The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 646: Nick Maggiulli - Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life (The Wealth Ladder)

Episode Date: July 27, 2025

Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire 1 person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. www.InsightGlobal.com/LearningLeader Guest: Nick Maggiulli is the Chief Operating Officer and Data Scientist at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He is the best-selling author of Just Keep Buying: Proven Ways to Save Money and Build Your Wealth, and his latest book is called The Wealth Ladder. Nick is also the author of OfDollarsAndData.com, a blog focused on the intersection of data and personal finance. Notes: Money works as an enhancer, not a solution: Like salt enhances food flavors, money amplifies existing life experiences but has little value by itself without relationships, health, and purpose. "Money by itself is useless... without friends, family, without your health, it doesn't add much... it enhances all the other parts of life." Nick beat his dad's friends at chess when he was 5 years old because he practiced more than they did. He got more reps. He did the work. It's not that he was a chess prodigy. He just worked harder than his opponents did. And he still does that today. Practice creates expertise beyond intelligence: At five years old, Maggiulli could beat adults at chess not because he was smarter, but because he had more practice. Consistent effort over time can outcompete raw talent. "I could beat them, not because I was smarter than them, only because I had practiced something... In this very specific realm, I could beat them." Consistent writing builds compound advantages: Writing 10 hours every weekend for nine years created opportunities including book deals and career advancement. The discipline of regular practice compounds over time. "I've been writing for nine years... I spend 10 hours a week every single week for almost a decade now, and that helps over time." The most expensive thing people own is their ego. How do you add value when you're in a job that doesn't have a clear scoreboard (like sales)? Think... What gets accomplished that otherwise wouldn't have without you? Add value through time savings and efficiency: In roles where impact isn't immediately measurable, focus on how much time and effort you save others. Create systems that make your colleagues more efficient. "How do I save our operations team time? How do I save our compliance team time... I'm designing better oars that'll give us 10% more efficiency." Money amplifies existing happiness: Research shows that if you're already happy, more money will make you happier. But if you're unhappy and not poor, more money won't solve your problems. "If you're happy already, more money will make you happier... but if you aren't poor and you aren't happy, more money's not gonna do a thing." Ego is the most expensive thing people own: Trying to appear wealthier than you are prevents actual wealth building. Focus on substance over status symbols. "People in level three that wanna look like people in level four end up spending so much money to keep up with the Joneses." Follow your interests for long-term success: Passion sustains you through inevitable obstacles and rejection. Maggiulli wrote for three years without earning money because he genuinely enjoyed it. "Follow your interest because when you follow your interest, you're more likely to keep going when you face obstacles." The "Die with Zero" philosophy, advocated by Bill Perkins, encourages people to prioritize experiences and fulfillment over accumulating maximum wealth, suggesting spending money strategically to maximize lifetime enjoyment. Nick defines six levels of wealth based on net worth, ranging from $0 to over $100 million. These levels are: Level 1: $0-$10,000 (paycheck-to-paycheck), Level 2: $10,000-$100,000 (grocery freedom), Level 3: $100,000-$1 million (restaurant freedom), Level 4: $1 million-$10 million (travel freedom), Level 5: $10 million-$100 million (house freedom), and Level 6: $100 million+ (philanthropic freedom).  Nick also notes a shift in asset allocation as one progresses through the levels. In the lower levels, a larger portion of wealth is tied up in non-income-producing assets like cars, while higher levels see a greater emphasis on income-producing assets like stocks and real estate. Wealth strategies must evolve by level: The approach that gets you to level four ($1M-$10M) won't get you to level five ($10M-$100M). Higher wealth levels typically require entrepreneurship or equity ownership. "The strategy that you use to get into level four is not going to be the strategy that gets you out." Know when "enough" is enough: Level four wealth ($1M-$10M) may be sufficient for most people. The sacrifices required to reach higher levels often aren't worth the marginal benefits. "The rational response for an American household once they get into level four is... maybe I take my foot off the gas and just enjoy life more." As a data scientist, Nick leverages data to provide business intelligence insights at Ritholtz Wealth Management, where he also serves as Chief Operating Officer. His work involves analyzing data to answer business questions, identify trends, and build predictive models. For example, he might analyze lead conversion rates, client attrition, or investment patterns to inform business decisions. Financial independence requires separate identities: Maintain individual financial accounts within marriage for independence and easier asset division. Pool resources for shared expenses while preserving autonomy. "Everyone needs to have their own accounts. They need to have their own money... especially important for women." Nick and his wife have a joint + separate bank account(s). Here's how it works: All of your income and your partner's income flows into this joint account. That income is used to pay for all shared expenses. Any excess left in the account (above a certain threshold) can either be left in the account or distributed equally between you and your partner (to your separate accounts). Apply to be part of my Learning Leader Circle  

This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you want to learn more about the CEO, Bert Bean and Chief Revenue Officer Sam Kaufman, check out episode 424. We had a fantastic conversation talking about my partnership with the great people at Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or it should be a fantastic conversation talking about my partnership with the great people at Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader. Nick Majuli is the chief operating officer and data scientists at Rittholz Wealth Management. He is a bestselling author of Just Keep Buying. His latest book is called The Wealth Ladder. Nick is also the writer at Of Dollars and Data.com, a blog focused on the intersection of data and personal finance. During our conversation, we discuss what Nick has learned about life from playing chess.

Also, how to add value at work when you have a job where it's kind of hard to measure. And then Nick shares some investment strategies, why he and his wife have separate accounts, And we go deep on the six ladders of wealth. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Nick Majuli. So this book was dedicated to your dad, your father, you write, for teaching me the game. Don't move until you see it. What does that mean? That's a Bobby Fisher quote.

