My end-of-week morning train WFH reads:

• Netflix Calls Paramount’s Bluff: Netflix gave Warner Bros. a seven-day waiver to hear Paramount’s “best and final” offer, essentially daring David Ellison to put real money on the table or walk away. A masterclass in deal-making psychology — and a Godfather reference just waiting to happen. One week for both sides to show the actual cards here… (Spyglass)

• The 401(k) Takeover: Private Equity Muscles In on Retirement: Private equity firms are flooding into America’s $14 trillion retirement savings market, mirroring crypto’s 2024 election strategy to loosen regulations and gain access to ordinary workers’ nest eggs. Wall Street power players are squeezing into the US retirement industry. Its gatekeepers are succumbing. (Bloomberg) see also As Private-Market Momentum Continues to Grow, Market Infrastructure Improvements Rise Too: Private markets are exploding toward retirement plans, but the lack of unified infrastructure and transparency poses serious risks as retail investors get their first real taste of alternatives. Additional retail and retirement-plan demand are expected to broaden distribution of private markets, but they will also bring scrutiny and comparisons to public markets. (Chief Investment Officer)

• Billionaires’ Low Taxes Are Becoming a Problem for the Economy: Tax avoidance by the superwealthy is an economic issue as well as a political one. The top 1% now holds 32% of U.S. wealth while paying historically low tax rates, creating concentration risk that could crater the entire economy in the next market correction. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Quiet Architect of Trump’s Global Trade War: Jamieson Greer, a low-key lawyer from a working-class background, is rewriting the rules of the global economy at the president’s behest. (New York Times)

• This Viral AI Project Went From Side Hustle to Coveted Prize in Three Months: After a fierce competition between the biggest AI labs, OpenAI hired the creator of the viral OpenClaw personal AI assistant platform. A small AI project caught fire online and quickly drew acquisition interest. How the speed of AI development has compressed the startup lifecycle from years to weeks. (Wall Street Journal) but see The End of the Office?: Andrew Yang warns that AI will “disembowel” white-collar jobs within 12-18 months, potentially cutting the 70 million office workers by 20-50% and collapsing the entire ecosystem of downtown businesses that depend on them. “If you are one of the professionals who is likely to be affected, I’m sorry.” (Andrew Yang)

• How Paris’ working-class dining experience is reshaping restaurant economics in France:  Historic Parisian bouillon restaurants are back, proving that simple menus, volume purchasing, and fast table turnover can create sustainable, affordable dining—and inspiring a global rethink of restaurant economics. It was here that he dished up comforting yet simple, hot meals that wouldn’t burn a hole in even the most cash-strapped wallets of the likes of the workers at the local Les Halles wholesale market, formerly known as the “belly of Paris”, named after the title of the Emile Zola novel. (The Conversation)

• What just one alcoholic drink a day really does to your body: Even small amounts of alcohol can seriously affect your health if you drink daily. The “moderate drinking is fine” consensus keeps eroding. New research on what even a single daily drink does to your liver, brain, and cancer risk. (The Times)

• The US coup: one year on: The event that triggered my nervous system was Elon Musk’s DOGE illegally entering the US treasury and gaining access to the entire nation’s personal and financial data: a system-level hack on the entire US population. This was a power grab that could not be undone. Data is like a genie. It cannot be put back in the bottle. That one act – that was then replicated across the federal government – was the beginning of what I believed, still believe, is a technoauthoritarian state. (Carole Cadwalladr)

• How Olympic skier Hunter Hess gets his superhuman balance: Want to have better balance? You can learn a thing or two from one of the best freeskiers in the world. Olympic halfpipe skier Hunter Hess pulls off gravity-defying tricks because his proprioception is finely tuned—and experts explain how regular people can train the same balance skills with simple exercises. (Washington Post)

• U2 Propaganda Days of Ash: U2 surprise-released a politically charged six-track EP ahead of their 2026 album, with tracks about defiance, war, and lost lives that Bono said were “impatient to be out in the world.” ‘Six postcards from the present… wish we weren’t here’ In advance of a new album in late 2026, the new EP is a self-contained collection of five new songs and a poem – ‘American Obituary’, ‘The Tears Of Things’, ‘Song Of The Future’, ‘Wildpeace’, ‘One Life At A Time’ and ‘Yours Eternally’ (ft. Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia) – an immediate response to current events and inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom (U2.com)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law. She specializes in financial regulation, banking law, securities regulation, and technology law, with a particular focus on how new financial technologies like fintech, crypto, and AI intersect with financial stability and public policy.

 

Detroit Automakers Take $50 Billion Hit as EV Bubble Bursts

Source: Wall Street Journal

 

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At The Money: The Mega Backdoor Roth with Dan Larosa (February 19, 2026)

401(k)s top out at $24,500, but you can boost your tax-deferred investments to as much as $80,000 by switching to an IRS-approved Mega Backdoor Roth account.

Full transcript below.

~~~

About this week’s guest:

Dan LaRosa is Director of Corporate Retirement Plans at Ritholtz Wealth Management, overseeing more than $400 million in various plans. He is a Qualified Plan Financial Consultant (QPFC) and Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF) and partner at the firm.

For more info, see:

Professional Bio

LinkedIn

~~~

 

Find all of the previous At the Money episodes here, and in the MiB feed on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, and Bloomberg. And find the entire musical playlist of all the songs I have used on At the Money on Spotify

 

 

 

At the Money with Barry Ritholtz

Guest: Dan LaRosa — The Mega Backdoor Roth

 

 

 

Transcript:

 

Barry Ritholtz: Tax-deferred portfolios, also known as qualified accounts, have become one of the most popular ways to invest. There are about a hundred million households, nearly 75% of every household in America with some sort of a formal tax advantaged retirement savings, total defined contributions are nearly $14 trillion.

The latest edition in your tax-deferred portfolio choices is the Mega Backdoor Roth.

To help us unpack all of this and what it means for your retirement savings, let’s bring in Dan LaRosa. He’s an expert in qualified retirement accounts and works with clients all over the country. And full disclosure, Dan leads the corporate retirement plans at my firm Ritholtz Wealth Management and is one of my partners.

So let’s start with the basics. Most of our listeners are certainly familiar with 401Ks, and they’re probably familiar with variations such as a Roth 401k, or a Roth IRA.

What is a Mega Backdoor Roth?

Dan LaRosa: So a regular 401k allows you to contribute up to $24,500 into it. The Mega Backdoor Roth feature allows you to contribute above the $24,500 limit, up to $72,000.

It uses the same type of strategy that you have in your regular backdoor Roth IRA. That’s just the way for high earners to get money into a Roth account. They’re gonna make a non-deductible contribution to a traditional IRA and then convert that to a Roth IRA. It works, it’s great, but the dollar amount is pretty small, it’s $7,500.

The Mega Backdoor Roth uses this same strategy, but inside of your 401k plan, where the contribution limits are significantly higher.

Barry Ritholtz: So Mega-Backdoor-401k-Roth sounds kind of complicated, but it really seems like that’s a huge increase in your after-tax contributions that theoretically grow tax-free and are withdrawn tax-free. Is that right?

Dan LaRosa: That’s right. When it works and your plan allows it, it’s a cheat code. There’s nothing else out there that’s going to allow you to get that much Roth dollars into a qualified retirement account.

Barry Ritholtz: So cheat codes and back doors sound a little shady. Is this legit with the IRS? Have they blessed this?

Dan LaRosa: It’s just the backdoor part that sounds kind of sketchy. It is not a gray area. It is not a loophole. It’s completely legit. The rules are actually very clear. The real challenge is just whether or not your plan allows you to use it.

Barry Ritholtz: So let’s go through that. If the IRS says it’s kosher, I would imagine your employer or the benefits provider, maybe even the custodian — who has to sign off on it? Is it any of the above or all of the above? Whose approval is required?

Dan LaRosa: There’s really nothing to do with the custodian with this. It’s more of a plan-level decision that’s going to be made by the employer. They’re the ones that are going to control the plan design and would ultimately make the decision to offer the after-tax contributions and in-plan Roth conversion features that make up this Mega-Backdoor-Roth. The 401k provider is obviously involved and they need to be able to administer this, but that’s generally not a problem.

Barry Ritholtz: Typically $24,500 is a regular 401k. I’m assuming catch-ups and things like that are separate. If you could go to $72,000 in this and it’s after tax, why would the employer object? This sounds like a great deal for anyone who wants to throw more money into their 401k.

Dan LaRosa: And this feature has gotten a lot more popular in recent years, but the reality is the most likely answer as to why more plans don’t do it — it just doesn’t work for every plan. After-tax contributions and the in-plan Roth conversions do add some complexity to the plan design, and most importantly, they trigger additional compliance testing. And that extra compliance testing, if failed, can prevent the whole strategy from working altogether.

Barry Ritholtz: I know our plan in our shop offers this in-house, and I’ve been taking advantage of it personally. I’m thinking about other service companies — lawyers, accountants, advisors, architects, anybody that’s a white-collar office with reasonable salaries. It would seem that this should be something that all those people should take advantage of.

Why don’t all of these firms take advantage of it? It sounds like $72,000, it’s triple what you’re normally allowed. Why wouldn’t everybody jump on this?

Dan LaRosa: $72,000 is actually the total — that’s your all-in that each individual can get into each plan. But why don’t more plans or companies use this feature? Again, it just doesn’t always work.

Without getting too deep into the weeds on the compliance testing side, if the only individuals that are interested in using this feature and contributing — making these after-tax contributions — are the owners and highest wage earners, it’s not going to work. It’s as simple as that. So the company either has to be big enough or have enough wage earners where it’s just not the top 20% or so using it in order for it to work.

