Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Money Expert: “Expenses Don’t Make You Poor! Your Income Does!” - Nick Maggiulli

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Nick Maggiulli is the COO and data scientist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, where he oversees operations across the firm and provides insights on business intelligence. He is the author of two books, Just Keep Buying and The Wealth Ladder, and Of Dollars and Data, a blog focused on the intersection of data and personal finance. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and the Los Angeles Times. Get his brilliant new NYT bestselling book The Wealth Ladder: Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life here: https://amzn.to/4qpBJE5 Also, check out his first absolutely phenomenal book, Just Keep Buying: Proven ways to save money and build your wealth here: https://amzn.to/4nIONSx Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Do not do that. That's not this solution. The solution is a long-term solution to raise your income. I'm going to stop you, Nick, and I want you to repeat that because people listening, and they all have issues related to their wealth. And so let's say I'm making 50, 60, 70,000 pounds or U.S. dollars a year. What am I doing to get myself into the world of financial independence? And so, repeat it.

The solution is a long-term solution to run. raise your income. Well, I wish we all had a magic wand and we can raise their income, but the question is how do you do that? Like, what is the path to get there? For some people, it's going to be, keep working harder at your job. You just need time. You'll get promoted. You'll see raises, all that type of stuff. It'll just happen naturally. That's not going to be true for everyone. Some people are going to have to go and start a side hustle. Some are going to have to go start a business, right? There's a lot of different ways this can be done. Some are going to go get an education and learn how to a new skill and kind of transition to a completely different industry.

There's a lot of different options out there. Not every person is going to work with every So you've got to figure out the one that works for you. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us now is Nick Majuli. He's a best-selling author. He's the C-O-O-O-Ridholt's wealth. Those are good friends of mine.

And the title of this book is the wealth ladder, proven strategies for every step of your financial life. And I have the book right here. And Nick, you did a very clever thing. He gave me a $2 bill because it didn't fit on the cover. See that? I'm very impressed. I read the book. It took me one sitting to read the book. I loved, I loved your first book. Just Keep Buying because your book has a lot of wisdom. You also say in the book, really, just keep buying and holding because that's how people really make their money in good and bad markets. And so it's something that you understand at a much younger age than me, which I give you a lot of credit for. I'm there now, but I sold winners way too early in my life, Nick. And I think that's a lesson. Peter Lynch is regaled upon and others, and I've been a victim of that.

But it's great to have you here. Before we get into the book, tell us about yourself and what led you to write these two books. Just keep buying. And now the wealth ladder. Yeah, so I was an economics major in college. After college, I started working at a litigation consulting firm, originally from California, by the way. And at the consulting firm, I was doing a lot of data work, a lot of analytics. That was kind of really my passion, one of the things I loved.

However, I also love personal finance a lot, and that really wasn't a fit within the litigation industry. And so I said, you know, hey, at some point, I want to start writing about this stuff. So I use my data skills, started writing a lot about personal finance and investing, started a blog in 2017. Five years later, I thought I had enough stuff. I put out my first book, just keep buying. And then that went, that actually did really well. Actually did better internationally than in the U.S., believe it or not. 80% of my sales when I first book are international, which is kind of crazy.

And then I came out the wealth ladder because Justky buying's great. It's one very good strategy. It's like the best strategy I recommend if I don't know anything about you. But the well flatter kind of zooms out from that and says, hey, what if we could give you a bigger framework that could work for someone in different stages or if you want to get to somewhere else in your life? And so like the analogy I give in the intro is, you know,

a personal finance or a fitness trainer would give different advice to someone who's morbidly obese versus someone who's a well-trained athlete. I think that same analogy is true with financial advice. Have you been talking to my trainer about my morbid obesity? Is that what's going on here? No, I'm not a threat if the questions go badly or something like that. My God. Jesus.