There's a movie called Searching for Bobby Fisher. I mean, the quote is not from Bobby Fisher. It's from the movie searching for Bobby Fisher. And in there, he says, don't move till you'll see it. And so my dad, I'd never seen it. the movie as a kid, my dad would always say that. And then we eventually watched the movie together as I got a little older. And so, you know, he just taught me chess early on. I think it actually had a huge impact on my development and how I think about things and, you know, thinking about,

stages and how your strategy has to change over time. There's a lot of elements of chess that are similar to the well flatter in the book, but I didn't go into all of them in the book because they would have probably bored people to death with, you know, chess analogies. But I think there's a lot of parallels between chess and life and a lot of things like that. So that's why I kind of dedicated to him. Well, when you were five years old, your dad had you play chess against his friends. And I'm curious what you learned about life from those games of chess where you would dominate these adults when you were five years old. It was just interesting because it made me realize that like, you know, I'm obviously only five and so I don't know a lot. I don't have

many deep realizations of that age, but like I could beat them not because I was smarter than them, only because I had practiced something. That was it. Like there's no way I was smarter than his Just 0% chance. I had more knowledge. I knew anything about the world. You know, I'm 5, 6 years old. But in this very specific realm in this specific game, I could beat them. And I wasn't a chess prodigy.

As I say in the book, I was just better. Like, you have no skill. I could beat you, right? So if you basically just know how the pieces move and that's it, like I could beat you. But I think that was the big takeaway there. You can learn something and outperform people, even if they're better than you at every other thing. You can just still compete them. What have you taken from that experience of this realization?

that I've got more repetitions than everybody else. I'm not necessarily smarter than them, but I've practiced more. I've worked harder at the craft, and that's why I'm winning. What have you taken from that key learning that has helped you in other elements of your life? The thing for me is like I've done all that, you know, all the standardized tests I've ever taken IQ tests, whatever put me like the 90th percentile, which is good. Don't get me wrong.

The 90th percentile is a massive advantage to have that, you know, intelligence since I was young. But I'm not at the 99th percentile. and I'm still out competing some people at the 99th percentile, right? Which is crazy. And it's only because I put in the reps. For example, in writing, like, there's so many writers out there that are so much smarter than me. So many of them, right?

And I've still built an audience and had a lot of sales and done well in that, only because I've just been doing it for so much longer. I think people, just because people are very smart, they think they can go and write a book and sell a bunch of books, and it doesn't always happen that way, right? And so that's an example where, like, I've been writing for nine years. And I wasn't necessarily the best writer when I started, but I just got better because I I spend 10 hours a week every single week for, as I said, almost a decade now, and that helps over time.

So that's kind of the big thing I've taken away from that. So you have a day job, too. You're not just a writer. Writing is something you do in addition to working because, Nick, I push every leader I work with to write. They don't have to publish. I love it if they do. They don't have to.

But I urge them to at least have a writing practice because it's such an amazing tool for clarity. You don't fully know what you think about something until you get those words out of your head onto the page. how do you balance out your writing practice, which you've done for a long time, and it's definitely benefited you in big ways. It's created opportunities, book deals, everything, right? It's part of the reason why we're talking, but also with the fact that you have a full-time job. How do you balance those things? So I write basically every weekend. Historically, I usually did it on Sunday, so that was my quote church, so to speak, was writing. And so I'd spend the five, 10 hours every

single weekend and doing that. And then my job, thankfully, you know, I work market hours, you know, so I'm at an investment management firm. And so, you know, we basically work nine to five. And so, yes, there are nights where you have to work beyond that. But for the most part, it's not a super high stress job. So because of that, there's a lot of balance there and allows me to kind of do the writing and everything else. If I was in a different role, I think it would be tougher or I would just have to find more time on the weekends and things like that to do it. And the writing is actually what earned you the job or helped you earn the job. Yeah. Well, not the job necessarily. but it got me noticed. I came in as a data scientist at Rittolt's wealth management,

and they only found out about me through my writing where I'm kind of talking about data, showing charts and all these types of things. And as I showed all that, they like my writing. And so we kind of talked and we realized that there could be a fit. Maybe I could help them on the operation side. And so over time, I came in as a data scientist. I started doing more and more stuff, and now I'm the COO of the firm. So I help with operations and thinking about efficiency and how do we scale our practice and everything and still provide the best service we can for clients. What does a data scientists do? There's different types of data scientists.

It could be as simple as like a business analyst where you're in Excel and you're just analyzing whatever data you have if you're a manufacturer or you're a wealth management firm, etc. Or it can be as advanced as doing really deep machine learning and stuff like that. And that's even that's even evolving as we speak with AI and everything because now AI is kind of taking over a lot of this stuff. But it's a whole spectrum of just what I like to think about is like business intelligence. What information can I find about our business that helps the leaders of the business make better decisions?

Like, oh, should we expand into this? How do we assign leads to advisors, right? And what's the close rate like? All these types of different things are all interrelated. But I think data can help you make better decisions as a result. So this is interesting. Okay. I want to work through this question.

But I worked until I left corporate America. My job was as a sales rep and then a manager, director, and VP of sales. And so it's very black and white on how I could add value to my company. Bring in the money, right? Bring in the money. When you have a job that's not that black and white, and maybe as a data scientist, we could use that as our example, but there are plenty other jobs like that where it's not as black and white as how much money did you bring in for the firm or for the company.

How do you ensure you're adding value? How do you ensure you're providing more for the place that you work? than what they're giving you because I think that's how we continue to rise up within companies. That's how we get promoted. That's how we build a really great career is to add more value than we take. So how do you do that in a job like a data scientist or something else like that where it's not so black and white as how much money did you bring in for the company? Yeah, I think the thing to think about here is like what are the things that are actually getting accomplished that wouldn't be accomplished if you weren't there? And so I can give an example of something very simple. Like, let's say the CCO at my firm has to review all this data and she would have to review it one document at a time or something.

If I can write a program that imports all these PDFs or documents, puts them into some sort of readable data table and then summarize it for her and gives it to her, I've now saved our CCO maybe five, six hours of time. And if I'm doing that once a month, okay, that adds up. Now, that's just one program I wrote for one specific task. Now, do that across multiple tasks over time. You can see it's about time savings. How do I save our operations team time? How do I save our compliance team time, our advisors time, et cetera? So if I'm giving an analogy, like if you imagine a wealth management firm is a boat, right?

