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Welcome back to the Rundown interview edition. Today we are talking to Nick Magiulli. Nick is one of my favorite finance bloggers. He has a great blog called Of Dollars and Data that he's been writing since 2017. He's also written two books now, so it's really great chatting with him. We got into a lot of topics today, including why Nick has become bearish on the stock market for the second time ever, what changes he's making to his portfolio, and we also talk about his new book on wealth and the challenges that young people face today when it comes to getting ahead. It was a really fun convers and I hope you guys enjoy it. All right guys, we are talking to Nick Maggi today on the show. Nick, he's an author, he's a blogger, he's a data scientist and he also has a day job. He's a COO of Rith Holtz Management. Nick, I'm a big fan of your writing. I've been reading your blog for a long time now. Thank you so much for being on the show today.
B
Yeah, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.
A
Of course. I have so many questions to ask you today, but I want to start here. Your recent blog post from maybe a week or so ago you talked about how you are now bearish on US stocks for the first, for the second time since you've been writing your blog since 2017. The last time you were bearish was November, I think November of 2021. So great call by the way. But now you're bearish again. Can you talk me through, can you talk me through and the listeners through your thought process here? And people should really read your whole blog. It's really good. But can you kind of talk me through the thought process and why you're feeling more bearish now for the second time ever?
B
I mean, it feels like there's a lot of echoes of 2021. Not everything's the same, you know, it's like history, you know, doesn't repeat but it rhymes. And so there's a lot of that going on right now where like valuations are very high on basically every metric you look at. I like using price to sales. I know it's not a perfect metric. I know margins are higher than they've been. And so I don't think like, oh, this, this metric has to return to its long term average. I don't believe that at all. But at the same time it doesn't, you know, price to sales ratio doesn't sit above 3 for that long and it's been above 3. Just went above 3 once again. And so I'm like, last time it did this, it crashed right after. I'm not saying it's going to crash right away. This could go to four or five. Who knows what could happen, right? But I think it's one of those things where when all the metrics are at the 99th percentile, like you have to say, like, okay, either the world's completely changed and this is normal, this is the new average, or like we're probably a little bit inflated. Right? And so trust me, I'm a, I'm a long term investor. So I'm like thinking, you know, I'm, I'm still buying US Stocks. I've just made a slight rebalance and I just went from a slightly higher equity allocation. I moved it slightly. I do what, what Cliff Asness calls sending a little. So I'm not like a, oh, sell your US Stocks. I'm not one of those people. I don't think that is a, it's kind of market timing. And so this is a very, very minor form of market timing. But I'm still buying US Stocks just at a slower rate than I was before.
A
So, you know, you're not going full zero Hedge or Michael Burry where, you know, well, you went from 100% allocation, I believe, to 80, 20, is that correct?
B
Yeah. So I had a hunt. Well, 100% wasn't all U.S. stocks. I mean, my 100% was like a diversified equity. It was all risk assets. And now I'm like, okay, let's take that. All risk assets down to 80% and then, and that's only in my retirement accounts. Right? So like outside my retirement accounts, I'm not even buying US Stocks right now because I'm trying to get a house. And so I'm trying to save for something. So you wouldn't. If you're, if you have a goal or a purchase, like you're not supposed to be putting that into stocks. Anything within the next five years, like stocks can do anything over a five year period. So you really want to save in something that's. Hopefully the cash is going to be there within three years. I hope I'll be buying a home.
A
That's awesome. Actually, I want you to settle a debate for me because you said that, you said something very interesting where if you're trying to save for something, you shouldn't be putting that into the stock market. You should be kind of putting that into low risk with their high yield savings account. Or, or short term bonds. If you were saying, this is not for me, it's for a friend. If you were saving for an engagement ring. All right, engagement ring, let's just say you're about a year out, maybe, you know, a year to 18 months out. Would you be okay putting that into the stock market? My advice, my advice was, you know what, that's okay. Go ahead and put that into the stock market. Because if the markets rally, you can get yourself a nicer ring. If it doesn't, if it maybe pulls back a little bit, maybe the ring will be a little bit smaller, but you can still get yourself a ring. So debate, what would you say? Where do you fall on that?