All right. But Nick, you're a young guy. How old are you, if you don't mind me, ask? 35 years old. All right. So you have 35 year old, you know, you probably think you're old, but I'm 61, about to be 62. You're a young guy. You have deep wisdom in this.

book, okay? You know, Sawhill Bloom, I think you may know who he is, the five proven strategies of wealth, very young guy like you, deep wisdom about certain things. So where does this come from? Is it your reading? Is it your research? Is it your professors? Were you born with it? You're, you're definitely like, you write like an elder statesman. This could be a book that Charlie Munger wrote, frankly, who passed at age 100. So I think it's, I don't really have any particular expertise. Everything I try to do is look at the data, look at the research, read a lot. I read graciously about a lot of things, not just financial things, like reading about

science and all sorts of stuff. The most recent book I just read was like on the history of the earth and like how old it is and how we figured that out and all this different stuff. So I'm just reading a lot. And that's where I don't come and say, hey, listen to me because I'm rich. I don't like that way of pitching things. I say look at the data and what is the data say on how people got rich or how people got to this level of wealth versus that level of wealth.

And that's where that comes from. All right. So in the book, you got six levels of wealth. But before we get into any of that, I would like to talk about starting from nothing and being something. So if someone is in that first and second level of wealth, can they become financially independent? Is that possible?

of the savings of net worth ranges 10,000 to 100,000. Oh, yeah, of course. It is definitely possible. Of course. All right. So I want you to repeat it. It's definitely possible. I'm going to stop you, Nick, and I want you to repeat that because of people listening,

and they all have issues related to their wealth. And so, repeat it. It's definitely possible to build wealth and to build financial independence. Yeah, I tell my producers are going or pay attention. And so let's say I'm making 50, 60, 70, thousand pounds or US dollars a year. What am I doing to get myself into the world of financial independence? Go ahead. So the thing you're going to want to do, I mean, in the short term, I say don't worry as much about your spending. Everyone's going to say you're going to nickel

and dime yourself. Do not do that. That's not this solution. The solution is a long-term solution to raise your income. Now, of course, it's, well, I wish we all had a magic wand and we can raise their income, but the question is, how do you do that? Like, what is the path to get there? For some people it's going to be keep working harder your job you just need time you'll get promoted you'll see raises all that type of stuff that'll just happen naturally that's not going to be true for everyone some people are going to have to go and start a side hustle some are going to have to go start a business right there's a lot of different ways this can be done some are going to have to go get an education and learn how to a new skill and kind of transition to a completely different industry so there's a lot of

different options out there I don't want to say you do this one option because that option may not be right for somebody and so you have to be I mean if that's not a kind of pop up. It's a very honest way of approaching the problem and saying, hey, like, not every person is going to work with every solution. So you got to figure out the one that works for you. And so that's what I would push forward is like education, raising your long-term income. Many people have anxiety about money. Some people are living above their means. Some people go on Instagram. They see highfalutin drinks or great meals or I don't know. Something about your generation, Nick. You guys are taking photographs of every goddamn piece of food out there.

and you're creating food envy for each other. And so there's a general tendency to overspend. So you're not a cautious spender. You don't believe in cautious spending or nickel and dimming, nor do I. But how do you get yourself disciplined to have some money set aside where you're paying yourself first to create the wealth that we all want? I mean, the thing that makes it easier, like I always say, if your income is high enough, you don't need to budget as much, right? I think, yes, if you're in a very tough situation, let's see you're making minimum wage in the U.S. You're making $30, $40,000, maybe, you know, $45,000 a year.

You're not in a position to be spending crazily. I'm not saying that you need to watch your spending like a hawk, but you need to watch it a little bit more than someone who's making even 70, 80, right? So I think the key here is like, where are you spending your money? Like, don't nickel and dime yourself and figure out a way to raise your income. It's the strongest relationship in all personal finance. It's the correlation between income and wealth. It's the strongest relationship. I have not found the higher a stronger correlation in the data.

Like the higher someone's income is, the higher is their savings rate. The higher is it's obviously easier to save money. The more if you're to invest that money, the more if they to grow their wealth, etc. We can sit here and guilt trip people about coffee and all this stuff. It's all fake. It's all fake just as a way of covering up. Oh, see, you're poor because of your expenses. That's not true.