Like the CEO is telling us where to go, like the advisors and the ops team are the ones who are rowing or kind of pushing us forward, right? What is the CEO doing? I'm designing better ores, right? I'm designing things that'll give us 10% more efficiency with every time we row or something like that. And so that's the thinking I have behind it. And so I agree, it's not easy to show, but I'm going to say, okay, let's say you wanted to go onto the market and hire this person that does this part of the role. And then you had to hire this person, had to hire this person. Like, these are all the things I do.

And so that's kind of how I try and come up with an approximate value. And of course, it's never perfect. You have to kind of try your best at this stuff. But that's how I try to show values. Like, look at how much time I'm saving all these people. If you add it all up, this is how much you'd have to pay for that or they would have to work extra and maybe not enjoy their job as much, et cetera. Or just anecdotally that CCO or the others saying, oh my goodness, I didn't think this was possible. The thing Nick did that saved me this much time, that's a life changer.

Like, that is a pure value added resource. You want to be that person at your place of work. Again, if it's not as black and white as like a lot of the jobs that I had. Okay, I want to get into the wealth ladder because I was looking at through the levels and then some of the questions. I think it's like a really interesting way to view wealth. not surprising. I'm a big of dollars and data fan. I told you that last time we talked and just keep buying. And by the way, since we talked, I've just kept buying and better off for it. Hopefully everyone else has too, because we're all better off if we have since the last time we talked.

But wealth out of there's six levels. And I'd love at least to start at a high level. What are these levels? What are the six levels of wealth? So this is based on net worth. And so that's just as a quick reminder, that's all of your assets. So that's everything you own, right? Your stocks, cash, house, car, et cetera, minus everything you owe to others. So assets minus liabilities, right? And so your liabilities would be your debt, student loan debt, your mortgage, credit card, et cetera. So if you take those assets minus liabilities, you get your net worth, right? And then based on your net worth, you would fall into one of the six levels. And the thing about the levels is they're all just a factor of 10. So multiply by 10 to go up a

level or divide by 10 to go down. And so I'll walk through that briefly. Level one is less than $10,000 in net worth. 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 lastly, level six is over $100 million. So if you just memorize one of these levels, I just memorize like level three is $100,000 to $1 million, which is your typical U.S. middle class. And I can get into the data on that. If you just memorize that, you can back out the rest from there. But every single level has a different strategy. It's a different way of thinking about your income, spending, investments, et cetera. And so that's what I kind of walk through in the book. And I think because of

these large 10x changes, there actually are pretty big strategy changes you might need to make if you want to keep leveling up, so to speak. Let's say you're in level three and you look like you may get to level four or five, right? How does the strategy change? Can you just share some examples because some people would say, hey, just keep investing, just keep buying, right? Maybe you throw some real estate in there. Like as you make a little bit more money, maybe you can go on better vacations, 529s are all good to go for your kids and all that. So how do things really change that much as you just progress through the levels? What strategies change some specific examples as you grow your wealth? I'm glad you asked this question because you said, you know, oh yeah,

level three, you're going to get to level four, level five. Some people in level three are on their way to level four and it's just going to take time, right? Time is a big factor here. For the record, level four is $1 million to $10 million. And the median U.S. household age of all households in level four, which is $1 to $10 million, is $62 years old. So if you took all the people of $1 to $10 million, put them in a room and then you took the middle age, that person is 62 years old. So time is a big factor here. But that's not the only factor, right? So even if you're in level three, you're saving and investing, okay, yeah, you can go and get to level four. But once you get to level four, That same strategy is very unlikely to get you to level five. And I talk about this a little bit in level four. And let me just do some math with you. Let's say you just made it to level four. You have a million dollars in wealth. Let's just assume it's all in a portfolio to make it easy. Right. You have a million bucks. Let's say you're saving $100,000 a year after a tax, which is a decent amount of money. I mean, there's a lot of money actually to save as well. And you're earning 5% a year. How long would it take you to get to 10 million? How long would it take you to get to level five? The answer is 28 years. That's

after you've already hit this huge milestone, you made it to level four, and it's still going to take you 28 years. They're like, well, Nick, you know what? I'm going to supercharged my income. I'm going to save $300,000 a year, right? That's a lot of money to save after tax money. Okay, even if you're saving $300K a year, you start with a million, 5% a year, it still takes you 17 years to get to level five. So once you do the math on this, the strategy that you use to get into level four is not going to be the strategy that gets you out. So it's not just time. Yes, time does matter, but by the time you get to level four, do you want to keep grinding for that long for another, let's say, 17 years while you're making probably close to a million bucks a year?

And, you know, after you're spending and tax and everything, you're only saving 300K, right? So it's like, do you want to do that for another few decades? Probably not. So the only way to get into level five is you have to probably have a different strategy. And we can kind of get, what do you mean? What type of strategy? We can definitely get into that. Oh, let's get into it. I'm curious. I think a lot of people listening and we can identify from this level and and wanting to grow. Yeah. So if you're trying to get to level five, besides like athletes or celebrities, entertainers who have very, very high incomes, the vast majority of people in level five, which is 10 million to 100 million or level six are entrepreneurs. They're business owners that

sold a business or have a business that's worth a lot of money. You're talking, you know, tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, right? And they usually sell that business and then after they liquidate, they're in level five, right? Or the business is worth enough so that they're in level five. So as you, as you, can see the actions you would take to get to level three and four, save, invest, have a good job, all those types of things are very different than the actions of someone who's typically in level five, which is, oh, I need to start my own business, I need to own the equity and all the income, and then I need to grow it to a point where I'm bringing in so much income or the business is worth

so much that I'm technically in level five. So you can see those are very different things, right? You can be, have an amazing nine to five making very decent in the six figures and still just never be able to get out of level four. And this kind of brings up a bigger philosophical point, which is, do you even want to get out of level four? Do you need to? I don't think anyone needs to. I think the rational response for an American household once they get into level four is like, hey, my job isn't really making as much of an impact on my wealth as it used to. So money isn't as valuable in that sense, right? So because of that, maybe I take my foot off the gas and I just enjoy life more and I don't worry as much about accumulating as much money as I can, right? I mean,

if you do the math, if you're saving 100K a year and you have a million dollars, you're impacting your wealth by about 10%, right? 100,000 over a million is about 10%. By the time you get to $5 million, that's only 2%. So your wealth swing every year from your saving is only going to be 2% when it used to be 10%. And so as you get deeper into level four, it just, it makes less and less of an impact. I saw this tweet that was like, if your investment portfolio makes more than your job, is your job a side hustle, which is kind of a funny joke, but it's getting at the point.

