you don't have a lot of money and something happens, let's say you have a car, your tire blows out, you have to get a new tire. Like, there's just ways where bad luck is amplified in a way that it's not amplified for some with more money. Like, oh, if I have a tie, let's. I don't even have a car. Let's say I had a car and my tire blew out. Like, that's not a problem. It's annoying. It's an annoyance for me, but it doesn't change my life at all. I just get the tire fixed, move on, right. For someone, level one, he maybe doesn't have a lot of money. If that happens, that could really, like, send them into a financial tailspin. So, like, the thing you want to focus on is like, de. Amplifying that bad luck. So get that emergency fund. Then once you feel like you have some sort of safety, so enough, then you got to start doing everything to get out of debt. And so it. There is a lot of little things you have to do to get there. And it's not easy. But, like, just getting from level one to level two, I think is the biggest lifestyle change you could ever have as an individual. Like, having that, like, freedom, you know, just to breathe and not have to worry about, okay, if some bad thing happens to me, I'm not screwed, you know, like, yeah, it's not great, but. But that's the thing I try and emphasize for a lot of people is, like, get out of level one because it is much scarier when you're in there. And any one bad thing could send your life in a different direction. Like, that's the thing that's really scary and unfortunate.
- [36:16]
Christine Benz
And it seems like credit rating, a poor credit rating at that level is kind of the ultimate amplifier multiplier, whatever you want to call it. That if that's something that's working against you, it makes it really hard to climb out.
- [36:30]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah. And that, I mean, that takes time to get that off. You know, if you go to a bankruptcy, you know, it takes it seven to 10 years or whatever it is before it's off your credit report. So it's like, these are the types of things where that stuff can Follow you and so you could even get your act together. And it's like five years later, but that's still there haunting you, unfortunately. So anything you can do to prevent that is ideal. And of course it's not easy. A lot of times you probably already maybe got into that position because of bad luck. So it's, it's, it's not a great place to be and it's, it's one of those things where you just have to try your best to get out of it.
- [37:00]
Christine Benz
So you have a fun discussion in the Level 2 chapter about finding the intersection of what you're good at, what you're interested in, and what someone will pay you to do. Can you walk us through that exercise and why it's so important?
- [37:13]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I think the exercise is important because I think the goal I think most people would, I hope would agree with this is like you want to maximize your long term income while also enjoying the work you do, right? If we all enjoyed the work we did and got paid well, like, I, I don't know what more you can ask for out of a career, right? And so of course that doesn't mean that your first job you're going to get is going to check all the boxes, right? But the goal is to eventually get to do work that does check those boxes, right? So those three boxes are, you know, what are you good at, what you're interested in, what will people pay you for in terms of like first jobs? Like, where do I start? I say you got to focus on what people will pay you for because that's like, that's what's required to live. Like you need money to survive. So all else equal, like as much as I would be like, hey, just do what you're interested in. Like if it's not paying the bill, it's probably not the right way to start with. So once you get that covered, what's the next highest priority thing I would focus on is like, focus on like what you're good at. Because I feel like if you're doing something someone's going to pay you for and you happen to be good at it, like you can get a lot of, if you get a lot of praise for being good at something, you'll actually start to like it. And I think this is also my thing with, we talked about writing, you know, a little bit earlier where like, oh, I didn't used to like writing. Now I do. It's because I was decent at it, but I was always writing about other people's stuff. As soon as I started to write about my own thing, I started to get more interested in. I got interested in it from the praise I got from others who read my work. Right. And that, that really allowed me to start loving it. So it's something that I wasn't interested in and now that I'm very much interested in. So if I have to focus you, it's like, hey, do the pay stuff and then do what you're good at and then hopefully that'll either lead to interest in that thing. If it doesn't, maybe you can save up enough money through all the pay over the years to then do something you're interested in that you can possibly get paid for eventually. So there's a lot of ways to get there. That's just my recommended path, but you don't have to follow that. Like I was in consulting for a long time. I was doing something I was getting paid for and I was decent at, but at the same time I was interested in finance and I was doing that on the side. So that's another option. If you do love something, keep it as a hobby and just keep doing it and maybe one day you'll be able to monetize and change your career. That's another option as well.