It's your income. And so I need to break that myth and bust as much as I can. And so I repeat it as often as possible. All right. So just keep buying is embedded in this book, right? So give us the thesis of just keep buying. And how does it fit into the wealth ladder? So just keep buying the thesis is the continual purchase of a diverse set of income producing assets. I'll say that one more time. The continual purchase of a diverse set of income producing assets. That singular sentence gives you everything you need as an investor to just focus on. do your thing in your career and then as an investor, if you're buying a diverse set of income producing assets over time, that's the continual part,

you're going to build wealth. Like that's just generally true. This would have been true throughout history. And if you do it for a long enough time, it's going to be true. You'll keep pace with inflation in the worst case scenario and you're very likely to outperform inflation over a very long time period. And that's true.

That's including not just U.S. stocks. We're including international stocks, including real estate, including farmland, including all of these things, right? And so when you look at this, like that type of, that solution is very simple. Just own those income producing assets, a diverse set of them, not just like one stock, not just one house, only a diverse set of these things. And you do it for a very long time and you will build wealth. You have a professor.

You have a mentor. You have somebody that rang your bell and got you going in the direction you're going. And who is that and what was their message? And I'm happy to share mine, by the way. but who is that for you? You're an economics major from Stanford, if I remember correctly. Yep. Who rang your bell, Nick?

The person that I think helped me the most is Dr. Jay Batacharya, who's now, he's about to more famous now since COVID and a lot of things that have happened. And obviously, he's now with the administration. But she, I was, I told him like, he's like, hey, what are you doing? Well, you know, I know who he is. But tell viewers and listeners, he got a lot of things right in COVID. Yeah, yeah. Against the conventional wisdom.

some of those things, Ron DeSantis actually adapted in Florida ahead of other people. And Florida's economy did better on a relative basis as a result of that. So tell us who he was first. Yeah, so he was a professor of health economics at Stanford and he was my professor at the time. So he taught a lot about, you know, he actually, I actually, when COVID happened, I remember thinking about what happened like his class because he taught me all about here's what happened when a pandemic. Like initially cases start to go up. People start taking preventative measures, right?

this thing peaks and then it starts to come down. Of course, the virus evolves and there's multiple peaks and it's a little more complex than that. But he talked about this. He had this thing called, if I remember correctly, the great, I think it was a bearinger declaration. He came out with the declaration, him and two other researchers came out and said like, hey, like, we were against the lockdowns. We were against a lot of this stuff that's going on because this is not going to solve our problem. And he got a lot of flat for that. He got a lot of, you know, a lot of the stuff that was said that he said in there, he got a lot of issue for. But now look, back, it seemed like it would have been the better path forward. Of course, we all know with

hindsight, a lot of uncertainty and stuff. But anyways, now he's within the Trump administration. And so the thing that's really interesting is like, he got me a line to like do something different because he asked me like, I came in and talked about a paper, just something for his class. He said, what are you doing for the summer? I said, well, I'm going to be working at my aunt's warehouse. I was going to be there just like, you know, making minimum wage, just stacking boxes, whatever needed to be done, right? And he's like, no, you're not doing that. Like, you need to do something more analytical with your mind. I know someone, you know, even other professor here at Stanford, he has a company, you should go work for them, just send me a resume. And so I sent

my resume in. I'd go in there. I took a statistics test, whatever, all this stuff. And I got an internship there which got me into economics litigation consulting, which is what I eventually did after school. So he absolutely changed my life and I'll forever be grateful for him. And he did this for a lot of people. It wasn't just for me. Like he did that for a lot of students. He helped a lot of people out. There's something about you. I'm trying to figure out what it is. It's one part charisma. It's one part wonk. It's one part you're backing your stuff up

with a lot of research. And so I'm going to drop you and to drop you in a lower middle income area of the country. Maybe here in the United States or in the UK and you get an audience with these people

and you can move them. And a couple of those people are going to become financially independent as a result of your philosophy and what's in your two books. So go ahead. You got a three-minute speech that you want to give those people to ring their bell the way your bell got rung by your professor and the other professors at Stanford. Yeah. So the thing I would say is think about what skills you have today.

