The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - How to Build Wealth on Less Than $60K a Year + Investing for Retirement Income (ft. Nick Maggiulli)

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

In this special Office Hours episode, Scott Galloway and Nick Maggiulli, COO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, answer listener questions on building wealth at every stage of life. They talk about paying down debt on a modest income, generating retirement income without over-obsessing on dividends, and whether young families should keep investing or wait on an inheritance. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [e-mail], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Plus, you can now call or text Scott a question at our new Office Hours hotline: ‪[phone]‬. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for the show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalist Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources the Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And the Guardian is not owned by a billionaire. They fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to the Guardian.com slash stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's the Guardian.com slash stateside. Welcome to Procti on Personal Finance, a special episode where we're joined by Nick Majuli, the chief operating officer for Ritthold's wealth management and author of the blog of Dollars and Data.

Together, we'll discuss how to build wealth at every stage of life, from saving on a modest income to investing for retirement to navigating today's housing market. Nick, ready to get into it? Yeah, let's do it. All right, question number one. Our first question comes from a listener who texts at the office hours hotline. Everyone talks about how to be rich, but no one talks about how to be poor. How would you save for retirement if making under $60,000 a year?

How would you structure your debt payments like student loans, credit, and mortgage? Nick, thoughts? I think the first thing you've got to do is make sure you're making the minimum payments. I think you don't make those and you start getting late fees, all those types of things. So as long as your minimum payments are taking care of, you have your emergency fund. So the first two things, after that, you rank order everything from highest to lowest return. Or you can say highest interest rate to lowest interest rate. And then every extra dollar after your minimum payment, you then put into the highest return thing.

So credit cards, 18 to 24 percent is what you're getting charged on that, right? Every dollar you pay off your credit card debt, you're basically earning an 18 to 24 percent guaranteed return. There's no place you're going to get a guaranteed return of 18 to 24 percent, right? So you're going to attack your credit cards first. Then you're probably going to go down the line and you're going to find, oh, my student loans are 8 percent. My mortgages, I don't know, 7 percent, 6 and a half right now, right, in the markets today. So it's like you start going down the list, you pay off your credit card debt, then you attack

your student loans, then you attack your mortgage. In terms of retirement savings, I say conservatively a diversified portfolio should get 5 percent a year. So that's it of the ones listed, that's the bottom of the list, right? So if I were going through, I would be attacking all the debt stuff and then I do the retirement savings at the end. So that's how I look at it is like return per dollar invested. And I think you have to attack the higher interest rate things first before you start going down the chain. Yeah, that just makes a lot of sense. And the only couple wrinkles I would add is also see if there's a way to elegantly refinance some of that debt to lower interest rates,

whether it's, you know, some institutions like SoFi, if you go to a quote-unquote or went to an elite institution will refinance your student debt at a lower interest rate, are the ways to transfer your credit card balance in the lower interest rates, refire mortgage, like how do you bring your interest rate cost down? But Nick's absolutely right that the best investment is getting rid of debt that's out of rate that you probably can't match in the markets. The only thing I would add is once you get your debt under control, there is some good debt. I would argue that a decent mortgage is, that's good debt. It's tax

deductible. It's fairly low interest usually. Usually you can do better in the market. But once you get sort of manageable debt, and it's mostly just your mortgage payment and maybe an auto loan if it's decent interest rate, try and figure out a way to have automated savings or automated investing that's tax advantaged. Almost every state and country has some sort of tax advantage savings or investment vehicle you can take advantage of. And the key is never to see it or never touch it, and that is have it taken right out of your paycheck, such that you're not tempted like 98% of it to spend or increase your standard of living to whatever it is that comes through your hands. But on the whole, I agree that the lesson, the key lesson here, what

Nick said is attack your debt. That's the best investment you can make. All right, question number two. Hi, Scott. My name is Scott, too. I'm calling from El Paso, Texas. My wife and I are in our early 60s. We run a micro-small business out of our house. We own our house. Our business has almost zero overhead and a small recurring revenue stream that pays our bills and a bit more. And we have about one million liquid net worth in addition to our house. For quite some time now, we felt that this market is overvalued. And our A.E. and with our concerns about the market, we're wondering how we might deploy a chunk of our net worth to produce more stable, regular, recurring income, plus some reliable appreciation. Thank you for what you do, Scott. You're a good example for us all.

