The 6 Levels of Wealth and How to Reach Them
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Summary
Nick Majuli is the creator of the Of Dollars and Data blog, the Chief Operating Officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management, and the author of The Wealth Ladder. Today on the show, he unpacks his wealth ladder concept, taking the complex, often overwhelming realm of personal finance and distilling it into six easy to understand wealth levels, each tied to specific net worth milestones and financial freedom.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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You've heard the advice that to build wealth, you need to earn more, spend less, and invest
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consistently. But what if there was a clear way to understand exactly where you stand financially
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and what steps you should take to reach the next level? My guest, Nick Majuli, offers just such a
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framework. Nick is the creator of the Of Dollars and Data blog, the chief operating officer at
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Ritholtz Wealth Management, and the author of The Wealth Ladder. Today on the show, he unpacks his
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wealth ladder concept, taking the complex, often overwhelming realm of personal finance and
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distilling it into six easy to understand wealth levels, each tied to specific net worth milestones
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and financial freedoms. Nick walks us through each rung of the wealth ladder, from getting out of
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financial instability to achieving restaurant and travel freedom, and eventually reaching upper
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levels of significant financial independence. We discuss the distinct strategies you should
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utilize on each rung to make the most of that level and move on to the next. And we get into
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why your spending decisions should be based on your net worth rather than your income, how wealth
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allocation changes dramatically as you climb the ladder, and why increasing your earning potential
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becomes more important than penny pinching as you progress. Whether you're just getting started or
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well in your financial journey, this episode provides actual insights and practical wisdom for
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climbing the wealth ladder and securing a life of greater freedom and fulfillment. After the show's over,
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check out our show notes at aom.is slash wealth ladder.
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All right, Nick Majuli, welcome back to the show.
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So we had you on last time to talk about your book, Just Keep Buying, which is all about,
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you just got to keep buying and investing in the stock market. Don't stop. You got a new book out
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called The Wealth Ladder, Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life. A really good
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book. I really enjoyed it. Your book is based on this idea of the wealth ladder that you've created.
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What is the wealth ladder and how and why did you come up with it?
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Yeah. So Stuart Butterfield, who's the founder of Slack, had this three levels of wealth framework.
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Level one was, I don't stress about debt. Level two was, I don't stress about how much things cost at
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restaurants. And level three was, I don't stress about how much vacations cost. And so I heard
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about this. Oh, that's a cool idea. At the same time, Jay-Z, you know, that he had this lyric in
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one of these songs. I'm not going to say the full lyric because it curses and stuff, but he just
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basically said, what's 50 grand to someone like me? Can you please remind me? At the time, he had a
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net worth of $500 million. And so at, you know, 50,000 over 500 million is 0.01% of his wealth.
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And so I realized, Hey, that's like a trivial amount of money to someone. So given that I kind
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of came up with this levels framework, which is based on Butterfield's three levels, but I made
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six levels and I actually put net worth values to them. So I'll just walk through those just briefly.
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So, and just for the record, your net worth, that's all your assets, everything you own,
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your cash, your stocks, your house, et cetera, minus all your liabilities. That's everything you
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owe to others. So your mortgage debt, student loans, credit card debt, et cetera. And so once
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you know your net worth, you're somewhere on the wealth ladder. Level one is a net worth
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of less than $10,000. Level two is a net worth of 10,000 to $100,000. Level three is 100,000
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to $1 million. Level four is 1 million to $10 million. Level five is 10 million to $100 million.
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And then level six is over a hundred million. Now, once you have these levels, it's actually
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funny. It actually maps up with the data and for United States household wealth, it actually
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maps up decently. About 20% of households are level one. So that's less than 10,000. 20% are
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level two. That's 10,000 to a hundred thousand in wealth. 40% of households are level three. That's
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a hundred thousand to a million. That's what I would call your typical middle class. And 18%
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of households are level four. That's one to 10 million. That's like upper middle class. And then
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over 10 million, that's like the top 2% of households. That's level five and six.
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And the nice thing about these levels, I've heard a lot of people do levels of wealth and do all this
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before. I like this because it's a log scale. You know, you divide by 10 or multiply by 10 to move up
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and down the levels. So if you know one of the levels, you can figure out the rest. So I just tell
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everyone, memorize level three. That's the middle middle class. That's a hundred thousand to a million.
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If you know that you can back out all the rest. And then even within that, going back to
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Stuart Butterfield's three levels framework, you know, level one was not stressing about debt,
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et cetera. I've applied spending freedoms to each level. So in my case, I said, Hey,
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I don't worry about what it costs at the grocery store. That's called grocery freedom. That's level
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two. So level two is grocery freedom. Level three is restaurant freedom. You don't worry about what
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it costs at a restaurant, which is a hundred thousand to a million dollars in net worth is
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level three, et cetera. You can get the appetizer. You can get the Southwest egg rolls at Chili's.
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Yeah, exactly. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. Right. And then by the time you get
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to one to 10 million, you can start to have travel freedom. That's where you can like sit in the nicer
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seat on the airplane. You can, you know, stay at a nicer hotel, et cetera. You can't really fly
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private yet. Cause that's a little too expensive. Maybe if you got to the very end of level four,
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I think private or travel is really reserved for people on level five, but you know, putting this
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all together is a very long answer, but putting this all together, you get the wealth ladder,
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which is just a new framework for thinking about money and how you make various money decisions.
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You can help with spending decisions, income decisions, investment decisions, and more.
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One of the interesting things you do with the wealth ladder is you argue that this is
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a better way to think about how you spend money. Cause I think typically when people think
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about how they spend money, they think about their income. Well, if I'm making more money
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this year, I can spend more money. You argue that we shouldn't be doing that instead of
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spending money based on our income. You say we should spend based on our net worth, uh,
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which you call wealth. Why is that? Why should we base our spending decisions on our net worth
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slash wealth? Well, I think the issue is that wealth is generally less fickle than income.
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I mean, you can lose your job at any moment and now, okay. I'm assuming that's, that's how most
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people are in their income. So if you lose your job, your income basically goes to zero. It's
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unlikely your wealth just going to go to zero out of nowhere, even during the financial crisis,
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as bad as it was, you know, people were saying, you know, their homes dropped by 25%, their stock
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portfolio get cut by 50%, which is still bad at the worst moment, but it didn't go to zero.
