Episode Transcript
Boke No Trillions.
Speaker 2I'm Joel Weber and I'm Eric Balchernas.
Speaker 3Eric, I'm really excited we have Nick Madjulie back on the podcast today.
Speaker 1I checked.
He was on three years ago for his first.
Speaker 3Book called Just Keep Buying, and he's just out with the second book, The Wealth Ladder, and I want to know more about the Wealth Ladder, how about you?
Speaker 2Yeah, No, this is a Nick is an advisor, and advisors are the biggest consumer of ETFs, so you always want to hear from them.
Speaker 4They are the users of ETFs, but.
Speaker 2They're not they're using ETFs, but that's just one tiny part of what they do, and their people use them as behavioral coaches, life coaches, tax plan It's really a whole deal.
Speaker 4And Nick is what I would consider like a cool advisor.
Speaker 2Oh a little younger, you know, the average advisory age is like sixty sixty five.
Speaker 1No jug no judging.
Speaker 2Nick is part of Ritholtz and there have really really changed the way that advisors are even viewed because they're really they do conferences, they're in the media, they write books.
They're just like just tons of content coming out of it.
And his last book was called Just Keep buying, which is when he was on our podcast like three years ago and that was a huge hit, and I told him this, I thought that phrase just keep buying, really captured the moment.
It's funny because he put it out right before twenty twenty two when the market went down a lot, but people in at least etf users they bought through it, and they also bought through the beginning of this year.
So people have taken that motto to heart or he captured what they do with a perfect phrase, and so it's cool to see him back with a new book.
Speaker 1Okay, this time Nick Majulie.
Speaker 3He's the chief operating officer and a data scientist at written Bolk Wealth, this time on trillions the Wealth Letter.
Speaker 5Nick, welcome back, Thanks for having me on guys.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 3The book is The Wealth Ladder, Proven strategies for every step of your financial life.
What is the Wealth Ladder?
Speaker 6The Wealth latter is a new framework for viewing your finances and the main idea here is I break wealth into six distinct levels.
We can get into those in a moment, but based on which level you're at, based on your net worth, it can help influence your spending decisions, your income decisions, your investment decisions, et cetera.
And I think the main analogy I use, like in the intro, is like a fitness instructor would give different advice to someone who's like obese versus someone who's like a well trained athlete versus.
Speaker 5Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6So I think that same analogy can apply to your financial advice.
Right, So if you're like just starting out, you're going to give someone very different advice than if someone's you know, trying to get to let's say ten million plus or one hundred million plus, et cetera.
Speaker 1Does it have to be a ladder?
Can it be an escalator?
Speaker 6It could, in theory be whatever analogy you want.
I think the term the wealth ladder has been used a lot, but there's no official like, oh, this is the person that coined it or anything.
It's just been kind of used as like there's like these stages to wealth, and so I just wanted to actually finally put you know my name on this phrase and actually define it.
Speaker 3And wealth escalator just wouldn't sell it in the same way that the latter might.
Yeah, So one of the things you say is we've been looking at wealth the wrong way.
Why and how do you want us to look at it?
Speaker 6I think people they understand this intrinsically, Like the difference between zero having no money in ten thousand dollars is pretty large for people, Like if you go from zero to ten thousand, that can like reduce a lot of stress, et cetera.
But then even someone going from like one million to two million may not change their life all that much, I mean relatively right.
And so of course, like ones a million dollar change the other ones a ten thousand dollars change, Like, it's not linear in terms of the happiness, enjoyment changing your life, et cetera.
And so there's this kind of diminishing marginal utility of money.
You know, as you have more of it, it's becomes less and less valuable.
Right, you need a bigger boost or a bigger hit, so to speak, to see the same jump and happiness or well being, live satisfaction, et cetera.
And I think people realize that.
And so by defining the wealth ladder and the way I did, I think it's a better way of looking at money and thinking about spending income investments, et cetera.
Speaker 2Yeah, I like the way you did this and you had you posted something on Twitter and I'll just read off of what it is.