B
This is, this is not really a financial question. This is more of a personal question. How you view, like, how do you view the ring as a person? Like, do you really need to get them a certain type of ring or spend a certain amount of money? I think what you could do is you can say, okay, I'm going to save up to half of it in cash, and the other half, I'll kind of let it ride. So, like, at least I know, like, worst case scenario, I'm getting the ring at like, you know, I mean, the market's not going to go to zero, but let's say the market goes into a 50% drawdown. So I'm getting like 75% of the value of my target value versus, you know, in the case where, you know, market's okay or just flat, then you get the ring you want. Right. So I would just probably hedge that if you really care that much. I personally, I would just put it all, I would just put it in like treasury bills. I wouldn't do anything like that. But each their own. I, I get the point. It's kind of fun, actually. Oh, the market's rally. I'm gonna buy a really nice ring. You know, that's what I thought.
A
I was like, you know, it's not as like serious as buying a house where you have to like have a certain amount of down payment. So you don't want to take any chances with that. But it's also like, you kind of don't want to lose that money either. But you know, you have options. You can get a slightly smaller ring upgraded later down. So I thought that was a fun little debate. It actually went on for, for, for a couple of hours.
B
So the correct answer is to do what your partner would want. If your partner's like, why would you risk that and be upset at you for Making this decision. Don't do that. If your partner's like, no, we want to make, like, just think about what would my partner think about this type of thing and just do that thing. That's probably the better solution than anything I say.
A
Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. I want to talk about, you know, you've written two books now on. On finance. I mean, so you wrote the first one. That was probably exhausting. What gets you. What got you to write the second one?
B
So before I wrote Just Keep Buying, which is the first book, I had two ideas. Yeah. So, yo, thank you for having it. Appreciate that. So that was the first book. I had two ideas. The. The first one became Just Keep Buying. I didn't have a name or a title or any of that. But the other one was the Wealth Ladder, which is my second book. So I knew about that idea. I had written about that in December 2019, and I knew it could be turned into a book. I knew I could expand on a lot of these things. But I was going back and forth, my publisher, my. For my first book, and they were like, do this book first, because it seems like an easier book to write if you haven't written a book before. And they were completely right. And I don't regret that decision at all. It was the right decision to kind of go and do the. Do the books in the order I did them in. And so, yeah, I put them together. And yeah, it's not. It's hard to write a book, but it's much easier when you've been writing online for over five years. You know, I've been writing online for nine years now. But when I first wrote Just Keep Buying, I had all these blog posts and all this stuff. So, like, I had material and I had to take it and chop it and mix it up and kind of make a Frankenstein's monster of a much better product than just a blog post. Right. And so that's kind of the thing I try to focus on is like, well, I have all this material, so it makes it a lot easier to use that or repurpose it or dig deeper on something and then use it for a book.
A
Yeah. Well, I really liked your first book. Just Keep Buying it was what I really liked about it was the way you wrote it was like, where you had, like, a summary of each, like, main topic and then you gave individual chapters to, like, dive deep into that topic, which I thought was a really well written way of kind of writing a book. So I really liked how your first book was and something that you said in the first book that kind of ties into your second book is the way you build wealth over time isn't going to come from savings. Despite what my immigrants parents tell me like you got to save, save, save, that's important. But the way you really do it is by increasing your income. And that I think that advice is great. That's the advice that I was getting given growing up as well. But do you think that things are a little bit different these days? Because I feel pretty bad for the newer generation, the people that are in college, high school. A lot of our listeners actually they're kind of dealing with a situation where they're trying to get a job. You see the numbers for unemployment for new grads is starting to tick higher. That could be because of AI, cost of housing through the roof, cost of, you know, if you want to start a family, the cost of daycare through the roof. What do you say to people, younger people especially, that hey, you gotta, you have to still try to keep building your income. And that's not just doing a nine game parlay on DraftKings or something. You have to actually do it slowly, whether it's through your job or side hustle or whatever. Like what do you say to young people these days, days?