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So it's not as, it's a little bit more stable as a result. I think your marginal spending decision
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should be based on your wealth, not your income. And then what we talked about, like just the
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example you gave, Oh, I'm at Chili's. I want to get these egg rolls. They're going to cost me an
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extra 15 bucks. Can I buy those? And I say, yeah, if you're in level three, which is, you know,
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anywhere from a hundred thousand to a million dollars in net worth, you can afford that quote splurge or
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that marginal choice to spend the $15 on egg rolls. I don't think it's a big deal. And so where does
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that come from? It comes from what I call the 0.01% rule. And that's kind of comes from that Jay-Z
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thing where it's like Jay-Z could drop 50 grand, like nothing. Well, if you have a net worth of
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a hundred thousand dollars, you can drop 10 bucks, like nothing. That's the equivalent,
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you know, difference, right? That we obviously were not Jay-Z, so we can't drop 50 K, but he also
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had 500 million at the time. So that's where I start thinking about this. Like, Hey, how much can I just
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drop as like a, you know, this is trivial to me. And so that number goes up over time. And so I think
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a lot of personal finance experts tell you, Oh, you can't spend more money, you know, don't allow
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lifestyle creep. And I don't think that's accurate. I think you should have some lifestyle creep,
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but it should be based on your wealth, not your income. Because you're right, your income can go
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up. And if you start spending more of it, you're not necessarily saving anything else. You're not
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building wealth. So my whole idea with this rule, the 0.01% rule, which is 0.01% of your net worth or
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take your net worth and divide by 10,000. It's the same thing. That's how much you can spend every day
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and your wealth will stay stagnant, at least on that amount. And so I think thinking about
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that is very helpful because that's where you can start to realize, Oh, Hey, I can spend more
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over time, but only after I built the wealth, the wealth ladder framework, plus the 0.01% rule
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allows you to spend more over time after you've demonstrated financial discipline. And I think
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that is very important because I want people to be able to spend more money. I want people to be
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able to enjoy their lives more. And this is a slower way of doing that. And it's a much better
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framework in my opinion. Yeah. I love the 0.01 rule. Like that completely changed how I think
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about how I spend my money. That's great. Yeah. So when you say this 0.01 rule, you spend 0.01 of
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your net worth. You mentioned earlier, net worth is your assets minus liabilities, but some assets
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like your home is not liquid. It's like not tied up in cash. So should you spend the 0.01 rule,
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like including your, the value of your home or should it just be like liquid assets?
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Yeah. So I think in general, it should be liquid assets. I, I just use, you know, I talk,
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when I talk about the wealth ladder in general, I use total net worth, but you're right when we're
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talking about spending decisions, like you can't eat your home, home equity necessarily. Like,
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yes, you can get something called a HELOC, a home equity line of credit, and you can borrow against
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your home and do all that stuff. So technically you can pull some of that money out, but I don't
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recommend it necessarily. So I think the thinking is, yeah, what's my liquid net worth? That's the
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more conservative thing. So if like, Oh, if my liquid net worth, if I have like, let's say,
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you know, I don't know, a hundred thousand dollars on a brokerage account, then you're
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in the beginning of level three. That doesn't mean you can go and splurge everything at a restaurant,
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but you can start to spend a little bit more at a restaurant. And where that 0.01% comes from,
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it's just, obviously I just came up with this as a trivial amount, but if we assume your wealth
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is earning 0.01% per day over the course of a year, if you do that, you know, 365 times,
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that's 3.7% a year, which is a conservative return. That's basically the assumption. I'm
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assuming all wealth is growing at 3.7% after inflation, like on average. I don't think it's
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a crazy assumption. And because of that, I'm just assuming your wealth can throw that off
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just indefinitely. Yeah. What I love about the 0.01 rule about spending on your wealth is that
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it's actually kind of encouraged me to spend a little bit more. I tend to be
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tight-fisted and very frugal. I still think I'm a law student, Baroque. And it's a good paradigm
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for helping me loosen up a bit. So you have a chapter about how you earn your way up the wealth
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ladder. So in order to accumulate wealth, you have to make money. So what does that look like? I mean,
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what I love about your work too is on your blog, Dollars and Data, and then your other books you've
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done as well, is you're very data intensive. So you're looking at all these obscure economic reports.
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When you look at the data, how do people on the different rungs of the wealth ladder earn money
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to get to that point? Yeah. So in general, across the wealth ladder, people in levels one to three,
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so that's anywhere from less than 10,000 all the way up to 100,000 to a million, they basically earn
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all of their money through work. That's how most people earn their money, right? It's through their
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labor. It's once you start to get into level four, and that's 1 million to 10 million. And obviously,
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you have some money invested, but we start to see a shift where assets are producing more of their
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income. And then by levels five and six, it's even higher and higher. People in levels five and six
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get most of their income from some sort of business or assets they own, not necessarily their actual
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labor that they do, like the work they do. And so I think that's the big mindset shift. And it takes
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time too, by the way. We can talk about this a little bit, but the median age of a household in level
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four, once again, level four is one to 10 million. The median age is 62. So if we put every household
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in the America in a room, that one to 10 million, and we just took like the middle age, basically,
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they'd be 62 years old. So this is not something that's going to happen overnight. It takes a lot of
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time in general or a lot of work. There's a lot of other ways you can do it, but less than 1% of
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households in level four or above are under 30. So that is not the case. That's a very,
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very rare thing. So when you look at how people earn money, for most people, it's just they work
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and they earn money and that's it. But as you kind of move up the wealth ladder, you start to see that
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those people are earning money off of their assets and not just their labor. And so that's the big
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kind of mindset shift I think you need to have. And it's what I wrote about in Just Keep Buying,
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right? It's the continual purchase of a diverse set of income producing assets. That's the mantra of
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Just Keep Buying. And that's kind of what I push for. But it gets even more extreme at the higher levels
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wealth. Yeah, I think that's a good point to make. Most people don't make it to millionaire status
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until their 60s. I mean, I think the problem with social media is that bias, that recency bias where
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you see, oh, these people who are in their 30s and 40s, just tons of money. And like, well, that's not
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me. And what's wrong with me? It's like, well, nothing wrong with you, actually. You're probably doing
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just fine. Exactly. Yeah. I think the media does a really bad job of high. I mean, but then again,
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that's the point, I guess, is they want to show exceptional stories. They don't want to show the
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ordinary things like, oh, yeah, I worked, you know, for 30 years and saved my 401k and now I'm
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a millionaire. Like, that's not as exciting for people, even though that's more realistic.