At some point, you're like, why am I doing all this for money when? I have so much money already that's earning me money that maybe I can do something else or enjoy life more, et cetera. So I think a lot of people get into level four and they rationally say, hey, you know what, I don't need more money than this. I can chill out a little bit. And I think that's actually the correct approach, but we can debate. The equity element, I've heard somebody say, I'm sure you read this all over, salary is for expenses, equity is for wealth. I think when you say that that may turn people off because they're like, dude, I'm not starting a business. Maybe I have some RSUs or I get some options if I'm depending on where I'm going.

That's the maximum of ownership or equity that people are getting. And so some would say that doesn't make me feel good. I mean, maybe it's not supposed to make you feel good, but like they may not relate to that. I've started my own business and I've certainly learned all of the benefits, I guess, of doing so from doing this years ago. And it's awesome. Now, super hard at the beginning, no guarantees, a lot of risk and downside and things that could have went bad.

It's so good. But for the person who's like, dude, I have a really good job. I don't have really any equity. Maybe they get some of those ghost stock or whatever they call it at companies. And in addition to more startupy options type things, what do you say to those people? I'm saying you have two options. You either start your own business. You can also join a startup early and get equity.

And then if it grows, there's a lot of people that were at Nvidia early enough or even very recently. Well, NVIDIA is a kind of exception because I got super, super big, but you get my point. You either start a business or you get early in and a business and get enough equity and then it gets very large. So you either do that or you just accept, hey, I'm not going to make it to level five and there's nothing wrong with that. And I can just be content where I am. It's kind of the Jack Bogle, you know, enough, right? Do you have enough yet, basically? And so I think those are your options. You either accept you're going to be stuck in level four forever, which is not a bad thing. I'm just saying it's a reality. You just accept it and move on or you make a big change. That's what a lot

of these things are in every level, like you have to make some decision. Do I want to stay here? Do I need to make a significant change in my strategy to move myself into a different level? Yeah. What about you? How do you view it? How are you approaching this? I'd love you shared the level you're currently at and where you're striving for. I think that would be awesome. Yeah. So I do talk about it in the book, right? So I'm in level four. Just very recently I got into level four. And so my goal is to keep working, keep doing my thing. I have no goal to get into level five. I have no interest in starting a business, but I think at some point, you know, however many years from it, I don't know how many years. My goal would probably be to kind of slow things down a little bit and do

more of the Coast Fire thing, where maybe I, maybe at my firm, I take a step back and say, hey, I can still do these roles, but I need someone else to kind of take this more high stress role and kind of take this over for me. And I take more of a research role or a content role. I have no idea. And this is not something I'm thinking about right now, but it's just something like five, 10 years down the line, probably closer to 10 years, if I'm being honest, where I'm like, hey, you know, I've done this. I got kids, younger kids. Maybe I can start doing all that. Because, you know, I just got married. We'll probably start having kids in the next few years, God willing, and we go from there, basically. So you don't have giant ambitions to make $100 million

or to be worth $100 million. That's you and your new wife. That's not like important to you guys. No, not at all. I actually think my life would actually possibly get worse if I went down that route. Why is that? I would have to do so much. I would be like, you know, work at this great firm. I love working with them. We're like, I have content family, do so much together. I'd be like, hey, guys, sorry, screw you guys. I'm doing my own thing. So I got to do that first, I don't want to do. Then I got to like go and figure out this business I'm going to create that's going to make me all this money, right? That's already stressful. Like, what am I going to do? I don't even know what it is, right? So there's all these layers of things that are very uncomfortable and things that I don't care about the upsides that much.

Like, I don't care about flying private or having a mega yacht or all those things. Like, I can already go to any restaurant I want. I can travel basically anywhere in the world. I can't always try. travel first class anywhere in the world all the time, right? But like, I could, in theory, upgrade to a business class C. So it's like there's not that many things that I want to buy with my money that I can't already buy with my money. You know, outside of real estate, that's probably the only thing. And right now I'm renting and it's great. And, you know, when you look at the real estate market, it doesn't really make sense to buy necessarily in a certain high cost of living areas. But my point is I don't need to do any of that stuff. So, you know, I would just happy in level four,

keep doing my thing and go from there. And I didn't grow up with money. Or I grew up. I would say in level two. So I have no interest in getting to level five, six, et cetera. If it happens, great, but I'm not going to specifically go out of my way to try and create that. What did the conversation sound like with your fiancé now wife about money, about wealth, about ambition? These are important things to talk about. I'm just curious to go inside what those conversations sounded like.

I think early on, first off, she didn't know, before we were married, she didn't really know how much wealth I had or anything. I didn't know how much she had. And so we kind of eventually had this conversation, obviously, before we got married and we kind of looked through everything. And we're like, yeah, we're doing fine. We're very young. I've been very fortunate in a lot of reasons. And so because of that, we don't need to stress about a lot of stuff. She can get very stressed about certain things with money. I'm like, baby, don't worry about it. We can pay for it. It's not a big deal. I think that's where a lot of that tension comes from is just you grow up with a certain lifestyle and a certain level of frugality and she's much more frugal than I am. And so because of that,

I'm trying to get her to relax a little bit more. And yes, we can spend money on this. It's not a big deal. Okay, that costs $20. We don't need to go back to the store to return it. If you don't love it, it's not the end of the world. It's only $20. It's going to cost us more in our time and energy to go out there versus just writing it off as a loss, so to speak.