And you don't have to have them all today, but everyone has some strengths. Everyone's like, oh, I'm pretty good at this thing. Maybe you're not the best at it, but you're better than some other people. Like, what are those skills that you have that you can build on? You need to build from some base foundation that you can build on over time. That can hopefully raise your income. Once you raise your income enough, it'll be much easier to save money, right?

You can't just let your spending go forever with your income, obviously. But it'll be much easier for you to save money. And then once you're able to save money, Nick, my wife has tried that, okay? We've given her an unlimited budget on certain things and she exceeds it. Okay, but keep going. So once you raise your income, it's much easier to save money. then you can take that money, save and invest it, and over time, that is going to build wealth. And once again, invested in a diversified set of income producing assets, right?

That is the way forward. And I talk about these in my books. And I'm index fund, owning real estate, owning farm, whatever. There's a lot of different ways this can be done. There's no one perfect solution. That's why there's the real estate people will tell you it's all real estate. The stock congressional will tell you it's all stocks. They're both wrong because they're both right.

That's the interesting thing. They're both correct at the same time. You can do it in real estate. You can do it with stops. You can do it with all sorts of things. If I was someone like lower middle income, I might, I think where there's a shortage of skills and labor right now is in a lot of producing of real things.

I think there's going to be a shortage of that going forward because everyone's focused on AI and technology and we're going to live on the internet and all that. I don't think that's true. I think the real world is going to need builders. We're going to need plumbers. We're going to need all sorts of people that are building things in the real world. And I think we don't have enough housing.

We don't have enough a lot of these things. And we need those people to do that. I think creating these businesses, you can start to make real money doing that. And I'm not an expert at creating those businesses. There's a lot of other people that will be better at that talking about that. But I do see that as a path forward for a lot of people that is probably unoverlooked right now. Very well said, you're a man of great practicality. I want to talk about market crashes.

So I have survived thus far nine market crashes. Maybe the next one will get me. I've already outlived the nine lines of a cat. I think I'm on Life 30. But how do you survive a market crash? You write beautifully about it. You also write about it and just keep buying. So I've been through both of your books.

What's your advice on market downturns and the panic that the media helps to engender during a market downturn? I mean, I think they help engender it because it brings attention, right? The phrase is, the higher the VIX, the higher the clips. And as a reminder, the VIX is a measure of volatility.

So basically how much buying and selling is going on. And so when things are crashing, there's usually a lot of selling. The VIX is very high. And so that is kind of a measure of like, hey, what's going on? And so what do you do during a market crash? You do nothing. You do the same thing you've always been doing. You keep buying and keep going on with your life.

Right. The more you focus on in panic and stuff, that can lead to suboptimal decisions, especially very large changes. If you do want to do something behaviorally, make a very, very tiny shift. If you're like, hey, I'm a little worried. take 5% off the table. Like I'm not, no one's gonna, no one's gonna fault you for that,

take some money off the table and then move on and then keep doing what you're doing. You don't want to go all to cash. There's people that went to all cash in March 2020, and right now they're sitting on massive, you know, they've lost out on a lot of gains and they're still in cash since then. There's not probably many of them,

but there probably are some people there. So that's the thing I say is, do not overly panic. If you want to do something behaviorally, make a very, very small change to get yourself past that and then keep buying and keep acquiring. assets. Hard to do though, yeah. Oh, very difficult because

why is it, why is it so hard to do for somebody? Because you're every person and everything around you is starting to influence your behavior and how you're thinking about it, right? Like imagine you turn on the TV. Oh, there's this pandemic. And I want, we all went through this. Like, we can all play this game in our mind because we just went through it. If we hadn't had a crash in 20 years, it would be very theoretical. This is very real. We just went through this, right? Like, oh, what do you mean? Like, they're stopping the NBA. Like, that's serious. Like, oh, they're not doing this. They're not doing that. Next thing you know, like all the trade around the world is shut down. Now it's like