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Another point you make in this earning up the wealth ladder is, okay, we talked about wealth is
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more important than income. But you show the data that income is pretty correlated to wealth. You had
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that really interesting chart there. Can you walk us through that? Yeah. So basically the idea is
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that, you know, within each wealth level, like the median income is just increasing across each
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wealth level to the point where it's the strongest relationship in personal finance. And if you really
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think about it, it's like a flywheel, like your income creates wealth. And then if you obviously save
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and invest that, that can create more income. And then it just keeps happening over and over. It's like
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the snowball. And so if you just look at the median income within each wealth level,
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it just goes up. So like in level four, one to $10 million in wealth, the median income is almost
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$200,000. And so that's a big piece of this, right? And then by level five, I think it's like
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$750,000 or something like that, something close to that. So it's just like it goes up and then level
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six, it's $4.3 million. So like the people on level six that have $100 million in wealth, it's just
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their incomes are just super high because they're earning so much off their assets.
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Yeah, I think that's an important point because I think oftentimes personal finance advice that you
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see out there, popular personal finance advice, it's geared more towards reining in spending as
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opposed to increasing income. And we'll talk about this later. I mean, we're going to talk about each
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individual rung on the wealth ladder and your different strategies to take towards it. Early on,
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if you're only making, if your net worth is less than $10,000, then yeah, you need to be concerned
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about how much you spend. But once you reach a certain point, it's not so much your frugality that's
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going to get you to the next level. It's just you got to increase the amount of money you got coming
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in. Exactly. I think spending, cutting spending is a short-term decision. It can help, but the
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long-term solution is to raise your income. And that's what all of the data has shown me.
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Yeah. I often fall back to when I'm feeling like, oh, I need, I need to do something. It's like,
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I want to cut spending. Because I think it's, I think people fall back to that because it's easy.
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It's like, I can do something right away. I can stop the streaming service. I can stop going out to
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eat. Trying to figure out how to make money, that can be intimidating for a lot of people.
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I agree. It's much tougher. I mean, it's a much longer term process. You're thinking about,
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oh, do I need to learn new skills? Do I need to start a side hustle? Do I need to, you know,
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get some sort of credentials or education? And those are much bigger lifestyle decisions than just,
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yeah, I can not go out tonight or I can kill my Netflix, you know?
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Okay. So to go up the wealth ladder, you need to earn more money. And there's different ways you can do
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that. We'll get in the specifics here in a bit. At a certain point in your wealth journey,
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hopefully you'll be starting to save money. That's how you build wealth. And you're going to
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put that savings into assets that make money, like investments and stocks and things like that.
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Talk to us about the research that you did, because I thought it was really interesting,
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how asset allocation changes as you move up and down the wealth ladder. What does the research say
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there? Yeah. So the data suggests that those lower on the wealth ladder, so those in like,
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let's say levels one to three tend to have more of their assets in cash, their vehicle and their home
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and those higher on the wealth ladder. So that's like those. And let's say levels four to six tend
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to have more of their total assets in income producing assets. So things like stocks, bonds,
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real estate and their own businesses. And so in other words, like those lower on the wealth ladder own
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fewer income producing assets than those higher on the wealth ladder. And on average, it's like,
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if I remember correctly, those in levels one to three have less than 25% of their assets in income
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producing assets. But those in levels four to six have over half of their assets in income
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producing assets. So that's like the main difference between those lower and higher on
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the wealth ladder. Obviously, like, you know, there's other factors that can be correlated with
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that. But, you know, once you have wealth, the people that have wealth tend to invest that in assets
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that produce more income for them, which allows them to have even more wealth, etc.
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Yeah, we talked about your story a little bit. I mean, I know you grew up, you know,
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I think like middle class, lower middle class, and you had kind of a rough childhood. But my experience
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dealing with people who, you know, are in that level one rung of the wealth ladder, you'd see that
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their assets are tied up in like physical stuff, like car house. And in extreme cases, you see like a lot
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of hoarding, like, why do you got like this, like junker car, you know, in your backyard, like just
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get rid of that. That's what I would think. But like, to them, it makes sense. Because it's like,
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well, I don't have cash, I don't have any income producing assets. I can use that junker car one day
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to pull a part off so I can fix my car. And you see this, they've done studies about this about
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individuals who grew up during the Great Depression. They tend to hoard more stuff because like they grew
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up in a time of scarcity. I guess they couldn't really shake that mentality, even though, you know,
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they're 80 years old, and they might have a pretty substantial net worth, like they still can't shake
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that scarcity mindset. Oh, yeah, completely get that. Yeah. All right. So as you move up the wealth
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ladder, your assets typically should shift to income producing assets at stocks, could be a
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business, etc. Let's talk about the different like the individual levels and talk about the strategies
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for it. And then some of the pitfalls of these different rungs and what you can do to, you know,
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get up the next rung. Let's start off with level one. Let's say you're on level one of the wealth
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ladder. What should be your focus in order to climb to the next rung? Yeah, I think you have to get to
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some form of safety. If we're talking about financial safety, that either means an emergency
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fund. There's other types of, you know, financial safety, like you could find people you can trust and
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rely on to help you get out of level one, whether that's friends or family. So like wealth is not just
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financial. I think especially in level one, I think you've got to think about the other types of wealth you
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have and how you can use those to get out of level one. And the reason I say this is because,
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you know, something's amplified on every level of the wealth ladder. And I think in level one,
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the thing that's amplified is bad luck. Like take someone who gets a flat tire, like for someone in
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level three or four, like that's an annoyance. Oh, I have to go get my tire repaired. But for someone
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in level one, it could send them into a financial tailspin. They don't have a, you know, a way of getting
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to work, they could lose their job, then they have to take out debt, etc. Like all sorts of bad things can
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happen just from that one flat tire. I mean, it's funny, you brought up the junker car, that junker
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car could actually be that emergency lifeline. Oh, my car broke down, I have a, I have a junker I can
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take for a week while that one gets repaired, or while I have to wait to save money, so that one
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could get repaired. So I actually, I understand the hoarding a little bit, because it is a form of
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safety, if you really think about it, right. And so I think, if you actually look at the data, like just
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not getting into a financial tailspin, a hole, whatever you want to call it, is like the most
00:19:33.240
important thing in level one. Because over, you know, if you look at the data over half of the
00:19:37.560
financial distress events, like bankruptcies, delinquencies, etc, is committed by just 10%
00:19:43.580
of the US households. So it's a very small percentage of households that are getting caught
00:19:48.040
up in the same financial problems over and over again. And it's very difficult to get out once
00:19:52.200
you're in there. So the whole point is to avoid that as much as possible. So once again, goal in level
00:19:57.200
one is to get to safety. Yeah, I've seen that play out in my church congregation. There's a lot of
00:20:01.620
individuals who just have a hard time financially. And you see that like a messed up car, it just
00:20:08.320
disrupts their life completely, because they can't get to work, and then they end up getting fired.
