Wealth Formula Podcast

Financial Education and Economics for High-Income Professionals.

553: How To Think about Taxes 04/05/2026

553: How To Think about Taxes If you’re paying a ton in taxes right now… it’s because you’re playing the wrong game. Most people think taxes are about income. They’re not. They’re about behavior—more specifically, incentivizing behavior. The government is constantly telling you what it wants through the tax code, and once you stop looking at it emotionally, it’s actually pretty obvious. It wants businesses. It wants jobs. It wants housing. It wants capital deployed in specific areas like energy and infrastructure. And when you do those things, it rewards you with lower taxes. Now contrast that with the high-income W2 professional. You did everything right. You trained forever, built a career, and you’re producing at a high level—often doing a lot of good in the world. But the government doesn’t see working for someone else as something it needs to incentivize. In fact, as a high-earning professional, you often end up paying a higher effective tax rate than almost anyone else. Not because you’re doing something wrong, but because you’re not doing what the system is designed to reward. I know that doesn’t feel fair. But fairness isn’t really the point. The people who seem like they’ve “figured out taxes” aren’t gaming the system. They’ve simply figured out what the government wants and aligned themselves with it. If all your income is W2, you’re largely boxed in. But when you start owning assets—businesses, real estate—you step into a completely different framework. Now you’re not just earning income, you’re creating it. You have expenses, deductions, and depreciation that fundamentally change how that income is recognized. Same economic reality, very different tax outcome. This is one of the biggest advantages of real assets over simply owning stocks and bonds. It’s not just about return—it’s about control over how you’re taxed. And if you really think about it, you should be looking at your financial life like a business. You already have revenue in the form of your paycheck, and you have expenses. But your biggest expense, by far, is your tax bill. If you want to maximize your “profit,” you have to figure out how to reduce that expense. And the only real way to do that is to change your facts—change how you earn, what you own, and how your income shows up. That shift—from focusing on how much you make to focusing on what you keep—is really what this whole conversation is about. It’s also exactly where this week’s podcast goes. I had a conversation with Steven M. Sheffrin that digs into how tax systems actually work in the real world. Not in theory, but in terms of how people respond to them—psychologically and behaviorally—and why so many well-intended policies fail because they ignore that. If you want a better mental model for thinking about taxes—and how to position yourself within the system—it’s worth a listen. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40729975

552: The Inflation Spike Everyone Will Misread 03/29/2026

552: The Inflation Spike Everyone Will Misread This week, you’re going to start hearing a familiar narrative again… “Inflation is back.” And on the surface, it’s going to look true. The next CPI print is very likely to come in hotter than expected. We’re already seeing it in real-time data like Truflation. Energy prices have surged, and because energy feeds directly into headline CPI, it’s going to push that number up—fast. But here’s the problem… That’s not the whole story. Energy is notoriously volatile, which is why the Fed focuses more on core inflation—stripping out food and energy. But even core isn’t immune here. Petroleum touches nearly everything in the economy—transportation, manufacturing, packaging—so some of that pressure will bleed through. So yes, in the short term, inflation is going to look worse. But step back for a second. This spike is being driven largely by geopolitical tension—specifically the situation with Iran. And unlike past conflicts, this is not shaping up to be a multi-year war like Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, the current administration is already signaling that this could be resolved relatively quickly. Whether it’s weeks or a few months, the key point is this: This is a temporary shock, not a structural shift. And when that shock fades, energy prices will likely come back down… bringing headline inflation with it. Meanwhile, underneath the surface, something very different is happening. Core inflation—particularly housing—is already decelerating. Housing makes up roughly 30% of CPI, and here’s the kicker: The way it’s measured is lagged by about six months. In other words, the official data you’re seeing today is reflecting what rents were doing half a year ago. But in the real world, rents have already been cooling. That’s why the most important question right now isn’t: “What does CPI say?” It’s: “What’s actually happening in real time?” That’s exactly what we explore in this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast. Our guest, Edward Coulson, is one of the leading experts in housing data. He uses alternative models that track real-time rental trends—and more importantly, he’s been consistently ahead of the curve in predicting the direction of core inflation. Even before this recent energy spike, his data has been showing a clear trend: Inflation has been overstated—and it’s been slowing for months. So while the headlines may soon scream “inflation is back,” the reality may be the opposite. This is one of those moments where understanding the components of inflation—and the timing behind them—matters more than ever. Listen to this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast to get the full picture. Because if you’re making decisions based only on headline numbers, you’re likely to get this one completely wrong. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40647835

551: Entrepreneurship Built for A Students? 03/22/2026

551: Entrepreneurship Built for A Students? Most people assume a high income leads to wealth. Sometimes it does. But more often, it leads to a very comfortable lifestyle that depends on getting paid dollars for hours. There’s nothing wrong with that. For many people, the best path is to keep doing what they do well and invest their income into real estate and other real assets. That alone can create significant wealth over time. But if you look at the people who build outsized wealth, there’s usually another element involved—they own something that scales. The key difference isn’t how hard they work. It’s what they own that has leverage. And that leverage typically comes from systems. If a business runs because you’re there every day, it can be profitable, but it’s still tied closely to your time. When systems are in place, the business can grow beyond you. That’s when it starts to become a true asset—something with enterprise value that could eventually be sold. For high-income professionals, this creates a bit of a dilemma. You’re already doing well. Walking away from that to pursue something uncertain doesn’t make much sense, and I don’t recommend it (even though I did it myself). A more practical approach is to build something alongside what you’re already doing—something that has the potential to become scalable over time. There are a few ways to approach that. Starting a business from scratch can work. I’ve done it multiple times. Some turned out very well, others didn’t. Candidly, being a startup entrepreneur requires a certain kind of personality—one that’s comfortable with a lot of risk. You have to have the stomach for it and, if you don’t, it’s better to recognize that early and stay away! Buying a business is another option, but most businesses in the price range of a typical high-income professional aren’t that large. Smaller acquisitions often come with hidden risks—key personnel, operational quirks, and issues the seller understands far better than you do (and may be part of the reason they’re selling). Then there are franchises. What makes franchises interesting is that they provide a structured roadmap. If you were an A student—someone who is good at following a curriculum and executing—this model can fit your wiring well. Franchise ownership is about learning a system and applying it consistently. You don’t have to invent the model. You’re executing one that has already been proven. Of course, there are trade-offs. Franchise fees can be significant. Upfront capital requirements can be high. And the advisory landscape isn’t always objective. So the real challenge is figuring out how to evaluate opportunities in this space with a clear, unbiased perspective. That’s what we cover in this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast. My guest breaks down how to think about franchises, where they fit into an overall wealth strategy, and how to approach them in a way that actually makes sense for high-income professionals. If you’ve been curious about building something beyond your primary career—but want a more structured path—this is a conversation worth listening to. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40557720