You do well and you do good. I would like to follow your lead. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. Next thoughts. I think they're in a great situation. The fact that they have a business with, as I said, low overhead that basically covers their expenses. All the rest of this is either upside or just

planning for the future when they either sell that business or wind it down, etc. I think for them, there's going to be two answers I'm going to give. I think they want to hear. And then I'm going to give the answer, which I think is the correct answer. So I think the answer they want to hear, they're looking for, okay, what type of investment should I own, right? I want to own some stable income. I also want some appreciation. For a lot of retirees, they're going to be looking at like dividend stocks or dividend stock ETF. They're going to be looking at REITs, real estate investment trust, right? Those are things that pay out a lot of income. You can also maybe add a little bit of short-term debt in there as well. So those three things in like a diversified portfolio of REITs, dividend stocks,

and some short-term debt. That's going to do quite well in terms of getting your income, and you'll retain their appreciation through the REITs and the dividend stocks. That's the answer they probably want to hear. It's not the answer I would actually give. And I think the problem that a lot of retirees have when they look at like generating income, they overly obsess on things that actually pay income, right? And I think the better answer is you could just buy like an overall stock market fund. I understand they're worried about valuations, but let me just walk through this real quick. You can just buy the overall stock market and it's going to appreciate over time.

And over the last, at least decade or so, the overall stock market has outperformed a dividend fund, even when you include total return, right? So even though that dividend fund is paying you income and you look, you see those checks coming and you feel good, the market, the stock market, you just put that in an overall index fund, that would have actually gone up more. And then the best part about that is you can just sell it down when you need to make those payments, right? Like when you need the income, you can sell. So from a tax perspective, it's also a lot better just to have it in a fund that just goes up more. And you can sell it as if you're creating the income yourself. So I think a lot of things have changed in terms of corporate

strategy, in terms of how companies pay out dividends or don't pay out dividends, etc. So as a result of that I think overly obsessing on income is not necessarily the right choice, especially from a tax perspective. But if you really want to do that, once again, reeds, dividends stocks, and maybe some short-term debt are the solution here. Yeah, I really like that. So the key piece of information that was revealed in the question is that they're still net savers, and that is they're creating more income than they're spending. And so they don't need income. And when you, when you're in a dividend stock, keep in mind those dividends are being taxed. Whereas when you're in a non-dividend stock, your money is growing tax-deferred. So it should compound at a greater rate. So if you don't

need income at this point, you want to take advantage of the fact that one of the greatest wealth creation vehicles or loopholes in history is that stocks compound tax deferred. They don't spit out the profits every year and say you must take this in the form of dividend, at which point it gets taxed between 23 and, say, 35% if you're living in California and New York. So if you don't need the income, you absolutely want to be in stocks that compound tax deferred because they don't lose money out to dividends. Having said that, you're basically coming to the same conclusion a lot of us are, and that is the market is overvalued.

Now, nobody knows. Everybody thought the market was valued or overvalued in 97, and they were right, if you looked at it at 2000, but by 99, the NASDAQ had tripled. It is very hard to time the market. The one asterisk around all of this is, I don't think there's ever been a time where it's more important to understand

the power of diversification. And that is people think they're diversified if they just buy low-cost index funds in SPY. But the S&P, because of the concentration of market cap around the Magnificent 10, means that if you're in the S&P, you may feel diversified, but you're not. what I would suggest is you think about diversifying not only by asset class, some bond funds,