And it was a little controversial.
Some people debated this.
When you talk about wealth and like classes, I think people can be touchy.
Speaker 4But here's what you say.
Speaker 2Under ten thousand, wealth is paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 4Level one ten.
Speaker 2Thousand to one hundred thousand is grocery freedom, which is where you can buy groceries without worrying about it.
And then level three is restaurant freedom.
That's one hundred thousand to one million.
Speaker 1And by the way, if you mentioning, this is net worth, right, yeah.
Speaker 2This is net worth and household net worth, yeah, not income.
And then level four is travel freedom one million to ten ten million.
Speaker 4You can travel when and where you want.
Speaker 2Level five is house freedom ten million to one hundred million.
You can afford your dream home with little impact on your overall finances.
And then finally level six, which is where I am, but Joel wishes he was one hundred million plus.
You can use money to have a profound impact on the lives of others, you know, businesses engaged in philanthropy, et cetera.
So I think it was the middle upper middle class where you got a little weird like if you know, middle class being up to a million, I think was part of it.
But can you talk about the feedback you got from that and what was like the points that were most contentious.
Speaker 3I think I noticed that got two point three million eyeballs that post.
Speaker 6So yeah, so that post said, like, okay, level one, which is less than ten thousand, I said, that's lower class ten thousand to one hundred thousands.
Level two that's working class.
Level three, I would say that's middle class.
That's one hundred thousand to a million dollars.
By the way, that's about forty percent of households.
So there's twenty percent Level one, this is US household US households, twenty percent L one, twenty percent Level two, forty percent in level three.
So that's now eighty percent of the entire US has less than a million.
About eighteen percent are in level four that's one to ten million, and then the top two percent is level five and six, which is ten million plus.
And when I said, you know, one to ten million was upper middle class, of course, some people are like, well, if you have you know, six million dollars in Alabama, you're definitely upper class.
I'm like, yes, okay, you can, you know, use these examples.
But like if you have six million dollars in New York, I wouldn't say you're necessarily upper class, right, so I think you're upper middle class.
Speaker 5You're obviously doing well for yourself.
Speaker 6But you know, with the price of an apartment even like it's pretty expensive.
Speaker 5Right.
Speaker 6So anyways, I said this, it's very controversial.
I tried it to make it as useful as possible and like agnostic to location, and I think the idea here is, you know, what I'm especially what I'm seeing is like the upper middle classes.
I define it with the one to ten million range.
There's a lot of people in that range, eighteen percent of the US, and it's it's tripled since nineteen eighty nine on an inflation adjusted basis used to be about seven percent.
So yeah, eighteen is not exactly triple, it's like two and a half times larger.
But that's kind of the big change that's happened in our society.
I'm starting to see it in other ways, like the AMX lounge is overrun at the airport.
You go to a nice resort and like you have to go out at seven am to get your pool chair, right, because people race to get them.
Speaker 5So it's like.
Speaker 6There's some sort of scarcity thing going on where the upper middle class is like being overcrowded.
And I think a lot of people aren't talking about that, and that's kind of one of the issues I wanted to bring up with this book as well.
Speaker 2So we talk about these levels, right, what percent or how would you describe people getting up to these levels because this stock market went up a lot versus income?
Right, Like, if I look at somebody who has a million in net worth, is that typically a lot?
Like how much of that is just because the market went up?
So we talk about these like scarcity where you have a lot of people fighting for chairs and the MX lounge.
How much of that is on the back of the US stock market because I don't are people really making that much more money?
Speaker 4Or is a lot of this the wealth effect because of stocks?
Speaker 5It's a mix.
Speaker 6And so that data I'm quoting that all the data I use for these percentages was twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three.
It's it's the survey of consumer finances, which is across those two years, and at the time, if someone's in level four, so one to ten million, roughly thirty percent of that wealth on average is in their primary residence, and in terms of the retirement account, it's about twenty five percent.
So over half of that wealth of someone in level four is typically going to be included in their house and their retirement account.