550: The Only Economists Worth Listening to Right Now 03/15/2026

550: The Only Economists Worth Listening to Right Now If you spend enough time listening to economists, you’ll notice something interesting. They rarely agree. Over the years on the Wealth Formula Podcast, I’ve interviewed economists from across the spectrum—Keynesians, Austrians, monetarists, market practitioners, academics. Some are bullish about the next decade. Others are extremely pessimistic. But there’s one thing that almost all of them have agreed on in private conversations. The entire economic outlook changes if artificial intelligence dramatically boosts productivity. And that possibility is no longer theoretical. The Latest Jobs Report Was Weak Last week’s employment report came in significantly weaker than expected. Instead of adding jobs, the U.S. economy lost about 92,000 jobs in February, when economists had expected modest growth. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, and several sectors showed surprising weakness. Even healthcare, which has been one of the most reliable job creators in the entire economy for years, actually lost roughly 28,000 jobs last month. There are explanations floating around for this. Some point to strikes and temporary disruptions. Others point to geopolitical issues or policy changes. But there’s a bigger question worth asking: Is this the very early sign of something structural? In other words—are we already starting to see the early effects of AI-driven productivity changes? The Wild Card That Changes Everything Every economic model—every single one—is based on assumptions about productivity. If productivity grows slowly, you get one set of outcomes. If productivity suddenly accelerates dramatically, you get something entirely different: • Faster economic growth • Lower production costs • Strong deflationary pressures • Potential disruption to labor markets And that’s exactly what AI could bring. Some economists believe the next decade could look sluggish because of demographics and debt. Others think inflation and fiscal pressures will dominate. But almost all of them admit the same thing: If AI dramatically increases productivity, their forecasts could be completely wrong. The Fed’s Risk There’s another implication here that matters for investors. If AI is already starting to push productivity higher and costs lower, the Federal Reserve could easily misread the signals—just like they did during the inflation surge a few years ago. Central banks tend to react to data after the fact.Technology moves much faster. If policymakers underestimate the economic impact of AI, they could once again find themselves behind the curve. Fortunately, it appears increasingly likely that Kevin Warsh may become the next Federal Reserve chair, and he is widely viewed as someone who takes technological change and productivity dynamics seriously. That could matter a lot. This Week’s Episode This week on the Wealth Formula Podcast, I interview another economist—one who leans heavily toward the Austrian school of economics. On many issues, his outlook is quite skeptical about the future of monetary policy and debt. But what was fascinating is how the conversation evolved toward the end. Even he acknowledged that his entire outlook depends on what happens with AI. In other words, even the skeptics recognize that this technology could fundamentally reshape the economy. And if that happens, many of the assumptions investors rely on today will need to be reconsidered. Listen to the full episode now. The only forecasts that matter right now are the ones that understand how profoundly AI could change the economic landscape. And that story is just beginning. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40447380

549: You’re Successful… Until You’re Not — with Rod Khleif 03/08/2026

549: You’re Successful… Until You’re Not — with Rod Khleif I recently had a long conversation with a very successful professional. He’s 58 years old. Highly educated. Respected in his field. Financially sophisticated — in fact, his job depends on understanding money. If you looked at his résumé, you would assume he was completely set for life. He wasn’t. A couple of bad investments. Some concentration risk. A few decisions that looked reasonable at the time. And suddenly he’s essentially back at ground zero — trying to start a new business at 58. This story is far more common than people realize. The Dangerous Assumption is that many successful professionals assume they’ll be fine. Doctors. Lawyers. Executives. Entrepreneurs. They make high incomes. They understand finance. They know about markets and interest rates and diversification. They focus on their career. They focus on income. They even focus on investing. What they don’t focus on is their own financial future with the same intensity they focus on their profession. There’s a difference. Being financially literate is not the same thing as being financially intentional. Especially when you assume you always have more time. The Good News at 58 is that he still has time. A lot of time. For entrepreneurs especially, it doesn’t take 25 years to rebuild. It can take five. There’s a quote often attributed to Bill Gates: “Most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in five.” That quote is brutally accurate. In one year, starting a business feels overwhelming. Progress feels slow. Revenue is inconsistent. Doubt creeps in. But five years? Five years of focused effort, smart strategy, capital discipline, and experience compounded? That can change your entire financial trajectory. I’ve Seen This Movie Before. I have a very good friend who was worth over $40 million in his early 30s during the real estate boom. Then 2008 happened. The real estate debacle didn’t just dent him — it wiped him out. For years, he struggled. Pride gone. Lifestyle reset. Just trying to survive. Most people would have mentally retired at that point. They would have blamed the market, blamed the system, blamed bad luck. But about six or seven years ago, he found his rhythm again. New strategy. New focus. New discipline. Today, he’s worth over $60 million. I get that’s not normal. But it proves something important. It Doesn’t Take a Lifetime. The examples I just gave are extreme. Most people don’t lose $40 million. Most people aren’t rebuilding at 58. But the principle is universal: It doesn’t take a lifetime to secure your future. It takes a focused season. A defined period where you are intensely clear about your objective. A stretch where: • You work harder than you’re comfortable with • You manage risk better than you used to • You stop assuming income equals security • You align your decisions with a specific financial target for the future There’s another quote I love: “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Luck isn’t random. It compounds around preparation, visibility, and persistence. When you are laser-focused on a financial goal, you start seeing opportunities others miss. You make better introductions. You ask sharper questions. You move faster when something makes sense. And over time, it looks like “luck.” The story of the 58-year-old professional isn’t a warning about markets. It’s a warning about complacency. Success in your profession does not automatically translate into security in your future. Income is not wealth. Financial literacy is not financial strategy. And intelligence does not eliminate risk. But here’s the good news. If you’re in your 40s or 50s and feel behind — you’re not done. If you made a bad investment — you’re not finished. If you took a hit — that’s not your final chapter. You may just be at the beginning of your five-year season. The key is focus. Direct yourself to a destination you can visualize. That’s the only way you will get there. Because in the end, securing your future rarely requires a lifetime of perfection. It requires a concentrated period of intensity. And the sooner you decide to enter that season — the sooner your next five years will start compounding in your favor. There is no one who knows this reality more than this week’s guest on Wealth Formula, Rod Khleif. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40342540

548: AI Is About to Trigger an Energy Crisis Most People Don’t See Coming 03/01/2026

548: AI Is About to Trigger an Energy Crisis Most People Don’t See Coming There is one truth that has followed every major technological revolution in human history. Energy demand always rises to meet technological capability. When we industrialized, coal consumption exploded. When we built the modern transportation system, oil demand reshaped global geopolitics. When we entered the digital age, electricity quietly became the backbone of the global economy. And now we are entering the AI era. What most people don’t appreciate is that AI is not just a software revolution. It is an electricity revolution. Training a single advanced AI model can consume as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes use in an entire year. And once trained, these models continue to run inside data centers filled with specialized hardware operating 24 hours a day. A single large AI data center can require over 1 gigawatt of power. To put that into perspective, that’s enough electricity to power roughly 700,000 homes. One building consuming the equivalent of a major city. Now consider that companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon are planning dozens of these facilities. Suddenly, you begin to see the scale of what’s happening. Even individual AI queries consume more power than traditional computing tasks meaningfully. One estimate suggests an AI query can use roughly 10 times the electricity of a traditional search query. That difference seems trivial until you multiply it by billions of interactions per day. This is why, for the first time in decades, electricity demand in the United States is accelerating again. For nearly 20 years, electricity demand was relatively flat. Efficiency gains offset economic growth. But AI, electrification of transportation, and domestic manufacturing are reversing that trend. And here’s where the story becomes even more interesting. China understands this. China is building power infrastructure at a pace that is difficult to comprehend. They are adding entire national-scale power capacity every few years. In 2023 alone, China added more new coal power capacity than the rest of the world combined. At the same time, they are installing solar and wind at record rates, becoming the global leader in renewable deployment. They are not choosing one energy source. They are choosing all of them. Because they understand that energy availability determines technological leadership. Meanwhile, in the United States, building new power plants and transmission infrastructure can take a decade or more due to regulatory hurdles, permitting delays, and political resistance. This creates a very real risk. The country that can generate the most reliable, scalable energy will have a structural advantage in AI, manufacturing, and economic growth. Energy is becoming the limiting factor. And whenever something becomes a bottleneck, investment opportunities emerge. We are entering a period where trillions of dollars will be spent on power generation, grid modernization, nuclear energy, solar, battery storage, geothermal, and technologies that most people have never even heard of. Some of the biggest fortunes of the next decade will likely be tied directly or indirectly to solving this energy constraint. In today’s episode, we explore alternative energy sources, the challenges we face, and the technologies that may power the future. Because understanding energy is no longer optional if you want to understand where the world is going. And as investors, those who see these shifts early have the opportunity to position themselves ahead of the crowd. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40256680

547: Home Ownership: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly 02/22/2026