00:20:13.080
And then in order to fix the car, they got to take out a payday loan, because they don't have
00:20:17.560
the emergency fund to pay for the repair. And so they've got this crazy loan with this insane
00:20:24.080
interest rate that just puts them more and more into a hole. And you got this great quote about
00:20:28.840
poverty from William Volman. It says, poverty is wretched subnormality of opportunity and
00:20:40.200
Exactly. I know, I love that quote from him. And I just think, you know, I didn't grow up in level
00:20:44.180
one, I would say, even though my parents declared bankruptcy, like twice before I was 18. I think
00:20:49.480
I was in level two. I mean, just from, you know, we had family with people we could rely on and stuff.
00:20:53.380
So I've never been in true poverty. But like, yeah, we just never had a lot of money going around.
00:20:56.820
So I kind of know what it's like to grow up like lower middle class to middle class, depending on
00:21:02.660
Okay, so level one, this also sounds like where you should think more about your spending,
00:21:08.160
like this is when cutting spending would be the most useful strategy. If you're in level one.
00:21:14.180
I mean, yeah, if you can't, obviously, raising your income is the long term solution. But like,
00:21:17.800
when you're in a, you know, I think the tagline for that chapter in the book is
00:21:21.620
atypical results require atypical actions. And when you're in level one, that is not normal.
00:21:27.260
And so you need to get out of that. Of course, everyone that's everyone's quote default level.
00:21:31.020
And if you have an education, and you're like, Oh, I just graduated college, I'm making good money,
00:21:34.460
you're going to be out of level one before you know it, it's just a matter of like time. So that's
00:21:37.840
what happens for most people. And I would argue you're not even in level one, if you already have
00:21:41.080
a good education and everything. Like I, that's why I said, I've never been in level one,
00:21:44.360
though my net worth obviously was, you know, $0 when I graduated college.
00:21:47.940
So yeah, I think that's the thing to think about there.
00:21:51.680
All right. So I like that. When you're level one, your mental framework,
00:21:55.280
atypical results require atypical actions, you have to cut spending, and then think about ways
00:21:58.820
you can boost your income. I'm curious, like, what do you do? Like, let's say you're fine
00:22:03.740
financially, like, say you're level three, level two, but you got friends and family members
00:22:07.640
proving that level one, you see them struggling. In your experience, what can other people what can we
00:22:13.640
do to help people get out of level one? I mean, I think you have to first make sure that that person
00:22:20.300
wants to get out of that level, like they have a real desire. Because of course, like everyone
00:22:25.740
wants more money, like, everyone's like, Oh, of course, I want that. But like, if they're not going
00:22:30.120
to take any steps or actions to try and move in that direction, whether that's like, Oh, I'm trying
00:22:34.280
to raise my income, I'm trying to learn, get an education, I'm trying to, they're not doing a lot of
00:22:38.640
that stuff, then like, what you can do to help is be supportive and say, Hey, is there anything I
00:22:43.020
can do to help you? And of course, if they just, you know, Oh, just give me a bunch of money,
00:22:46.220
that's not going to really solve the problem. Because if they don't have the means to help
00:22:49.940
themselves at all, they're going to end up back in that spot eventually, right? You can give someone,
00:22:54.760
you know, here's five grand or 10 grand, even get them there. And if their income is not enough to
00:22:59.760
support themselves, they're just going to draw down on that 10 grand until they're back at level one
00:23:03.540
again, right? You know, so you have to, I think it's more about thinking about finding ways to help
00:23:08.620
them help themselves. But at the end of the day, they have to help themselves. You know, you can't
00:23:12.960
force someone to try and better themselves, they have to want to do it for themselves. And so
00:23:17.100
you'll notice, I guess, when I, you know, I've, you know, family members, friends and stuff like
00:23:21.960
this, who have been in this position. And there's a big difference between someone just asking for
00:23:25.720
money, and someone who's like, I need money, but I need it, because I'm trying to do all these
00:23:29.700
things to try and improve my life. And you'll know, it's more, you'll know it through the
00:23:32.940
relationship. So I think that's the kind of the big thing there is to strike that balance as best you can.
00:23:37.000
Yeah, I was talking about level two. So this is where you're making your net worth is 10,000 to
00:23:41.460
100,000. This is grocery freedom, you can buy the Dunkaroos without worrying about it. What are the
00:23:46.920
big challenges when you reach level two? Yeah, I think that the thing to think about in level two
00:23:53.240
is the trajectory you're on and what level that's going to get you to because there's two groups of
00:23:58.200
people in level two. There's people on level two who are going to probably be there most of their life,
00:24:02.860
where they might barely get into level three by the, you know, later in their life. And then
00:24:06.940
there's people in level two who are just there temporarily, they're making good money. And
00:24:09.880
they're, they're kind of on their way to deep into level three or level four. And I think the big
00:24:13.800
difference there is education and what skills you have. This is, you know, level two is the level where
00:24:18.160
getting those skills can really kind of change that you can imagine your your trajectory is like a slope
00:24:22.800
on a line, and that slope can be pushed upward, and change your income, your career, etc, based on that. So
00:24:29.120
it doesn't always have to be a college degree. But I think you need something that allows you to grow
00:24:32.560
your income in a big way, whether that's, you know, a skill that's very useful. I think, for
00:24:36.560
example, sales, if you're a good salesperson, you can make very good money, easily six figures. And
00:24:40.840
you know, there's some sales people out there that make, you know, seven figures or more at the higher
00:24:44.340
end, you know, they're selling a luxury good, like high end real estate, things like that. And so you
00:24:48.360
can make really a lot of money in sales. And that's something that AI is not going to be able to
00:24:52.140
replace. I don't think we're gonna have robot realtors or anything like that. So there are still skills
00:24:56.380
out there that you can learn, and you can make a lot of money that don't necessarily require a
00:25:00.180
degree, but they definitely require a lot of work. We're gonna take a quick break for your words from
00:25:05.920
our sponsors. And now back to the show. Okay, so level two, your goal is just like, figure out the
00:25:14.340
education, the training, the skill acquisition you need in order to make more money so that you can
00:25:19.160
accumulate more wealth. That's the key there. All right, let's talk about level three. So this is when
00:25:24.440
you move to 100,000 to 1 million in your net worth. What are the big stressors there when you reach
00:25:30.980
level three? I think the stressors are more about if you're overspending. And the reason I say that
00:25:37.480
because if you look at people, and I did, there's some data from the University of Michigan has something
00:25:43.600
called the panel study of income dynamics, which just looks at the same set of households over time.