So the other half would be other things vehicles, obviously cash, other stocks they have if they own a business, anything like that.
So roughly half of that wealth if you're in level four should be in kind of these less liquid assets, right retirement home equity.
So how much of that is being due to the stock market going up?
A decent portion of it is obviously over half of it.
But you know, I don't have the new The new estate is going to come out next year, and we'll look at it then and see like, oh, has that gone up, has it gone down, et cetera.
But I do think there is quite a bit of paper wealth here where like, hey, well my house is worth this, but you can't really access it outside of like a heelock or something.
So I think the main thing to think about here is just like, well, either way, there's still a lot more people in this kind of bucket level four, as I call it, and because of that, like they are spending more, they're traveling more.
I think that's what's changing a lot in the United States, and it's impacting you know, consumer goods in that sector.
Speaker 5In particular.
Speaker 3How walled off are each of these levels, Like how often are we seeing people go from level three to level four, level four to level five, or you know, vice versa.
Speaker 1I supposed to.
Speaker 6Yeah, so it depends on the timeframe.
So I covered this in chapter ten in the book, and this was actually kind of one of the reasons why I wrote the books.
I basically wanted this like mobility matrix, which would be like, hey, if you start in level three, like after ten years, what's the probability you're going to be in level four?
Speaker 3Because my assumption is that this wall is getting higher, right, it's getting harder and harder to advance out of levels.
Speaker 1There's an entrenchment on ust.
Speaker 6So I haven't looked in that at in particular, like looking at the switching rate, let's say from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety nine versus ninety nine to two thousand and nine.
Obviously that's a weird period because of the GFC, But you get my point, and either way that in general, most people are in the same wealth level after a decade, right, So, and that's that's at least true, like across every wealth level.
So if you start in level two a decade later, you're very likely to be in level two.
If you start in level three, you're seventy two percent of households will still be in level three after a decade.
If you're in level four, seventy two percent will still be in level four after a decade.
Three percent make it to level five, et cetera.
And all this data is in the book, right, and so we can talk about it just in general, like just across all wealth levels, agnostic with the levels, about twenty one percent of households will go up one level within a decade, about three percent will go up two levels, so one in four are going to be up a wealth level.
Speaker 5Right.
Speaker 6So once again, these some of these levels are pretty broad, like level four is one to ten million, so you can stay in that wealth level.
Doesn't mean you didn't build wealth, right, So it's another thing to think about here.
It's just I'm trying to say, like what are these big step changes those are the ones that are kind of important have probably a bigger impact on our lives.
And the same thing, how many people fall down the ladder, It's about twelve thirteen percent over the course of a decade, even though the course of two decades it's about the same.
So that doesn't really change much, right, So whether they're talking ten years or twenty years, the number of people that fall down the ladder is about you know, let's say one to ten in some fashion.
And the number of people that go up the ladder, as I said, is about twenty four percent over a ten year period.
Over a twenty year period, it's about thirty seven percent, so it's.
Speaker 5A bit higher.
Speaker 6So there is still a lot of positive mobility.
I don't know about the time factor though, which is what you brought up.
Speaker 3It's a good point.
Speaker 4You have clients in all these ladders, I take it.
Speaker 6Yeah, we we have clients across the wealth ladder, right, we have those.
I mean technically we don't have a minimum, So we have people with some probably not many, with less than ten thousand.
Some would just maybe just less than ten thousand with us, but they may have obviously assets elsewhere, they own a home, et cetera.
But for the most part, yeah, we have people across that.
We have people technically in one hundred million plus.
We don't have too many of them, but we have a handful of one hundred million dollars plus clients.
And then we have obviously our our bread and butter is level four and level five, which is you know, one to ten and then ten plus.
Speaker 2Because you do talk about like like this is just money, right, and there's also just like happiness and general you know, content with yourself and and you talk in here about some of the you know, there can be some things that.
Speaker 4Go wrong when you get a lot of money.
Speaker 2Relationships, family dynamics, your kids, stress levels.