Barry Ritholtz: What does it typically look like in a firm that does this? What sort of buy-in do you need from management, as well as the rest of the staff or partnership?

Dan LaRosa: As far as buy-in from the staff, if you have a lot of employees that are contributing and maxing out. If you have a lot of people that are maxing their contributions and would do more if they could, that’s one good sign. It’s worth looking into in that situation. But you’ll also have to have enough highly compensated individuals. If you have 30 people and eight of them are the big wage earners, it’s just not gonna work. It’s gonna be top heavy. So if you have enough highly compensated individuals that are interested in using this feature, there’s a good shot it’ll work.

Barry Ritholtz: I immediately thought of professional services companies — financial advisors, attorneys, accountants, bankers, doctors, et cetera. But what sort of industries do you see use this? What sort of businesses is this really well-suited for?

Dan LaRosa: All the professionals that you just listed. Tech companies — I’d say just about all of the big tech companies have this feature available. And I think any industry or any company where a large percentage of the population would be considered high wage earners, meaning say over $150,000–$160,000 a year, and that are interested in making these significant contributions, it could work.

Barry Ritholtz: Let’s assume you have a traditional 401k and everybody is maxing out their $24,500 plus whatever catch-up over 50 years old, and they want to be able to save more money. What is the process like converting that to a Mega Backdoor Roth? Walk us through that process.

Dan LaRosa: Ultimately, it’s going to have to come from the employer. So whoever at the company is in charge of running and administering the 401k will need to be involved in that decision. If you’re an influential employee, of course you can try and influence and push on that decision, but ultimately the plan sponsor or the employer will work with the 401k provider to update the plan documents and add a couple of features.

For the Mega Backdoor Roth to work, a plan has to allow two things: The first is the ability to make after-tax contributions, and the second is a way to move those after-tax dollars into a Roth account. Moving the after-tax dollars into Roth can happen one of two ways. First, you have an in-plan Roth conversion where the after-tax dollars are converted to Roth and stay in the 401k plan. And the second is an in-service distribution where the after-tax dollars are rolled into an outside Roth IRA. In-plan Roth conversion is probably more common; it’s just simpler to execute and it keeps all the money inside the plan.

Barry Ritholtz: This is really attractive. I’m assuming someone reaches out to HR or one of the managing directors / partners (whatever the title is) and says, hey, this is a great opportunity, why don’t we do this? Is there an extra cost? Why would there be any reluctance to do this, assuming it’s the right sort of mix of high-wage employees?

Dan LaRosa: There is no additional cost. You could say there’s a little bit of an additional headache – you’re adding more complexity, another layer of compliance testing. Whoever is in charge of administering the 401k at the company; maybe it amounts to a little more work.

But when it works, it works really well. And the significant benefits far outweigh the minor additional administrative burden.

Barry Ritholtz: We’re talking about companies with partners and HR, etc. What about either a solo practitioner or a 1099 contractor? Can you do this sort of Mega Backdoor Roth if you’re self-employed?

Dan LaRosa: Yes, absolutely. Mega Backdoor Roth works perfectly for solo or owner-only 401k plans. There are no compliance tests and headaches or administrative burdens when the plan only covers owners.

Yes, we are huge fans of the Mega Backdoor Roth in solo 401Ks.

Barry Ritholtz: Let’s talk about timing. How does this work? How much are people converting? What does this look like in terms of best practices — either daily or each pay period or quarterly? How often does this occur?

Dan LaRosa: It really depends on the plan or on the plan provider. Some plans only allow a certain number of conversions or distributions each year, which is obviously not ideal. And it really shifts the burden onto the participant to figure out when and how to do that. Others have daily automatic Roth conversions, which is just awesome. I’ve done it both ways. I’ve had the once-a-year manual paper form after-tax conversions, and we now have the daily automatic Roth conversions with Fidelity, and it’s a game-changer. It’s great.

As an employee, you don’t have too much control over that. It really depends on the provider. But whatever the case, I certainly recommend reaching out to your 401k provider the first time you do this, the first time you convert, and making sure you get it right, do it the right way.

Barry Ritholtz: So you and I have talked about this in the past and you discussed automatic Roth sweeps. Is that something that gets set up by the provider or the employer or the employee? How do you make sure that each payroll period — or in the event of any distribution, profit share, or dividend — how do you make sure that it stays on the Roth side?

Dan LaRosa: That’s a great point. So that daily automatic Roth sweep or automatic Roth conversion is awesome, but only some record keepers, only some providers offer it. The answer, as it usually is with these types of plans, is “It depends.” Every plan is different, every provider is different.

If your plan offers it, or if you’re not sure, reach out to the 401(k) provider. If your plan does offer it, the employee generally has to activate this daily automatic Roth conversion feature.

Barry Ritholtz: All right, so I know my 401(k) is at Fidelity—all of these daily sweeps and other things — from my perspective, it was set and forget. I don’t have to pay much attention to it. What about some of the other big 401(k) providers — Schwab, Vanguard? Is it possible to do it with those, and do they allow for these daily sweeps? What’s the landscape look like out there?

Dan LaRosa: As this feature has become increasingly popular in recent years, which it certainly has, more providers are getting better at it. Five years ago, I don’t know if anyone outside of Fidelity did it. Now, certainly, if your plan is big enough, they’ll pretty much do whatever you want. I think Fidelity just happened to be the first to really excel at administering it, but other providers are catching up quickly.

Barry Ritholtz: Last question. People hear this described as “tax-free growth forever,” and obviously that gets people excited, but what are the risks? What scenarios does this not make any sense? Where are you just better off investing in a taxable account?

Dan LaRosa: I think the excitement is warranted. I’m a huge fan of the Mega Backdoor Roth feature. If your plan offers it and you can afford the extra contributions, my answer is usually do it.

Just keep in mind a couple of things. First, if you use that in-plan Roth conversion, the money stays in the plan and then follows the Roth 401k rules. So that means you generally can’t access that money until age 59 and a half or a distributable event. The biggest thing, to answer your question — when does a taxable account make more sense? If present-day liquidity is important.

Barry Ritholtz: What about Mega Backdoor Roths — is there the same required minimum withdrawal requirements?

Dan LaRosa: Actually, effective last year, the SECURE 2.0 Act removed the RMD requirement from Roth 401Ks. So there are no RMD requirements for a Roth 401k.

Barry Ritholtz: Really interesting.

If you are working in a firm or if you’re a solo practitioner and you’re making a decent amount of money, but you want to save more for retirement, the Mega Backdoor Roth allows you to use after-tax dollars up to $72,000 to put into this account that will not only grow tax free, but you can withdraw it tax free whenever you want after age 59 and a half, with no minimum requirements when you turn 73.

It sounds like a great opportunity and a lot of people just are unaware of it and are not taking advantage of it. You should look into this if you are in those circumstances and you have an employer who will work with you to create a better corporate retirement plan.

I’m Barry Ritholtz. You are listening to At the Money.