547: Home Ownership: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly There’s a moment most high-income professionals remember clearly. It’s when the first real money finally starts coming in. If you’re a doctor, it’s when you finish residency training. And almost immediately, the world starts whispering in your ear: “It’s time to buy a house.” Not just any house. The nicest house the bank says you can afford. And that’s where people unknowingly sabotage one of the most powerful wealth-building windows of their entire lives…by becoming house poor. You see, the bank is not qualifying you based on what will make you wealthy. They’re qualifying you based on what will maximize the size of your loan. If I could go back and do it again, I would have done something other than buy the great big house that I did. I would have bought a 3–4 unit property. I would have lived in one unit. And I would have let the other tenants pay for my life. This is an incredible strategy that almost no one uses. Yet, the government actively encourages it. FHA loans allow you to buy up to a four-unit property with as little as 3.5% down—as long as you live in one of the units. Think about how different that is from buying a single-family home. Instead of writing a large check every month from your after-tax income to cover your mortgage, your tenants are covering most—or sometimes all—of it for you. Your biggest expense disappears. And when your biggest expense disappears, everything changes. You can invest more. You can take more risks. You can acquire more assets. You can build wealth instead of feeding a liability. And it gets even better. Even if you live in one of the units, the rental portion of the property is depreciable. In a four-unit building, roughly 75% of the structure qualifies. And with a cost segregation study, you can accelerate a huge portion of that depreciation into the first year using bonus depreciation. That means you may be able to take massive deductions in the first year—deductions that can offset income and actually pay you back the down payment you made on the property in the first place. Meanwhile, your tenants are paying down your loan every month. You are living there. And you are building equity in a cash-flowing asset. It’s almost like having someone else buy your first investment property for you—while you live in it. And it gets better. When you’re ready to upgrade—to the nicer house, the one you actually want—you don’t sell this property. You move out. And suddenly, you own a fully stabilized rental property with favorable financing, built-in equity, and years of tax advantages ahead of it. This is how real estate portfolios actually start. Not with some massive leap—but with a smart first step. There’s also another version of this strategy that’s incredibly powerful. Buying a property that can function as a short-term rental. In the right markets, short-term rentals can generate significantly more income than traditional leases, while still providing depreciation benefits that improve your after-tax returns. The core idea is simple. Early in your career, your job isn’t to look rich. It’s to build the machine that makes you rich. And nothing slows that process down faster than becoming house poor. Your primary residence, by itself, is not an investment. It’s a consumption item. It requires constant feeding—mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, maintenance, repairs. But a small multifamily property flips that equation. It produces income. It produces tax advantages. It produces optionality. Instead of draining your resources, it accelerates your financial progress. Looking back, this is one of the highest-probability, lowest-risk wealth-building moves I could have made. And for those early in their careers today, it remains one of the smartest first financial decisions you can make. As for buying your dream home? You have the rest of your life for that. And there is a lot you need to think about before pulling the trigger. This week’s Wealth Formula Podcast gets into the real data behind home ownership across the country: the trends, the psychology and the invisible costs. Whether you own a home now or not, this is information you need to know. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40178675

546: A Review of Retirement Account Strategies 02/15/2026

546: A Review of Retirement Account Strategies At some point in a successful career, taxes quietly become your largest expense. Not housing. Not lifestyle. Not investing losses. Taxes. And unlike most expenses, they grow automatically as your income rises — unless you deliberately structure around them. You know that my favorite means of tax mitigation is through investing in real assets like real estate and operating businesses. That approach has been the backbone of my own strategy for years — taking active income and redirecting it into assets that generate cash flow while providing meaningful tax advantages. I’ve also recently explained how you can use in conjunction with charitable pledges to potentially create a future stream of retirement income — essentially at no net cost — while also establishing a death benefit. It’s a powerful framework when structured properly. That said, there are also more traditional tools in the tax code that are important to understand. They may not be flashy, but when layered together they can meaningfully reduce lifetime tax burden. I wanted to put together a simple overview — not exhaustive — just a practical framework for thinking about what’s available. Let’s start with the basics. A Roth IRA remains one of the most elegant structures in the tax system. You contribute after-tax dollars, but the growth is tax-free, and withdrawals are tax-free. That’s incredibly powerful compounding over decades. The challenge is that most high earners exceed the income limits for direct contributions. Fortunately, the tax code provides a workaround. The Backdoor Roth is simply the process of contributing to a non-deductible traditional IRA and then converting those funds into Roth status. It’s not massive in annual dollar amount, but over a long horizon it’s meaningful — especially when tax-free growth is involved. For those with access through certain employer retirement plans, the opportunity expands further through what’s commonly called the Mega Backdoor Roth. Some plans allow substantial after-tax contributions followed by immediate conversion into Roth treatment. Instead of moving a few thousand dollars per year into tax-free territory, you may be able to move tens of thousands. It’s one of the most underutilized opportunities I see among high earners. From there, we move into more aggressive tax mitigation territory with Defined Benefit or Cash Balance plans. These structures were designed for business owners and high-income professionals and allow very large deductible contributions — often well into six figures annually, depending on age and income profile. They require actuarial design and administration, so they aren’t simple, but they can significantly reduce taxable income during peak earning years while accelerating retirement accumulation. Many people assume pensions are relics of another era, but in reality, they’ve evolved. Structured properly, modern private plan approaches can create predictable future income streams while providing current tax advantages. For the right profile, this dimension of planning is often overlooked. Finally, charitable strategies sit at the intersection of planning and purpose. Whether through donor-advised funds, charitable remainder trusts, gifting appreciated assets, or more advanced leveraged structures, thoughtful design can reduce current taxes, avoid capital gains, support meaningful causes, and improve estate outcomes. In some cases, the real economic cost of giving is far lower than most people expect once tax effects are considered. The big picture is this: No single strategy solves the tax problem. But when retirement positioning, Roth strategies, defined benefit structures, charitable planning, and real asset investing are layered together, they form a system — one that can materially change long-term wealth outcomes. High earners don’t just earn more. They structure more. This week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast reviews these concepts in detail with an expert in the field. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40103060

545: Should You Invest in Hotels? 02/08/2026

545: Should You Invest in Hotels? For most of my career, I’ve been focused on two things: Operating businesses and Multifamily real estate. The strategy has been pretty simple. Take money generated from higher-risk, active businesses… and move it into more stable, long-term assets like apartment buildings. That shift—from risk to stability—is how I’ve tried to build durability over time. Now, to be fair, the sharp rise in interest rates a few years ago put a dent in that model. But zooming out, it’s still worked well for me overall. So I’m sticking with it. That said, there are other ways to think about real estate. In some cases, the real opportunity is when you combine real estate with an operating business. We’ve done that before in the with self-storage, and the results were excellent. Storage is operationally simple, relatively boring—and that’s exactly why it works. But there’s another category that sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Hotels. They’re sexier. They’re more volatile. And yes—they’re riskier. But the upside can be dramatically higher. One of my closest friends here in Montecito has quietly built a fortune doing boutique hotels over the past few years. He started with a no-frills hotel in Texas serving the oil drilling industry. Over time, he combined his operational experience with his talent as a designer—and eventually created some of the highest-rated boutique hotels in the world. He’s absolutely crushing it. Of course, most of us aren’t world-class designers or architects. I’m certainly not. Still, his success made me curious. Hotels have been on my radar for a while now—not because I understand the business, but because I don’t. When I asked him how he learned the hotel industry, his answer was honest: “I figured it out on the fly—starting with my first acquisition and a great broker.” That’s usually how real learning happens. So this week on the Wealth Formula Podcast, I brought on an expert in hospitality investing to educate both of us. We cover the basics: How hotel investing actually works Where the real risks are (and where they aren’t) How returns differ from multifamily And what someone should understand before ever touching their first hotel deal If you’ve ever thought about buying or investing in hotels—but didn’t know where to start—welcome to the club. You don’t have to jump in tomorrow. But you do have to start somewhere. This episode is a good starting point. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/40022890