B
I mean you have to try something, I mean to say, oh, the system, it's too hard. I'm not, I'm going to do nothing. I can guarantee what that's going to do for you. That's not going to help whatsoever, right? Or trying to take these lottery ticket bets or whether you're doing sports betting or all this other stuff like we, we. And of course like one, you know, you have 10,000 people do that. One of those people is going to get very lucky and do very well. Right? But the point is like that is not a viable solution. And so like yes, every, trust me, every generation gets a different deck of cards. I, I graduated in 2012. That was not the best time. It wasn't as bad as 0809 but it wasn't great either. That was when housing bottom like the, the economy wasn't great then either. It's not. I mean I think it's gotten worse today for younger people, especially with AI and a lot of other things for certain industries in particular. But I think you have to like, okay, here's the cards I've been dealt. I have to deal with it, right? And so what I'm finding though, and this is not true of everyone So I don't want to say this is true of most young people, but you know, they just came out with, there was some study that was done and 50% of Gen Z and millennials are getting financial assistance from their parents. And so technically they are not doing, they're not better off than their parents were. But when you include the financial assistance assistance, they are. So some people are listening. It's like, I don't have any of that. My parents can't help me. I'm like, mine couldn't help me either. So I'm not saying that that's the full thing here, but like, you got to do something with what you have. So like you have a certain, like, I never had financial assistance from parents that other people had. I'm not going to have that for my house. I have to go save my own way there. Right? So like that's, and that's how most people are, that's the default. Right. But things are changing. And so, you know, I'm just seeing more data come out that suggests that, you know, yes, the younger people aren't doing as well, but they are getting, on average, they're getting more assistance from the older generation. So that's a piece of this. And then, you know, you got to do what you can with the information you have at the time. So I would say like build a skill, like learn, do something different. Like you don't have to follow. I think the traditional 9 to 5, 4 to year career type stuff is dead. So it's like, what can you do to make money? Let's start thinking about this. Think long term, right? And maybe you have to work a job that's not great, just temporarily. And while you do that, what's something else you can do? I was writing for three years before I made any money on my blog, right? And so it's like, it takes time and you have to have that patience to do that. And like, who wants to spend 10 hours a week for three years to earn no money? Well, you know, now it's paying off. It makes me more than my income from my job, my actual, you know, 40 hour week job. I have this side business which makes more. So it's one of those things where like, I've been very fortunate in that case, but it's, it took me nine years, like, can you give me like, you know, like, hey, it took me a long time to get here.
A
I think that's the thing about, especially with younger people. I mean, when I was younger I wasn't patient. I was trying to get, become like the next big thing you can. When I was growing up, you heard like the stories of the Zuckerbergs and the tech guys that are becoming billionaires at 22. So I was like, you know, I wanted to do that and, and then you realize like, this is a slow process where like, you know, you're not going to do it overnight. So I have a similar story to you where I just started making videos on the Internet, you know, in my spare time after work, you know, in the evenings. And over time that became into a full time career, which is why I get to talk to you today. So it does take time. I just think with younger people it's, it's much harder for them because they just, they're just like shown so much stuff on their feeds with the Ferraris and like all the people that are flashing their success on social media, we, we had that a little bit, but it was, it was mostly like the MTV Cribs where we see it like once or twice a day. Now these people are seeing it 24 7. So it's harder. Which is why actually my, my hot take was that like, you know, everyone talks about how we should teach high school kids and you know, people in middle school like financial education. I wonder how effective that would be because like, are they, are they going to be like mature enough to like fully understand it or, and like apply it or do you just learn that later in life?
B
I mean, it's better than nothing. It's better than like them getting no exposure to it. Right? Of course, like education matters, but like getting that income is really the thing that makes a difference. But when they first do, when they finally do get income and start having a higher paying job or whatever, they actually get a job. Like what do I do with that money? How do I manage that is going to be very important for them. But I'm just going back to what you're saying. Like, I, I think the thing is like they, you know, you have to do what you can with what you have, right. There's no other solution here. I can't, there's nothing I'm gonna say that's gonna change that. Right? Like you have try and figure out something within the realm of like what are your skills, like what are your interests, like what will people pay you for? Right. That find that intersection or trying to find some sub intersection in there and then work on that and go from there.