people aren't traveling. You start discounting all that. And you can understand how stock price you would fall. And they did fall. But pretty quickly, the market said, okay, well, like, we're going to get through this. We're going to figure this out, blah, blah, and it started rediscounting all that future. Right. So the market right away starts, even as the news is getting worse, the price starts to get better. So you can't wait for headlines to do this either because the headlines will keep getting worse, even as the market's already rebounding. By the time, the headlines say, if you use same amount of money every month. You're buying more of the asset. Yes, at a lower price. You're buying less of the assets. So dollar cost averaging has worked for me and my family for 40 years.

I want to go over these levels. Okay, paycheck to paycheck is level one. Grocery freedom is level two. But Nick, Nick, we got a lot of inflation, Nick. You know, some things in the go. I mean, there's coffee $21. You know, eggs are a dollar an egg. I mean, what do you say to people about inflation. How do they deal with the inflation? What should they be doing to hedge themselves against what looks like prolific government's spending? And I'll quote, I'll quote Morgan Stanley, who's not even big, they're not even bitcoiners over there. They call it currency debasement. So what do you do, Nick? You have to own income producing assets and in some cases some non-income producing assets. Things like Bitcoin and gold can be inflation hedges. And historically,

gold has not been the best inflation hedge. It's still generally done well, but like there are periods where it hasn't been in inflation hedge, right? Like it peaked in the early 80s and then it had a 20 year period where it was underwater before it hits new peak. So there are weird cases where this happened. So it's about owning assets that are going to probably go up over time. I think generally businesses pass on their costs to their consumers. So stocks in general tend to be a pretty good inflation hedge. People don't believe that, but it's true. If people want to believe Bitcoin's a great inflation edge. You can think that as well. I think there's debates to be had about that. It's obviously done very well, much better than I think anyone anticipated even through today.

So yeah, it's about owning assets still. Like sitting in a bank account holding cash is not the solution there, right? So I think everyone understands that. You know, sometimes you need to have some cash for emergencies and whatnot, but I think the solution to hedge that is to own assets of some sort. Okay. So again, don't fear the market crash, buy into it, just be patient and disciplined. don't fear the inflation. If you got income producing assets, the way Nick is prescribing, you're going to get some economic benefit

from those income producing assets to help you offset inflation. Let's talk about you got other, you got restaurant freedom. I love that because you're Italian, I'm Italian. Let's face it, we'd love to eat. You got travel freedom, house freedom.

What about impact freedom? What does impact freedom mean to you? So impact freedom, so in the welfare, there's like these six levels, each level, like a 10-edge jump from the one before. So impact freedom is where I say of like some with $100 million plus.

You can fundamentally change people's lives. Like you could go and buy a business. You could start a foundation and really like change a bunch of people's lives. Technically, you can do a lot of that without having $100 million. You can impact lots of people with much less money. It just takes a lot more of your time.

If you're very rich, you can pay other people to do that, right? But if you want to have that impact yourself, you just have to put in a lot more in the time. Right. So it's a tradeoff between your energy and your financial resources versus just sending your financial resources after something. So it's just another way of thinking about this. So impact freedom to me means the ability to impact a lot of people's lives and whether that means buying businesses through charity work, etc. There's a lot of ways you can do that.

I think I love about the book is the work and progress elements of the book. I mean, you're even citing later in the book Charlie Munger in an interview that Charlie Munger did with my friend Becky. quick from CNBC. I don't know if you remember the chapter, but you're in there. He's saying, yeah, I could have worked harder. I could have been smarter. He's made himself multiple billions of dollars. He was Warren Buffett's partner for 60 years.