544: Why the Sahm Rule Matters — and Why the Big Picture Matters More 02/01/2026

544: Why the Sahm Rule Matters — and Why the Big Picture Matters More This week’s episode of Wealth Formula features an interview with Claudia Sahm, and I want to share a quick takeaway before you listen — because she’s often misunderstood in the headlines. First, a quick explanation of the Sahm Rule, in plain English. The rule looks at unemployment and asks a very simple question: Has the unemployment rate started rising meaningfully from its recent low? Specifically, if the three-month average unemployment rate rises by 0.5% or more above its lowest level over the past year, the Sahm Rule is triggered. Historically, that has happened early in every U.S. recession since World War II. That’s why it gets cited so much. And to be clear — it’s cited a lot. The Sahm Rule is tracked by the Federal Reserve, Treasury economists, Wall Street banks, macro funds, and economic research shops globally. When it triggers, it shows up everywhere. That’s not by accident. Claudia built one of the cleanest early-warning indicators we have. But here’s the part that often gets lost. The Sahm Rule is not a market-timing tool and it’s not a prediction machine. Claudia emphasized this repeatedly. It was designed as a policy signal — a way to say, “Hey, if unemployment is rising this fast, waiting too long to respond makes things worse.” In other words, it’s a call to action for policymakers, not a command for investors to panic. What makes this cycle unusual — and why talking to Claudia directly was so helpful — is what’s actually driving the data. We’re not seeing mass layoffs. Layoffs remain low by historical standards. What we’re seeing instead is very weak hiring. Companies aren’t firing people — they’re just not expanding. That distinction matters. And this is where I think the big picture comes in — not just for understanding the economy, but for investing in general. When you step back, the big picture includes a government with massive debt loads that needs interest rates to come down over time. It includes fiscal pressures that make prolonged high rates politically and economically painful. And it includes the reality that if the current Fed leadership won’t ease fast enough, future leadership will. History tells us that governments eventually get the monetary conditions they need — even if it takes time, even if it takes new appointments, and even if it takes a shift toward a more dovish Federal Reserve. That doesn’t mean reckless money printing tomorrow. But it does mean that structurally high rates are unlikely to be permanent. And when you combine that with investing, the question becomes less about this month’s headline and more about what’s positioned to benefit when the environment normalizes. That’s why I continue to focus on real assets that are already deeply discounted — things like multifamily real estate — assets that were repriced brutally during the rate shock, but still sit at the center of a growing, rent-dependent economy. This conversation with Claudia reinforced something I’ve been talking about for a long time: The biggest investing mistakes usually happen when people zoom in too far and forget to zoom back out. I’ve made this mistake myself. If you want a thoughtful, non-sensational, data-driven discussion about where we actually are in this cycle — and what the indicators really mean — I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39950125

543: Avoiding Misinformation in the Era of Fake News 01/25/2026

543: Avoiding Misinformation in the Era of Fake News One of the biggest risks people face when trying to understand the economy, investing, or personal finance isn’t a lack of information. It’s the illusion of being informed—while quietly limiting the sources that shape your thinking. We live in a world where information is everywhere. Podcasts, X threads, YouTube clips, newsletters, reels. But abundance doesn’t equal diversity. In fact, the algorithms behind social media are designed to do the opposite: they show you more of what you already agree with. Over time, your worldview narrows—not because you chose it to, but because it was curated for you. I noticed this years ago when I started listening to alternative asset podcasts. At first, it felt refreshing—new ideas, new language, new opportunities outside the mainstream. But after a while, something became obvious. Many of these shows were operating inside an echo chamber. Different hosts. Same conclusions. Same narratives. Same villains. Same heroes. It was as if they were all listening to one another and simply regurgitating the same ideas, reinforcing them in a closed loop until they felt like truth. And to be fair—knowing many of these hosts personally—that’s often the business model. Audience reinforcement is rewarded. Dissent is not. Ever since then, I’ve made a conscious effort to study people I don’t naturally agree with. Not because I want to adopt their views—but because I want to stress-test my own. This matters more now than ever because social media accelerates groupthink at scale. When an idea gains traction online, disagreement quickly becomes social friction. It’s easier to conform, retweet, and nod along than to pause and ask, “What if this is wrong?” I once had a conversation with Robert Kiyosaki where he told me he actually gets worried when everyone in the room agrees about the economy. When viewpoints converge too neatly, it’s usually a sign that critical thinking has been replaced by consensus comfort—and that’s exactly where blindsides are born. If your goal is to get closer to the truth, you must seek out opinions that challenge your own. That includes people you disagree with—especially people you disagree with. Truth doesn’t emerge from unanimity. It emerges from tension. And that applies to me as well. Don’t let me—or anyone else—be your sole source of information. No matter how much you trust someone, outsourcing your thinking is always a risk. I can tell you from personal experience that in economics and personal finance, narrow perspectives lead to surprises you only recognize in hindsight. Those are the moments people regret most—not because they lacked intelligence, but because they lacked perspective. Financial education is critical. But a real curriculum doesn’t just confirm what you already believe. It exposes you to competing frameworks, conflicting data, and uncomfortable questions—and forces you to think for yourself. That’s how you build conviction that actually holds up when the world changes. This week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast examines this groupthink problem on a broader scale throughout society with an author who wrote a bestseller on our inherent appetite for misinformation. It’s a fascinating conversation that will surely get you thinking about the way you view the world. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39852895

542: Why Investors CANNOT Ignore AI and Blockchain 01/18/2026

542: Why Investors CANNOT Ignore AI and Blockchain The Wealth Formula Podcast is one of the longest-running personal finance podcasts still standing. For more than a decade, I’ve shown up every single week to talk about investing, markets, and the forces shaping the economy. What’s interesting is how much my own thinking has evolved over that time. Early on, I was more rigid. I was—and still am—a real estate guy. But back then, I didn’t give much thought to ideas outside that lane. I was dogmatic, and I didn’t always challenge my own beliefs. Time has a way of doing that for you. I’ve now lived through multiple market cycles. I’ve watched the stock market melt up to valuations that felt absurd—and then keep going. I’ve seen gold go from flat for a decade to parabolic over a year. I’ve seen interest rates sit near zero for a decade and then snap higher at the fastest pace in modern history. And I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, that diversification is about survival and that every asset class has its day. One lesson I learned that I am thinking a lot about these days is: ignore major technological shifts at your own peril. Back in 2014, I first started hearing people talk seriously about Bitcoin. At the time, I dismissed it. I listened to the critics, was convinced it was a scam, and didn’t take the time to truly understand it. That was a mistake—not because everyone should have bought Bitcoin, but because I ignored a structural change happening right in front of me. Bitcoin went from a cypherpunk expression of freedom to the largest ETF owned by BlackRock. Today, the dominant story is artificial intelligence. And whether you love stocks, hate stocks, prefer real estate, or focus exclusively on cash flow, you cannot afford to ignore AI. This isn’t a fad. It’s a general-purpose technology—on the scale of electricity, the internet, or the industrial revolution itself. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to invest in. It’s hard to look at headline names trading at massive valuations and feel good about buying them today. But investing in AI isn’t about chasing a single company. It’s about understanding second- and third-order effects: energy demand, data centers, productivity gains, labor displacement, capital flows, and how blockchain and decentralized systems intersect with all of it. What experience has taught me is this: you don’t need to be first to invest—but you do need to be early in understanding. If you wait until something feels obvious, most of the opportunity is already gone. This week’s episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast is focused squarely on AI and blockchain—what’s real, what’s noise, and where the long-term implications may lie. Listen to this episode. You’ll come away smarter. And years from now, you may look back and realize this was one of those moments where paying attention really mattered. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39763115

541: Failure, Success, and the Current Economy with Russell Gray 01/12/2026

541: Failure, Success, and the Current Economy with Russell Gray We all love winners. We love hearing about the big wins and the perfect track records. It feels good. It feels safe. It instills us with a sense of trust. But I’ve been in business long enough to know that virtually all individuals who are long-term winners have had profound moments of failure from which they learned invaluable lessons. Those are the people I really want to hear from. They have the kind of knowledge we all need as we navigate through life. It’s called wisdom. Surgeons have a saying: “If you’ve never had a complication, you haven’t done enough surgery.” In my surgeon days, I had a handful of complications. Let me tell you—they are no fun. You stay up at night replaying things in your mind, trying to figure out how you could have done things differently—how you could have had a better outcome. Even when unavoidable, those complications teach you something you’ll never get from textbooks. It’s been no different for me when it comes to business and investing. But I take comfort in knowing that even the greatest investors of all time had their moments of failure and rose from the ashes stronger and wiser. Warren Buffett. Ray Dalio. Every big winner has a story of failure. And while it may be cliché to say that we learn best from mistakes, I truly believe it. The good news is that those mistakes don’t have to be our own. Learning from other people’s mistakes can be just as effective. This week’s episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast is with Russell Gray—a guy many of you already know from his podcasting and radio career. Russ lived through 2008 up close. He took a beating, and he talks openly about what went wrong. But that period also changed the way he sees the world—in a good way. It changed how he thinks about risk, leverage, and what actually matters when things stop going up. That mindset is a big reason he’s been successful since then. It’s a conversation worth your time. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39697430

