Act Smarter. Live Richer. Nick Maggiulli on personal finance and investing.
A few months ago, I analyzed U.S. stock returns over the last century. Today, I'm going to determine the best portfolio over the last 50 years among the following asset classes: U.S. Stocks International Stocks Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) U.S. Corpor…
I recently joined a professional organization to discuss various topics in wealth management. On our first Zoom call there was a debate around the use of levered long/short strategies. For the uninitiated, a levered long/short strategy is a way of taking marke…
When I was 27 years old I was at a crossroads. I was five years into my career, yet I was stagnating. Though I was making six figures, which was great for my 20s, I knew I couldn't make much more at my job. Without an advanced degree, my future compensation wo…
A year ago I wrote the blog post Why I'm Bearish on U.S. Stocks (for the Second Time Since 2017). Since then U.S. stocks are up 16% (total return) and my bearish prediction turned out to be misguided. So where did I go wrong? And how can you prevent yourself f…
You've probably heard it all before. Be your own boss. Control your schedule. Own your time. As attractive as it sounds, it's a lie. Many people believe that working for yourself means unlimited flexibility. You can work where you want, when you want, and with…
Imagine being the typical SpaceX employee over the last few months. Your shares IPO at $135 and within a few days they peak at $225/share (up 67%) before they begin to decline. As of this morning they sit at around $139, or about 3% above the IPO price. Given…
What if I told you that $100 at 25 is worth $500 at 65, even after we adjust for inflation? Well...it is. There's an unspoken belief in personal finance that a dollar is always worth a dollar (putting inflation aside). We assume that spending $100 today would…
I’ve seen a lot of discussions this year around maximizing freedom and optionality. For example, consider this tweet: If you ever get up $1M in cash Buy a new modern apartment in the UAE for like $550k (you have zero property tax). Once you own it, it’s actual…
A year ago, I published my second book The Wealth Ladder. It's sold over 100,000 copies worldwide and hit the New York Times bestseller list in its third week of publication. At the time, I was thrilled that my work was finally getting some mainstream media at…
As stocks have hit new all-time highs in recent months, I've seen an increasing number of people argue that stocks aren't becoming more valuable, the dollar is becoming less valuable. Investor Lee Roach articulated this "debasement theory" in a recent Twitter/…
In honor of America's 250th birthday, I decided to do a deep dive into U.S. stock returns over the past century. My goal was to answer the following question: If you had invested in U.S. stocks at a random point in the last 100 years (1926-2025), how would the…
A few months ago I saw this video of Kevin O'Leary (Mr. Wonderful) arguing that $5M was enough for a lifetime of financial security. On the surface it seems hard to argue with this, but it was how O'Leary recommended investing this money that gave me pause. As…
I recently saw this video where Anna Stansbury, an assistant professor at MIT, explains that people who grew up in poverty end up earning less than their more affluent peers, even when they attended the same university: We know that socio-economic background m…
Working in England in the 14th century was difficult to say the least. Between the harsh conditions and low wages, you also had to fight against the occasional disease outbreak and a repressive government. As the Black Death spread across England, killing anyw…
This week SpaceX is having its initial public offering (IPO) where it plans to raise $75 billion at a $1.77 trillion valuation. Anthropic and OpenAI have their own IPO plans for later this year. With these highly valued companies coming to market, there's been…
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…
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…