And he's telling you there's always room for improvement. And weirdly, he's also telling you something else. It should resonate with people. Even though there's always room for improvement, don't be that hard on yourself. Just get in the game and follow up and demonstrate some discipline. and you could win at this game. Is that fair to say, do I have that right for your book? Oh, yeah, that's completely right.

And I think Munger's case is very interesting because he's, I mean, everyone would consider him one of the wisest business people of the 20th century or maybe any century, period, right? The reincarnation of Ben Franklin, by the way, that's why I love him so much. Yeah, and so like you look at this, I mean, how many great thinkers do we get a century? And he's one of them. It's like, Ham Einstein, you know, you think about this type of stuff. And it's like, wow, that's a true great.

and still he even had some tingees of what sounded like regret, even though he's clearly incredibly successful. And so it goes to show some of the emotions, and even the greats go through this stuff, even the people who are very renowned still go through these things. So it's very natural to feel like, oh, I could have done that better. Well, like, even if you had done that better, you still would think, oh, I could have done that even better than that, right?

So it never really ends. So I think it's just a way of, you know, reducing some of the guilt we put on ourselves as well, something to think through. All right, so we're down to the last couple of minutes of this podcast. Okay, so hopefully you'll come on again. And so this will be something you'll be used to. But we've got five words we've picked out of your book. We want our authors to just do some free thinking here.

I'm going to say the word and then you respond to the word. Okay, you ready? Yep. All right, I say the word investment. When I say that word, Nick, what do you think of? Giving up present consumption for future consumption. All right. So delayed gratification, hard for people to do, but people that are,

are capable of doing it, they're well rewarded over the course of their lives. What about saving? Is that different from investment? And if so, when I say the word saving, what do you think of? I think of giving up future consumption. It's more of, actually, no, I think of it differently. I would say that's excess income above your spending. Those are different things in my head. And so excess income above your spending means like it's obvious. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like a cash reserve. It says, I mean, I end up in your investment category, if you have a little bit of, cash laying around in case you have a flat tire or something like that. What about the word buying?

Buying is the act of using your resources to change your future, right? In this case, with investments and things like that. That's the act of doing that. It's very similar to investing. It's interesting. You know, when I, after reading both of your books now, when you say the word buying, I think a perpetual buying, you know, just keep buying. Okay, I've got the word happiness, Nick, say happiness.

Yeah, what does what does happiness mean? Like how do I think about it? Yeah. So that's a great question. It's a very broad, I mean, very known term, but at the same time, like, I think it's getting what you want out of life. Whatever your, whatever, what you want, I think you should be underlined there because every person version is different.

So it's like, what is your version of that? And do you get that? And that's, I think, probably the most important thing there. I think is really important because it's not. just the bank account, right? You got to have health, you got to have love, all different types of things. And so you also make it, you do a really good job of explaining that in your books. Last word, I'll give you the last word. I say the word wealth. You say what? Wealth is living life on your own terms. Happiness and wealth are a little different, right?

Because with happiness, it's like you want things to go a certain way. Wealth is saying, I have the resources to live that life. You're controlling your own. And that doesn't mean you're controlling your own destiny. You have house freedom and maybe even some impact freedom, right? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, you could have wealth, but not necessarily happiness

or vice versa. You can have a lot of happiness and not necessarily have the resources. You're like, maybe just turn out away without you having those resources. You've got lucky. That happens. And then there's the case of like,

you know, you can have the resources and you end up not being happy because you get unlucky, right? You can imagine like, oh, I had all the money. I had this. And then this terrible tragedy happened to me. Like, you lost your happiness. So they're both.

But Julie, let me tell you something. You're a philosopher king, okay? You could be a modern Charlie Munger. I mean, in the mortal words of Warren Buffett, if I could buy stock in your income, in your future career, I would be an equity owner. The title of the book is The Wealth Ladder, and it's proven strategies for every step of your financial life. Bestselling author, Nick Majuli, thank you so much for joining us on Open Book.

Yeah, thanks so much. We appreciate it. I truly appreciate the kind words. Thank you.