00:25:47.900
So we can follow people's career trajectory, their income, all that are spending over time, we can
00:25:52.620
follow it. And in that data, I said, Okay, let's look at people in level three today. And look at
00:25:57.580
those that made it to level four, and compare it to the people that are in level three today that
00:26:01.980
stayed in level three. And so what are the differences between those two groups, like the
00:26:05.860
people that went from three to four, and the people that stayed in level three, let's say over a decade.
00:26:10.660
And so if you look at that information, the difference is income, that's a big piece of it. So those that
00:26:15.980
made it to level four generally earned more. But I think the bigger thing I noticed was the
00:26:20.000
spending, the people that stayed in level three over time spent almost as much money as the people
00:26:25.500
that made it to level four from level three. So the people that made it from to level four from level
00:26:30.860
three did spend a little bit more, but not that much more than the people that stayed in level three
00:26:35.500
over time. And those people that made it to level four at a much higher income. So it's like,
00:26:39.040
I think the issue the stressor in level three is that people are trying to do the keep up with the
00:26:42.860
Joneses thing, they're overspending on housing, cars, whatever to portray a certain lifestyle when they
00:26:48.300
don't necessarily have the money for it. And so they don't have the income for it. So I think
00:26:52.800
that's the thing to focus on is like, hey, you know, make sure I'm not overspending in this level.
00:26:57.420
Now, once again, I don't think cutting spending is the way to build long term wealth. I do think it
00:27:02.460
can be something especially on the big ticket items like housing in particular, I think is very
00:27:06.360
important, you have to think about your spending there. And then in terms of what to focus on in level
00:27:10.280
three, I think it's really about your income and specifically your income from investments. That's where
00:27:15.480
as you start to invest, by the time you have a portfolio in the six figure range,
00:27:19.620
that's throwing off real money. You know, if you have $10,000 invested, and you get a 10% return,
00:27:24.040
that's 1000 bucks, that's not really going to change your life. But by the time you know,
00:27:27.860
you have 100,000 invested or more, now it throws off that same 10% return throws off $10,000 is a
00:27:33.580
much more significant change in wealth. And so I think that's where you start to see, hey,
00:27:38.440
the flywheel really starts to grow in level three. And by level four, it gets even bigger. But I think
00:27:42.640
that's where you should focus, spend more time focusing on is investing in income producing
00:27:46.500
assets in level three. And your research, what's the average age for someone who's in level three?
00:27:53.040
So yeah, the median age in level three in the United States is 54 years old.
00:27:56.980
Okay. So it's still like, I say that's middle class, but it's also people who've been spending
00:28:02.080
their life, you know, buying their home, you know, saving the retirement account, etc. Like it
00:28:06.920
doesn't happen overnight. And just for reference, the 25th percentile age is 40. So that means one
00:28:14.020
in four households in level three are 40 or younger. So a lot of people can get to level three before
00:28:20.060
40, but it's still rare. It's only one in four people that get into that level are younger than
00:28:24.780
40. So something to keep in mind. Yeah. And so the tactic there is when you reach level three,
00:28:30.300
your focus should start being spent towards how can I have more of my income come from income
00:28:36.260
producing assets. So that's investments. And the mental framework there is just keep buying. That's
00:28:40.780
from your first book. Like just start socking away as much money as you can in your investments,
00:28:46.060
because that's going to add up over time. Yeah, exactly. And that's why it's the perfect
00:28:51.920
book for someone in level three going to level four, or even, you know, kind of level two going
00:28:57.080
into level three. But it's really made to shift your mindset from just, oh, I go and I save money.
00:29:02.580
I work and save money to, oh, I go and I save the money. I invest it in assets that then pay me
00:29:08.360
money. And then that money can be reinvested. And it just goes from there. All right. So let's move
00:29:13.240
to level four. This is when you get to 1 million to 10 million. That's a big range. But the point you
00:29:19.440
made, though, is, you know, once you go higher and higher up the wealth ladder, like an increase of
00:29:25.020
just one isn't going to be that big of a difference. Like if you have a million dollars and then you
00:29:29.340
increase your net worth by another million. I mean, that's a lot of money, but in the grand
00:29:33.700
scheme of things, it's like not that big of a jump, really. One of the things you talk about
00:29:38.180
in level four, this is the place where a lot of people, this is where they stop. This is where
00:29:42.320
they stop the trek up the wealth ladder. And to remind people, meeting age for this is like 62.
00:29:47.600
So this is like, you know, your end of your working career. And, you know, if you get to this range,
00:29:52.040
like you're probably, you know, you're good for retirement. Why do people get stuck on level four
00:29:56.300
though? Why don't they continue to go up the wealth ladder? They get stuck in level four because
00:30:00.640
the actions that get you into level four aren't the ones that get you out of level four. So there's
00:30:07.220
like this Marshall Goldsmith book called what got you here won't get you there. It's a career book.
00:30:11.720
It's about career strategy. Now you have to change your career strategy over time to like get promoted
00:30:15.440
and stuff. But I think it's the same idea. Like you need to change your strategy if you want to keep
00:30:20.540
climbing the wealth ladder. And once again, getting stuck in level four is not a problem necessarily. I think
00:30:25.340
there's a lot of people that like, great, I'm never going to get out of level four. It's not a
00:30:29.480
problem. Realize that, accept it, be happy. Like the simplest way I can say it. But if you do have
00:30:36.200
aspirations to go beyond that, you really are. And why we can get into the psychology of that. But
00:30:40.940
if you do, then you have to kind of change your strategy. And for most people that get into level
00:30:45.140
four, you can get into level four with a few things. You have a decent job, you know, making you good
00:30:50.180
money. You're saving that money. You're investing it and reinvesting all that income and enough time.