- [39:16]
Amy Arnott
So in the Level 4 section, you discuss how big investment losses have the potential to do serious damage. What are some of the best ways to avoid that risk? Risk not just in level four, but also at other levels.
- [39:33]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, I think it's just really hard to know which investments are going to do well and poorly ahead of time. And so the best solution is the simplest, which is diversify. Like being diversified just means that no single investment can wipe you out. And, and not just diversify. Like, oh, I own 20 different tech stocks, am I diversified? Like that's, that's technically you are, but they're not as diversified as you could be. You still have sector bias, right? So I mean, diversified across asset classes, sectors, etc, like, like that's why I think survival is like the most important part of investing. Just staying in the game. Earning a long term market return will do more for you than just about anything else financially. So like my thing I always tell people is like, stay diversified. I know, it's like, well, Nick, how am I going to get to level six if I'm diversified? It's very difficult to get there. It's like, okay, well that's true. It's very difficult to get to, you know, level five, level six while being completely diversified. I will, I'll Be the first to say that. But usually those people that do that are undiversified in their business interests. But that doesn't mean that your portfolio, everything outside of the business you own, doesn't have to be diversified. So I still think diversification is a prudent approach even in that scenario. Even if you're trying to build a business that's going to end up being worth a lot of money one day.
- [40:43]
Christine Benz
Many people who are in that level four with net worths in the $1 million to $10 million range think that their investment portfolios should get more complicated as they've amassed more wealth. And of course the industry sells into this mind that if you have a lot of money, you should be doing something pretty complicated with your portfolio. Can you talk about that?
- [41:04]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah. So I understand this argument from a diversification perspective based on what I literally just said in the one of the prior questions. It's like, well, I'm trying to get more diversification. The issue I have with that is many of these more complex investment products tend to have higher fees and other sorts of restrictions. Whether that's illiquidity, et cetera, that makes them less than ideal for building long term wealth wealth. So I'm generally neutral on these products. Overall, I don't think, I'm not against them, but I'm not for them. And I understand why they exist, I understand why they can be valuable. And I've especially now that I'm actually in the wealth management space, like I think I, I understand them more than before, but I don't think they're necessary to build and maintain wealth in any one of these levels. And one of the reasons why I say that is how often is it. I'm not saying this has never happened, but most of the people that own these products, they got wealthy doing one thing. AK probably had a business, they sold the business for a lot of money and then they bought the private investments. It's very rare, the case that they bought the private investments when they didn't have a lot of money and then all of a sudden that's the reason they're rich. I'm not saying it's never happened. It does happen, but it's very rare. So I think the causality is a little bit backwards. Most of the people that own private investments probably got rich doing something else and now they own private investments versus oh, I bought a bunch of private investments and that's the reason I'm wealthy today. So that's another thing to keep in mind is which way is the causality with these products and who's really making the money. Right. The fees are great here. So. So I know there's a lot of people that work in private equity that do very well, but they're doing well because they have the carry and all the other fees associated with working in that industry.
- [42:35]
Amy Arnott
You talk about how a lot of people find themselves kind of perpetually stuck in level four with net worths between 1 million and 10 million. And you argue that really the only way to ascend beyond that level is through business ownership. But for someone who's not comfortable taking the type of risk that you would need to be comfortable with to start your own business, are there other ways to kind of break through and get into level five?