A
Yeah, I try to take the optimist angle here. Is that like. Yes, it's harder these days. But also there's a abundance of opportunity as well. With the Internet and things like that. You can. You can try to find more opportunities online. So it's tough, but, yeah, I think there's. If you look at the positive way, there's more opportunities than ever before for. You talked about, you know, building wealth and, you know, once you start making money, what to do with it. That kind of ties into your. To your new book, the Wealth Ladder, where you kind of break down. I really like how you broke down your, like, net worth into, like, different buckets. And I think you talked about how, like, I think you're 10,000 to 100,000. It's the. The grocery freedom, which I. I really like that because that's kind of how I. That's kind of how I see it. This might be kind of, you know, embarrassing to admit, but, like, now when I go to the grocery store, I don't really look at prices that much. I know this is, like, sounds kind of pretentious, but, like, usually I just buy stuff that I need. And yeah, I might buy an extra, you know, bucket of strawberries if it's on sale, but generally I'm not looking at prices. And that's kind of like a great way of looking at wealth is, like, based on how. Where you are in your wealth ladder. You can kind of just make decisions without having to stress about things, whether it's groceries, restaurants, travel, things like that. Can you talk more about, like, how you broke that down? How did you come up with this concept for your new book?
B
So, yeah, the wealth ladder, the ideas you need to change your financial strategy over time. That can mean changing your income decisions, investment decisions, spending decisions. Right. In this case. And so there are six wealth levels. I'll just walk through those briefly. And this is total net worth. So, like, all the. All your assets minus all your liabilities. So level one is less than $10,000. Level two is 10,000 to $100,000. Level three is 100,000 to $1 million. Level four is 1 million to $10 million. Level five is 10 million to $100 million. And finally, level six is 100 million plus. In terms of the breakdown, you have about 20% of households in level one. That's less than 10,000. 20% are in level two. That's 10,000 to 100,000. 40% in the United States are in level three. That's 100,000 to a million. And these are households, by the way. Right. So it's un. If you have a spouse or something 18% are in level four. That's 1 to 10 million. And that's actually grown, that cohort's grown more than all the other cohorts. And then the last 2% is, you know, 10 million plus. Let's say 10 million to 100. And then like 100 million plus is like less than 10,000 people. It's like not that many people in the US that are, that are in that bucket. But once you have this framework, you can then think about income decisions differently, spending decisions, etc. And so what you talked about, the grocery freedom, I have this rule called the 01% rule. And the idea is take your net worth, multiply by 0.01%, and we're just going to assume that's how much your wealth throws off every day, or that's just a limit you have. And so you that amount, if you have to pay for something, and that's like the marginal difference in the cost of that thing, you can just not worry about it. In other words, like once you find that limit, just like if it's, if the thing you're buying is below that limit, don't worry about it, just buy the thing. Right? And so let's use your example. Let's say you have $100,000 net worth using the.01% rule, which is multiplied by.0001 or divide by 10,000, the same way of getting there, that gives you $10. So 100,000 divided by 10,000 is $10, which means on average we assume your wealth throwing off about $10 a day. If we assume that's true, which is about 3.7% a year, a pretty conservative return. If we assume that's true, then when you're at the grocery store it's like, oh, do I get the eggs or the cage free eggs that are a dollar more like that extra dollar difference, that marginal difference is less than the $10. Right? So the idea is by the end of level two, once you hit about $100,000 in net worth, you can buy whatever you want at the grocery store. Level three is 100,000 to a million. That's what I call restaurant freedom. So by the end of level three, by the time you're at like a million bucks in net worth, you can basically buy what you want in a restaurant besides maybe the super expensive bottles of wine, right? So outside of that, you can basically get what you want in a restaurant. Level four is what I call travel freedom. That's one to 10 million by the end of level four, by the time you're in 10 million, you can basically travel how you want. You can, you know, get first class upgrades. The only thing you can't really do is fly private. So there are still like carve outs of like flying private. That's really for someone more like 20 million kind of deeper into level five is where we tend to see the data show up there. But either way, I think the idea here is like, as you build wealth, it allows a little bit of lifestyle creep. Because right now most of the finance experts out there will say, no, you can't, no, you can't spend more no matter what, like, keep your lifestyle the same. And I think, no, you can spend more, but only after you've built wealth. And so that's what this wealth ladder framework does because as you build wealth over time, it allows a little bit more spending freedom. But it takes, you know, it's only 0.01%. So it's a very slow moving scale.