equity funds, but also geographically. And that is, U.S. stocks now comprise over half of total market capitalization globally. And if you add it in debt, it might be 60 or 70 percent. And you do see a cyclical rotation between U.S. and call it the rest of the world. And you want to be prepared if there's a major drawdown in the valuation of U.S. stocks, because if you just think you're diversified by being in U.S. stocks, you're not. You're actually more concentrated than ever before. I would argue you're basically making a giant bet on AI. So one, if you don't need the income, let that money compound tax deferred with stocks that aren't dividend stocks, as Nick suggests. But also, at your age, given that you've already built up a nice nest egg, you're looking to

probably take some risk off the table, and you do that through diversification. Low-cost index funds, but think about different asset classes, both equities and fixed income, and what people usually miss is diversified geographically. Any thoughts on that, Nick? No, I completely agree. I think they just need to have a good diversified portfolio for those liquid funds, so that's going to include, as I said, short-term debt, you're going to want, yeah, if you want international stocks, you can go into other types of investments as well if you wanted to get into something like farmland. That's something that produces income. It's obviously very illiquid. So, you know, getting into one of those like crowdsourced platforms, things like that,

but there's a lot of different asset classes out there that can produce some income. And I agree. You want to, since you don't need the income now, start planning for that because you still have at least, let's say, 20 to 30 years ahead of you. And when are you going to wind down that business thinking through that, how that's going to play out? Because if those aren't covering your expenses anymore, then your actual liquid assets will need to do that. So kind of preparing for that transition. is the big thing to look at here. Yeah, and the only, just hearing you speak,

the only thing I would add to that is that at some point, like my dad died with about 800 or 900 grand to his name, and he should have spent more of it. And that is my dad was so terminally cheap that, well, having said that, I think he got a lot of joy from asking for his frozen margarita to go. he was just so painfully cheap that I don't think he ever really had a chance to enjoy his money. And then at some point, assume you're going to get a 4% return on your money,

assume that at some stage that 4% is more than your burn. What I would suggest is you and your wife maybe at some point think about, okay, could we spend a little bit more money on travel, on maybe fixing up our house, I'm maybe giving a little bit of money away to things we're passionate about or people who could use some help. I think the whole point of being as responsible as you've been and working as hard as you've likely worked is that at some point, you know, money means nothing from zero to 18.

It kind of means way too much, sometimes everything, kind of 18 to 70 or 80. And then as you get towards the end of your life, it means nothing again. And I just wouldn't be afraid at some point to think, how could we have a little bit of fun? You know, could we take a real, really nice cruise. Could we give some money away? Could we, you know, buy a piece of art that we just

always loved? Could we, you know, whatever it might be, take our family for a reunion. And that is what I sense in your, what I sense in your, the question is that you're very responsible. And I don't want to say people can be responsible to a fault, but keep in mind money, I believe money is meant to be at some point spent. So just be mindful at some point. You may want to ask yourself, could we have a little bit of fun with some of this money? Yeah, I'd agree with that completely. I think one of the things, and if you actually look at the data on this, it's very surprising because, like, if you look at people who have it, let's say a 60, 40 portfolio, they're

following the 4% rule and you do that for 30 years and you go back through history and you just do that every single year in a simulation, you're more likely to end up with four times your wealth than you are to be below your starting balance. So in this case of this couple, if they start with the million dollars and they just started using the 4% rule in the 60-40, they're more likely to have $4 million in, you know, adjusted for inflation in the future than they are to be below a million after 30 years. So I think the spending more is something that we don't talk about enough here. Okay, we'll be right back after a quick break.

Support for the show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want the news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. State side with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week host Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their

expertise together to showcase different yet engaging perspectives regarding the world today. They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. Plus, The Guardian wants to emphasize that they're not billionaire owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to the Guardian.com slash stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube starting May 13th. Support for the show comes from Rippling.

These days, you can chat with AI about almost any business problem, but with Rippling AI, you can actually solve them. That's because Rippling AI is built on your live, global workforce data, giving you full visibility into your business and the ability to take action with AI that executes across departments. Say you want to retain top talent. Just ask Rippling AI, who are my top performers this year, and you'll instantly receive a workforce report flagging potential at-risk employees with supporting data like comp ratios, recent performance reviews, and engagement metrics. But it doesn't stop there. Rippling AI can turn these

insights into a proposed reiteration strategy, including a recommended 10% spot bonus for top performers. All you have to do is tap confirm, and the spot bonus is added to the next month's pay run. So don't settle for AI that's all talk. Head to rippling.aI slash prop G and get AI that turns insight into action. That's r-i-p-p-l-I-N-G. Sign up for exclusive access today. Support for the show comes from IMA. Every day it seems like there's a new fad diet that wants to tell you what to cut out and what to add in.