 

~~~

Find our entire music playlist for At the Money on Spotify.

 

The post At the Money: The Mega Backdoor Roth appeared first on The Big Picture.

My morning train WFH reads:

• The grift economy is going mainstream Scams and grift have evolved from fringe activity into normalized economic behavior, marking a fundamental shift in how cons operate in plain sight. (Your Brain on Money)

• Detroit Automakers Take $50 Billion Hit as EV Bubble Bursts: The Big Three face massive write-downs as EV demand collapses and companies redirect investment back to gas engines. (Wall Street Journal)

• Bitcoin’s plunge should end the hype that it is digital gold: Bitcoin’s 35% decline versus gold’s 70% gain puts the lie to the “digital gold” narrative. (The Hill)

• Why voters hate Trump’s (pretty decent) economy: The data is solid. The vibes are atrocious. What gives? Despite solid economic metrics, voters remain sour on Trump’s economy because costs for essentials like housing and groceries never came down, leaving real people worse off despite the headlines. (Vox)  see also The Disappointment of Young Trump Voters: Americans under 30 swung to the right in 2024, but they’re not getting what they voted for. Young voters who backed Trump in 2024 are abandoning him at record rates, disillusioned by unmet economic promises. (The Atlantic)

• Workers Are Afraid AI Will Take Their Jobs. They’re Missing the Bigger Danger. It isn’t whether artificial intelligence is going to replace them. It’s who will control the knowledge that companies capture from their employees. The real threat isn’t job replacement—it’s that companies are capturing every keystroke and interaction you make, then using that knowledge to automate you or sell it to your competitors. (Wall Street Journal)

• Why it’s becoming so expensive to buy a car in America: Prices are at record highs. More loans are going bad. It’s not an easy time to afford a new car in America. New cars now average $50K with $800+ monthly payments, driven by SUV-heavy tastes, tech complexity, and tariffs that automakers are absorbing—pushing bad loans to levels not seen since 2008. (Washington Post)

• Apple Decouples From Nasdaq, Offering Alternative to AI-Fueled Volatility: It’s been nearly 20 years since Apple Inc. was this untethered from its tech peers, giving investors an appealing alternative to the artificial intelligence-fueled volatility that has gripped most other corners of the stock market in recent weeks. Apple’s 40-day correlation to the Nasdaq 100 Index tumbled to 0.21 last week, the lowest since 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Apple’s stock becomes a haven from AI-stock whiplash, proving that sitting out the AI arms race is now a viable investment strategy. (Bloomberg)

• Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation: The AI identifies high-entropy clusters – the precise points where unique insights and “blood” reside – and systematically replaces them with the most probable, generic token sequences. What began as a jagged, precise Romanesque structure of stone is eroded into a polished, Baroque plastic shell: it looks “clean” to the casual eye, but its structural integrity – its “ciccia” – has been ablated to favor a hollow, frictionless aesthetic. When AI “refines” your writing, it’s not improving it—it’s erasing the rare, precise ideas and replacing them with statistical averages, stripping nuance and context in ways that spread misinformation. (The Register)

• The Republican Governor Getting Under Trump’s Skin: Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt has weathered criticism from Trump ahead of a meeting of governors at the White House this week. The Republican chair of the National Governors Association, walked a tightrope defending Democratic governors’ invitation rights—and Trump wasn’t happy about it. (Wall Street Journal)

• Brooke Shields on Style, the New “Sex Sells,” and Returning to the Calvin Klein Fold: Forty years after those jeans ads, Shields is back with Calvin Klein — this time on her own terms, with thoughts on how sex in advertising has evolved. (Vanity Fair)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law. She specializes in financial regulation, banking law, securities regulation, and technology law, with a particular focus on how new financial technologies like fintech, crypto, and AI intersect with financial stability and public policy.

 

Complete History of 2s/10s Yield Curve Inversions (1976–2026)

Source: Eco3min

 

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The post 10 Thursday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.

 

 

“Let me tell you how this works:  A twenty-six-year-old quantitative analyst at a hedge fund in midtown Manhattan—a person who has never managed an employee, never sat across from a customer, never had to explain to someone that their position has been eliminated—opens a spreadsheet, sees that your company’s headcount is 14% higher than a competitor’s, and writes a note to institutional investors that your stock is overweight.

That note gets circulated and your stock drops. Your board panics. They call the CEO, who was hired eighteen months ago specifically to “unlock shareholder value,” a phrase that should be studied by future anthropologists as one of the great euphemisms of our time. An all-hands meeting is called. Two weeks later, 3,000 people get a calendar invite from HR titled “Quick Chat.”

This is the system working exactly as designed.”

 

No, this is not how this works.

I see this stuff all the time. Sometimes it’s a news item, or a Substack post, or a video clip that purports “a great truth” about markets and companies. Clients, friends, even family members who don’t work in finance share this with me (the excerpt above was from a Substack).

The implication: the system is somehow both already broken and fragile.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how markets operate, what drives stocks, and how information truly gets reflected in prices.

Let me explain why this is decidedly not how things work.

The information this 26-year-old analyst “discovered” is a simple ratio. It shows the number of employees relative to some other metric, such as revenue or profits. Assume it came from a well-known (trustworthy) data source. It’s available to various market participants: the 400,000 professionals who pay $3,000 per month for a Bloomberg Terminal; the near-professionals who subscribe to other databases or free versions available in broker research. You can even find variations on Yahoo Finance or Google.

Each of these participants has huge financial incentives to apply this analysis to their own portfolios. But they don’t, because of one simple reason: Zero edge. A widely reported ratio that every other investor has access to provides no advantage over other market participants with that same ratio.

It is already in the stock price.

When I was a newbie trader, it took me a good long time to understand why this is true – and indeed, could not be any other way.

All fundamental information that is widely distributed and/or well known by the investment community is already priced in. Hundreds of thousands of people are deeply incentivized to identify alpha — information that allows you to outperform the markets – and then to deploy capital based on that.

That already happened here.

What is the edge in the story above? What is the insight this “discovery” – and I believe it’s nothing of the kind – uniquely provides to this person?

There is simply no alpha in widely available information, such as an obvious, well-known, easily discovered ratio.

~~~

Let’s do a quick thought experiment:

Imagine the scenario outlined above was successful: what would happen if some inexperienced kid at some fund spotted an aberrational datapoint, wrote up a research note, took it public, which led to a hugely profitable trade?

What would happen next?

Some of you know exactly what would come next: Every fund would unleash every MBA in their shop (along with anyone half decent with Excel) to find the next version of that trade. No data point would go unnoticed, no ratio would sit unanalyzed, no possible combination of variables would remain untried. Any and every possible source of Alpha would be explored, war-gamed, backtested, and modelled.

If other trade possibilities like this one existed, someone would find it and act on it. Others would quickly follow. Soon, the “proper” alignment between these ratios would fall into place. Any upside would be thoroughly arbitraged away…

Markets are not perfectly efficient; I have described them as kind of sorta eventually efficient. I have yet to find anything that disproves this thesis.1

But as far as the major issues go — the big obvious things found in newspaper headlines, in any datapoint in every Bloomberg terminal, in the free research via brokers or online websites — you may safely assume that 98% of the time, it’s already in the price.

What is not in the price?

Many things, across many vectors:

-Genuinely new, unknown information. (FDA Approves new drug!)

-A unique analytical framework no one else has access to (Renaissance Technologies’ 3000 separate proprietary, unique trading algos)

-Insight into a product (The Cybertruck sucks!)

-Recognition of a deeply flawed business model (short Microstrategy!)

-Grasp of a market unknown (Rivian R2 is going to be a global bestseller!)

-Legal insight (SCOTUS will overturn Tariffs — retailers and industrials will benefit)

-Complex risk analysis (Securitized subprime mortgages are sure going to be problematic if rates go up!)

-Behavioral recognition of a crowd mania (Silver sure looks bubbly over $75 100!)

All of these and more can be sources of alpha. But they must genuinely be poorly known or misunderstood by the crowd, and acted on even less.

Good bets made by active traders and managers amid fierce competition look different than bets made on very publicly available information.

They tend to start with a variant perception versus crowd consensus; one where price was significantly impacted, and this perception hasn’t been acted on (yet), and hopefully remains that way until you establish your position. The crowd, correct most of the time (we call this a trend), is wrong in this instance; once it recognizes its mistake, it shifts away from what is now seen as an incorrect consensus and adjusts its portfolios accordingly.

Not all active players trade this way, but enough do. These great insights do not come along every day, but they occur frequently enough to entice an entire active segment of the market to consistently hunt for them.

And that 26-year-old spreadsheet jockey? He is going to need more than a simple headcount ratio to find any alpha…

 

 

 

Previously:
Tariffs Likely To Be Overturned (November 5, 2025)

The kinda-eventually-sorta-mostly-almost Efficient Market Theory (November 20, 2004)

 

 

 

__________

1. Indeed, even the Nobel Prize committee acknowledged this by recognizing in the same year both Eugene Fama for his efficient market hypothesis and Robert Shiller for studies of how bubbles develop and pop.

 

The post Not How This Works… appeared first on The Big Picture.

My mid-week morning train WFH reads:

• Integrity faces a critical moment of peril: Prediction markets like Polymarket lack insider trading regulation, allowing traders to profit from non-public information about real-world events. Any person can now share coherent, well-constructed views that don’t reflect their true ideas or beliefs — or that they barely understand themselves. (Axios)

• How to solve any problem: Human beings began to solve the ultimate problem, the giga problem, the problem of all problems: They solved the problem of how problems are solved. High agency comes from Guess-Test-Correct loops: theorize solutions, validate with experiments, iterate on findings. (High Agency)

• The 401(k) milestones everyone should hit ASAP — and next steps to take once you pass them: A guide to key retirement savings targets at every age and what to do after you hit them. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• AI Kingpins Adopt Crypto’s Playbook in Bid to Get Allies Elected to Congress: As voters grow concerned over AI’s impact, a new industry-backed super PAC is helping candidates who favor a lighter regulatory touch. Tech leaders are forming AI-focused super PACs, mirroring the crypto industry’s successful 2024 strategy to influence congressional races. (Bloomberg)

• The Plural Of Housing Anecdotal Is Not Data, But It Can Be A Leading Indicator: Pending sales are faster but less reliable; closed sales are slower but confirmed. “New signed contracts” give the most current market view. Anecdotal insight: Pre-qualified local feedback, like the Fed’s Beige Book, signals shifts before official data. Anecdotes from real estate professionals can signal market shifts before the data catches up — but must be verified. (Housing Notes)

• The Bezzle and the Bull Market: A sharp essay on John Kenneth Galbraith’s concept of “the bezzle” — the gap between perceived and actual wealth that expands in every bull market and only becomes visible in the bust. (Novel Investor) see also Fraud Investigation is Believing Your Lying Eyes: The mechanics of how fraud investigations actually work — pattern recognition, gut instinct, and following the paper trail until the numbers stop making sense. (Bits About Money)

• Colbert Says CBS Pulled Guest Amid FCC Scrutiny, Posts Interview on YouTube Instead. CBS lawyers blocked a Democratic candidate interview over FCC equal-time concerns, so Colbert took it to YouTube. Instead, Stephen Colbert’s sit-down with the Texas State Representative currently running for Senate was posted to the late-night program’s YouTube page—the URL for which Colbert was not allowed to share on-air. The Streisand Effect for the Win! (Late Nighter)

• America and China at the Edge of Ruin: A last chance to step back from the brink. Foreign Affairs on how the two largest economies are sleepwalking toward a confrontation that neither can afford and both seem unable to avoid. (Foreign Affairs)

• Democrats spy rare opening in rural America: President Donald Trump’s unpopular tariff and health care decisions have created an opportunity for the Democratic Party to court a GOP-loyal bloc. (Washington Post) see also Republicans see a big opportunity in crowded Democratic primaries: In more than a half dozen swing districts, House Democrats have nomination contests that could prove harmful. (Politico)

• A No-Name Director to Everyone but His 38 Million Fans: The debut film from one of YouTube’s most popular creators is a box-office hit, thanks to his subscribers. YouTuber Markiplier self-financed and directed “Iron Lung,” earning $13 million opening week entirely outside Hollywood. (The Atlantic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business last week with Heather & Doug Bonaparth, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

Happiness and life satisfaction in Europe consistently rank among the highest in the world

Source: @Isabel_Schnabel

 

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The post 10 Wednesday AM Reads appeared first on The Big Picture.