Speaker 4Is that something you've noticed.
Speaker 2Like is already correlation to other things like the more money you have, the more paranoid you get, or the more you hate taxes in in a weird way, or I don't know.
I'm just thinking about this because sometimes I sometimes think of that famous chart that USA Today used to put out with like countries ranked by happiness, and like I think Nigeria was like number one and the US is like twentieth, And I wonder if there's an any kind of other correlations with general disposition or happiness or anything like that with these brackets.
Speaker 6So there is data on happiness and income and then also data on happiness and wealth.
And so most of your audience has probably heard of the conom and deed and study, which is like, oh, once you earn over seventy five K year, your happiness doesn't increase.
Long story short, that data wasn't exactly correct.
It's the measure was.
It wasn't measuring happiness.
It was measuring unhappiness, which is kind of a weird thing.
So it was saying that after seventy five K year, you can't prevent unhappiness, which is a weird as a double negative, right, so it's kind of hard to think about.
But long story short, a guy named Matthew Killingsworth sat down with Condom and they look through the data and everything.
While Cocondom is still alive.
They look through it and they agreed that the measure was wrong.
And so the new takeaways.
No, happiness keeps increasing all the way up with your income, but only if you're already happy.
So if you're unhappy, more money is not going to make you happy, right, especially if you have a lot of money.
So if you're unhappy.
I mean, let me just summarize the findings.
If you're poor, more money is likely to make you happier.
If you're happy, more money is likely to make you happier.
But if you're not poor and you're not happy, more money's not going to do a thing, right, That's kind of the main takeaway.
So they found like, hey, if you're unhappy and you're in level three or level four, money's probably not the issue.
It's something else going on.
And I think that's the big takeaway from the research.
It's not out there people still believe, oh the seventy five thousand thing that's so old that needs to be like killed already and just gotten rid of, because there's new data out there that shows like across income and wealth is probably even stronger than income.
The more you have, the generally the happier you are, assuming you're already happy.
Speaker 1That is it, flatline though, Like oh it kep's going to just keeps going.
Speaker 6Out, but you have to be happy.
It only goes up if you're happy.
So the people who are like not even thinking about like, oh I'm not happy right now, Oh do I need more money?
Like that's it it's a very it's very ironic, like the people that aren't happy.
If you're looking for money is the solution, that's not the solution.
But if you're just if you're loving life, everything's great.
If I just gave you an extra million bucks, you'd be even everything'd be even happier for you.
So like that's kind of a weird irony here.
Speaker 2In other words, if you're not happy and you have this big void inside and you're trying to fill it with money, it just won't.
Speaker 4You can never fill it.
Speaker 5Yeah, exactly, not with money.
Speaker 6It's something else maybybe accomplishment or something else might be able to fill that.
But yeah, if it's not, of course, and then excluding people who are like very poor, like if you're if you're in like abject poverty, Like, yes, money is going to make you happier.
Speaker 5There's no debate there.
It's clear in the data.
Speaker 3It feels like Rosebud fits in here somewhere.
Yeah, so this is a podcast about ETFs.
Let's bring it back to ETFs.
How do ETFs figure into the wealth ladder?
Speaker 6I mean, the big takeaway from the wealth Flatter, at least on the investment side, is those in levels one to three, less than twenty five percent of their assets on average are an income producing assets things like stocks, bonds, et cetera.
That ETFs would you know, you'd hold three ETFs.
Those in levels four to six have over half of their assets and income producing assets.
So like that is the big difference between those lower on the wealth flatter and those higher on the wealth flatters.
Those lower on the wealth flatter don't own that many assets that produce income.
Those higher on the wealth flatterer have the majority of their assets are actually assets that produce income of some sort.
So that's you know, you could be retirement account with an ETF, individual stocks or you know stock ETFs things like that, or owning an individual business.
So in terms of like what are the things to think about, and I kind of show this in chapter three.
It shows like how much percentage by each wealth level, like what percentage is in retirement accounts, what percentage is in businesses, is in stocks, real estate, et cetera.