But before you go and fill your fridge with beef tallow and salmon skin, ask yourself if you're actually getting the full scope of vitamins and minerals you need in a day. Here's a tip to help you fill in the gaps. IMAID's daily ultimate essentials drink. IM8 uses clean ingredients. It's NSF certified, which means all the ingredients are third-party tested for purity. Our colleague Ed, Ed, IMAid. Ed, IMA. Love it.

Hydrating, refreshing, makes me feel like I'm healthy. I hope I am healthy, but this makes me really feel that way. So big fan of IM8. Nice. Give your body what it deserves with IM8. Go to IM8health.com slash prop G and use code popg for a free welcome kit. Five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's I am number 8, h-e-a-l-t-h.com slash prop-G code prop-G for a free welcome kit,

five travel sachets plus 10% off your order. I-M8health.com slash prop-G code profge. Prof-G. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Welcome back. Question number three. What should the average family with young children be focused on in this economy? My husband and I are in our early 40s with some under 30K savings and two children under two. We moved to a lower cost state to be near family, part-time child care, and a house in an upscale area we will inherit someday within 10 years. do we hold off on investing in our future and hunker down through this storm?

Thank you so much for what you do. You know, do you want to live in that other house? Is the big question I would ask? Like, do you want to live there? You know, is that where you guys want to take over at some point? Or are you happy to like sell that home in the future if you just find a home that you like, right? So I think it's a question of like, it's more of a personal question than a financial question in this case. They're working.

They have two kids. They have a small, they have a start in terms of savings, but not a number. enough to, quite frankly, feel comfortable yet. And they have two children. This isn't a Hallmark Channel advice, but I traded off a lot of time with my kids, and I focused on work because I wanted to figure out a way to make more money than I was spending, which was really difficult living in New York. And they did what ultimately I did, and that is they did a geographic arbitrage.

And I moved to Florida where the school we sent our kids to was $12,000 or $14,000 a year, or not $58,000 a year at First Presbyterian or Aven is. So we did the geographic arbitrage, which it sounds like what they've done. At this point, what I would say more than anything is that you and your partner need to get aligned around your approach to earning, saving, and the trade-offs around time with family and sacrifice. It's nice to have one person at home. It's also nice to have financial or more financial security of two incomes. I would argue also there's a lot of evidence showing, especially with daughters, they make more money when they see their mom working.

And let's be honest, usually when we talk about two incomes, it's mostly the mom going to work, although that is changing a bit. But my advice is that you get alignment with your partner. There is no balance. There's just tradeoffs around what are the sacrifices in terms of lifestyle as we do kind of automated savings plans or automated investments that take advantage of maybe the company we work with around matching or, state-sponsored tax-advantage savings plans, but get alignment. You might decide, look, we're not going to have a lot of savings. We're going to live pretty modestly, even when our kids are out of the house, because we want to spend more time with our kids or at our church or coaching Little League, or that having a certain level of wealth by the time their kids are ready for

college or out of college is important. And we're going to need to make certain sacrifices in terms of lifestyle or maybe spending more time focused on our careers. But I would suggest they do the math and get alignment around goals and the sacrifices and tradeoffs required to hit those goals. And again, this isn't, people have a tendency to be very generous and hallmark with other people's money. When my kids were young, I got alignment with my partner and I basically said, I'm going to work all the fucking time. And it's going to come at a cost. It's going to put a strain on a relationship. I'm not going to see our kids as much as I would like and probably would be good for them and good for me.