540: Outlook and Predictions for 2026 01/04/2026

539: Best of 2025 Holiday Special 12/28/2025

538: Is Gold Still a Buy? 12/21/2025

538: Is Gold Still a Buy? For years, gold was the asset nobody wanted to talk about. It sat there quietly while stocks and real estate continued to rip. Gold was for pessimists. For doomsayers and perma-bears. And then suddenly… gold didn’t just wake up. It launched. As of mid-December 2025, spot gold is trading around $4,300–$4,400 an ounce, depending on the market, marking a gain of roughly 60% over the past year and pushing decisively into record territory. The obvious question is: why now? The short answer is that gold isn’t reacting to one thing. It’s responding to a stacking of pressures that have been quietly building for years and are now impossible to ignore. Start with central banks. For the better part of the last decade, central banks were net sellers or indifferent holders of gold. That changed dramatically after 2022. According to the World Gold Council, central banks have been buying gold at more than double the pace of the pre-COVID years, and 2025 continues that trend, with hundreds of tonnes added to reserves year-to-date. These aren’t hedge funds chasing momentum. These are monetary authorities making deliberate, strategic decisions about what they trust to hold value. Why would central banks suddenly want more gold? Because geopolitics has re-entered the chat. We now live in a world where reserves can be frozen, payment systems can be weaponized, and “risk-free” assets depend heavily on political alignment. The World Bank has been explicit that rising geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty are key drivers of gold’s surge this year. When trust in the global order erodes, gold benefits. At the same time, the U.S. dollar devaluation thesis is no longer fringe thinking. It is reality. Gold is priced in dollars, and when real yields fall and the dollar weakens, gold historically performs well. That dynamic is playing out again. Reuters has repeatedly pointed to a softer dollar and declining Treasury yields as near-term tailwinds for gold’s rally . Bank of America’s research echoes this relationship, emphasizing gold’s inverse correlation to the dollar and the growing desire among nations to diversify away from dollar-centric reserves . In other words, gold isn’t just going up because people are scared. It’s going up because confidence in fiat discipline is eroding, slowly but persistently. So…Is gold still a buy or did we miss it? The truth is, both answers can be correct. Yes, gold is expensive relative to where it was a year ago. You don’t go up 60% without pulling future returns forward. But what makes this cycle different is that many of the buyers driving demand are price-insensitive. Central banks don’t care if gold is up 20% or down 10% in a quarter. They care about long-term reserve integrity. That’s why major institutions aren’t dismissing the move as a blow-off. Goldman Sachs has cited sustained central-bank demand and the potential for further ETF inflows as supportive of higher prices. J.P. Morgan continues to frame gold as a beneficiary of geopolitical instability and monetary uncertainty, and Bank of America is projecting prices as high as $5,000 an ounce into 2026. Of course, nothing goes up in a straight line. A shift toward tighter monetary policy or a sudden easing of global tensions could cool enthusiasm. Understand though, that gold’s breakout isn’t just about gold. There is a larger message that should be taken away from all of this. Hard money has come back into favor. Gold is the original hard asset. It’s scarce, politically neutral, and has thousands of years of monetary credibility. But it’s also heavy, difficult to move, and awkward in a digital world. Bitcoin exists on the same philosophical axis. Both gold and Bitcoin are reactions to the same problem: expanding debt, monetary dilution, and declining confidence in centralized control. Gold is the conservative expression of that view. Bitcoin is the aggressive one. Today, Bitcoin trades around $86,000, still volatile, still controversial, still misunderstood. But if gold’s surge is signaling a regime shift toward hard assets, then Bitcoin may simply be earlier in that adoption curve. In other words, gold may be leading the parade. And if history is any guide, when institutions start moving into the oldest form of sound money, they eventually begin exploring the newest. That’s the signal worth paying attention to. So this week, I interview Dana Samuelson, an old friend of the show and an expert in everything gold and hard money. Learn more about Dana Samuelson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-samuelson-64793056/ /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39484935

537: Markets Do Not Behave Like Saber-Toothed Tigers 12/14/2025

537: Markets Do Not Behave Like Saber-Toothed Tigers You know, the longer I’ve been an investor, the more I realize this simple truth: the biggest threat to your wealth isn’t the market… it’s your own brain. We’re all wired the same way—with instincts that were fantastic for avoiding saber-toothed tigers but are absolutely terrible for making good financial decisions. Take something simple like a marathon. If I asked you to predict next year’s top finishers, you’d look at last year’s results. That works. Human performance doesn’t flip upside down in twelve months. The best runners tend to stay the best runners. There aren’t that many variables to consider. When we try to apply that same logic to investing, it often blows up in our faces. There are way too many variables to consider when it comes to market behavior to make simple assumptions. Entire sectors rotate from darling to disaster in a heartbeat. Yet our brains keep telling us, “Hey, this worked last year, surely it’ll work again.” In my view, nowhere is that psychological mismatch more obvious than in real estate right now. A few years ago, when real estate was on fire—cheap debt, rising rents, deals getting snapped up before lunch—everybody wanted in. Fast-forward to today. We’ve had a rate shock. Values have reset. Properties are selling at steep discounts. And Construction starts have fallen off a cliff. Real estate got slaughtered. But look around now. The market has reset. Assets are selling 30 percent below where they did just after Covid. Jobs and population growth in places like the Carolinas, Texas, and Arizona look fantastic, and interest rates are falling quickly. Every macro indicator you can name is pointing to a major buying opportunity—one of the best in the last 15 years. So naturally… few people are paying attention. Markets that are bottomed out are not sexy. If it’s not frothy, it’s not newsworthy. This is human nature in a nutshell. When assets are expensive and risk is quietly rising, people feel brave. When assets are attractively priced, and future returns look great, people get scared. It’s recency bias: assuming whatever just happened will keep happening. It’s loss aversion: we fear losing a buck more than we enjoy making one. It’s herd behavior: we’d rather be wrong with the crowd than right by ourselves. And of course, it’s confirmation bias—where people seek out whatever headlines validate the emotions they’re already feeling. It’s not logical. It’s not strategic. But it is human. And that’s why this week’s guest on Wealth Formula Podcast is of value to listen to. He’s one of the leading experts in the world on investor psychology—someone who can explain, with real data, why even intelligent investors consistently jump into markets late, bail out early, misread risk, and miss the best opportunities… especially the ones sitting right in front of them. If you’ve ever wondered why you sometimes make brilliant decisions and other times do the financial equivalent of touching a hot stove twice, this conversation is going to hit home. Learn more about Prof. Terrance Odean: https://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/terrance-odean/ /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39398850

536: Should You Own a Home? 12/07/2025

536: Should You Own a Home? Homeownership has been baked into the American Dream for nearly a century. Politicians, parents, and banks all tell you the same thing: “Buy a house as soon as you can. It’s your biggest asset.” But as a real estate guy who actually understands how wealth is created… I’m not convinced it makes sense for everyone—especially early in your career. Let me explain. Say you finally start making some real money—maybe you’re a doctor fresh out of residency. The cultural script kicks in immediately: Buy a house. Build equity. Feel responsible. But here’s the part most people forget: your primary home is not an asset. As Robert Kiyosaki puts it, if something takes money out of your pocket, it’s not an asset—it’s a liability. According to Bankrate and the Census Bureau, U.S. homeowners spend around $17,000 per year just to maintain and operate their homes—and that’s before you make a single mortgage payment. That’s property taxes, insurance, utilities, landscaping, repair bills, HOA fees… the list goes on. If your house is worth $1.5M, even the bare-minimum 1% annual maintenance rule hits you with $15,000 a year just to keep the place from deteriorating. Add insurance, taxes, utilities, and everything else, and you’re looking at $30,000–$40,000 per year in unavoidable, non-negotiable carrying costs. And that still doesn’t cover the roof that fails, the appliances that die, or the curveballs Mother Nature throws at you. None of that feels like an “asset” to me. Now, to be fair, people don’t usually buy homes as investments. They buy them for stability, a place to raise kids, a sense of being “settled.” It’s emotional. It’s psychological. And it’s real. But if you’re young—and especially if you haven’t hit your first million—it’s worth asking yourself a tough question: Is buying a home right now the best financial move… or just the most familiar one? Because historically, U.S. home prices appreciate around 4.3% a year (Case-Shiller). Meanwhile, the S&P 500 averages closer to 10%. And if you're in real estate investing? A solid multifamily value-add deal often targets 16–20% IRR—plus tax advantages your primary home will never give you. So if you’re just getting started, it might make sense to delay that home purchase. Invest first. Build your passive income. Let your assets—not your salary—pay for your lifestyle. Then when you do buy a home, you’ll be doing it from a position of strength, not strain. The irony is this: waiting often gets you to the dream home faster because your capital compounds instead of being trapped in drywall, windows, and a backyard you barely have time to enjoy. This Week on Wealth Formula Podcast, I interview expert Dr. Ken Johnson, who digs even deeper into this question—and lays out why homeownership isn’t the golden ticket people think it is, especially for high earners early in their wealth-building years. Links mentioned: Beracha and Johnson Housing Ranking Index: Waller, Weeks and Johnson Rental Index: Price-to-Rent Ratio Report: Top 100 Housing Markets - Inflation Adjusted: Learn more about Dr. Ken Johnson: /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39294665