- [43:06]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah. So you can either once again start your own business or get equity in a business that grows to a much bigger business. Right. So like you can be an early startup employer. I like the example I think of as like early Nvidia employees, right? Like they didn't start the business, but with the, you know, the recent surge in Nvidia stock price in the last few years, like their equity became worth millions of dollars. Right. Same thing's true of, you know, early startup employees that get acquired. They may not be, they may be employee 5, 6, 10, whatever. And just because they were there early, they got even a small piece of equity. On a really decent sized business you can make a lot of money, right? So either way the key is to have equity, you have to have ownership. So whether you have a lot of equity in a decent sized business that you sell or just a little bit of equity in a very huge business, it makes no difference to me. The key is just have business ownership because that's how, if you're trying to get out of level four, that's probably the way you're going to do it. Of course, you know, you can be in level four and just save and invest and do it for, you know, you know, until you're 90 and I guarantee you'll probably kind of level four. But I, for someone in, in any reasonable timescale, it just, it's very difficult to gather without a large business exit of some sort.
- [44:15]
Christine Benz
In the context of very wealthy people, you discuss some of the non financial stressors that can come into play. You note that having a lot of wealth can affect relationships, family dynamics and stress, for example. Can you talk about that? Because I think many people assume that if they amass wealth at that level, like over $10 million, all of their cares will evaporate but you point to the fact that that's not necessarily true.
- [44:41]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, yeah. The biggest misconception about extreme wealth is that it solves all your problems, right? In fact. Yeah. The only problems it solves are money problems. Like by definition. And while there are many money solvable problems, I guess we could say in the world, like money can't solve everything, right? Like you can't write your children a check so that they love you. You know, you can't buy a new cardiovascular system to get into good health. Right. Like there's certain things you can do that you can have a better relationship with your children. Right. You can have a probably slightly healthier if you have more wealth. Like I agree, but you get the point. There's only so much that money can buy at this point. And so, you know, there's a limit to money's usefulness. And unfortunately some people just don't realize that until it's a bit late. Like, like you can neglect certain parts of your life to make money, but if you do it for too long, you'll come to find that that's all you have is just money. Right. So it's not a good place to be in. And so I'm always trying to emphasize as you move up the wealth ladder, remember we talked about different wealth levels amplify different things. When you're in level five and level six, it's all the non monetary parts of your life that are amplified. Like your relationships are even more important. Of course they're always important in your life, but like they're even more important in level five and level six because like you can't buy them. Like there's nothing you can do to change that, right? You can have all this money, it's not going to change a thing. Right. So if anything, it just shows like, hey, money matters so much less that all the other things that aren't money are the things to focus on.
- [46:03]
Amy Arnott
You also discussed some of the newer research that has emerged about the connection between money and happiness. Can you talk a little bit more about what those findings are and what we can learn from them?
- [46:17]
Nick Magiulli
Yes, yes. So the original Money and happiness paper, which I believe was like Daniel Kahneman and Angus DNA, and that's the one that I think most people on this podcast probably heard, is that money doesn't buy happiness. Above, I think it was like $75,000 a year in income, right? Everyone's heard that once you have over 75k a year, it doesn't buy any more happiness. Unfortunately, a guy named Killingsworth, Matthew Killings were came out and they looked into the data some more and they found out that conclusion wasn't completely accurate. Like the more recent research found that more money does buy more happiness if you're already happy happy. So this was true for incomes above $75,000 a year. And they even looked at wealth and this was even more true for people with lots of wealth. And so I think the, the conclusion from the original paper wasn't they weren't measuring more happiness, they were measuring more unhappiness. So basically once you have more than 70, like up to $75,000 a year, like as you got more money, like it generally, you know, prevented unhappiness after $75,000 a year, it did nothing. Like you could still be unhappy and have a lot of money. That's what the original research shows because they're their, their measure wasn't perfect. But in the new research, like the main conclusion is if you're poor, more money can buy more happiness. If you're happy, more money can buy more happiness. But if you aren't poor and you aren't happy, more money is not going to do anything, right? So that's kind of the main thing. So if you're like, hey, I don't have a lot of money, more money will probably make you happier, right? And if you're already happy and you have money, more money will probably still make you happier, right? But if you're not in those two categories, like it's not going to do a thing. So I think that's the big change in terms of the happiness research is like, like money does buy happiness if you're already happy.