A
Yeah, no, I just, the way you frame it is so good and so helpful, especially with, especially for the spending. For me, in my household, it's the $20 rule. If something's less than $20, like, I don't really think about it, I just end up getting it. Whether it's an Amazon, it's a silly Amazon purchase, or if like we're going, you know, shopping and my kid wants something, if it's less than 20 bucks, generally I'll be okay just getting it without, without having too much fuss about it. But you know, I think, I think that a lot of people have a hard time kind of even people that like, gets this level of success, like being okay with spending their money. Right. I think, I think that's like something that you talked about in your recent blog post where like people that make money, like lottery winners, end up going bankrupt. There's a high, very high rate of bankruptcy. Whereas if you like work hard to make money, you sometimes have a hard time spending it. It's something that I deal with my parents all the time. You know, my parents are immigrants, worked really hard for a long time, and without their support, I wouldn't be where I am today. But like, they still to this day have a hard time spending the extra cash on something nice for themselves or taking a nice trip even though they can afford it. How do you, how do you get people to like, feel okay? Especially someone who's been kind of had the opposite way of thinking for so long. How do you get them to kind of break out of that shell and be okay with kind of treating themselves.
B
Yeah. A lot of it's a behavioral and like, it's a psychological thing. But these types of rules can help. Like, hey, here's a rule. Try this rule. Okay? Try the 4% rule. Try. Like, there's a lot of different things out there. I'm not saying any one of them is perfect or correct, but like, throw a bunch of these at them and they can say, like, okay, well, according to if you have a wealth of $5 million and, you know, using the 4% rule, you can spend, you know, 200K a year or whatever it is. Right. So it's actually more. I think it's 225, but is that right, 25? Yeah, I think it's. I think it's 225. I can't remember. But it's like, you do the math on this thing and it's like 4% rule on 5 million is $200,000 a year. Like, that's how much you should be able to spend. How much are you spending? Oh, 100,000. You can double your spending. And they say, well, I can't do that. I'm like, well, the data says you can. Right. There's so much research, blah, blah, blah. Right? Oh, you don't like that? Try the.01% rule. Okay? You can spend 500 bucks a day on whatever you want. Like, you know, and so it's like, I don't know, you got to try to just run those numbers and just see how people react to it, See how they feel about it.
A
Yeah, it's just because, like, I think for them, for a lot of people, once you've kind of been through some traumatic episodes, whether it was a dot com bubble where you kind of, you know, people lost a lot of money and then you had the financial crisis. And when you kind of go through those hardships, even when you've recovered, like, it kind of. It's hard to kind of go back and not feel worried all the time because you've been through some bad stuff. And that's why, like, right now it's so interesting is like, we haven't had a bad recession since 2008, 2009. You know, I, I was 16 years old when that happened. So I still remember it. I still kind of remember, like, the vibe. It was, it was a scary time, but I don't really. Like, I didn't have to try to get a job through that time. So it's just so interesting how, like, behaviors are different these days from A newer generation of people growing up. I wonder if like savings rates and things like that are lower because of that, where people are like, you know what, the economy always just keeps booming. Yeah. Economy keeps going up and we're gonna be fine.
B
And there might be some of that going on. I mean, there are periods like the, I think the Australian economy had like, I think was two or three decades where there was no recessions or anything. So that it does happen. It's very rare that it happens, but it can happen. And so I'm not saying that's what's happening now, but like, it's hard to know, right? The futures, it's. The future's uncertain and so we have to kind of just do what we do what we can with the information we have. And so like I say to say I, I recommend staying diversified because we never know what's going to happen. And you know, right now, you know, stocks are very elevated in the US and maybe that'll come undone, maybe it won't. Maybe it'll just melt up. Maybe there's be hyperinflation. I have no clue. I'm hoping none of those things happen. But we'll wait and see.
A
I wonder if, like, I wonder if we've kind of hit an economic cycle now where we like, know how to deal with economic slowdowns, where we're just going to, you know, qualitative easing with the Fed coming in, like, are we ever going to have another recession? I'm sure, like, those are some thoughts that people have, like, are we ever going to have another recession? Is it going to be more of like a rolling recession where some industries have it? Like, we're kind of seeing somewhat with the tech industry kind of having, you know, higher levels of layoff compared to others where like, you know, the industry that I'm coming from in engineering and construction, like, that's still doing really good where like it's booming. So I wonder if like, we've just kind of entered a period where like you have some downturns in some industries, upticks in other industries, and we just have like a rolling recession now moving forward. Because it's just, we haven't had anything bad in so long and it's just making people feel different.
B
Yeah, I mean, and who knows what's going to happen. But yeah, you're right. Since 2009, I mean, we 2022 was the closest we got, but it was mostly tech focused on evaluations and then chat GBT came out. Well, you know, usually, you know, 11 months into it, and then everything changed. And so now we're kind of all been on the AI train since then.
A
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm going to end with this to my daughter. She's six years old. Are you ever going to write a children's book, Nick? Because I've been waiting to, like, get a good kids finance book that I can read with my daughter. There's really nothing good out there. When's the. When's the Nick Maggi kids book coming out?
B
I have no clue. Let me have kids. Let me have kids first and see if I can come up with something. We'll. We'll leave it at that. I just got married, so give me some time.
A
Congrats.
B
Congrats. But, yeah, so, yeah, I think, you know, you need kind of understand. I mean, I'm not saying I don't. I've obviously been around children in my life. I was a child myself, obviously. But like, let me think about it. That's all I'll say.
A
Well, she has her book fair right now. She's. They do like, the book fair at her school. So I'm gonna try to see. I'm gonna try to see if I can find your. Your old book and your new book there because, I mean, give. These kids need to start, you know, getting educated earlier and sooner and hopefully that way they can start making the good decisions now. You know, I. I just wonder what, what the next generation is gonna be like because they're just so. You know, they have the ability to like, tap a few buttons on their phone and be invested and also make bad decisions as well. We didn't really have that. I used to have to, like, go to my Scott's trade office, like, $5 trades back in the day, and now these kids have like, tap. They can tap, tap away and then be like, fully invested. So I'm just, so I'm fascinated to see, like, if they can kind of get set up earlier and be set up for life sooner than like, what we were, where we didn't really start having to make financial decisions until we were. I was in my 20s until I really had to start making decisions. Now these kids can start doing it at the age of 16 with custodial accounts, you know.
B
Yeah, yeah. No, it does change the dynamic a bit.
A
Well, awesome, Nick, thank you so much for hopping on again. Big fan of your blog. Looking forward to getting your book. I just ordered it recently, so. Looking forward to reading your new book. Your previous book on my bookshelf. Highly recommend it to anybody. So Check out Nick's book. Just keep buying. And also your new book, the Wealth Ladder, should be on Amazon everywhere.
B
I'm assuming Amazon Target, everywhere books are sold.
A
Fantastic. And if people want to follow your blog, you're. Are you. Are you still active on Twitter?
B
I mean, yeah. So Twitter at Dollars in Data. I'm on Instagram at Nick Magi and LinkedIn. And then I'm also, you know, my. My blogs ofdollars and data.com again.
A
I've been reading your blog for a long time. Highly recommend it to anyone out there. Young, old, whoever. By the way, I love your calculators on your blog. I still, I still use those all the time. Like, I remember when the Lakers got sold a couple months ago, the first thing I did was I look up. I went to your calculator to look up what the sale price of the Lakers was to get the S&P 500 returns. So I love all your little tools. So it's more than just a blog. There's a lot of good tools on there. Highly recommend people checking that out.