And looking through that, it's very clear that you know, level four, which is like the most the largest wealth level after you know, in the upper end they primarily have a lot of their money in stocks, retirement accounts, other types of income producing assets of that sort.
Speaker 2When it comes to ETFs, I've always thought, you know, and I wrote when I wrote the Bogel book, especially low cost Vanguardian type ETFs, that they are kind of a gift for advisors in any people because you don't have to worry about them, Like, once you lock into those, they're so low cost, you can literally just get.
Speaker 4Married to them.
Speaker 2You don't have to fuss with your investments that much because you know you're in the good stuff.
Speaker 4Do you find that is true with.
Speaker 2Those people, that their ability to keep buying, as you would put it, is easier because the products they're in are lovable and reliable versus thirty years ago when you're chasing active managers and active mutual funds, and it's harder to be well behaved if you feel like you're not in the right fund in a downturn, Whereas if you have Voo or something and it's a market down ton you're like, well, what the hell's am I going to do?
I'll just hold it and we all know that's the better move.
Speaker 4We win in the end with that attitude, have.
Speaker 2You because I always thought, you know, I interviewed Michael Lewis for the book, The Bogle Book, and he said ETFs have like helped me become a better writer.
I can just focus on that.
I don't have to check this stuff at all.
So that's something I just as curious.
From your role as an advisor, they seem like a godsend because you just buy these like really easy going ETFs, maybe customize the portfolio a little bit, and then we'll focus on other stuff.
Speaker 6I mean, I completely agree with that.
I think it's allowed passive investors to just free ride off all the work that all the active investors are doing to set prices.
And now, of course, how good is price discovery that's obviously debatable, especially as the passive share gets bigger and bigger.
I think just in general, yeah, it's one of those things where like I don't have to worry about it.
You know, you put and this is only going to work for people who get it.
Not everyone's gonna get this.
They're not going to believe that.
And if they don't believe that, when there's a downturn, maybe they will abandon their VTI or their VOO.
Most people don't because they get it.
They're like, I just got to keep buying over time and just do this and the market generally goes up.
And that has been shown to be true over a very long period.
We can go back to nineteen twenty six.
You see that in the US market.
Of course, there are exceptions.
There's Japan, there's Greece, there's Russia.
Right, we can talk.
I know all the exceptions very well.
There's very dark periods for equities where this can happen.
But if you're diversified across a broad range of assets, it's very unlikely that you're going to lose money on an inflation adjusted basis over a long period.
Speaker 5Of time, especially if you're buying over time.
Speaker 6I agree, if you put all your money in at once, there's a little bit more risk, right, because you're not diversifying across time with your payments or I'm sorry, with your contributions.
But that's just something else to consider when you're thinking about this stuff.
Speaker 3Right, I'm going to assume that most of our listeners are in level four, maybe level three, let's say the wash of.
Speaker 1The majority as you as you call it.
Speaker 3What are the actionable takeaways that you want them to hear from this book?
Speaker 6So level three is a little different than level four.
Level three obviously it's keep investing and usually a lot of these people wrote that book already, Yeah, I know, just keep buying.
Yeah, well that is the lesson of level three, So there's not much.
I mean, if you've already read just keep buying, you and you're in level three, that's kind of the main takeaway that if you're in.
I mean, the other thing you consider is like people starting side hustles, thinking about your career, how do you raise your income?
That's something I focus on a lot in level three.
In level four, it's actually a different lesson, and the lesson in level four is like what got you here won't get you there.
So the thing to get into level three and level four they're very similar, just usually takes more time, and that's you know, get a good job, save money, invest in ETFs, et cetera.
You know, diversification in coome producing assets, you'll get there.
To get to level five, which is ten million plus, that's a completely different ball game, and I think that requires in general, outside of celebrities, athletes, entertainers, some sort of entrepreneurship, right, unless you're making you know, tens of millions of dollars a year.
You're not going to get into level five unless you have a business that brings in a lot of income and you either you know, save that income for a long time or you sell the business for a lot one day.