00:30:55.340
Right. So like job, you know, good job plus investing plus time. And you get to level four
00:31:02.060
in the United States. But to get to level five, which is 10 million plus, it's a whole nother
00:31:07.300
thing. You're going to basically have to either start a company and basically own all the equity
00:31:10.860
and sell it for a decent amount of money. Or you join a startup early, get a good amount of equity.
00:31:16.320
And that company sells for a lot of money. Right. You either own a small piece of something
00:31:20.340
that's very big or a big piece of something that's decently sized, let's say. So that's where
00:31:25.760
I think the difference is. And we can even run the math on this. I do this in the book where I'm like,
00:31:29.720
hey, let's say you like today you made it to a million dollars. And let's just say you have a
00:31:34.160
portfolio just to keep it very simple. You have a million dollar brokerage account that's earning
00:31:38.620
five percent a year and you're saving one hundred thousand dollars a year after tax. Like that's a
00:31:42.680
considerable amount of money. Assuming that's all true. How long would it take you to get to 10
00:31:47.720
million? The answer is 28 years. It's crazy. So if you imagine the typical person gets there,
00:31:53.300
let's say it's in their mid 50s or early 60s. Do you want to grind it out for three more decades
00:31:58.880
just to get to 10 million? No, you don't want to. You're not going to do that. Most no rational
00:32:03.040
person would do that. They would say, hey, I've done enough, you know, and they stop, you know,
00:32:07.220
even if you're saving 300K a year, which means you're probably making close to a million bucks,
00:32:11.180
you know, pre-tax everything. You know, you're saving 300K a year, earning five percent. You start
00:32:15.380
worth a million. It still takes you 17 years to get to 10 million. So the math is not friendly
00:32:20.300
to you once you get into level four. That's why I call it the no man's land on the wealth ladder,
00:32:24.740
because once you get in there, it's hard to get out. And then, you know, succession has that joke,
00:32:28.260
five to 10, five to 10 is a nightmare, right? Because it's true. Like you, there's no real
00:32:32.120
incentive to keep working because your income is not going to really move the needle anymore.
00:32:36.080
Your wealth is throwing off so much wealth on its own. So you're in this weird spot where you're like,
00:32:40.580
hey, you know, I don't know what to do here. And I think for most people, the rational response is,
00:32:44.760
hey, take your foot off the gas, enjoy life more. Do you like a type of coast fire thing? Find work
00:32:49.640
you just find enjoyable and not just for money and go from there and stop worrying about getting
00:32:54.400
to level four. Yeah. Be okay with level four. Level four sounds pretty awesome. You mentioned
00:32:58.180
coast fire. What is that? You wrote an article about that. What is coast fire for those who
00:33:01.940
aren't familiar with that phrase? Yeah. Sorry. I try not to use so much semantics,
00:33:06.040
but coast fire there's, you know, I'm assuming many of most of your audience sort of fire,
00:33:09.900
which, you know, financial independence, retire early. Coast fire, the idea there is you save up
00:33:16.620
just enough for your retirement. We're like, hey, I have enough money now where if we assume it grows
00:33:21.160
at a conservative rate, let's say you assume it grows at 4% a year. So you say between now and when
00:33:26.240
I retire, let's say you retire at 65. So I'm 35 now. I'll just use myself as an example. So I let's
00:33:31.500
say I have enough money now where I assume it grows at 4% a year between now and, you know,
00:33:36.120
when I'm 65, 30 years from now, I'm going to have X dollars. And then at that point I can then pull
00:33:41.260
from that money and use that money to live off in retirement. That means you've hit coast fire once
00:33:45.660
you don't need to save any more money for retirement. That's the point where coast fire lives.
00:33:50.640
And so does that mean you don't have to work anymore? No, because you still need to cover
00:33:54.780
your current consumption. Like that's not, you're not supposed to use your assets to cover your current
00:33:58.880
consumption. You're supposed to use any income you have to cover your current consumption,
00:34:02.320
but it means you don't have to save more for your future. That's kind of the big difference in
00:34:06.960
thinking here. And so I think coast fire is actually the exact place for it is level four
00:34:12.380
because people will get there and say, Hey, and especially if you get there like relatively
00:34:15.680
younger, like let's say in your forties or something, you might be like, Hey, you know,
00:34:18.960
this is a time for me to like, I can take my foot off the gas. I can chill out a little and I can
00:34:22.800
work on something that's maybe more meaningful to you, or maybe doesn't make you as much money.
00:34:26.460
And you don't have to worry about saving as much. You just need to cover your current expenses
00:34:29.840
and you know, the rest will take care of itself basically.
00:34:33.440
Yeah. Or I mean, even if you get there when you're in your sixties, so you have a long,
00:34:37.640
productive working life, you saved for retirement and you don't have to work full time anymore,
00:34:43.280
but you could still get a part-time job if you wanted in your sixties. Like my dad, he did that.
00:34:48.060
He had a government job, forced retirement in his early fifties because he was in law enforcement
00:34:51.800
and he's got a pension, you know, he didn't have to work, but he kept working. Like he took contract work
00:34:56.860
and he's still working. He's like 70, he's almost, I think he's like 75 still works and he enjoys it.
00:35:02.140
But I think it covers like their, my parents' consumptive costs. Yeah, that's great. That's
00:35:06.000
how I think a lot of people should do it. And I think, you know, we always look at work as like,
00:35:09.460
Oh, wouldn't it be great if I never had to work again? Like people idealize that at the same time,
00:35:14.520
I think a life without any work or any work doesn't necessarily have to mean paid work by the way,
00:35:19.460
but a life without any work I think is a difficult life if you do it for a very long time. I think
00:35:24.620
it's very tough, you know, mentally to do that. Of course you may reach a point in your life where
00:35:29.080
you're like, you know what? I'm happy to do that. And some people are okay with it, but I think a
00:35:31.820
lot of people want to have some sort of purpose or something they're working on. And so, you know,
00:35:36.340
I've looked at all the research and the data on this and overwhelmingly people do find a lot of
00:35:40.960
positive benefits from work. Now, of course, if you're in a job you hate, you want to get out of
00:35:45.140
it as quickly as you can. But you know, for most people, you want to do something you enjoy
00:35:48.960
working on what, and whether that's a creative endeavor, whether that's volunteering,
00:35:52.800
like the options are very numerous. And so it's just figuring out what you want and then
00:35:57.000
building your life backwards from that. Okay. And so level four, again, this is the 1 million to
00:36:02.320
10 million range. This is achievable through increasing your income, through acquiring new
00:36:07.460
skills, increasing your education, asking for raises, investing, and then just time, like the
00:36:12.640
time factor. I think that's an- Time's a big piece of this. Once again, the median age is 62.