Yeah, thinking about saving. And my parents are this way. They've done a really good job of being frugal and saving a ton. And my dad retired at 60. My mom stayed home with us. And so they've both been enjoying. golf a house in Florida, another one in Ohio doing their thing. And there's this stat though. I don't know the percentage, but a high percentage of people kind of like them,

they end up living for 20, 30 years into retirement and die with more money than they had when they retired. Right. And so knowing that they're that way and so many others are that way, it actually makes me want to spend more money, go on better vacations, bigger ski trips or whatever, because I'm wired like that too, and I almost have to push it out. What do you think about that, that so many people end up with a ton of money when they could have maybe spent it and made parts of their life bigger and grander and potentially more enjoyable? That's the whole Bill Perkins' die with zero thing. And I think that's directionally.

I think that book is accurate. I don't think you should try to die with zero. I think it's very difficult. I bet Bill Perkins is going to die with quite a few million dollars. but I think he's going to die closer to zero, which I think is the correct approach, right? It's hard to know. You don't know when you're going to die. Yeah, exactly. Of course. Of course. Yeah. But you're trying to die closer to zero is probably the directionally the correct approach. And I actually have a funny study about that. So Michael Kitsy's looked at like retirement portfolios. And this is just historical

analysis, right? And if you started, let's say, let's say, let's say, let's say you follow, like, the 4% rule pulling, you know, 4% a year, adjusting for inflation, you are more likely to to end up with four times your money than less than your starting portfolio value, right, following that approach. You're basically equally likely, but it's slightly more likely to end up with four times your money after 30 years than below what you started at. So you start a million dollars, you're more likely 30 years later after doing the 4% rule and everything.

You're more likely to have $4 million than you are to have under a million, which is exactly your point. The data shows it. There's people not spending enough. I think when you ask retirees, oh, why don't you spend more on this? They'll say, I don't need to. It's not going to make me happier. It's all this.

And maybe that's true for some of them. But I think some of them, too, could loosen up a little and say, hey, maybe I can get a nicer seat. I can get a business class seat instead of a coach seat just because your whole life you flew coaches. I mean, you have to fly coach later. I mean, I don't know. It's all comfort. It's what you care about. And maybe some people want to leave more to their errors.

It's up to them. I don't try to criticize how people spend their money. But I do agree with you that people are probably not spending enough at certain points in their lives. Well, and part of Bill Perkins stuff he was on this podcast talking about it is I have a healthy, able body to go climb mountains and ski and do all those things. I may not later. And so I think part of the point is, is like, spend it when you can still climb big mountains in Zion National Park or go ski in big sky, do things like that.

Because you never know. You may not be able to do that. So why not spend it now to basically use the hard work that turns into money and then turn that money into amazing experiences with people you love? I think that's like the, that's what I'm trying. trying to do, but it's harder for somebody who grew up and is naturally like a saver and wants to save for the future. It's like a tough balance. Yeah, I think that's also the thing that, you know, my wife and I talk about. I'm like, hey, we're only going to be able to do these things

once. She was like worried about, oh, this expense of the wedding or that or this, is this dress too much? I'm like, hey, we just get it. We're only doing this once. We're not doing a full wedding. Like, we did a full on wedding and everything. We had a much smaller wedding. We did a full on wedding. It costs like $100,000. Right. So we're like, we're not doing any of that. we're doing a much smaller kind of boutique wedding. So like we can kind of go above and beyond for things that's still not going to cost anywhere near what a much larger wedding would cost. Yeah.

I want to fast forward to later in your book about the money buying happiness thought. It goes back and forth. You talk about a lot of the research done with this. There used to be thoughts of like you get to a certain amount and then above that it doesn't really go up much. And then somebody disputed that and then you've kind of gone back and forth. But at a high level, how does money impact happiness? The general takeaway after looking at all the studies on income and wealth is that if you're

happy already, more money will make you happier. If you're poor, more money will likely make you happier. But if you aren't poor and you aren't happy, more money is not going to do a thing. And so I think that is the summary of all the data we've seen. For example, the figure that's thrown around is the $75,000 in income, that famous paper, which basically says, hey, after $75,000, happiness doesn't keep increasing. They actually looked into it a little bit more after, like in another paper, another guy named Killing'sworth came in, which is what I talk about in the book. And they realized that they weren't measuring happiness. They were measuring unhappiness.

So basically, unhappiness doesn't fall. It's kind of a weird double negative. Unhappiness doesn't fall above $75,000. So once you're above $75,000, you can still be unhappiness. happy, basically. But when you actually look at a true measure of happiness, like it keeps going up over time, but it usually has to have a what's called a log step or like a multiple increase in your income or your wealth to see that, which is why I think the wealth ladder is useful. A large 2x or 5x or 10x jump in wealth would actually make you happier, assuming you're already happy, right?

So that's the one takeaway here is if you're already happy, you'll probably be happier if you have more money, but it also requires a much bigger step to keep getting more happiness. Well, and part of it too is there's tradeoffs to everything in life. And there are sacrifices that need to be made for everything in life. In sports, if you want to win, for the most part, you've got to be overprepared and work insanely hard and bounce back from diversity and be resilient. And there's a cost at all that. It takes time. It takes effort.