 

 

The transcript from this week’s, MiB: Douglas and Heather Boneparth, Money Together, is below.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

~~~

Interview with Doug Boneparth and Heather Boneparth Podcast Transcript

[00:00:02] Announcer: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.

[00:00:16] Barry Ritholtz: This week on the podcast I have an extra special guest. Guest, plural Heather and Doug Boneparth. I’ve known Doug for, I don’t know, 10 years. Yeah, maybe something like that. And Heather, for a couple of years when I went to their book party and dragged my brother-in-law, ’cause he was in the neighborhood, he was there, we sat and had a conversation and I’m like, yeah, a book about couples money. This is gonna be, you know, it is what it is. And as we were chatting, I’m like, son of a gun. This is a really interesting topic for the podcast. I have to have them on. And I thought this conversation was absolutely fascinating. Not just about power dynamics within a relationship, but everything from budgeting, prenup agreements, inheritance communication. Really. This was really fascinating. I found it super interesting. And I think you will also, with no further ado, my conversation with Heather and Doug Boneparth. Thanks for

[00:01:16] Doug Boneparth: Having us. Thanks for having us, Barry.

[00:01:18] Barry Ritholtz: So I’ve been excited to have you come talk about this since your book party. ‘Cause it is not the usual financial book. It is a lot of stories. You guys have interviewed hundreds of couples. But before we get to the book, I wanna just dive a little bit into your backgrounds. Heather, you went to law school at, at my alma mater, Benjamin and Cardozo School of Law in New York City. I didn’t

[00:01:45] Heather Boneparth: Know

[00:01:45] Barry Ritholtz: That. Yes, we both went there. Oh, I love that. Not, not at the same time. And Doug, you got your MBA from NYU Stern, very different career paths. Tell us what, what were the original plans?

[00:01:57] Heather Boneparth: Well, the original plan for a, for an elder millennial like myself, I think got thrown out the window, you know, during the Great Recession in 2008. So I was in law school when that happened. Ooh. Yeah. And so I graduated in a very different labor environment than the one I entered school in. So my expectations were not met. I mean, that’s an understatement. So, you know, I, I ended up in the world of commercial insurance, which shouldn’t surprise you that that was not exactly what I went to school for.

[00:02:25] Barry Ritholtz: I thought you loved commercial insurance.

[00:02:27] Heather Boneparth: You know what, I, I, I ended up having, you know, having a fine career in that for over 13 years. And I, I really like learning a lot about risk, which we write a lot about in the book. But that was certainly not the path and the reason that I went there and, and so much of my earliest money stories as a young adult were really wrapped up in the shame that came from graduating law school with six figures of student loan debt to a labor environment that was not welcoming to, to young lawyers.

[00:02:54] Barry Ritholtz: And, and the studies show you graduate into a recession, your lifetime earnings are actually lower than people who graduate into a boom, which is really interesting sort of thing. Doug, MBA from NYU Stern, what was the plan?

[00:03:08] Doug Boneparth: Yeah. So by the time I made it to grad school, I was still focused on building my own wealth management firm and building a book of business. I grew up the son of a certified financial planner. So I’ve done nothing else in my professional life. That

[00:03:19] Barry Ritholtz: Was always the plan from start

[00:03:21] Doug Boneparth: Was always the plan. That’s what I was doing during college. Undergraduate, went to New York City as a love story, wanted to be with Heather. And that was October, literally October, 2008. I’m getting off a plane. Nothing was really

[00:03:33] Barry Ritholtz: Going

[00:03:33] Doug Boneparth: On. Nothing was happening. Nice and chill, watching it all.

[00:03:37] Heather Boneparth: He moved to New York City with a duffle bag and a dream. Absolutely. Like straight out of a movie.

[00:03:40] Doug Boneparth: I shipped up three boxes and went to Sleepy’s on fifth to get a bed that day. Random roommate on Craigslist.

[00:03:45] Barry Ritholtz: My, my wife and I watched a whole bunch of rom-coms over the holidays. And this is like, this is setup

[00:03:53] Doug Boneparth: For one of them. We’re

[00:03:54] Barry Ritholtz: We’re leaving out, you two meet as freshmen at the University of Florida. So you guys have been together since freshman year, is that right?

[00:04:02] Doug Boneparth: Yeah, since 1918. 19.

[00:04:04] Heather Boneparth: Since 1819.

[00:04:05] Doug Boneparth: 1819. Since 1819.

[00:04:06] Barry Ritholtz: So it’s a hundred, 130 years

[00:04:08] Heather Boneparth: Going on, you know, and, and, and I think we make this point too, then, and, and we’re, we’re transparent about this. We’re not perfect. I mean, Doug and I, I would say lived the lifecycle of some marriages before even getting married. Right. I mean, we had to figure out what it would look like to, to be adults and grow up together or apart. I mean, they were a couple years there where we didn’t know whether we had a future together. When I went to New York City, he moved home to work for his father and, and and where’s home?

[00:04:36] Doug Boneparth: South Florida. Boca Raton.

[00:04:38] Barry Ritholtz: Okay. Oh my god. Boca Raton. Wow. So, so wait, so you meet when you’re 18 or 19 years old? Yeah. Just about when did you first start talking about money with each other? Was that way off in the future or was that an early conversation?

[00:04:54] Heather Boneparth: It was not a conversation for a long time. I don’t think we really started talking about money together until we came back together and said like, it was really after law school that we took a hard look at, at each other and where we had been and where we were. And we said, we wanna give this a real shot. We wanna start our adult lives

[00:05:11] Doug Boneparth: Together. Our adult shot together. Yeah. But we were observing money behaviors for our entire time dating throughout. That’s right. Undergraduate. And probably me observing Heather more than Heather observing me. You’re an only child product of divorce. Her story is shared in detail in the book. So I was, as the son of a financial advisor and working in an advisory practice, probably getting a lot more observation points on Heather than her on me. But to Heather’s point, when we ultimately had decisions, joint financial decisions to make, such as sharing rent, the typical stuff that couples come together for, I would say because we had those observation points around each other, and obviously being together for so long before we needed to make decisions, it played in our favor and helped us navigate it. Although I don’t think you or I anticipated multiple six figures of graduate student loan debt. Right. As this big boulder. We had to figure out how to move in our financial puzzle.

[00:06:09] Heather Boneparth: And I don’t think that he could have anticipated the weight that the debt would have on me. And, you know, it, it is so interesting and, and, and we interviewed a couple for the book, and I would say the same for Doug too. Like, there’s people who view debt, especially like debt from higher education as you know, this is an investment in myself. It’s an opportunity. It was a necessary evil to get where I need to go. That was not the message that I was telling myself. My debt was not a, some outside, you know, hurt financial hurdle. My debt was me. It stood for everything that I wasn’t really,

[00:06:42] Barry Ritholtz: I’m so shocked to hear. I mean, having read the book, and I know you not as much as I know Doug, but I know you, I’m, I’m really kind of surprised at that. I can compartmentalize things like that. And just like, I remember when we were young and broke and my wife used to sit there Sunday nights writing checks out and she’s like, we don’t have enough money to send all seven checks. I’m like, that’s easy. Send the check, don’t sign it to whichever one. And they’ll bounce it back and, you know, try again. Just remember which one you could do. You could rotate through seven and by then hopefully we’ll have a little more money. She was aghast at that. I could not possibly care less. It,

[00:07:23] Heather Boneparth: It, it’s so interesting. And there, there were elements of it that we were totally okay with. Like I remember we first moved in together on the upper West Side. We would go to Fairway to the grocery store and we had like our set of like, of of very affordable meats that we could get every week. Yeah. Every week we ate the same things and I packed us lunch every single day. Yeah. To go to work. And I was completely okay with that. But anytime there was a major financial decision we had to make, or anytime there was even like the smallest hiccup with my student loan debt repayment. Oh, oh. I mean, I would, it would send me into these like deep emotional spirals. And they were not just about the money. It was like, I am worthless. I’m never going to get anywhere in my career. I can’t believe I did this to myself. Like it really ran so deep I was punishing myself.

[00:08:09] Barry Ritholtz: So there’s a line in the book that I, I wanna bring up here. ‘Cause it very much relates to what you’re saying. Quote, most money conflicts aren’t really about money. Explain what, what are, what are they actually about? Yeah,

[00:08:24] Doug Boneparth: It’s, so we have a whole first section of this book that touches on our beginnings, right? Who we are in our relationship with. Money starts long before you meet your partner. It is the meals you shared with your family where you went on vacation. Maybe it’s some trauma you experienced or the socioeconomic status both from the side of being privileged all the way to food insecurity or housing insecurity. Our cultures, our religion. It is almost endless the amount of touch points in our past that shaped the way we feel about money that we bring into our relationships that we bring into our adulthood. So when we are having an emotional response to money, it’s usually not the number on the screen or the check you’re writing and the bill you can or cannot pay. It is something you’re fixing it to that you’ve experienced. And if you can get to the bottom of that, if you can create that relationship, you’re gonna be that much better off in evolving and having a better financial relationship. Because now you gotta bring all that to your partner who also has all of that in their own unique way. And I think that right there shows you how difficult this particular topic is around love and money.

[00:09:38] Barry Ritholtz: So when you guys sit down with a couple to talk about money and financial planning, what’s the biggest mistake you see? What do most couples, what’s the biggest error that that comes up? Time. And again,

[00:09:50] Heather Boneparth: They’re not communicating, they’re not communicating either substantively about these issues, about, they’re not going deep enough to understand why they feel the way they feel in a very surface level, very surface level. And they’re getting caught in these surface level disagreements, right? It’s, it’s these behaviors that happen over and over again because we’re not taking the time to dig deeper to understand what’s actually going on, like what Doug just said. Because that’s how you build empathy for one another. You may not agree with the way your partner approaches it, but if you don’t even understand why they feel the way they feel, you’re never going to get past those squabbles over spending or about what you’re saving for and being misaligned on your goals unless you’re taking that extra step to really understand empathy builds that bridge in people

[00:10:35] Barry Ritholtz: Communication. Doug, you you wanna say something else? Yeah, I

[00:10:37] Doug Boneparth: Like putting examples and stories behind that. You have someone who does the shopping in a household, they come home with an extra bag of rice or we already have that item. The other partner gets very upset. We already have four chicken broths and you bought two more. Maybe, you know, is it that they spent the money on two more boxes of chicken broth or is it because there were some issues with food security growing up and that is plaguing their identity around money. So they fight about the chicken broth.

[00:11:05] Heather Boneparth: Not we did interview. Yeah, yeah. We interviewed someone who came from, and it’s, I think it’s a great example, came from extreme adverse childhood experiences. They experienced homelessness, abuse,

[00:11:17] Barry Ritholtz: Living in the car, I remember.

[00:11:18] Heather Boneparth: Yeah. Living in the car. And one of the ways that played out in his young adult life was always overstocking his fridge and always overstocking that his pantry, because you never wanted to feel the safety, you feel safety in being over con over consumptive as an adult. So just one example of how that shows up. I, I’m

[00:11:37] Barry Ritholtz: Not a prepper, but we had plenty of paper towels and toilet paper heading into the pandemic, which you write about. One of the things that shocked me in the book was the whole debate about joint accounts, separate accounts, hybrid. I mean, to me, this is partnership blasphemy. I had to ask my wife this morning, Hey, when did we set up our joint account? And she’s like, don’t you remember we were leaving for our honeymoon. We got married on a, on a Sunday afternoon, we got home a Sunday and knew we got home at like six, seven o’clock. We signed all the checks, gave it to our neighbor to deposit. That was our opening deposit in our joint account. Anybody I know that doesn’t have a, everybody I know who’s married disproportionately has joint accounts if they’re still married. And we went over the other day talking about this over all the couples we know that are divorced, how many of them did not have joint accounts and a disproportionate number that we knew about because she’s usually friends with the wife. I’m friends with the husband. Sure. Sometimes we, after divorce, you inherit one side or the other. I don’t choose. I don’t, I don’t understand how you could get married and not pull your assets, pull the financial responsibility or at least the discussions about what are we spending, how much is a vacation, what are we spending on shoes or watches or whatever. And I I I’m genuinely shocked. That’s a debate. What did you guys find?

[00:13:15] Heather Boneparth: I would start with the caveat that I think that there are legitimate reasons why people are apprehensive to join and pool all of their finances together. If it’s a second marriage or if somebody came from maybe an abusive family, like there could be legitimate reasons why

[00:13:29] Barry Ritholtz: Or come from a lot of money

[00:13:30] Heather Boneparth: Or come from a lot of money, which, you know, there’s,

[00:13:32] Barry Ritholtz: Well, they may have a separate trust or a separate account, but at the very least isn’t there a households account you’re paying the mortgage and rent, you’re paying for vacations, clothes, food. Oh, we’ve, its entertainment. We’ve

[00:13:43] Heather Boneparth: Seen it all. We

[00:13:44] Doug Boneparth: Completely agree. Completely agree with you on this. That having a joint account puts you in the best position to work as a team.

[00:13:50] Barry Ritholtz: You’re partners. Right? Exactly. Yeah.

[00:13:52] Heather Boneparth: Communication, again, playing team again. And also just the transparency, right. Of of being able to see what comes in and out and save for joint goals together. I mean, we talk about this, there’s of course there might be reasons why you don’t. Yeah. But there’s no question that you’re gonna, all the data work, it’s gonna work better

[00:14:07] Doug Boneparth: At the all the data points to that your relationship will work out better in general and financially. If you are taking a team approach to your finances, imagine, you know, playing the same game on two separate fields. That’s insane. Right? Right. What are you doing here? But there is one thing, regardless of how you set it up, and I think in practice we always encourage clients to do what works for them. But the thing you need to have is transparency. You wanna have your own individual account, you wanna have your own individual account. You wanna chop up the expenses. By the way, that scales horribly. Right? When you start bringing family into it, having

[00:14:43] Barry Ritholtz: Children, yeah. Whatcha

[00:14:44] Doug Boneparth: Gonna do pay 25% of the formula because they make 25% of the household income for the baby. This isn’t, this is crazy stuff, right? But if you have transparency and everyone has access to each other’s bank accounts and you’re doing these reviews and everyone knows where everything is, sure, I could see pathways for that working. But again, I don’t, and we would all agree this is not the most effective way to manage a household financial situation. And what

[00:15:09] Heather Boneparth: We found in speaking to so many relationship coaches and couples, therapists and psychologists, is that this, this money, this money topic actually translates to couples therapy as well. The idea of yours, mine and ours. No one is saying that you need to come together as some like homogenous blob. And now you’re just one person and all your assets are pulled goals, all

[00:15:29] Doug Boneparth: Your goals are the same.

[00:15:30] Heather Boneparth: Yeah. Pulled

[00:15:31] Doug Boneparth: No, you are supposed to maintain your individuality and have individual goals, whatever that may mean. If that could mean individual financial goals, we take no issue with that. Yours, mine, and ours. It’s, it’s the same in couple’s work.

[00:15:43] Barry Ritholtz: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Heather and Doug Boneparth, authors of the book Money Together. I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I am Barry Ritholtz. You are listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guest today are Heather and Doug Boneparth. They are the authors of the book, Money Together, How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship and Become an Unstoppable Financial Team. So communication and transparency, pretty straightforward. And with a little hindsight obvious, what was the biggest surprise? What did couples say to you where you kind of looked across each other and said, what the hell is that about? Like, what shocked you?

[00:16:47] Doug Boneparth: Heather would always say, and I would agree with her, often the things that shocked us were the things that were not being said. For example, you would ask a very forward question, or rather you would pick up, I would do a lot of this over Zoom. You’d pick up body language. You would see one partner zoning out or spacing out or not engaging. So those were all tells that there was something greater going on. On that particular topic.

[00:17:14] Barry Ritholtz: What sort, what sort of topics engender that sort of response? Is it the full spectrum or were there things that were like, I could imagine credit card debt and reckless spending being an issue. That’s obvious. What what surprised you?

[00:17:32] Heather Boneparth: You know, where I saw this come up and I, and I, it, it always caused me to kind of tilt my head and and wanna know more was when you would see one spouse, it was typically a, a man who was running his own business or an entrepreneur. And it really felt like it was, was his show and, and the risks that he were to be taking, and this happened more than once, felt like they really did not consider the family as a whole. It felt very, very much like, well this is my plan and if it doesn’t work, burn it all to the ground. And you could see his wife sitting next to him aghast, like aghast, but silently aghast. Like you could see that it was like, she’s like, you’re right. Like this is, this is his ride. And, and we are all, I would say along with it, but being held hostage by it.

[00:18:20] Heather Boneparth: Wow. And that, that was where we saw this, the silence and the body language play in. And I’ve set Doug, like we interviewed a a couple folks who like had been in bankruptcy for business ideas of theirs. And that’s fine. But like, just the, just the, the lack of accountability to the rest, to his partner and to his children and just saying, well, and I’ll try again and I’ll, and I’ll keep trying again. Like, what kind of rollercoaster are you bringing your family on if she doesn’t feel like she has a voice to even be part of this discussion that we’re having right

[00:18:49] Barry Ritholtz: Now. Seeing someone without agency. Yeah. Is not a good thing to look at. It doesn’t look good. And you can see it if you’re asking the right questions or you’re a financial professional and you’re looking at that situation. Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty ugly. And I have to ask about this since we were talking earlier about dividing some household work and, and responsibility. How did you do this work together? How did each of you contribute? You work together as writing together a different experience?

[00:19:21] Heather Boneparth: It’s a journey. Yeah, it was a journey, Barry. This was something. So I, writing is a huge part of my life. I was a journalism major in undergrad. I, there was a very long time of my life where I had only hoped to get back to a moment like this where I could use my words and my storytelling ability and my, and my question asking ability, which was honed three years as a lawyer to write something like this, to find a way to help people through my writing. So the, we always kind of knew that I would be taking the lead when it came to writing. Yeah. The words on the page of this book. But Doug and I sat together on 90% of these interviews. Of the couples. Yeah. Many of the experts. And the way that we would do this is we’d have like a big picture meeting.

[00:20:02] Heather Boneparth: We would talk through different chapters. Eventually they all fell into the five sections of the book. And then I, I would draft it and I would put it to him. And I would say, does this one make sense from a, from a practitioner standpoint? Like, are we covering enough of the basis from a practitioner standpoint and two from a, from a male lens, we wanted to write a book. I think one of the greatest challenges in writing this book was not us working together. We’ve worked together in many different ways over the course of our careers, but how do we write something that resonates with all genders?

[00:20:34] Barry Ritholtz: So I know Doug’s voice, which is kind of snarky and funny. And I got the sense that you did most of the writing in this, at least in terms of, I don’t wanna say feminine, feminine, but it’s a gentle se sensitive, the right word. Like, like

[00:20:53] Heather Boneparth: Empathetic,

[00:20:53] Barry Ritholtz: Empathetic tone. Yeah. Which I don’t get from Doug’s tweets. No, but here’s the, the more interesting question. When you guys went through the whole process of drafting and editing and writing the book, did it change at all how you guys talked about money with each other? How you thought about it? Yes. Like reading the book might affect some people. How did writing the book affect you two as a married couple?

[00:21:18] Heather Boneparth: Oh my goodness. In

[00:21:19] Doug Boneparth: Profound ways.