00:36:16.260
Yeah. I think that's an important thing to feel. If you're like in your 30s or 40s right now,
00:36:19.640
you're like, I'm not in level four. It's like, okay, you're fine. You've got 20 years
00:36:23.240
to make that happen. Yeah. Just for the record, you know, less than 1% of households in their 20s
00:36:29.480
are in level four. Less than 5% of households in the 30s are in level four. So only like one in 20
00:36:36.180
people in their 30s are in level four. 15% of people in their 40s are in level four and et cetera.
00:36:42.500
And this is in the book. It breaks down by age cohort, by decade 20 to 29, 30 to 39, et cetera.
00:36:47.880
It shows the percentage of people within that cohort that are in each wealth level.
00:36:51.700
What are the biggest risks or stressors once you reach level four, you think?
00:36:56.460
I think the money stressors in level four are similar to level five. And I think
00:37:00.400
the stress is usually from a lack of diversification. You know, it's like concentration.
00:37:06.080
That's the issue as really the only way to lose wealth quickly. Obviously, you know,
00:37:10.140
there's divorce and other things outside factors. But if we're just talking pure
00:37:13.580
monetary factors, it's really going to be concentration. So it's like, how is your wealth
00:37:18.260
allocated? And how concentrated are you? Because the more concentrated you are, the more likely
00:37:23.160
you could lose wealth quickly. Of course, that's also how you can build wealth quickly. But
00:37:27.320
it's a double edged sword. And I think realizing that it's a double edged sword is what's important
00:37:33.800
That's the key there. And then, yeah, move to level five. It's like you said, it's what got
00:37:37.900
you to level four is not going to get you to level five. You're going to have to do something
00:37:41.320
radically different. And for a lot of people, that might not be rational. What causes people to like,
00:37:47.020
they reach level four, they've got the vacation money, they can like, I can just take a nice
00:37:51.580
vacation whenever I want. Life's good. Why would someone want to make that leap to level five based
00:37:57.780
on your experience interacting with people who've made that leap?
00:38:01.100
There could be a lot of different reasons. One, some people want to create really big generational
00:38:06.060
wealth for their families. Some people want to fly private. Some like the ego boost of being
00:38:11.320
like, oh, I'm, I'm not just upper middle class, I'm upper class, right? I'm really wealthy. You
00:38:15.060
know, I can go and buy supercars and all these other things that you see the stereotypically
00:38:19.240
rich people do, which funny enough, you know, not most rich people don't even own supercars,
00:38:24.180
right? People with that level of wealth, they don't spend money like that. So it's only really
00:38:27.480
the media's depiction of it that that makes it look like that. So why do people do I mean,
00:38:31.700
in the book, I say, you know, the most expensive thing some people own is their ego. So if the
00:38:35.800
most expensive thing some people own is their ego, that's why, you know, that's the answer,
00:38:39.060
the short answer for you. Yeah. So we talked about rungs one through five on the wealth ladder
00:38:43.760
rungs six is a hundred million dollars plus, and that's going to apply to just a very small
00:38:50.160
amount of people. There's only 11,000 households in the U S who are on, who are on rungs six. And
00:38:56.380
these are basically people who've sold their businesses for huge amounts of money or, you
00:39:00.720
know, like athletes or entertainers, but even very few of those, those people reach that level.
00:39:06.140
So let's talk about mobility up and down the wealth ladder. Let's talk about how often people
00:39:12.440
fall down the wealth ladder. Let's say someone gets to level four. How often do they stay there?
00:39:18.340
It's usually pretty rare how people fall down. So for example, over a 10 year period,
00:39:22.560
11% of households fell down one wealth level and 2% of households fell down two wealth levels.
00:39:29.340
This is based on the historical data where I'm following the same set of households over time.
00:39:32.520
We can actually control for by level. And it's actually a little bit more interesting
00:39:36.200
because you can say, okay, Hey, if I started in this wealth level, what's the probability
00:39:40.180
I'm going to be in another wealth level in the future. So for example, going to what you just
00:39:44.000
asked, if you start in level four, after 10 years, there's a 23% chance you'll be in level three.
00:39:50.460
And there's less than a 1% chance you'll be in level two or one. So it's very unlikely 72% of
00:39:56.440
households that started in level four are still in level four after 10 years. And that's like the
00:40:01.240
highest out there. And we can even, we can look over 20 years and it's roughly the same. That's
00:40:05.140
why after 20 years, if you start in level four, there's a 64% of those households are still in
00:40:10.820
level four after 20 years, only 8% make it up the wealth ladder to level five. So it's very rare to
00:40:17.100
see that kind of mobility switching, but it does happen. What about mobility going up on those lower
00:40:21.820
rungs, like from one to two to three, is that still happening? I mean, you hear all this talk about
00:40:26.200
like the American dream is dead. There's no income mobility or wealth mobility. What does
00:40:31.100
the research say about that? So this research is historical. So it's going backward looking from
00:40:35.880
like the 1980s when we first had the wealth data through 2021. So the question is, is it still
00:40:40.100
happening now and will it happen in the future is remains to be seen. But in general, like there is
00:40:45.180
mobility. So for example, let's just look over 10 years. If you start in level one, after 10 years,
00:40:51.120
there's a 54% chance you will be out of level one, there's a 30% chance you're going to be in level
00:40:56.240
two, there's a 22% chance you'll be in level three, etc. So there's a decent chance that you can kind
00:41:01.880
of get out of level one and get higher on the wealth ladder. You know, 46% of households stay
00:41:06.160
in level one after 10 years, but the rest don't. So there is mobility. And there's some healthy
00:41:11.400
mobility. And it's just I think a lot of its time as well, because people get older. And so they
00:41:14.660
save money and they age out. Let's talk about mobility across generations. There's that phrase,
00:41:20.420
shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves and three generations. So yeah, there's a generation
00:41:26.220
that got a lot of wealth. And then by the third generation, that generation, like the money's
00:41:31.600
just gone. There's actually I think there's a book that came out a couple years ago, like
00:41:35.000
where all the billionaires, these guys look at the missing billionaires, these guys look to the
00:41:40.320
Vanderbilt family. So like Vanderbilt, he left an inheritance, I think it's like $100 million.