It takes you away from other people in your life. And the same thing could be said for potentially earning more money. And you've heard these stories of these super rich guys that speak to the. like the younger generation and say, do not do what I did. Don't do it the way I did it, where I was on the road all the time. I wasn't home. It cost me family. It costs, you know, that type of thing. So it's figuring out what's the level you need to get to and what are you willing to sacrifice. What are you willing to get? What's it going to take in order to get there? And is it worth it? I feel like that's what the wealth ladder is helpful for readers as well as like,

what is it going to take? And what are you doing it for? And sometimes I think people don't actually stop and think, what am I doing this for? What am I striving for? What am I trying to do to get all this money to do what? It's worth it to be much more thoughtful about this. Yeah, I think the big takeaway for me as I was writing the book was realizing when you're in like the lower part of the wealth ladder, let's say level one, most of your problems are money problems. Right. If you had more money, if you're in level one, less than $10,000, if you had more money, you would solve a lot of your problems. But as you go further and further up the ladder, money, becomes fewer and fewer problems, right? And so as a result of that, you realize that it's all the

other parts of your life, the non-financial aspects, which get amplified as you move up the wealth ladder, because you can't buy them. You can't write your kids a check. You can't write your wife a check and say, love me. You know, you can't buy yourself a new cardiovascular system, at least not yet, you know. So the whole idea is like, money is useful. Don't get me wrong, but it's a certain point. It's not tradable for the other types of things that are important in life. So where that enough level is is going to vary a lot based on the cost of living and where you want to live based on, you know, obviously the society you're in, right? I always say, I think in America, because it's a little bit more expensive, because health care is more expensive, et cetera. I think level four is the place

to be where you don't have as many of the sacrifices and the crazy downsides of money on the, on the high end, but you also have enough to feel secure. I think in places like Europe, you can be in level three because the social safety in is so much bigger, you don't need as much money, right, for that type of thing. So it really depends where you live, what your lifestyle, what you want out of life. If you want to fly private, I'm sorry, level four is not going to do it for you, right? So you got to get to level five. So just thinking about that, I think as you figure those things out, then you can make better decisions for where you want to be. Yeah, you said to me before we recording, the most expensive thing people own is their ego. Can you go deeper on that quote?

I mean, it applies to so many different aspects of life, but certain people, if you want to look a certain way and you want to portray a certain image to the world, that can be very costly to do that. I think the biggest difference between people in level three, which is, you know, 100,000 to a million dollars in wealth, and people in level four, which is one million to ten million dollars in wealth, isn't actually that large. There's not that many big differences. Like, yes, people in level four probably live in a nicer neighborhood. They probably sit in a better seat on the airplane, right? They maybe eat slightly nicer food from the grocery story, if that. For the most part, their lifestyles are very much the same, right? And they might have a slightly nicer job, but people

in level three that want to look like people in level four end up spending so much money to keep up with the Joneses type thing. And that's why I say, that's your ego. That's just your ego coming in there, right? And if you didn't spend like that, it might be a little bit easier to acquire the wealth to actually get into level four, which is the irony here. And there's some data to show that, which I discuss in the book. But that's the thing I think about when I'm trying to figure out, like, how does ego matter and how does it impact what decisions you make? Like, once you're in level five and six, I think ego shows up by you staying over concentrated in your business. And so if something were to happen to your business, you could lose all your wealth. We've seen this

happened so many times where people go from billionaires to bankrupt overnight. So it's one of those things where like, why didn't they diversify? Why didn't they do all these things that they could have done to protect some of their wealth? They didn't do it because ego, I think, is at the end of the day, rules a lot of us, unfortunately. I've seen these stories as I've progressed in my career and the business of people who do really well. And then maybe they sell and they have a big exit. And then they get depressed. They don't have a mission anymore. They have tons of money. but it literally doesn't matter because their purpose may be gone. And they struggle and they try to start something new maybe and it doesn't really work.

And they're like, oh, my God. And it goes really, really bad. And I'm just curious from all your study of money and wealth, if somebody came to you privately like Nick, dude, I thought I would be so pumped. I got acquired and now I'm completely free. I can do literally whatever I want, never have to make another dollar and they're depressed beyond belief. how would you help someone like that?

I would probably think about framing it in terms of a game. Like they came up with a game for themselves to play, and that game was building their business. They did the game very well. Maybe early on, I'm guessing it wasn't easy. It was a very difficult game. They mastered it. They got better.

They basically kind of won the game. And then after beating that game, they were basically given the freedom to, hey, choose any game you want. And there's so many games now you can play that it's overwhelming. You know, you get the paradox of choice, right? Like, what do I do now, right? And because of that, it's very easy to look at the world and say, I don't know what to do.

And then you just get depressed. Instead of, would they have been happier if they just stayed in their game? Possibly. You don't know the future. At the same time, they could have stayed in that game and kept playing it and something changes in their industry and they lose it all. And they said, oh, I wish I had just sold at the top. You know, there's so many people in the late 90s that didn't sell in the late 90s and they're kicking themselves as the people that sold it at another point and the business kept growing. right. So I see both sides of the coin, and I think it's one of those things where it's hard to know the future, and it's very easy to woulda, shoulda, coulda. You're only coming up with the reaction after the fact, right? Because for all you know, some people could sell their business and like, oh, you know what? I've always wanted to start a charity, a dog rescue or something. And now they go open a dog rescue and they're happier than ever, right? And they have the resources to do that. That's an example where someone can use their money to do something else, and they'd be very satisfied, but not everyone's going to have that other thing that they come across.

Yeah, I just think it's so much of it is purpose. Like what is your purpose? What is the reason that you're creating for yourself to get up and get after it each day? If you're the type of person that could build a business like that and do something that grand, employ people, have a big exit, I just think that it's very, very hard for them to just chill out on the beach. They could do that for a few days. And they're like, wait a second. And you see it a lot. And I think that's something for all of us to think about.

There's another part towards the end called the Great Enhancer that you write about. And I love the analogy of the fact that salt being added, if you're like cooking, it's not a spice, it's a mineral. It actually works as an enhancer of the existing flavors. Salt can do that to our food and money can do that to our lives. How can money work as the great enhancer, much like salt does for our food? Yeah. So you explained it great.

