Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Ray Dalio on How to Make Money in Any Economy

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

The Money School: The Complete Financial Education You Were Never Given Nicole's most comprehensive book yet, the financial curriculum that should have been taught in school but never was. From your first paycheck to investing, buying a home, building wealth, and planning your legacy, The Money School is the full course in plain English. Go check it out: https://nicolelapin.com/money-school-book Financial headlines are always going to be scary, but there's money to be made in any economy. That's my biggest takeaway from sitting down with Ray Dalio. He started investing at twelve, built Bridgewater into one of the biggest hedge funds on the planet, and made more money for his clients than any hedge fund manager alive. I don't get starstruck often, but I couldn't play it cool with this one. Today I'm sharing the moments from our conversation that I'm still thinking about. I break down Ray's view of how money and debt really work, why he thinks the U.S. has a lot of "plaque" in its financial arteries, and what that means for the buying power in your bank account. Then I get into the investing strategy Ray is famous for, including the one asset he loves that another billionaire I had on the show said he has no opinion on. ----------------------- MORE FROM NICOLE LAPIN 🎥 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneyRehabPodcast 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moneyrehab/ 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nicolelapin 🌐 Nicole's website: https://nicolelapin.com OTHER THINGS WE DO 💳 SoFi: https://SoFi.com/MNN 💰 Private Wealth Collective: https://privatewealthcollective.com 🏦 The Money School: https://themoneyschool.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Headlines in financial news are pretty much always going to be scary. But there's money to be made in any economy. And that's what I took away from my conversation with legendary investor Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio started investing when he was just 12 years old, built Bridgewater into one of the biggest hedge funds on the planet,

and made more money for his clients than any other hedge fund manager alive. I had Ray on Money Rehab last year, and honestly, I do not get starstruck very often these days, but I totally was with Ray. I cannot even play it cool. He is one of the greatest living investors, and he is so in demand that not a lot of people get to ask him for his advice, but he made time for us money rehabbers. Ray has an all-weather portfolio designed to withstand any economic condition. I'm going to break that whole thing down at the end of the episode. But before I unpack it, it's really important

to understand how he sees the markets. And I know it sounds kind of woo-woo and unnecessary, but I'll show you what I mean. Dallio's whole worldview starts with one simple idea. Money is debt and debt is money. I know it takes a second to wrap your head around it, but once it clicks, it really clicks. Almost all the spending power in the economy comes from somebody borrowing. In other words, credit. And every dollar of credit creates a dollar of debt that somebody else eventually has to pay, right?

It's a marketplace. When the borrowing keeps piling up faster than the income to service it, It starts hardening like plaque in an artery and it starts squeezing out everything else. Ray's diagnosis for the U.S., we have got a lot of plaque and we're at the risk of an economic heart attack. I know it's dramatic, but honestly, fair. And why can't the government just, you know, handle it? Ray has an answer for that too. A government's debt works exactly like our credit cards, but governments have some levers that we do not.

Like governments can print money and that's cool, but printing money doesn't exactly create It actually just waters down every single dollar that's already out there, which shows up in our lives like inflation. A government can also tax its people to cover its bills. So when a country is drowning in debt, those are the levers. It can tax or it can print. And both take buying power out of our pockets. So with the national debt at over $39 trillion at the time I'm recording this, yeah, it's not amazing. Ray says we need to fix it ASAP or we get a heart attack.

That's the macro. Now here's where our bank accounts come in. I know it is easier said than done, but Ray isn't just saying that you need to have money saved, duh, that is obvious. He's also saying we need to know our numbers. Most of us think about savings in raw dollars. He thinks in buying power because a dollar that's sitting in a checking account earning no interest is no winnow when inflation starts eating into the value of that dollar every single year. So step one in his world is figuring out the number where you and your family are genuinely okay, even if no income comes in for a long stretch of time and stress testing it, assuming the stock market could drop in a bad year.

And we cannot forget to prioritize our emergency fund and putting that in a vehicle like a high-yield savings account where your savings are actually earning something for you. Once you know you're covered, he says you get peace of mind. And peace of mind is what lets you take smart risk instead of scared risk. Then comes the fun part, how you actually build that portfolio. What Ray really means here is that you should have investments that are independent of each other. If you own two equally good bets that don't rise and fall together, your average return stays the same, but your bumps get way smoother because they basically cancel each other out on bad days. Stack 10 to 15 of those, and Dallio says you can cut your risk by five times without giving up return. That is the engine behind his famous all-weather portfolio, an allocation designed to hold up no matter what the economy looks like,

A key ingredient is one asset that people love to argue about. So interestingly, when Bill Ackman came on my show, he said he doesn't invest in gold. Gold is an effective diversifier. Gold, it should be part of a portfolio as a diversifier. Now, what's that amount? Between 10 and 15%. If you have a traditional portfolio and you have about 10 or 15% in gold and that kind of bad time happens, you'll will be well diversified. So whether you expect a good time or a bad time, and it's a good thing to have between 10 and 15% in the portfolio.

So crypto couldn't be a replacement. And then there's the question of crypto. There are pros and cons to crypto. Okay, here's how I look at crypto. During very difficult times, there is a desire to have privacy for ownership. Gold is an investment that has been held by central banks, that they can securely hold. because it's in their hands. There's a saying that gold is the only asset that you can have, investment asset, that is not dependent on somebody giving you something. And so central banks,

I don't believe, are going to hold crypto in the same way because it can be monitored, who's owning it, what is being done with it, and also it can be taken in various ways legally. So crypto is less appealing to me than gold, but I have some crypto, a smaller amount, a much smaller amount than gold. Well, he did say that he buys gold jewelry for his wife, which I love, but he has no actual opinion on gold as a traditional investment. But gold is a foundational part of Ray's portfolio. Ray's take goes back into two things that the government can do in a debt crisis, print money and tax us, which both eat into the value of the dollar. Gold is a hedge against exactly that. He suggests something like 10 to 15% in gold as a hedge.

All right. So let me walk you through the all-weather portfolio. Here it is. Ray's all-weather portfolio calls for 30% in U.S. stocks, 40% in long-term treasury bonds, 15% in intermediate term treasury bonds, 7.5% in gold and 7.5% in commodities. This is the portfolio that he's designed to withstand different economic environments, even downturns. The heavy, heavy bond waiting here isn't a very heavy bond weighting here.

a bet that bonds beat stocks, it's because bonds are less volatile, so more dollars are needed to contribute equal risk while gold and commodities act as an inflation hedge. This portfolio is built for stability and smoother returns with smaller drawdowns, not exactly maximizing for supersonic growth. But Dallio is a long-term investor who prioritizes survival down here on Earth versus investing in something that is going to the moon. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. If you don't have an emergency fund yet, you do need to build up three to six months of of essential living expenses. If your income is unpredictable, like you're a freelancer or you have commission-based work, or you're the sole earner in your household, aim for the higher end or even

nine to 12 months of cushion. To find this number, just add up your non-negotiable monthly expenses, not all the extras, and multiply that number by the number of months that you want covered. Keep this money in a high-yield savings account where it stays liquid, but also, earns interest. This isn't the nest egg that's going to the stock market per se. It's an emergency funds job to have safety and access, not growth.