So I think the big decision point for those in level four is like do I need to keep doing this?
Speaker 5Do I take my foot off the gas?
Speaker 6There's ideas of coast fire or fire financial independence.
There's a lot of these things come up in level four because you start to think, like how much am I even impacting my finances anymore?
Speaker 4Right?
Speaker 6So let me just a simple example.
If you're saving one hundred K a year and you have a million dollars, that's ten percent you're impacting your wealth every year.
By the time you have five million dollars, it's only moving your wealth by two percent.
So over time, like your labor is going to get less impactful on an annual basis in terms of impacting your wealth.
So the question is like, do I need to keep working?
Should I take a step back and I do something I enjoy more that pays less A treadmill?
Yeah, I think it's I think it's one of those things where you have to think about, like what do I do at this point?
And that's like the big decision idea in level four is like do I take a step back?
Do I need to change my my path completely?
If I want to get to level five.
I'm not saying you need to get to level five.
I don't think that's necessary whatsoever.
But for some people that want that, okay, maybe you need to take a different route.
Speaker 1To get there.
Speaker 3So, as Eric mentioned, he's he's level six, I'm level five.
What's he doing that I'm not doing?
Speaker 6He probably just either he had a business that he worked on for longer than you, or he sold his first business and then learned all those bad lessons from selling that one, and then, you know, start a second business.
That's typically what happens.
It's not their first business, their second business.
Speaker 1They got to be something else.
Because I don't I don't think that's him or ETFs.
Speaker 5Does he have a lot?
Is he an ETF is shuer?
Speaker 3Maybe No, I think that would be a conflict of interest.
I'll have to talk to him offline about that.
He's become suspiciously quiet.
Speaker 2Yeah, I know, I don't have an answer for this.
I don't want to reveal my secrets for unlike private equity companies, I'm not looking to democratize this great thing I have.
Okay, all right, but by the way, this idea of like, okay, people try to get a good job, they try to get a good salary.
Then like then they invest, and then they tend to the investing really powers half their funds.
Speaker 4Later on, there's this I think the bill.
Speaker 2Passed, right, so there's a in twenty twenty six, they're going to have a opportunity where kids will get one thousand dollars put into an account.
This is a Trump account, and I think it's gonna the.
Speaker 1What the Trump account?
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean, I don't know what they're calling.
Speaker 5Is that what is called the child?
Speaker 6I mean, yeah, they're putting a thousand dollars per child born.
I think in twenty two.
I don't know if it's this year or in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2Yeah, next year, it's just twenty twenty six, and then parents can obviously do it's like a four to one k for your kid in a way, and they can put money into it.
This was an idea put forth by Tyrone Ross, who you know.
Speaker 4He thought this was the solution.
Speaker 2To killing the wealth gap in America.
He had one other stipulation which I liked, which is that you can't get the money out as the kid until you're eighteen, and you have to pass a financial literacy test.
Because so many people don't know what the hell's going on with investing.
The only thing they might have gotten is like a stock picking competition in like middle school.
Speaker 4And I don't know.
Speaker 2This seems like a good idea.
Is there any downside?
Do you think this will help with the ladder climbing?
Speaker 6I guess the question.
I mean, I think it's it's better than not doing it, right.
I think a lot of a lot of the issues we see.
As long as the account can't be raided, you can't take money out of it like you have to.
It's almost like a it's like a private equity lock in, right, that's actually the it's a pheasic canvas.
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 6If you can't take the money out, that's eighteen years of compounding.
Right, even even if we go very conservative and say four percent per year inflation adjusted, that's like still very good, right, Like it will build wealth.
Now, the question is, as soon as these people turn eighteen, what do they do with the money.
And even if you pass a test, you can study for a test.
That doesn't mean, like, just because I know the right answer doesn't mean I'm gonna do the right thing right.
So there is the possibility of someone, you know, they finally get there, they have you know, how much is in this account.
Let's say it's I don't know, fifty grand maybe I don't know, and they could it all right away.