Like the idea is you could have this. amazing dish, but if you didn't salt it at all, like it may not taste as amazing, right? You could have done everything right, but that little bit of salt there really makes the difference, right? You've tasted it, right? You had something like, oh, can I say it? Oh, wow, that tastes so much better, even though literally the same dish, all I did was add salt. If you eat salt by itself, it's not really that appetizing. You're like, oh, my God, this is incredible. No, you would never say that. It just enhances all the other flavors. I think the same thing is true with money. Money by itself is useless, right? Without friends, family, without your health, without all these other things,

It doesn't add much, right? It's like having a plate of salt and no food to eat it with, right? So it's a great enhancer because I think it's the thing that can amplify all the other parts of your life, right? Like, oh, I like hanging with my friends. Wouldn't it be cool to hang with my friends at a concert? Or we could rent a private venue and have a nice dinner. Like, the more money you have,

the more you can kind of do these types of things that you couldn't have done if you didn't have money. And so I think it enhances all the other parts of life, but by itself, it's not really that useful besides just pure survival, obviously. So just something to think about. And I think it was what I realized as I'm kind of looking through the ladder and kind of walking up the steps and writing at each level. I'm like, you know what? This thing is kind of like salt

in that way. And I know it's a weird analogy, but I think it actually fits here. One of the blog posts you had of dollars and data recently talked about, this is a little bit separate from the book, but I think it still could be helpful. Talked about how you and your wife manage your money. And you talk about these different styles, this separate plus joint method. Can you walk through the different styles of how married people could manage their money together separately, separate and together. I thought that was really interesting piece and could help a lot of people. Yeah, so I know couples that do everything separately. They have their own accounts. They never have had a joint account and they say, okay, you pay for this. I pay for that or let's pay for it

together or vice versa. I know people that kind of keep those things separate. I know people that have everything in a joint account. They put all of their money in there, all their credit cards are in there, all their money sitting in there. God forbid they ever get divorced. It's a huge mess, dividing the assets. It's such a problem. And so I was like, is there a better way for this? Right. Obviously, you want some sort of joint thing that's like a shared expenses, right? And so you want us to, you know, in theory, share those. And then you also want each individual to kind of have some of their own money for whatever reason. I think this is especially important for women where, you know, historically women didn't even have access, have the ability to have a bank account or have property or

anything. And I think that could have kept them in relationships that were maybe abusive or where they didn't feel like they had their own power or independence to kind of go and leave. Right. They would like, I don't have any money. What am I supposed to do? I can't leave. Right. So I think, especially in today's day and age, like, everyone needs to have their own accounts. They need to have their own money. So my thinking behind it is like you pull all your resources into your joint account, like your income, your future income, right? Everything before the marriage in theory is split separately in your separate accounts, et cetera. But once you're married, all that income goes into the same account, any credit cards or payments come out of that account. Let's ideally hope you have a positive surplus

over time. So you're saving money, right? If not, that's a different debacle. But let's just assume you're saving money. And then periodically every few months, once a year, whatever you and your spouse decide, you take the excess over some amount. Let's say you keep $10,000 in there's like working capital for credit cards and other expenses. Anything above that, you say, hey, we're going to split it. So let's say you start the year, there's $10,000 in your account. By the end of the year, let's say there's 30,000 in the account. You say, okay, we're going to take the 20, split it. I take 10, my spouse takes 10. There you go. And then the next year you do that again. And right, and so then that money is kind of always being, quote, split over time. And that makes it really

easy for like division of property that's not a mess at the end. And of course, I'm not saying that, you know, this is not a legal advice. Obviously, a lawyer might not agree with all this. But I think it's very fair. And you can track everything. And look, all the money came in. We paid for everything equally. And at the very end, it's almost kind of like you're always splitting your assets. So it's, you don't have to worry as much about. about that. Now, of course, what about shared assets? If you go and want to buy a property, well, then both of you and your spouse have to contribute money into the joint account to then pay for a down payment, closing costs, etc. And then, yes, you can't split that house in the same way

like you would any other asset, but it's just a way of kind of over time, always being fair and equitable to both you and your spouse and also allowing kind of some financial independence. So if my wife's like, you know what, I want this $5,000 handbag, I'm like, okay, go use your separate money. Like, if I don't want to pay for the handbag and I don't think it's something that we're paying as a joint thing, like, you can use your separate money on whatever you want, just like I have the freedom to do that too. But if you're using the joint money, we have to agree on certain things. And we have an amount. The amount doesn't really matter, but let's say it was $1,000. Like anything below $1,000, you want to buy it, go ahead, no questions asked.

Above $1,000, you want to use joint money. We have to talk about it. So there's just different methods in ways I've put out there. And so, yeah, obviously, I'm newly married. We were technically doing this before we were married. We had a joint account and everything, but the whole point is we've been trying it. It works. I've gotten a lot of feedback on this. I've talked to a lot of different couples about this and they've generally been positive of it because it allows the independence while also giving some sort of collaboration there as well. Yeah. Super useful. How about how you save slash invest? Has anything changed since just keep buying? I'm sure you're just, you're continuing to buy, but what is your strategy overall personally for saving slash

investing. Yeah, so the mantra and just keep buying was the continual purchase of a diverse set of income producing assets. And I'll say that one more time. The continual purchase of a diverse set of income producing assets. That has not changed at all. 95% of my net worth is in income producing assets. Only 5% is in non-income producing assets. I'm still renting, as I said, I don't own a home. Everything's in financial securities of one sort or another or some sort of cash. But yeah, no, nothing's changed. I mean, if anything, I probably sold up. of some like illiquid less like non-income producing assets I had some art I still own some art but I had some other art that I sold and so I've kind of just put that all into

income producing assets just something with more liquidity that's also income producing so that's probably the only real change but it's that's very minor in the grand scheme of things it's like a few percentage points of my net worth so I haven't changed anything I don't sell I don't sell assets I just literally just keep buying them I know it's a I'm not just trying to you know push my book but that's a great title dude outside of rebalancing which I sometimes have to sell something. Most of the time I'm just taking my new money and just putting it into the underweight asset. So I never even have to sell things when I rebalance. I'm just buying the underweight thing to kind of bring everything back into line. I rebalance through, I call it an

accumulation rebalance. But yeah, that's the idea is I keep doing that. I have no changes to that. One day, I'm telling you, the U.S. stocks are not going to do well over some decade in the future. And I'm like, oh, Nick was wrong. I told you. It's like, dude, this is history. I know it's going to happen. I'm telling you what's going to happen. It's happened before it's happened, you know, in the 30s, the 70s, in the 2000s. It's. It's going to. to happen again. Don't say I'm an idiot when it happens. I've been saying you should follow history and it's work since I first talked about in 2017. There will be periods where it will not quote work, but it will eventually come back. So that's what the history shows. And I believe in that.