- [47:52]
Christine Benz
Presumably you've ascended the wealth ladder during your career. You don't have to tell us where you are on it, but what have been some of your main takeaways as you've done so.
- [48:01]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, sorry. I mean it's in the book so I don't want to give it away though maybe I'll leave it a spoiler. It's in the book I talk about this but I mean ironically like building wealth has really taught me the importance of all the non financial aspects of life. Life, right. It's easy to focus on money. We don't have a lot of it when you grew up, you know, in a family that maybe didn't have a lot of it, but once you do, everything else becomes far more important and valuable once you have some money. And the reason why is once again they just discussed, right, like you can't buy it you can't buy true friendship, true love, great health, all these things require work somewhere in your life. And like, the sooner you realize that, the more you can take your foot off the gas as you kind of succeed financially. Right. That's kind of how I like to think about it. So. So yeah, I mean that's, that's the big takeaway for me. And it took me some time to get there, but now that I'm there, it's like I value money less than I did when I was younger because I didn't have any of it. Now that I have some of it, I can be like, hey, I don't need to worry as much about these types of things and I can focus on spending more time with my family, you know, you know, not having to like work all the time and like, you know, telling my wife, like, oh, you know, I gotta write this thing tonight, I gotta do this. And I never spend time with her. It's like, no, I can, I can chill out a little bit. You know, things are gonna be fine. I don't need to have that extra dollar. Like, that's not as important as, as enjoying life.
- [49:13]
Christine Benz
Life.
- [49:15]
Amy Arnott
So in addition to your day job, as Christine mentioned before, you are active in posting on your blog of dollars and data, where you're normally publishing about once a week. And I'm curious, what are some of your must reads or must listen tos in the realm of personal finance and investing?
- [49:37]
Nick Magiulli
So I have a lot of, of different stuff over the years. I have like a popular post page which has like a bunch of different things that people have liked over the years. I have this one blog post called Even God Couldn't Be Dollar Cost Averaging, which went into my first book, Just Keep Buying. But yeah, I've been blogging for almost nine years now. I blog once a week. And so I just put a lot of stuff out there. I have a lot of different. I mean, it's hard to. Because I've been doing it for so long. I have like 450 posts. Like if you give me a subcategory, I could, I could narrow it down, but it's really hard to like pick this one or that one thing. I think to just keep buying stuff obviously has done well. That's why it did decently well as a book and everything. But yeah, I would say that's the stuff is like thinking about market timing and all those types of things and how little those things actually matter. And, and the thing, the most important thing is just to be consistent and Just keep investing over time and just focus on raising your income and keep investing and I think you'll do fine.
- [50:29]
Christine Benz
How about external influences? Are there any people who you read consistently or any podcasts that are always your feed? What are your favorites?