I mean, so it's a question of you know, people at eighteen are not necessarily the best decision makers.
I think we all know that I wasn't the best decision maker when I was eighteen.
Speaker 2But isn't isn't part of the idea that a lot of parents would be able to use this money for college versus having to borrow it, which can be brutal later on.
Speaker 6I mean, that's another option as well.
But I guess is it the question now?
Is is it the child's money or the parents money to use for college?
Speaker 1Like?
Speaker 6How how is this?
Who's the account under?
And when does the custody transfer or whatever?
Like all these types of questions matter in terms of how it actually plays out.
So I think it's a good idea.
I actually liked the idea of a sovereign wealth fund at the same time, like it's better than nothing.
Speaker 5I think just getting people.
Speaker 6In levels one, two, and three to own more income producing assets is a good thing period, Like full stop.
I think that will help with the wealth inequality.
It's not going to solve it completely, because there's just existing inequality that's just being exacerbated over time.
And if people aren't you know, don't have enough income to buy and come producing assets, then that's not going to help either.
Right, A lot of people can't afford or to even put money into an ETF.
Speaker 3Unfortunately, Nick, I'm curious, what do you know now having done the book that you didn't know before you did the book?
Speaker 1What'd you learn?
Speaker 5There's a few things.
Speaker 6I think The stuff I talk about on level four with like the difference between getting out of that level versus getting into that level was even more striking than I thought it would be.
And I use this.
I used some math to show this, Like once again, a million dollar portfolio, you're saving one hundred k a year.
Let's say you're it's growing by five percent a year after inflation, how long does it take to get to ten million?
The answer is twenty eight years.
So like, even like you're saving one hundred k year, that's a lot of money.
You're doing well, you're grinding, it still takes you thirty years.
And that's after you already hit a million, right, which could take someone a few decades to get there, right, So you think about that and you're like, wow, like doing all these things, the nine to five going through that, like it is a rough grind to get to ten million from here, and so a lot of people rationally so will say, you know what, I'm not gonna do that.
I don't care about doing that and take their foot off the break our foot off the game, so to speak.
And that was one of the big things I learned.
And then also just seeing how much business interest is at the higher end of the wealth flatter.
I knew that was true, but when I saw it in the data, it's like overwhelmingly, you know, the higher you go up the wealth flatter, the more people just have their own businesses, right.
And it's just, of course there's some survivorship bias there.
I understand all that, but if you just look at people in level six, all of them, it's like the vast majority of their wealth is in their businesses one way or another.
Speaker 3Last question for you, you're a little fine print at the beginning to my father for teaching me the game don't move until you see it?
Speaker 6What's that about Bobby Fisher that it's an old movie.
He taught me chess when I was, like, you know, very young thing.
I was four or five when he started teaching me, and I started playing as friends, and it really made me realize that, you know, like chess as an analogy for like life is actually probably more true than almost any game out there, because you're looking at the board.
For any thee that's played chess, you look at the board a certain point in time and oh, I want to make this move.
Oh I can't make this move because they could do that a few moves later.
The board's changed.
Now that move that didn't make sense can now make sense.
And I think the same thing was true when I was writing The Well Ladder.
Oh I could do this now, but maybe that's not the right move.
Like starting a business when you're twenty two, some people have succeeded it, most would fail.
I think most of the successful business owners are actually in their forties because they've actually had industry experience, they have more connections, and they have money to start the business.
So the move doesn't make sense at twenty two makes a lot more sense at forty two, right, And so I think thinking through that is when you realize, like wow, life is more like a chess game than and first glance.
Speaker 1Nick Majulia, thanks for joining us on Trillions.
Speaker 5Thanks Pridman, guys appreciate it.
Speaker 3Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time.
You can find us on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you'd like to listen.
Speaker 1We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3Hit us up on social I'm at Joe Weber Show, He's at Eric Faultiness.
Speaker 1Trillions is produced by Magnus Hendrix's Brendan Newman is our executive producer.
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcast
