Wealth Formula Podcast

What makes a great investor? Genetics? Personality type? Luck? Probably all of the above. But one thing I've noticed is that all the best investors in the world are very curious people and they tend to read a lot. Apparently Warren Buffett was reading between 800 and 1000 pages per day in the early days of Berkshire Hathaway. He probably learned a thing or two along the way. Even now, approaching...

Should you be investing in real estate now? After all, we have double digit inflation and rising interest rates. Well, let's start with an even more basic question. Should you be investing in anything right now? What is the alternative? The alternative is to sit on cash while inflation erodes the value of your money by double digits. Would you invest in something today that would guarantee you a l...

Nothing saddens me more than to see my fellow physicians and other highly trained professionals who spend their youth studying hard for the promise of a fulfilling career that will take care of them financially only to realize that they have been sold a false bill of goods. Physicians in particular have gotten really screwed. The golden age for physician reimbursement was in the 1980s and 1990s. T...

No matter how open-minded you think you are, you are always going to approach things with a certain bias. And it only takes being completely wrong about something that you would have bet your life on to realize that. My perspective on Covid-19 in the early days is a good example. Now I know there seem to be some who still don't think it was a big deal. However, at least old guard Covid and Delta w...

When times get tough, it is always easier to have a scapegoat. After all, it is easier to blame an enemy than an unfortunate circumstance. The enemy can be punished and held responsible. Circumstances cannot. The most extreme example of this in modern history is the vilification of Jews during World War 2. Reparations for World War 1 left Germany in a world of economic hurt. Hitler demonized Jews...

I don't know about you but sometimes I have so many different things cycling through my brain at the same time but it's hard to keep track of any one of them. I'm not talking about just work or personal finance related issues. I'm also talking about trying to keep my kids' schedules straight. I've got three young daughters with a lot of friends who have birthdays seemingly every weekend. Then ther...

The hardest part about understanding economics is terminology. In reality, economics really just comes down to understanding human behavior based on incentives. Let's take for example the Cobra Effect. This is a term coined by economist Horst Siebert to describe a time in India under British rule when the local governor was trying to figure out how to deal with an apparent uptick of venomous snake...

As I write this email, I'm on my way to Phoenix for our biannual meetup. So…I'll keep it short. Coming up Covid and in the midst of a war in Europe we are experiencing unusual inflation forcing the Fed's hand at raising interest rates. Over the last several weeks, we have had several economists and authors on the show trying to predict the future. Unfortunately, that's not an easy task. We can loo...

The most common question I get from investors these days is how increasing interest rates will affect the performance of our real estate holdings. There is often concern, for good reason, that as rates go up our net operating income will go down. The good news is that things aren't that simple. Rate increases don't happen in a vacuum. Remember that the reason the Fed is increasing interest rates i...

I have started a number of small businesses over the past decade. I know that a number of you run your own business or are thinking about some kind of new entrepreneurial endeavor. So, let me tell you about some of the things that I have learned. First, fewer variables make businesses easier to run and, in most cases, more profitable. You can see examples of this with big business all the time. Ev...

My kids are little. My oldest is 12 and her sisters are 9 and 6. Admittedly, I've spent no significant amount of time trying to teach them about money as of yet. If anything, I have taught them a little bit about the burden of taxes by eating half of the cupcakes and ice cream and metaphorically blaming the IRS. That one seems to get the point across! When they get older, you can be sure that I wi...

You would think from the vilification of capitalists in recent years that we are nothing but a waste of space on earth. "Pay your fair share capitalist pig!" That's what you hear these days from popular politicians on the left. Of course, in reality, without us, the government would be broke. What makes America great and what has made the world the place that it is in terms of technology and healt...

Money has taken on many forms throughout history. In the last couple of centuries gold has been the dominant form of money recognized globally. In 1912 J.P. Morgan himself said, "Money is gold, and nothing else". Yet the relevance of gold has really come into question since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971. That move has been vilified by Austrian economists and others who treasu...

I write this on the "Ides of March" one day before the Federal Reserve meets to discuss the economy and its plans for the near future. The 900-pound gorilla in the room is inflation although the war in Ukraine may be a mitigating factor for the impending hawkish moves anticipated. By the time this post is published and podcast recorded, you'll already know what happened at that meeting. Let me gue...

Americans have always enjoyed the advantage of geographic isolation from much of the Western World. It has allowed us, in many ways, to look at many of the world's conflicts from a relatively disinterested distance. Who knows if we would have gotten involved at all in World War 2 if not for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, the implications of major conflicts like the one currently happen...

In June of 2008, I graduated from my surgical residency program, got married and discovered Robert Kiyosaki. 14 years later, I'm no longer a practicing surgeon nor am I married anymore. However, the impact of Robert's books defined the course of my life. It's really extraordinary when I think about how a single book that I stumbled upon in a dingy Mexican airport could have just profound implicati...

Distributed ledger technology is revolutionary and creates some problems for the old guard—specifically banks and the traditional financial markets. The young guns creating all of this technology are really shaking things up. But you can bet that the traditional guys who have been making millions of dollars off the old system aren't giving up easily. The old guard also has something else on their...

Disruptive technology always creates casualties. I still remember a few years ago walking in a city with my oldest daughter who was about five or six at the time. We passed an old phone booth and she asked, "Daddy what's that?". Think of all the technological dinosaurs that have been forgotten in your lifetime. Records and compact discs? Typewriters? The Yellow Pages? Technological innovation is s...

If you were an alien from another planet visiting who got stuck on earth and had to figure out how to get by you would quickly realize that you would need some money. This would probably lead you to a job which would not be difficult given your extraordinary intelligence. In fact, it might land you a high-paying technical gig with Google or Facebook. You might enjoy the work at first but the long...

I still remember listening to the Peter Schiff podcast seven years ago when I lived in Chicago. I was at the tail end of my Austrian Economic phase and so I believed in everything Peter had to say. One day I was sitting there at my computer listening to him make fun of something called bitcoin which was making some waves at the time. The way he made it sound made bitcoin seem like a completely rid...

People listening to the show for the first time often feel a little overwhelmed by the basic terminology and concepts that we use as the basis of our conversations. We throw words like bonus depreciation and cost segregation analysis around like everyone knows what we are talking about. The Ask Buck shows that we have a great place to build the framework for understanding the Wealth Formula altern...

This week's show marks the 300th episode of the Wealth Formula Podcast. That means about six years' worth of shows. Wow! How did that happen? What started out as a little time to speak to myself (I had no listeners) has become a show with well over a million downloads and an extraordinary community. When I reflect over the last six years, I'm really encouraged. I see the incredible progress that I...

Why is it that the rich get richer? Well, for one thing, they have money to invest. Think of how many people out there live paycheck to paycheck. Meanwhile, people with money like you and me are able to invest our money and get it working for us. Remember the mathematical Wealth Formula? Wealth=Leverage(MassXVelocity) Velocity is the rate that you get your invested capital back in your pocket to r...

Okay—let's talk about debt. I bet at some point in your life, someone has told you that you need to pay it all off. On TV, you see the likes of Suzie Orman and Dave Ramsey telling you that you have to get rid of it before anything else. They aren't entirely wrong. They are just talking to the masses. The masses aren't a group of sophisticated real estate investors like you, who are distinguishing...