- [50:39]
Nick Magiulli
So I, I read a bit and I really think it depends on, I read more than I listen. I'm just a visual learner. And so I think if, if I had to say, like, it depends where you are on the wealth ladder for what types of things are like, must reads, right? So, like, if you're just getting started, right, like you're level one, I would recommend like Tiffany Alici, like, Get Good with Money. Like, it's a great book for people starting out, great for budgeting. That's the perfect thing there, right? Right. But now if you're like, hey, I'm in level 4, nick 1 to 10 million, I really want to get out of level 4, I want to get to level 5, etc, then I'm like, okay, look at Millionaire Fast Lane by M.J. deMarco. His. He has a very different take on that. Right. If you're like, oh, I want to just keep building my wealth through investing, I'm going to recommend, you know, the Intelligent Ass Allare by William Bernstein. Right. If you're like, oh, I'm near retirement, what should I do? I'm going to plug your book Christine how to Retire. So it's like it's, it's all, it's. Everything's based on like, what, what, what are we talking about? What are we looking at? And I think that because the, the world of personal finance investing is so wide and there's so many different things, and so it really does depend where you are. It's kind of one of the reasons why I wrote this book. It's like, hey, if you're here, these things will be more helpful and if you're here, these might be more helpful. And it's not that you can't read across. I don't think there's anything wrong with if you're in level one, reading a business book. But I think the risk is just so much higher to starting a business when you're at basically zero than if you have some money saved away. And there's a lot of data on this as well in terms of like, the most successful entrepreneurs generally have more experience, have more money or a little bit older. Like, all the things that make it easier to start a business, they have those. And I think because it's in the data, it shows that it's probably better for you to follow the same path. Right? You know, I'm not saying you can't start a business when you're young, but I think most of the people that have done it successfully have waited a little bit, have waited until they're 40, 50, et cetera, before they did it. And that's when they end up being more successful.
- [52:25]
Amy Arnott
What's your take on the whole fire movement? Financial independence, retire early.
- [52:31]
Nick Magiulli
Yeah, so I love the fi part of fire, the financial independence part. I think it's a worthy goal. You know, you get to live life on your own terms, etc. I'm a little skeptical of the re retire early part and I think it's just because based on the research, people I've talked to, everything, it's just people need some sort of purpose and I think it's just difficult for many people to find that purpose outside of work. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think, I don't know a good, I don't, I don't have an exact number, let's say 70% of people. People need some sort of vocational purpose. It doesn't necessarily, you know, need to be a 9 to 5. It doesn't need to make you a ton of money or anything, but I think you need to feel like you're contributing to society in some way. And so the re part, if you do the retire early without thinking about that, I think it can lead to an existential crisis. And so that's the thing, you know, I know that we all glorify, oh, it wouldn't be awesome if I could just be on a beach all day with my ties. And I think that's fun for a few weeks. And then you're like, okay, why am I doing this? What's the purpose? And it's, it, it can get really dark from there if you don't know what you're going to do next. So that's my only kind of pushback on that. So.
- [53:30]
Christine Benz
Well, Nick, congratulations on the wealth ladder. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be with us today.
- [53:36]
Nick Magiulli
Anytime. No, I appreciate you guys so much. Thank you, Amy and Christine for having me on. I really appreciate it.
- [53:41]
Amy Arnott
Thanks again, Nick.
- [53:43]
Nick Magiulli
Thank you.
- [53:49]
Christine Benz
Thank you for joining us on the Longview. If you could please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow me on social media hristinebenz on X or @christinebenz on LinkedIn.
- [54:08]
Amy Arnott
And Amy Arnott on LinkedIn.
- [54:11]
Christine Benz
George Cassidy is our engineer for the podcast and Carrie Gretchik produces the show Notes each week. Finally, we'd love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us@thelongvieworningstar.com until next time. Thanks for joining us.
- [54:31]
Podcast Announcer
This recording is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Opinions expressed are as of the date of recording and are subject to change without notice. The views and opinions of guests on this program are not necessarily those of Morningstar, Inc. And its affiliates, which together we refer to as Morningstar. Morningstar is not affiliated with guests or their business affiliates unless otherwise stated. Morningstar does not guarantee the accuracy or the completeness of the data presented herein. This recording is for informational purposes only and the information, data, analysis or opinion it includes or their use should not be considered investment or tax advice and therefore is not an offer to buy or sell a security. Morningstar shall not be responsible for any trading decisions, damages or other losses resulting from or related to the information, data analyses or opinions or their use. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. All investment are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal. Individuals should seriously consider if an investment is suitable for them by referencing their own financial position, investment objectives and risk profile. Before making any investment decision. Please consult a tax and or financial professional for advice specific to your individual circumstances.
- [55:56]
Nick Magiulli
Sam.