And yeah, I'm going to follow that going forward. How automated is that process for you? 401k is all automated. So that stuff's going in. And then I'm doing everything kind of quarterly because I have a business with the books and everything. So that kind of those big distributions happen quarterly. And now with obviously my spouse and the joint money, we put everything in and then quarterly, we send each other, you know, we basically take the joint and split out that distribution. We then invest it as we see fit. Really? So you do separate investments? All our investments. Yeah, all of our money. We don't have a joint investment account. Everything's separate. Really? Do you think you will? No, probably never. I don't think why we would. Once we do the distribution, like that money is ours. It's separate assets. And if we need to buy a house, I mean, we would just sell our separate assets and put it back into the joint account. So there's no reason I would see for us to ever. have a joint investment outside of our primary residence, right? And I don't even consider that an investment in the traditional sense, right? It's a more of a consumption good. You wouldn't say like, hey, I'm saving slash investing for our future. What's up? You're buying $5,000 handbags? Like, wouldn't that cause some issues? No, she can do, it's her money, right? What am I? I'm of course,

I'm invested. But you're married, though. You know, it's different because you're married now. Yeah, but it's her assets. If she wants to blow through all of her assets, that's fine. But then she's like, oh, I want us to buy a house. I'm like, do you have you just blew through all your assets. Like, how are we going to buy a house when you're doing that? Like, I'm just, she wouldn't do, she wouldn't do that. Like, I wouldn't pick a wife that does that, but I'm just in hypothetical, I'm like, okay, if you want to do that, you can, but then like, oh, you also want a house. Why did you buy all these handbags? You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm happy to, like, these hypotheticals with you, but I'm like, okay, like, thankfully my wife's not like that

at all. She doesn't, she doesn't buy $5,000 handbags, but, you know, if she did, you know, that's, she's allowed to and she can. I'm just saying. Yeah. No, no, it's good. That's why I like your style of writing both your books now as well as of dollars and data i highly recommend people go there nick i've asked you this before but things change and you're a little bit older and have more years to work and to writing and now marriage so a big life event if you're meeting with people who are earlier in their career like they're getting started maybe early 20s mid 20s what type of life slash career advice do you give to those types who want to do what you're doing They want to leave a positive dent in the world, like create a legacy.

What do you say to them? You have to really follow your interest. And I think because when you follow your interest, you're more likely to keep going when you face obstacles, right? And I think simply like I started writing. I remember I said I've been writing for it'll be nine years at the end of this year. So at the end of 2025, I started writing in 2017. And I didn't make money for three years. I didn't make a single dollar just putting out content just for the heck of it.

you know, I wasn't trying to do it as a moneymaking thing. I just wanted to like, hey, write cool stuff and like see if people would like it, et cetera. And I'm like, oh, they liked it. Okay. Keep doing it. Eventually, you know, I started doing ad partnerships and things like that. And so I started earning money on it. But for three years, I just did it. And that first year, especially was really tough. Because, you know, you're putting stuff out into the world and no one's reading it. No, one's responding to it. Like it's getting crickets. And people think that as a content creator, they think like, oh, if your stuff's not good, you get like, oh, this suck, this piece. No, no one says that. No one talks about it. about it. It's crickets. That's what the sound of rejection is. It is nothing. The sound is silence, right? Once you realize that, then it's like, it's much harder than, I wish there was like 20 people out there saying, this blog post. I'm like, at least they read it, right? But no one's even reading the blog post. So it just took a while. I mean, of course, I had a couple lucky breaks early where like some people like would retweet my stuff or something. But like still, every week, it was a challenge. I still to go out there and try and get attention again by putting out, you know, the best thing I could. And so the hard thing is follow your interest.

because if you're really interested in, you'll do it regardless of money, outcome, whatever. And just like, I like finance. I'm going to keep writing about it because I just enjoy it. And I'm not doing it just to make the money. Of course, the money's nice and all. But I'm trying to help people as much as I can, coming up with new frameworks and new ways of looking at a very difficult and complex problem. And for me, it's not as difficult and complex because I love it. And I've been thinking about it for so long and spending so much time on it.

And so trying to distill all that as best I can into different frameworks to help people. Love it, man. Nick, I appreciate it. The book is called The Wealth Ladder, Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life. Again, just like of dollars and data, just keep buying. It's really, really well written. It's entertaining and also really useful. So I appreciate you writing it and send him an early copyman. It's been really good to catch up with you as well. Thanks so much, man. Yeah, thanks again for having me on Ryan. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks, Nick. Thank you.

It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the to the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learn from this great conversation with Nick Majuli. A few takeaways from my notes. The most expensive thing people own is their ego,

thought-provoking quote. And then why did Nick beat his dad's friends at chess when he was just five years old? It's because he simply practiced more than they did. He got more reps. He did the work. It's not that he was a chess prodigy. he just worked harder than his opponents.

And he still does that to this day. It's a great reminder of it takes what it takes. Be a pro, do the work. Then I love the analogy that money is like salt. It's the great enhancer. Salt isn't a spice. It's a mineral. It enhances the existing flavors.

What salt can do to our food, money can do to our lives. It can amplify all other parts of life, if we use it right. Once again, I'm going to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Nick McGulie.

I think he'll help you become a more effective leader and because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcast and you subscribe to the show and you're ready to hopefully five stars and you write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity

to do what I love on a daily basis and for that. I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk good, too. Can't wait.