[00:21:20] Heather Boneparth: In profound ways. In so many ways. I mean, I, I will tell you that some of the couples we interviewed completely changed my perspective on what it means to have enough. Yeah.

[00:21:31] Barry Ritholtz: Really.

[00:21:32] Heather Boneparth: And, and, and that it was, these were perspective shifting relationships that we’ve made with some of these folks.

[00:21:39] Barry Ritholtz: Give, give us an example.

[00:21:41] Heather Boneparth: Well, on one hand we interviewed many couples who objectively on paper live a very different socioeconomic life than we do. They live in a, in a lower cost of living area. They make it work on a lot less. And they, they have love, they have family, a roof over their head. Have they have a roof over their head? And they have enough. We asked every couple that we interviewed, do you have enough? And the answers said so much. And they gave us such perspective. So like there are couples that on paper are, are, are living a very different life. Sure. Than we are, you know, objectively of less privilege. And they just were so happy and content and proud of where they were. And I think sometimes when you’re an ambitious, Doug and I are both,

[00:22:24] Doug Boneparth: We’ll flip it, we’ll flip it around, right? We interviewed a lot of people who are highly successful entrepreneurial building their second, maybe third business. And we asked that same question, don’t have enough. It was never enough.

[00:22:36] Heather Boneparth: Brought them to tears

[00:22:37] Barry Ritholtz: Really

[00:22:38] Doug Boneparth: So serious when, when they realized like, Hey, we just reflected on all this amazing stuff you did. You know, you’re telling us you, you don’t have enough. And then kind of that moment, that pause where they realized like, oh my God, what is my enough? Or they look at, I mean, it ran deep sometimes the, the family, they didn’t start the second child. They maybe didn’t have the time. They didn’t get with their spouse to enjoy something in their life.

[00:23:01] Heather Boneparth: I think that maybe one of the greatest things we learned. And it, and it made its way into the book, not only through those conversations, but we had conversations with folks who were dealing with life threatening sickness or terminal illness. And we realized that time is the greatest currency that we have. Of course. And I know we can say it, but to really believe it and feel it. And I think that we embody that now in our life.

[00:23:25] Barry Ritholtz: Let, let me float a theory at you about enough. I think if you’re in middle class or upper middle class or lower middle class, the range is pretty tight. Like upper middle class is a lawyer, an accountant making a couple hundred grand bottom of that group is somebody in civil service making 40, 50, 60 grand. That’s the range. Once you’re in the top 10, 1.1%, it’s from a million a year to billions. And no matter how much money you have, there’s always a tier above it that seems to be, gee, you know, if I just made another million dollars a year, I could fly private move from

[00:24:06] Heather Boneparth: Succession. The fi. Didn’t Tom say that in Succession?

[00:24:09] Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. Tom says it to Greg. Oh, 5 million, you know. Yeah. It’s, you know, the worst kind of rich there is not, not enough to retire. Right. You know, too much to do nothing, you know, whatever. Too know

[00:24:21] Doug Boneparth: Too much to do. Nothing. Not enough to retire.

[00:24:23] Doug Boneparth: Yeah. You know, I love that show. But going back to what this process did for us in our relationship, you have thought, and, and I will chime in and say, for me personally and selfishly the amount of work that needed to be put into myself in order to, because this, this book is a product of major life decisions Heather and I made three and a half years ago to leave 13 years of being a corporate attorney, which was the very reason that’s stability, the, the benefits, the salary. That was the stability I needed to grow and be the entrepreneur. And I, I

[00:25:07] Barry Ritholtz: Have, I have to interrupt you. I have the exact same experience. My wife was a teacher for 35 years. The firm launched in 2013. I didn’t feel like it was a risk, but at the very least, hey, healthcare is covered. Yep. All these things you don’t have to worry about. And I had the conversation with my wife, are you okay, first of all, changing careers from a lawyer to finance, but then, hey, I know I’m making a decent salary, but I want to go do this on my own. Yeah. I think there’s an opportunity here. And she was like, go for it.

[00:25:37] Doug Boneparth: Not to spoil the book, but I got very comfortable after having reached certain goals in building the firm, that I probably would’ve kept feeling comfortable and having Heather continue being an attorney at her job forever

[00:25:56] Heather Boneparth: Burying the lead here. Yes. That in that moment in time was also the time that we had two very small children. COVID hit. COVID hit when we had an 11 month old and a 4-year-old. Wow. At

[00:26:06] Barry Ritholtz: Home. So you’re stuck at home. That’s time.

[00:26:08] Heather Boneparth: That’s tough. Yep. I’m working a corporate job, corporate legal job in a GC’s office of a Fortune 100 company from home taking care of our two children and also moonlighting as Doug’s business associate for the firm, which I’ve basically helped to build from the ground up, you know? Yeah.

[00:26:21] Doug Boneparth: There’s never been a day that I haven’t been doing that she wasn’t my co-pilot helping me make critical decisions. I was, she’s working three jobs

[00:26:27] Heather Boneparth: Here, but I was working three jobs and I was being stretched so thin that I felt like I had completely lost myself in trying to stay above water. And there was a moment where we said, you know, we formed this whole cruise ship of our life around servicing the risk that you were taking in starting this firm. But when is it about me again?

[00:26:48] Barry Ritholtz: So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about. Sure. The stories from your marriage, and I have to ask, it’s all narrative, no spreadsheets. Why did you decide to tell this story in a narrative format?

[00:27:02] Doug Boneparth: There’s been too, there’s enough books on budgeting and spreadsheets. Tons. Yeah. Enough people have tried to do it. And I, and also,

[00:27:09] Heather Boneparth: Also also a perfect budget’s not gonna solve much for the dynamics of your relationship with someone.

[00:27:16] Doug Boneparth: That’s right. There’s a reason that folks have not read this book before and it’s because doing this stuff is emotional work. It’s personal work. It requires understanding stories and hearing things you may not want to hear. That goes way, way, way deeper than the numbers. So we wanted to do something that we felt like would really uncover the things that weren’t being said. Like there were so many invisible moments that I, I hope we made visible in this book.

[00:27:44] Barry Ritholtz: So you bring a lot of therapists and psychologists. Yes. And, and couples counselors into the book. The question that was running through my head as I was going through that is, hey, at what point should any couple get professional help? Be it working with a financial planner or go into a couple’s therapy or, or a shrink to help them work out their emotional issues?

[00:28:09] Doug Boneparth: Yeah. So, you know, probably self-serving statement here all along on people using professionals to help them find the time and the space and the agency to talk about things that need to be discussed. But, you know, there’s never a bad time. I think if you can first recognize that you’re going to need help finding the space, finding the time, right. Self-starting is, for me personally, one of the hardest things that I struggle with. So I’m always open to finding people who can help me do that. But I think in practically speaking, if you are both wanting to improve and not being able to get past step one, like every conversation you’re having, Hey, let’s, let’s sit down and have our, you know, money date, our conversation and every time you’ve attempted to do that has resulted in, you know, a fight

[00:28:58] Heather Boneparth: Or, or you avoiding it for two months afterwards. So you didn’t get anywhere

[00:29:01] Doug Boneparth: Or you’re not develop. So what we want you to do is develop a practice around talking about money with your partner to Heather’s point, it’s been eight months, you were supposed to talk three months after that first one. You’re not creating practice and discipline and consistency. If this is happening you two over and over again, and the frustration, is there time to start finding other solutions? Maybe outsourcing that to a professional is the way to go. That could be a financial professional, that could be a therapist, that could be a marriage counselor of

[00:29:26] Heather Boneparth: This or a financial therapist. I mean, correct. There, there are some folks that are carrying such deeply rooted shame around money into their relationship. That’s not something your partner can unwind by themselves. It’s

[00:29:38] Doug Boneparth: Not their job to fix it either.

[00:29:39] Barry Ritholtz: You, you talk about money stories that people bring into a marriage or a relationship. Right. What are some of the ones that you know really resonated with you?

[00:29:48] Heather Boneparth: The stories that we heard? Yeah. You know, I think stories that were steeped in people’s culture, the cultural messages that they brought into their relationship. There was a woman from Taiwan who, who received a higher education here in the US and she brought into her marriage these scripts about what she, what she could, what she felt like she deserved, and what she was allowed to strive for in her life.

[00:30:20] Barry Ritholtz: Is this the woman who had to go home to settle her father’s estate?

[00:30:23] Heather Boneparth: No, no. Different, different woman. We heard a little bit about her story in the, in the culture chapter of the book. But I just remember her talking to us about how she was always taught not to live a small life, but to live like a demure life. To not showcase her wealth, to not strive for too much wealth. Perfect example. She graduated with a grad degree from Columbia and she was waiting tables at the restaurant down the street from her, her dorm. And she was eating the leftovers off people’s plates. She felt like that was what she deserved. Deserved. Yeah. Like i i the, these are stories that she carried into her relationship and trying to find a way to like marry those messages with one somebody else’s, but two, to like build a life that reflects both of your values when you’re kind of questioning what place those values even have in your life. Right. So somebody, one of the financial therapists that we spoke to, my friend Asia Evans, I remember she said, people who carry that into their adult relationship have to be asked, are the circumstances in which you were taught those things actually even present in your life today? And if you’re answering that question, no, well, there’s stuff that needs to

[00:31:32] Barry Ritholtz: Change to let go.

[00:31:32] Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. So, so how do you have couples that have never really had this money conversation? How do you have them take the first step? Where should they be beginning?

[00:31:42] Doug Boneparth: Yeah, so we are very long on, we call them money dates. You can call them whatever you like, but you have to have a forum in which you first are sitting down to discuss things relating to your financial life. And we talk about the best practices of having to do this. Right. You don’t start with the numbers typically. That’s a great way to get someone to flee the scene right then and

[00:32:02] Heather Boneparth: There. And, and that’s why at the end of each section in the book, we offer a list of like eight to 10 conversation starters. You don’t need to do them all at once. You don’t even need to do them all ever. Yeah. But the point being conversation starters on how we start to learn a little bit more about what’s bothering the other person, what they’re carrying into the relationship. Sure.

[00:32:18] Doug Boneparth: And what you do here, instead of focusing on numbers and talking about, here’s another one you don’t wanna do. Talk about what went wrong this quarter or what’s not working. Flip both those things around. What did work? What are the wins you should be celebrating? We wanna build momentum here. Talk about the goals that you both share. I know if I say, Hey, can we talk about that vacation? We wanna go on that chair’s pulling right up. We’re sitting down and I got a nice way to then talk about the budget and get into the numbers. Right? We almost do this categorically backwards. And what we need to do is understand the rule book for creating those consistent conversations that we need to be having regularly. Little things, time and place matter, right? We call it family rush hour. The time the kids come home from school to just shy of going to bed. This is probably the absolute worst time to conduct anything having to do with our lives, let alone our financial lives. You loved

[00:33:11] Heather Boneparth: That, that was your favorite time to talk about money.

[00:33:13] Doug Boneparth: I, I would run out of my three o’clock appointment when we were marooned in our house. Heather, guess what? And she’s like, kids throwing food all over the place. One kid, she’s like, what do you got for me, Doug? This is a great time to talk about this. It was the worst. A spaghetti hanging on you. Yeah. She would return the favor. We’re exhausted. It’s 10:30 at night, she wants to get into all the serious stuff. We’re gas. I’m like, I, I can’t, I can’t even keep my eyes open, let alone follow along. So time and place matter. What do you like to do together? Can you carve that out? Put it on the calendar, set the reminder, pre-schedule those meetings, do stuff you like to do. So I say can’t wait to go do that. And you’re not canceling that. These are little things that when you build a practice around them, go a very long way.

[00:33:56] Doug Boneparth: Because if you’re doing this quarterly and we suggest you do speak comprehensive or not the data, you’re gonna talk day to day about money, week to week about money. We’re talking comprehensive view of your financial life on a quarterly basis. That’s not a lot of cracks at that during the year. Right. You’re getting four. Great. We now can divide by four. So over multiple years, right? Two years. Eight, 12, count by four here. That’s not a lot, but it’s going to take a very long time. These are long games. Do you go to the gym one time after not working out and find yourself in the best shape of your life? No. You will be sore. Go to the gym four times a week for six months. I can almost guarantee you will be in the best shape of your life. Do these quarterly meetings over three years. You should have this figured out and you should be getting there with your partner. I

[00:34:40] Barry Ritholtz: Love this quote from one of the chapter titles. Being prepared is better than trying to predict what will happen. Is that preparation, is that planning, is this all part of the same concept of getting people to talk, having them focus on this? Yeah,

[00:34:54] Heather Boneparth: Absolutely. I, I think that one of the hardest things for people to do is accept that we don’t know what’s going to happen. Right. And I spent years dealing in risk for, for work. And I think it’s just really hard to accept that you could do everything right and it, things still may not pan out the way that you wanted them to. But when we embrace that, we embrace that there’s 10 different ways to get to the goal. You want not just the one that you guys locked in on five years ago and you hoped this was the one way we would get there. ‘Cause disappointment looks for space closest to home. Right? So if you are not making it there, you’re not, those expectations aren’t being met. We can’t take those five steps to get to that one financial goal. And then you’re taking it outta one another. You’re beginning to to resent one another. But when you embrace this idea that life is fickle, things are unexpected, we don’t know what’s going to be required of us next year. We don’t know whose job is going to be stable two years from now. Even though it feels great today. Everything’s gravy today. We don’t know two years from now when you embrace that idea of flexibility, fluidity, and being nimble in your relationship, you’re able to work better together as a team and pick up slack for one another when you need each other.

[00:36:03] Doug Boneparth: Do you wanna know, you know, when people say, oh, enjoy the journey, you know, you’ll get to the end goal, but enjoy the journey. The people that are capable of actually enjoying whatever journey they’re on are the ones that have put themselves in flexible enough of a situation that when life inevitably hits you across the face. And I guarantee you it will, it does it every single time. Those who are more proactive in their response versus those who are reacting and running around as if this is the worst thing that ever happened. Those are the people that are enjoying their journey. Hey, we knew something, you know, something wild was gonna take place. We have a plan for that. Let’s go. Well great.

[00:36:39] Heather Boneparth: Change it up. Great example from our own lives. We always knew that someday I had hoped to work at the firm and that we were gonna do our business together. But the time in which that came about was because my corporate job very pretty suddenly wanted us back in the office four days a week. It kind of came outta the blue. We weren’t prepared for it from a childcare standpoint. And instead of, you know, we could have solved for it, we could have solved for it. I could have gotten a babysitter, I could have gone back. We looked at each other and we said, is this the moment to accelerate this goal that we’ve always had? Do we take this as a sign from the universe? It was a little, it was a little backwards from what we were planning. We thought we had a couple more years of runway before we would take this leap together. But we took it and, and you know what, like it was unexpected, but it worked out for now, you know, everything’s for now. ‘Cause we don’t know what two years from now will bring.

[00:37:29] Barry Ritholtz: Huh. Really, really interesting. I mentioned there’s a lot of narrative letter storytelling in the book, but there was a data point jumped right outta the book and grabbed me 15% or more of marriages today involve a prenuptial agreement 20, 25 years ago that was less than 5%. Oh yeah. That’s a shocking change. What’s behind it? Why is this changed so much?

[00:37:54] Heather Boneparth: I think that there’s lots of ways to obtain a prenup now. I mean there’s even companies now that are offering more of a prefab, there

[00:38:01] Doug Boneparth: Are platforms for this right

[00:38:02] Heather Boneparth: There, there are platforms solving, solving

[00:38:03] Barry Ritholtz: There forms for a prenup. But

[00:38:06] Heather Boneparth: Yeah. But now we’ve made it. Yeah, we’ve made it frictionless. Now

[00:38:10] Doug Boneparth: You took the word outta my mouth. This has become a, a frictionless process for a lot of folks.

[00:38:14] Barry Ritholtz: A prenup app. You just work your way through it. Yes.

[00:38:16] Heather Boneparth: That’s it. Yes, there are several, but I think also the way that millennials feel about prenups is that they’re starting. I think also when this is anecdotal, I don’t have any data to back this up, but I think a lot of us are products of divorce. I think you have, you have a generation. Yeah, yeah. Right. You have a generation aging into adulthood and, and into marriages where we’ve seen our parents, half

[00:38:35] Doug Boneparth: Marriage, millennials have watched their parents, you know, go through divorce and they’re saying, well, I don’t wanna witness or be a part of what I just saw them go through.

[00:38:44] Heather Boneparth: And I, and I think so much now, people understand that a prenup is not setting your marriage up to fail. It is outlining expectations for certain situations happening. It’s just a contract. Right. It can also outline certain expectations for during the course of your marriage. It doesn’t have to just be limited to the dissolution of your marriage. And I think that our generation. Yeah. In particular is very, is is very keen on opportunities to have our expectations managed even with the people that we love the

[00:39:15] Barry Ritholtz: Most. So there’s a quote in the book that I was kind of never really thought about, but you made me think about it. Quote, when you marry into money, the privilege might come with strings attached. Oh yeah. Explain that.

[00:39:25] Doug Boneparth: Absolutely. So speaking of expectations here, so when you’re the married in, the person who is marrying in a family of, you know, substance or, or wealth, right? You’re probably gonna get to experience a number of things that are a product of the family that you’ve married into. It could be vacations, it could be here’s your house or a down payment on your house. And you would think, well that’s really wonderful. Go give your in-laws, you know, a hug and a kiss for that on

[00:39:56] Heather Boneparth: It. And it is really wonderful. It is.

[00:39:57] Doug Boneparth: Yes it is. It is. But I hear a but coming. But in many cases, this sets up expectations now that this family has for this person. It could be how they raise their kids. It could be how you act and behave on vacations. How you spend the idea that maybe your financial household isn’t even your financial household. It’s there. So where’s your agency? Where’s your independence? It sets up a lot of what ifs. Right? What if this doesn’t work out? Where does that leave me? What if I might lose my husband due to really sad state of affairs? Then what am I going to be supported? So setting expectations around this is critical to the married in otherwise they’re going to, through the entirety of their marriage, find themselves asking what if and will I be okay? It’s not a great way to go into a long-term committed relationship.

[00:40:57] Heather Boneparth: And I think some of this is really difficult to talk about because you’re not just, yes, you can set certain expectations in terms of the mechanics of some of these things, but like some of this is you have to observe how is your spouse with his parents, how much have they financially supported him or her over the years? How, what, what level of control have you observed them trying to exert over that adult child of theirs in exchange for the wealth and generosity that they’re giving your family? We’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. I, I, I think, you know, it’s, you

[00:41:31] Barry Ritholtz: You wrote write in the book about, and I

[00:41:32] Barry Ritholtz: Have it all caps, the family sort of a Succession like yeah, wealthy family that wants to control everything, control the relationship. They’re holding all the, all the cash and they’re manipulating everybody to get what they want. Not just outside in the world of whatever acquisitions are going on, but within the family dynamics itself. How do you deal with that?