00:41:44.900
It's almost like $3 billion in today's money. But if you look at the descendants, like there's
00:41:50.060
like no more billionaires in the Vanderbilt family. What goes on there? Like, why is it
00:41:54.480
so hard to maintain a family on a rung in the wealth ladder?
00:42:01.240
Well, I think there's a lot of reasons why this is I mean, I can talk about the Vanderbilt
00:42:04.540
specifically, or just like, like level six wealth, let's just call it, and then compare
00:42:09.520
it to other wealth levels. But in level six, and most people that have that much wealth,
00:42:13.540
it's usually concentrated. And so unless they diversify, it's very unlikely that that's going
00:42:18.100
to last. This is why I think Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are so smart, because of all
00:42:22.440
the billionaires out there, they may not be the richest on the list, but they're the most
00:42:25.620
diversified. They're the ones that are least likely to see their wealth just, you know,
00:42:29.860
disappear or see a massive change in their wealth, because they're very diversified. Like
00:42:34.220
Bill Gates is the largest private landowner in the United States. He owns more US land than
00:42:38.740
any other individual. So he owns a lot of different assets and things that are going to allow
00:42:44.140
him to have wealth for multiple generations. And I think if you're like an Elon Musk, even though
00:42:48.220
he's richer on paper, if something happens to Tesla, that's like the majority of his wealth. So he
00:42:53.060
could easily fall below Gates at any moment. And so that's a piece of it. I think, if you look at
00:42:58.880
like the growth of families, like they're growing faster than the wealth is. So like, let's say you
00:43:03.620
have two kids, now they have two spouses, that's now four people, and then each of them have two
00:43:08.040
kids, right? And so now, four people is now eight people. And then those kids get spouses,
00:43:12.960
and they have, right? You can just see how the, it's growing at such a fast pace and your wealth
00:43:17.460
is not keeping up. So it makes sense why the Vanderbilts couldn't do it at just some point,
00:43:21.000
like the math doesn't make sense, you know? So that's another piece of it. But I think just,
00:43:25.360
if we're talking about lower wealth levels, like I think succeeding generations can find it difficult
00:43:29.240
to stay in the same wealth levels, their parents, because like economic conditions change,
00:43:34.320
they may not want to work as hard. Like, oh, I don't want to work like my parents did to get to that
00:43:37.720
level. I may just realize, you know, I don't need to work as hard because I know I'm gonna get
00:43:40.740
an inheritance so I can just, you know, chill a little bit more. They may have different feelings
00:43:44.180
about money. Like, all these are very case-specific, but just a few reasons that make sense to me.
00:43:48.660
Okay. So we've talked about the different rungs of the wealth ladder. They all have their
00:43:53.240
opportunities and their risks. How do you figure out, like, where you're fine at? What other things
00:43:59.300
should you consider besides your net worth in deciding, you know, I'm okay where I am at
00:44:05.320
financially? What are things should you consider in order to figure out if you have a rich life or
00:44:09.560
not? I think it really depends what you want out of life. I mean, this is the most difficult part
00:44:14.660
of, you know, being a human in modern civilization is like, we've been debating this idea since the
00:44:19.980
time of the ancient Greeks. You know, it's like why, you know, know thyself is such an important
00:44:24.120
concept. And it's because you need to know what you really want. And so once you can solve for that,
00:44:29.740
then it's much easier to figure out, okay, well, how much wealth do I need to support that? Oh,
00:44:34.600
I want to, you know, I can imagine your dream life or whatever it is, like how much wealth do
00:44:38.380
you need to support that? Because once you know what you want, then you can figure out all those
00:44:42.700
things. And for most people, I think it's lower than they think. I mean, it's always easy to justify
00:44:47.480
needing more, but yeah, you have to kind of get past that or figure out what's the things that
00:44:51.460
really matter. So it's like your time, how much free time do you have or time you can use time
00:44:55.440
wealth is what we call it. You can think of mental wealth. You can think of physical wealth. You can
00:44:59.960
think of, you know, social wealth, all these different things, right? Sahil Bloom has a book
00:45:04.180
called the five types of wealth where he talks about all these. And I use that as a framework
00:45:07.120
in the wealth ladder to think about these types of, you know, a rich life and what does that mean?
00:45:11.780
And it also depends where you live too. Like I said, you know, 1 million to 10 million is upper
00:45:16.060
middle class. Well, it kind of depends where you live. You know, if you've got 8 million bucks and
00:45:19.540
you're in a low cost of living area, you're upper class, you're actually very upper class. But if
00:45:23.260
you're in New York city, maybe not, you know? So it really depends where you live, the type of
00:45:27.720
lifestyle you want, et cetera. So that's the, those are the things I would say to,
00:45:30.300
to take into account. Yeah. Whenever I go to San Francisco, like, man,
00:45:35.140
this place is beautiful. I could see myself living here. And then you look at the cost of
00:45:38.940
housing and you're like, no, I can see why housing is so expensive because it's so beautiful,
00:45:42.980
but I'll stay in Tulsa next to the Arkansas river and take the sunsets, I guess, in Oklahoma.
00:45:48.200
Well, Nick, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:45:52.000
and your work? Oh yeah. So you can find the book everywhere books are sold, Amazon,
00:45:55.980
Barnes and Noble bookshop.org, et cetera. And you can find out more about me. I write every week at
00:46:01.460
of dollarsanddata.com. You can also find me on Twitter slash X at, at dollarsanddata. I'm on
00:46:07.380
Instagram at Nick Majuli, and then I'm on LinkedIn at Nick Majuli. I answer every DM. So if you have any
00:46:12.220
questions or anything, feel free to DM me. Yeah. And of dollars and data plug for that. It's one of my
00:46:16.040
favorite financial blogs out there. It's a lot of fun to read. Well, Nick, thanks so much time.
00:46:22.540
It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on again. Appreciate it, Brett.
00:46:26.460
My guest here is Nick Majuli. He's the author of the book, The Wealth Ladder. It's available on
00:46:29.920
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website
00:46:33.700
of dollarsanddata.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash wealth ladder. We find links
00:46:38.860
to resources and we delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM
00:46:50.680
podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanage.com. We find our podcast archives.
00:46:54.580
And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter. We got a free newsletter on
00:46:57.860
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00:47:14.900
it's Brett McKay. Remind you how to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into