Act Smarter. Live Richer. Nick Maggiulli on personal finance and investing.
I recently saw this Reddit post about a man who retired early (FIRE) only to be called a "loser" by his wife go viral. In the man's own words: 41m, $2mm liquid, $650k retirement and I get a $75k/yr royalty from a business I sold. Recently retired. Wife is a sc…
My wife and I recently started watching Hacks, the HBO TV series starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, about a legendary comedian trying to stay relevant in a changing world. It's funny, the writing is fantastic, and there are lots of great plot twists. Bu…
Over the last year, there have been a number of policies aimed at taxing the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. It started last November when the "2026 Billionaire Tax Act" ballot initiative was proposed in California to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on its resident…
There's a common belief that as your wealth increases, your capacity to take risk increases as well. After all, when you have more you can afford to lose more, right? This might be correct in the extremes, but this argument doesn't hold in more typical wealth…
It's 1:30 AM and my wife is in the middle of labor. We're both trying to get some sleep while she dilates further from 3cm to the ultimate goal—10cm. That's when I wake to one of the nurses telling my wife: We don't want you to panic, but you're about to hear…
As of today, I've published 500 blog posts online since January 2017. That's slightly more than 1 per week. Given this, I wanted to discuss the biggest lessons I've learned from this and how they can help you. Consistency Beats Everything If there were one ide…
In 2015, Tai Lopez started running his now famous "Here in my garage" ad on YouTube as a way to promote his 67 Steps self-help course. The ad featured Lopez standing in front of a brand new Lamborghini before panning over to seven bookshelves he had installed…
Picture this: You're in your mid-40s and you've just quit your stressful corporate job. You've set aside enough money to fund your future retirement and now can work a more enjoyable (but lower paying) job to cover your living expenses until then. This is the…
Over the last year, I've come to an unsettling realization—the upper middle class is caught in a trap, and many of them don't realize it. A few weeks ago I wrote about why private school isn't worth the cost. My argument hinged on the fact that the upper middl…
There seems to have been a vibe shift in the U.S. housing market over the past six months. What started in places like Austin, Texas with falling rents and home prices, seems to have spread to other parts of the country. As you can see in the table below, it's…
For months now there's been an online joke that anyone who doesn't learn about AI will be a part of the "permanent underclass." The permanent underclass represents the new have-nots of society—all of those who will be left behind in the coming AI wave. While a…
I recently saw the following table about the increasing cost of private school in NYC: For context, the annual tuition at Harvard is $59,320, or over $3,000 less than the cheapest school on this list (for 2025-2026). Excuse me, but what the hell is going on? H…
I recently saw this video of Alex Hormozi where he talks about a speaking event he attended. At the event, the speaker wrote $1,000,000 on a large whiteboard. Then the speaker asked someone in the audience how much they make and they replied, "$50,000 per year…
For the past few decades, being in shape was the ultimate "proof of work." You couldn't buy it. You had to earn it. Unless you had top 5% genetics, you had to build your physique through diet and exercise. But then something incredible happened. GLP-1 agonists…
What if I told you that getting a college degree provides no long-term financial benefits unless you get married? What if I told you that the typical single business owner is wealthier than most married couples who don't own businesses? Though both of these st…
Right now many people are debating why the U.S. housing market is broken. Some blame interest rates. Some blame prices. Some blame zoning laws. While the truth is a mix of all of these factors, there's one thing that no one seems to agree on—supply. Does the U…
Let's turn the clocks back a little over a year. Going into 2025, the consensus view on markets was: U.S. Exceptionalism: The U.S. is the only equity game in town. Europe and the rest of the world had fallen behind on AI and tech innovation. Lower Rates: Inves…
I recently saw this tweet from Pieter Levels arguing that inflation is actually much higher than people think because of decreasing product quality (and not just increasing prices): I think we're 100% in some kind of hyperinflationary state But the hyperinflat…
One time I saw someone ask James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, "What's the point of writing a book when there are already so many books out there? Isn't the market oversaturated?" Clear agreed that this was true if your book wasn't any good. But, if your…
Wouldn’t it be great if you knew the future before it happened? Imagine all the money you could make in the stock market. It seems like a dream scenario, right? But, what if I told you that it wasn't true? What if "knowing the future" wasn't as profitable as y…
With the surge in U.S. home prices since 2020, Americans have more home equity than ever before. As Realtor.com reported in September 2025 (emphasis mine): In the second quarter of 2025, the Flow of Funds data from the Federal Reserve showed that the total val…
Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche, New York Times bestselling author, once told a story about how she was on a long walk around Central Park when she saw the most perfect leaf she had ever seen in her life. It was fall in New York City and many of the leaves we…
There's a popular belief in the investment industry that alpha, or the ability to beat the market, is the thing that you should seek out as an investor. This is perfectly logical. All else being equal, more alpha is always better than less. But, having alpha d…
A few years before Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton's famous voyage to the South Pole (as told in Endurance), Robert Falcon Scott attempted the same thing in his Terra Nova expedition. To ensure that his team would survive the 1,800-mile journey to the South Pole a…
A few weeks ago, Michael Green published a post where he argued that the poverty line for a family of four in the U.S. wasn't $32,100 in annual income (as currently claimed by the Department of Health and Human Services), but closer to $140,000 per year. He ma…
With 2025 coming to an end, it’s time for my annual tradition of gathering my favorite investment writing of the year. I started this tradition in 2017, and have continued it ever since (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024). 2025 was a year of turbulence…
I can't stand AI-assisted writing anymore. It's all over Substack. It's in my LinkedIn replies. It's everywhere. Like a disease slowly infecting our literary consciousness. I even see it from people who I know aren't bad writers. For example, a prominent perso…
Imagine it's 2004 and I explain to you what a mortgage-backed security (MBS) is. I show you how they work and how banks are using them to sell groups of mortgages to investors. Even with this knowledge, it would've been difficult to foresee the financial crisi…