B
Thank you. Appreciate it. And by the way, I answer every dm, so send me a DM on any one of the platforms.
A
I.
B
Unless it's absolutely unhinged, I answer all of them. So I promise.
A
All right, well, awesome. Thanks. Thanks for that, Nick, and hopefully we'll have you again soon.
B
Yeah, thanks. Appreciate it.
A
Well, all right, guys, hope you enjoyed that conversation with Nick. Now, hope you guys have been liking our weekly interview series as well. We got some great guests coming up that I'm really excited to talk to. You know, I'm starting to get comfortable interviewing people, but if you guys have any feedback for me, please let me know in the comments on Spotify or YouTube. And if there's someone that you think we should interview for this show, let us know as well. We've already put a call out to Nvidia for Jensen to hop on the show. Still haven't heard back yet, but you never know. Thank you guys again for listening and watching. Shout out to to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes. We'll see you guys back here tomorrow.
Guest: Nick Maggiulli (Author, Blogger, Data Scientist, COO at Ritholtz Management)
Host: Zaid Admani
Date: September 7, 2025
Podcast: The Rundown by Public.com
This episode features a candid conversation with Nick Maggiulli, the finance blogger behind "Of Dollars and Data," and author of Just Keep Buying and the newly released The Wealth Ladder. Host Zaid Admani digs into Nick's latest bearish outlook on the U.S. stock market, his approach to portfolio management during uncertain times, the unique wealth-building challenges facing young people today, and practical advice for financial success in a world that often seems stacked against the average investor.
(Starts ~01:00)
“When all the metrics are at the 99th percentile, like you have to say, okay, either the world’s completely changed…or we’re probably a little bit inflated.” (Nick, 01:33)
(Starts ~02:56)
“This is not really a financial question. This is more of a personal question.” (Nick, 04:16)
(Starts ~05:50)
(Starts ~07:03)
“The way you build wealth over time isn’t going to come from savings…The way you really do it is by increasing your income.” (Zaid, 07:03)
“Every generation gets a different deck of cards…you have to do something with what you have.” (Nick, 08:31)
(Starts ~11:01)
“It’s much harder for [young people] because…they’re just shown so much stuff on their feeds…Now these people are seeing it 24/7.” (Zaid, 11:01)
(Starts ~14:07)
“Take your net worth, multiply by 0.01%, and we’ll just assume that’s how much your wealth throws off every day.” (Nick, 14:07)
(Starts ~18:49)
(Starts ~19:49)
(Starts ~21:20)
“The future’s uncertain and so we have to kind of just do what we can with the information we have.” (Nick, 20:43)
(Starts ~22:23)
“Now these kids can start doing it at the age of 16 with custodial accounts, you know.” (Zaid, 23:54)
“I’m not like a, oh, sell your US stocks. I don’t think that is a…market timing. And so this is a very, very minor form of market timing. But I’m still buying US stocks just at a slower rate than I was before.” (Nick, 01:33)
“If you have a goal or a purchase… Anything within the next five years, like stocks can do anything over a five year period.” (Nick, 02:56)
“It’s much harder for [young people] because…they’re just like shown so much stuff on their feeds…Now these people are seeing it 24/7.” (Zaid, 11:01)
“You have to try something…Every generation gets a different deck of cards…I graduated in 2012. That was not the best time…But you have to do something with what you have.” (Nick, 08:31)
“As you build wealth, it allows a little bit of lifestyle creep…you can spend more, but only after you’ve built wealth. And so that’s what this wealth ladder framework does.” (Nick, 14:07)
“A lot of it’s behavioral and like, it’s a psychological thing. But these types of rules can help…” (Nick, 18:49)
The episode blends practical finance, optimism, and realism. Nick’s data-driven approach is counterbalanced with humility and personal anecdotes, while Zaid channels the voice of a new generation striving for wealth in uncertain times. The discussion is accessible, relatable, and peppered with actionable rules-of-thumb, making this episode valuable for listeners at any stage in their financial journey.