535: Apartment Buildings Are Having a Holiday Type Sale 11/30/2025

535: Apartment Buildings Are Having a Holiday Type Sale It’s that time of the year again—Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Everyone loves a deal. If you’ve been investing long enough, you know one important fact: there is always something on sale. The problem is the herd never sees it. They’re too busy chasing whatever feels safe because it’s setting new records. And right now? That’s the stock market. That’s gold. Everyone’s piling into the most expensive things they can find and patting themselves on the back for being “prudent.” But smart investors don’t chase what’s already expensive. They look for the thing sitting quietly on the clearance rack, the thing nobody wants yet. And today, that thing is real estate—particularly apartments. We’ve seen this movie before. Think back to the early 2000s. After the dot-com crash, everybody ran to gold and Treasuries. Meanwhile, the very companies that would define the next two decades—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft—were sitting there marked down 75%. You didn’t need to be a genius to buy them. You just needed the stomach. Then there was 2009–2011. Real estate was radioactive. The media made it sound like apartment buildings were going to fall into sinkholes. But if you bought during that window? Values didn’t take ten years to recover. They snapped back within three. And then they kept running for another decade. And remember 2020—oil going negative? That’s the kind of insanity that only happens once in a generation. People were literally joking that Exxon would pay you to take barrels off their hands. It was absurd… and it was the greatest energy buying opportunity in modern history. But most people sat on the sidelines in fear. Different cycles, different assets, same principle: If you want outsized returns, you have to be willing to buy what everyone else is mispricing. And right now, the only major asset class not making all-time highs is real estate. In fact, our is still finding deals discounted 30–40 percent from just a few years ago. Apartments, specifically, are in this bizarre sweet spot where pricing is still beaten up from the rate shock, yet the fundamentals underneath are quietly strengthening. Sellers who bought with floating debt are fatigued. Buyers with dry powder are getting real discounts. Construction has collapsed—meaning supply will be razor-thin in 18–24 months. And the interest-rate environment is shifting in exactly the direction apartments benefit from. This is why rates matter. This is why liquidity matters. This is why cycles matter. When financing costs come down and supply is constrained, prices don’t grind higher—they launch. This Is Exactly What the Bottom Feels Like Bottoms never feel like bottoms. They feel confusing. Uneasy. Contradictory. And that is precisely why it’s the opportunity. Every big wealth-building moment looks like this in real time. Everyone’s distracted by what’s hot while the discount sits in plain sight. Make no mistake—if the Fed keeps cutting and liquidity continues loosening, apartments aren’t going to stay discounted. They’ll do what they did after 2009. They’ll do what oil did after 2020. They’ll do what tech did after the dot-com crash. They’ll reprice fast. And years from now, people will look back at this exact moment and say the thing they always say after missing the obvious: “It was right there. Why didn’t I buy more?” Well… it is right here. Apartments are on sale. No one has been beating the drum more on this than my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast this week. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39200170

534: The Economics of Professional Sports 11/23/2025

534: The Economics of Professional Sports This week’s Wealth Formula Podcast is about the economics of sports—if you are a sports fan like me, you will love it. But before we get to that, I want to give you my two cents on one of the most important elements to financial success in anything: conviction. As I write this, Bitcoin sold off from a high of $126K to under $90K. Other cryptos have lost 50-90 percent of their value in the same time. It’s been called a blood bath. Some are even saying it's over for Bitcoin. I might even believe them if I hadn’t seen the same story at least 5 times before over the past decade. True bitcoiners have tremendous belief in what bitcoin means to the world. Someone who bought $1,000 of Bitcoin in 2010 and simply refused to sell would now be sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. That is the reward for true conviction. The irony of this bitcoin cycle is that many of those individuals with high conviction are finally cashing in on the fruit of their patience. Almost every day, another wallet that hasn’t been active since 2011 is selling off a billion dollars into the market into the hands of Wall Street and governments. That’s why prices are tumbling. But don’t be fooled into thinking that these buyers are the dumb money holding the bag. The story does not end here. Nor is the Bitcoin story a one-off either. History repeats itself as the story of investments unfolds over time. In December 1999, Amazon stock traded at $106. After the dot-com crash, it fell to $5.97. Every talking head had a eulogy written for the company. But if you were crazy enough to hold through the storm, your conviction paid off spectacularly: $10,000 invested in Amazon in 2001 is worth over $20 million today. Now, moving on to the topics of sports. One of my favorite examples of conviction is from 1920, when George Halas bought the Chicago Bears franchise for $100. The Halas family could’ve “taken profits” countless times. They lived through multiple depressions, a world war, a dozen recessions, five or six league restructurings, labor disputes, player strikes, and decades of bad seasons. Anybody else would’ve bailed. But they didn’t, and today, the Chicago Bears are valued at over $6.3 billion. These stories have different time periods and different industries, but they all teach the same lesson: Conviction is one of the most profitable assets you can own. That’s the message I want to leave you before we move into a perhaps more entertaining topic: the economics of professional sports. Most people think of sports in terms of touchdowns, rivalries, and Super Bowl rings. But the truth is… professional sports is one of the greatest wealth-creation machines in American history. Few people understand those engines better than our guest this week. He’s one of the clearest, most respected voices in sports economics today, and he’s going to break it all down for us: salary caps, streaming deals, and team valuations. If you are a sports fan, you are going to love this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast! /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39129215

533: What’s Really Going On in Real Estate Right Now with Prof Norm Miller 11/16/2025

533: What’s Really Going On in Real Estate Right Now with Prof Norm Miller When you invest in real estate, you’re not buying what it is today—you’re buying what it will become a few years from now. That’s especially true in multifamily, which, despite all the noise, remains one of the most compelling long-term plays out there. Unlike stocks, you don’t get a live ticker reminding you every five seconds what your property is “worth.” And that’s a good thing. Real estate moves slowly, and that patience rewards people who can see the story before it unfolds. The national headlines are confusing right now—depending on who you read, the sky is either falling or it’s never been brighter. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Mortgage rates are still above six percent, affordability is strained, and national price growth has flattened. But beneath the surface, there’s an entirely different story playing out—one that favors multifamily investors who understand that real estate is always, always, about location. Some markets are clearly soft. A few urban centers built too much too fast, and it’s showing up in higher vacancy and flattened rents. But other regions—think the Carolinas, Texas, parts of Florida—continue to thrive because people are still moving there in droves. Jobs, climate, taxes, and lifestyle continue to pull migration south and inland, and those people need somewhere to live. When you combine growing populations with a shrinking construction pipeline—new multifamily starts are down roughly 40% from their 2023 peak—you’re setting the stage for tightening supply and rent growth in the right markets over the next few years. That’s the part that separates pros from spectators. Anyone can read a national report and call it a trend. But the investors who win are the ones who know their markets intimately—who’s building what, where the jobs are moving, and how local policies are shaping demand. In that sense, real estate offers the only kind of “insider trading” that’s perfectly legal. The better you know the ground, the better your odds. For passive investors, that means something simple but crucial: partner with operators who live and breathe their markets. You want people who are plugged in at the street level, not just reading spreadsheets. Because in multifamily, the difference between a mediocre investment and a great one can be a single zip code. Real estate, especially multifamily, rewards patience, perspective, and proximity. You can’t control interest rates or the national narrative, but you can choose where—and with whom—you invest. And if history is any guide, those who make smart, localized bets while everyone else is sitting on the sidelines tend to be the ones who look like geniuses a few years down the road. This week on the Wealth Formula Podcast, I talk with a former professor and renowned real estate analyst who’s been studying these patterns for decades. We break down which markets are setting up for real opportunity, where caution is warranted, and what the next chapter of multifamily investing really looks like. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/39049095