I hate to say this, but I put, I don't want to say I put family second, but I put financial security and the optionality and wonderful things that would afford me and my family later in life. I prioritize that, and it came at a cost, but I had alignment with my partner, and now I have a tremendous amount of balance because I worked very hard, I got lucky it paid off,

and now I can basically do whatever I want whenever I want. So I go back to, again, the keyword is alignment with your partner and recognition that everything requires tradeoffs. And you just need to decide with your partner, what are the tradeoffs, where on that spectrum is the right point for you in terms of, again, those tradeoffs. Any follow-up comments on that, Nick? Yeah, I'd also think about the inheritance and how, because obviously the size of the inheritance matters is that you're just getting a house. Is there more assets there? because that can then affect your saving behavior. Maybe you don't need to save as much early on

because you know that there's going to be this large transfer in the future. The other thing I'd say about the housing market, if you're in a low cost of living area, obviously, it'd be much easier to get a down payment. Obviously, the home prices will be cheaper there as well. But for a lot of people, because of where rates are, no one wants to borrow. So the right solution may just be to save up more cash,

put down a larger down payment, or just pay in cash in a few years. So think about all those tradeoffs. Obviously, there's a lot of information we don't have here to give a better prescription. But, you know, I'm thinking about this. You know, my wife, we just had our daughter two months ago. So we're starting that journey.

We're thinking about buying a home. I live near New York City. I'm in Jersey City, and it's quite expensive here. So because of where rates are, I'm basically over-saving in treasury bills to eventually buy home either in big down payment or mostly cash in a few years because I don't want to borrow at 7%, right? Or I want to borrow at 6.5%. So because of that, I'm just thinking about this differently.

I don't know if that was kind of embedded in the question. they're asking, but I think that's kind of, a lot of people are looking and they're saying, hey, this looks kind of crazy. I don't know if I want to borrow it at this rate. Should I just keep saving? And maybe I buy later or put down a bigger down payment to get my payment lower. And I think that's some of the stuff they have to think about here. Yeah, and just hearing you say that, I kind of inspired another thought. And that is, I don't think it's a bad idea to ignore the inheritance part, to make decisions that totally ignore if and when you might inherit a a house or some money. Because one, old people are developing this terrible habit of living for

fucking ever. So, you know, if your parents are seven or 80, one of them might go another 30 or 40 years given the advances in health care. And also, by the way, just a heads up, the parent you get along with least well will be absolutely be the one that lives the longest, as Louie C.K. says. But I don't think it's a bad, I see weird, stress-induced, unproductive behavior when people start planning for inheritance. And that is, I don't want to say you start rooting for people's deaths. It creates a dynamic where your parents have an uncomfortable amount of control, where you're planning for an event that is out of your control,

where there are conflicting motivations, where you're not taking responsibility. I don't think it'd be a bad idea when you sit down. Like, if your parents have said, you're going to get this house in 10 years, we're going to move into assisted living, then fine, plan for that. But when I speak to people about, and they start talking about the money they're going to get

when, you know, so-and-so passes away or whatever, I just don't think, I think it's healthier to assume that will never happen and plan your life in the absence or in a vacuum of anything around inheritance. Yeah, I said that from like a very financial perspective, but like the very human side of this, it's like you don't want to look at your parents as like, oh, I'm just waiting for them to die so I can get this money, right? You don't want to do that either. So you don't want to obviously go

into debt in the hopes of getting inheritance or anything like that. But yeah, there are these things to think about. And sometimes ignoring this or treating it as found money might be the actual solution that really helps you kind of just move through life and not worry about those types of things. And also, if you are philanthropic, I know you brought this up before, Scott, that's a great way of being like, hey, we know we were going to probably get this eventually, and we can use that to start funding our giving goals or really expand how much we give, etc. Nick Majuli is the chief operating officer of Ridholt's wealth management and author of the blog of dollars and data. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours ofpropertymedia.com. Again, that's office hours of propertymedia.com.

Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway. subreddit and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. Nick, thanks for joining us. Thanks again, Scott. Appreciate it. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Jinnair. Camryka is our social producer, Brad Williams is our editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGPot from PropG Media.