532: Pejman Ghadimi - A New Paradigm for Buying Nice Stuff 11/09/2025

532: Pejman Ghadimi - A New Paradigm for Buying Nice Stuff A few years back, I bought some very expensive sports coats. I wore them at first and enjoyed them. But over time, they kind of lost their luster. As I have found often to be the case in my life, I don’t tend to care that much about fancy stuff—fancy jackets, fancy shoes. My true self regresses to a fairly simple jeans and flannel circa 1992 style—not expensive. Realizing that these fancy clothes were just rotting in my closet, I recently sold them on a well-known second-hand site with only designer stuff. And I was shocked when I realized I was only getting 10 cents on the dollar for what I paid! But then again, I guess I shouldn’t have been. Buying new fancy clothes has an extremely low likelihood of being a good investment. It reminded me of my good friend in town here who’s made millions of dollars in his life. He only buys nice stuff. But he almost never buys new things. The furniture in his house is incredible. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of mid-century modern gems. And he buys vintage cars rather than new supercars off the lot. He also has a 7-figure collection of rare watches. It's all really nice stuff. The difference between what he is doing and what I did with those clothes is that he was investing while I was spending. While he’s bought millions of dollars of cars and watches, he’s always made money with them because he has focused on their future value. Maybe I’m a bit dense, but I never thought about stuff this way before meeting him. And I still have to remind myself of this paradigm. It’s a different way to look at luxury and one that is certainly smarter when it comes to your pocketbook. My guest on today’s Wealth Formula Podcast teaches people how to live this kind of lifestyle with cars and watches. I’ve interviewed him before, and I’m doing so again because so many of you have engaged in this way of buying nice stuff that I get regular requests to have him back on the show. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/38959625

531: How to Identify a Good Real Estate Deal 11/02/2025

531: How to Identify a Good Real Estate Deal I grew up with a very different perspective on personal finance and investing than most. My parents were immigrants, and when they arrived in this country, they didn’t come with any preconceived notions of conventional financial wisdom. My father grew up dirt poor in India—that’s really poor and he had never even heard of investing as a kid. But he was blessed with a tremendous intellect and used it to rise from nothing to truly live the American dream. He came to the U.S. in the 1960s on an engineering scholarship and started working as a bridge engineer in Minnesota. When he finally began making a little money, he was confronted with the idea of investing for the first time. Until then, life had always been hand-to-mouth. So he was approaching investing like an alien coming to this planet for the first time with an unbiased view on anything financial. With that perspective, the stock market didn’t make sense to him. He wanted cash flow that would immediately improve his quality of life. Intuitively, it felt smarter to buy “streams of cash” than to “gamble” on stocks. So with whatever money he could scrape together, he bought small rental properties. Nothing glamorous—mostly low-income houses and duplexes in Minneapolis. But guess what? It worked. Before long, he started making real money and quit engineering altogether. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, I guess. Years later, I would also walk away from my career as a doctor to become a full-time investor. My father did really well. By the 1980s, he was having million-dollar years—that’s a lot now, but back then it was a lot more! But then came the ’90s. Like many others in the dot-com era, he got in over his skis. It seemed like everyone was making easy money in the stock market, and he got greedy. Unfortunately, he sold a large chunk of his real estate portfolio and went all in on tech. And of course, we all know how that story ended—the bubble burst and so did his brokerage account. So there he was, in his 50s, starting over again after being obliterated by the dotcom bubble. He was terrified. But he knew what he had to do. He had to rebuild the same way he had built wealth the first time: cash-flowing real estate. Today, in his 80s, he’s still at it. To be clear, his real estate career wasn’t all smooth sailing either. This isn’t a fairy tale. It’s real life. For example, in the late ’90s, Alan Greenspan suddenly cranked up interest rates, creating a situation not unlike what investors faced post-COVID when the Fed raised rates at record speed. That hurt him, but each setback brought lessons, and he kept moving forward with an asset class that he trusted. Eventually, he recovered. We were always comfortable, and my dad made enough to pay for 3 kids' college tuition and medical school for me while still living comfortably, traveling, and enjoying his life. He’ll be the first one to tell you that he only ever made money in real estate and that’s what he believes in. Now, why am I telling you all this? I’m telling you this story because it shaped the way I see investing. Unlike most, I grew up hearing that the stock market was risky and that real estate was the safer, smarter path—pretty much the opposite of what everyone around me grew up with. And despite my own challenges from the post-COVID rate hikes, I can still say without hesitation that focusing on real estate has served me better than following the traditional investing playbook. Still, no one wins all the time. Every investor loses money sometimes. Surgeons have a saying: “If you haven’t had a complication, you haven’t done enough surgery.” That’s as true for the best surgeons in the world as it is for the best investors. So what do you do? Sitting on cash guarantees you’ll lose purchasing power to inflation. Money markets barely keep up. For me, the answer is to keep investing with discipline. Real estate is my medium, and like my father, I learn from my mistakes and keep moving forward. I still see it as the greatest wealth-building asset in the world—just look at how many billionaire real estate investors there are. But wealth doesn’t build blindly. Every project I invest in has to have underwriting I believe in. Beyond that, I pay close attention to macroeconomic shifts and form my own view on what comes next. Right now, I believe in the right markets, real estate has bottomed out. I think we’re on the buyer’s side of the cycle. I also believe interest rates are headed lower—both because the Fed has signaled it and because the Trump administration will do everything possible to keep them moving in that direction. And for real estate investors, investing in a descending interest rate environment is nothing short of a gift. So now I look at the deals in the right market. That involves underwriting and understanding what all those numbers mean. In this week’s episode of Wealth Formula Podcast, my guest and I break down how you—even as a passive investor—can do your own due diligence. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/38862645

530: A Tax Attorney Talks Tax Mitigation with Buck 10/26/2025

530: A Tax Attorney Talks Tax Mitigation with Buck This week’s Wealth Formula Podcast features an interview with a tax attorney. While I’m not a tax professional myself, I want to drill down on something we touched on briefly that is incredibly relevant to many of you: the so-called short-term rental loophole. If I were a high-earning W-2 wage earner, this would be at the top of my list to implement—and I know many of you are already doing it. The short-term rental loophole is one of those quirks in the tax code that most people don’t even know exists, but once you do, it can be a total game-changer. Here’s why. Normally, when you buy a rental property, depreciation losses can’t offset your W-2 income. They’re considered passive, and they stay stuck in that bucket. But short-term rentals—Airbnb, VRBO, whatever—work differently. If the average stay is seven days or less and you materially participate, the IRS doesn’t classify it as passive. It becomes an active business. That means the paper losses you generate can offset your ordinary income, even from your day job. Normally, you’d need a real estate professional status to get that benefit. This is the one situation where you don’t. So let’s walk through how it works. When you buy a residential property, the IRS requires you to depreciate the structure—the walls, roof, foundation—over 27½ years. On a million-dollar property, that’s about $36,000 a year. It’s a slow drip. A cost segregation study changes that. Instead of treating the property as one block of concrete and wood, it carves out the parts that don’t last 27 years. Furniture, carpet, appliances, cabinets, and even ceiling fans—those are considered 5-year property. In other words, you can depreciate them much faster. Now add bonus depreciation. Instead of spreading those 5-year assets out over five years, the current rules let you write off most of them all at once in year one. Here’s the example. You buy a $1,000,000 short-term rental and finance it at 70 percent loan-to-value. That means you put in $300,000 cash and borrow $700,000. A cost seg often shows about 30 percent of the property—roughly $300,000—is 5-year personal property. Thanks to bonus depreciation, you deduct that entire $300,000 immediately. So you put in $300,000 cash, and you got a $300,000 paper loss in the same year. In practical terms, you just deducted your entire down payment against your taxable income. This is what real estate professionals do all the time and why they often end up with no tax liability at all. In this case, it works for you as a W2 wage earner. And for that reason, I think its one of the most powerful tools out there for high paid professionals that is grossly underutilized. Remember, the biggest expense for most people is the amount of tax they pay—especially W2 wage earners. This strategy lets you use money you would otherwise pay the IRS to build a cash-flowing asset for yourself. Listen to this week’s Wealth Formula Podcast to learn other ways to legally pay less tax! /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/38771400

529: How to Get Yield from Bitcoin Safely 10/19/2025

No-Brainer Strategy to Start TODAY: Why Wealth Formula Banking Makes All the Sense in the World 10/14/2025

No-Brainer Strategy to Start TODAY: Why Wealth Formula Banking Makes All the Sense in the World It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Wealth Formula Banking in detail, and I know we have a lot of new listeners who may not have heard about it yet. So today, I want to share a webinar that explains why I think this strategy is such a no-brainer. First off—what is ? You may have heard of something called “infinite banking.” It’s a similar concept, but instead of focusing on paying your bills, Wealth Formula Banking is specifically designed to amplify your investments. My introduction to this idea came the same way you’re hearing it now—through a podcast. I kept hearing the phrase “be your own bank.” Honestly, I didn’t know what that meant, and I tuned it out until a friend finally broke it down for me. That’s when I had my aha moment. Here’s why. Normally, when you want to invest in a cash-flowing asset, you park money in a checking or savings account first. The problem? Those accounts pay you almost nothing—well under 1 percent. Meanwhile, inflation is running at 2–3 percent, so you’re guaranteed to lose money. That’s why my friend Robert Kiyosaki always says, “savers are losers.” Wealth Formula Banking flips that script. You’re essentially creating a special kind of cash value life insurance policy, where the money you put in grows at a virtually bulletproof 5–6 percent compounding rate per year. Not that sexy on its own, BUT…here’s the kicker: you don’t have to pull that money out to invest in your deal. Instead, you borrow against it from the insurance company’s general ledger at a simple interest rate. That means your original money keeps compounding inside the policy at 5–6 percent—even while you’ve borrowed against it to invest in cash-flowing assets like real estate. That’s the key. With a HELOC, when you borrow, your money stops working for you. With Wealth Formula Banking, your money never stops growing. So now you’ve got the same dollars doing two jobs at once: earning safe, compounding growth inside your policy and generating income from your investments outside of it. By simply routing your money through Wealth Formula Banking, you’re supercharging your returns. And here’s what makes it even more powerful: tax-free growth within the insurance account, real asset protection to shield your wealth from lawsuits and creditors. Plus, it includes a permanent death benefit, which means that in addition to building wealth today, you’re also creating a lasting legacy for your family tomorrow. It’s not magic—it’s math. And it’s the kind of smart arbitrage that can turn ordinary investments into extraordinary ones. Schedule a FREE consultation: https://wealthformulabanking.com/ /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/38582620

528: Investing Is More Like Poker Than Chess 10/12/2025

527: Is Franchising Right for You? 10/05/2025

526: The Wealth Ladder 09/28/2025

526: The Wealth Ladder If there’s one thing that separates the truly wealthy from everyone else, it’s their relationship with risk. Not blind risk. I’m talking about conviction — the ability to see an opportunity before everyone else does, to lean into it while others are frozen, and to hold through the storm until the payoff is undeniable. The extreme example is Bitcoin. In 2012, when it was trading for less than the price of a cup of coffee, most people laughed it off as internet monopoly money. But a handful of people had conviction. They understood the asymmetric nature of the bet — the downside was capped at the small amount they put in, while the upside was exponential. Those early adopters didn’t just make returns; many became billionaires. Of course, most people hadn’t even heard of Bitcoin in 2012, so that might not have even been an option for you. So let’s take another example that you almost certainly did live through. Real estate after the Great Recession in 2008 was radioactive. Nobody wanted to touch it. Yet those who bought when fear was at its peak ended up riding one of the longest real estate bull markets in U.S. history. Data from the National Association of Realtors shows that home prices more than doubled from 2012 to 2022 in many markets. Imagine the rewards of being on the buy side in 2012. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I believe we are in a similar scenario with real estate right now as we head into a descending rate environment following a real estate bloodbath. Properties are severely discounted, and values are almost certain to go up as rates fall. But you have to see the big picture and not be scared. That’s not easy to do when everyone else is. Real estate moguls and business owners are the ones most likely to take their wealth to the next level. Real estate is accessible to you — and so is business ownership. Look at the Forbes billionaire list and you’ll see a pattern: nearly 70% of the world’s wealthiest people are business founders or owners. They didn’t get rich clipping coupons from the S&P 500. They got there by creating or buying businesses that became valuable, saleable assets. The risk was obvious: most startups fail. But the payoff for the ones that succeed dwarfs anything you’ll ever get in your brokerage account. Now, the reality is that most high-paid professionals never play in this arena. They’re comfortable and don’t want to rock the boat. Some call it the “golden handcuffs” — you make enough money to feel comfortable, but that same comfort prevents you from ever taking risk. And you know what? That’s totally fine. Just know that doing your 9-to-5 and investing into your 401(k) is not going to create life-changing money. If all you’re looking for is life-sustaining money, keep doing what you’re doing. But ask yourself this question: What’s the life you dream about? If it’s the life you already have, then congratulations. If not, are you on a trajectory that even makes it possible to get there? If not, you’ve got to change course. My guest this week on Wealth Formula Podcast has done a great deal of research on the wealthy and has written a book based on what he has learned. /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/38371790

525: Is Trump’s Takeover of the Fed a Good Thing? 09/21/2025

525: Is Trump’s Takeover of the Fed a Good Thing? Something big is happening in Washington right now, and it has the potential to reshape everything you and I do as investors. A few weeks ago, the Trump administration attempted to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook, only to have an appeals court block the move on legal grounds. At almost the same time, Stephen Miran—one of Trump’s economic advisers—was confirmed by the Senate to the Fed’s Board of Governors by a razor-thin margin. On one side, an attempted subtraction. On the other, a confirmed addition. All of this is happening right before a major policy meeting, and it’s not hard to see the writing on the wall. Trump’s takeover of the Fed is not a question of if—it’s a question of when. Whether it unfolds in a matter of weeks or drags out over the next few months, the direction is set and the outcome is inevitable. The endgame is to bring interest rates down and, if necessary, use quantitative easing to drive bond yields even lower. That kind of policy would flood the system with liquidity, and the immediate effect would be a booming economy. Asset prices would rip higher—stocks, real estate, gold, Bitcoin—you name it. If you own assets, you’d feel wealthier almost overnight. But of course, there’s another side to this coin. A dollar that weakens under the weight of easy money. A gap between the asset-rich and the asset-poor that grows even wider. Rising inequality, rising tensions, and perhaps a long-term cost to the credibility of the U.S. financial system. So is this takeover of the Fed a good thing? That depends entirely on where you sit. If you’re a wage earner with no meaningful assets, it’s bad news. If you’re an investor, it’s a reminder that ignoring policy shifts like this is done at your own peril. The time to prepare is now, not later. Don’t wait for rates to drop before acting. History shows that buying assets in a descending rate environment has been one of the most powerful wealth-creation maneuvers in the United States. Think back to 2008. The Fed responded to the financial crisis with unprecedented rate cuts and waves of quantitative easing. What followed was more than a decade of explosive gains in stocks, real estate, and other assets. Those who bought while rates were falling built extraordinary wealth. Those who stood on the sidelines missed out. But don’t take my word. Listen to noted economist Richard Duncan explain the dynamics of this situation in this week’s episode of Wealth Forula Podcast. Learn more about Richard Duncan: https://richardduncaneconomics.com/ /episode/index/show/wealthformula/id/38284495

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