[00:41:56] Heather Boneparth: It’s not easy. It is not easy. And we keep coming back to the obvious answer of communication, transparency. It does require the person you are marrying to, the family member that you’re marrying. You have to find a way to become transparent and open and honest about your relationship with them. This is not the time to just sit there quiet and let this happen to you. You have to be able to advocate for yourself in some way because it is your life and it’s gonna be a life that you share together with someone. These are probably uncomfortable questions and conversations, but what’s more uncomfortable is when you don’t address them and something happens five, 10 years down the road or you have two, three kids. You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point.

[00:42:43] Doug Boneparth: And it’s not to say that you should not accept the generosity. Right? This is a wonderful thing and there’s many benevolent parents that just wanna see their child and their child’s spouse and their family succeed and they want to offer that generosity during the course of their life. It can be a beautiful thing. But having the conversations upfront about what this means, do they wanna have they wanna offer to help you buy a house? Do they believe that they’re entitled to help you look for that house? Are there stipulations on around where that house needs to be? Does it need to be in the town in which your, the mar which the adult child grew up in? Are there certain expectations there? They wanna help pay for the grandchild’s college? Are there stipulations there as well? But I think that one way to also, you know, kind of pose and gauge how, how enmeshed the adult child is with his parents is saying, I would like for us to have our own financial advisor. I would like for us to grow our independent wealth as a family. How do you feel about that? Say that to your spouse. How,

[00:43:42] Barry Ritholtz: How do these big wealth gaps, and it doesn’t have to be Succession, it could just be reasonable wealth gaps. How do they distort the power dynamics inside the relationship? Forget the relationship of the couple to the in-laws or the parents within couples, how does that dynamic play out and, and what’s, what should be done about these sort of gaps?

[00:44:08] Heather Boneparth: Well, I think that privilege cuts both ways and that’s what we, we like to, we write about privilege and, and the many angles of it so that you can understand also, like socio you are socioeconomic conditions could have been great, but your perception of them is what matters. We can’t say, oh, you grew up with more money than me, so you had it easier. You had a silver spoon in your mouth and your life was gravy and I had a terrible life. And so none of your feelings around it with your family matter, that’s something we dispel as well, right? Your story is your story. You don’t know if your partner who yes, may have objectively grown up with greater privilege than you. You don’t know if they’re carrying deep rooted expectations like the long shadow of the family name. It’s, that is, that is a heavy load to bear for some people.

[00:44:51] Heather Boneparth: So I think there are ways, like different ways this shows up in a relationship for another example would be like how that privilege plays out in terms of your values. You know, what, what are you trying to accomplish together as a couple? That may not be something that if you didn’t grow, if you didn’t grow up with privilege, maybe your goals and expectations are, are I, I don’t wanna say more limited, but maybe they’re more proximate. Like, I wanna build a life that just involves not being strapped for cash. Us being able to afford that roof over our heads. Then you have a, a partner who grew up with such privilege, they didn’t even have to consider their salary when they chose their career because they knew that there would always be kind of this existential safety net available to them. How do you marry those two, those two belief systems. Yeah. Together to kind of find a life that, that, that can identify the meaning for both of you.

[00:45:44] Doug Boneparth: I, I would also add in these situations, it’s easier to assume that these conversations will go down a road of upsetting the family or something bad or negative. And I just want for a minute to throw in the possibility of it working out well that a family would appreciate the fact that their child and the person they’re marrying are forward thinking enough to make sure they’re okay. That everyone is comfortable. You know, the family isn’t always oh, the evil rich family, right? A lot of times, in fact, I would argue most of the times, this is all out of love. This is all I love. And if you don’t approach and you don’t ask, you’ll never know. We just

[00:46:24] Heather Boneparth: Assumed you were very happy with

[00:46:25] Doug Boneparth: All this wonderful stuff we’ve been doing for you and Ryan. We didn’t know it made you feel uncomfortable every time you came on the cruise ship.

[00:46:33] Heather Boneparth: Last,

[00:46:34] Doug Boneparth: Why didn’t, why didn’t you say anything

[00:46:36] Barry Ritholtz: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Heather and Doug Boneparth, authors of the book Money Together, talking about writing a book as a team. I’m Barry Ritholtz, you’re listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I am Barry Ritholtz. You are listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guests today are Heather and Doug Boneparth. They are the authors of the book, Money Together, How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship and Become an Unstoppable Financial Team. Last, last prenup question. I mean, it’s a given that the person who’s marrying into the wealthy family should have their own legal counsel, is it fair for them to ask the wealthy family to pay the bill? Ooh, for the lawyer?

[00:47:40] Heather Boneparth: Oh my goodness. I mean, I I if you off the cuff, I think it’s fair. Okay. I think it’s fair. What’s

[00:47:47] Doug Boneparth: The, what’s the worst that could happen?

[00:47:48] Heather Boneparth: What’s the worst that can happen in asking? I think, I think you prove a very good point because again, like when we’re talking about negotiating power and power dynamics,

[00:47:56] Barry Ritholtz: Disparity can be giant.

[00:47:58] Heather Boneparth: You know, there’s, there’s the lawyers who handle, you know, Beyonce and Jay-Z’s prenup, and then there’s Joe Schmo down the street and whatever. I, I don’t think that it would be unreasonable to ask that if we are entering into this and that this is something that impacts not just me and my spouse, but also your family as well, that maybe you’d be willing to subsidize a piece of this on

[00:48:16] Doug Boneparth: Heck of a way to broach the conversation by saying, Hey, we’ve been doing all this work here, pay the legal bill versus I want you to know we’re gonna do some work here so everyone’s comfortable, we’re taking care of ourselves, that you’re comfortable. By the way, would you pay the bill?

[00:48:30] Barry Ritholtz: Very, very different way you’re phrasing it. So let’s talk a little bit about estate planning. Quote. People go on a journey when they inherit money. I never really thought of that, but explain what, what’s the inheriting money journey?

[00:48:45] Doug Boneparth: Well, first and foremost, we love stats, right? Like most inheritances are five figure numbers.

[00:48:52] Barry Ritholtz: 10 grand. Yeah. The book, the numbers you have, the median was like $45,000, but it’s totally skewed. Oh yeah. Yeah. By the very wealthy inheritances.

[00:49:02] Doug Boneparth: Yeah. The big, big ones.

[00:49:03] Barry Ritholtz: And the average person’s inheritance is five grand. Little or nothing.

[00:49:06] Doug Boneparth: Yeah. Yeah. So then you have to ask yourself, so what’s really being inherited here? What’s really being transferred from, you know, the decedent to, to the children or the heirs? And typically it’s obviously memories and the experiences both good and bad, that end up in the possession of the, of the child, of the heir.

[00:49:30] Heather Boneparth: There there’s a quote and I I it’s slipping my mind, but it’s something like, inheritance inheritances are the numeric symbolic delivery of all you have left from someone and you wish you had more time, you wish you had more memories, you wish you had more moments. And one more chance for one more conversation. And so for people that $12,000 as a bonus from your job is very different from $12,000 from your mother.

[00:49:58] Barry Ritholtz: So let, let’s talk about what I think is the most interesting trend I’ve seen in estate planning over the past few decades. I know what you’re, which is invos

[00:50:09] Doug Boneparth: Giving gifts. Yeah. During lifetime.

[00:50:10] Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. Doing this while you’re alive so you can enjoy it with each other.

[00:50:13] Doug Boneparth: Yeah, I love it. I love it. That was a big Wall Street Journal article a handful of years ago. I absolutely love it. I see it show up in practice quite a bit. Probably one of the nicer, you know, boomer mechanics in estate planning that I’ve seen happen over the last few years. Yes, you should, you should get to create these experiences while you’re alive. You know, and everybody can enjoy that. You see your hardworking millennial children dealing with the high cost of home prices and they can’t get ahead or settle down with their family, and you wanna step in and do some gift things that they can afford it. I think it’s probably one of the most beautiful things out there. Wish that happened to us here. It didn’t happen. All right. If you know, guys, if you know anyone, let let us know.

[00:50:52] Doug Boneparth: But you’re seeing this trend emerge and I’m seeing it show up in practice. It’s, it’s really a beautiful thing. And also perhaps a sad, I don’t know, the, you know, particulars of these situations, but good planning’s, good planning, right? You know, as a financial advisor where the rubber meets the road and all of the topics that we cover in comprehensive planning, estate planning’s the one, it’s the biggest piece of all of it at the end of the day. And what you’re doing here, it’s about legacy, right? So now you have children and you have their parents creating these experiences knowing they helped. Let me back up for a second, just to give you an idea of, of how I truly feel around the other way that this typically happens. It is, we’re not gonna talk to our children about money. It’s taboo. You know, you’ll figure it out. Or the worst one. We don’t want to burden them today with this. And it’s so ironic

[00:51:44] Heather Boneparth: That it gets really on one

[00:51:45] Doug Boneparth: About this. I really, it’s so ironic because what you’re going to do is exact, is the exact opposite of what it is you just said. You, you don’t clue them into the estate planning. Now you’re dead. And not only did you leave a burden to them, the whole

[00:51:59] Heather Boneparth: Estate process, whether you’re a beneficiary or the executor,

[00:52:03] Doug Boneparth: By the way, even

[00:52:03] Heather Boneparth: The, it’s a lot of work. That’s a lot.

[00:52:04] Doug Boneparth: Even the best plans are a ton of work, right? You see this all the time. Like, oh man, my dad did a really good job of laying this out. Five weeks of go, you know, it it’s insane. While you’re

[00:52:15] Heather Boneparth: Grieving top, while you are grieving, you’re grieving.

[00:52:17] Doug Boneparth: All of thi all of this is happening here. And, and it’s just such a joke to take the line that I don’t wanna burden my kids and then literally burden them, you know, to no end. And you’re dead. You don’t even get to see, you know, thank, thanks mom. Thanks dad. That was great. And it’s a, it’s a disaster. It’s a disaster. So that’s how I truly feel about it. That’s why these gifts during the lifetime I think are just absolutely wonderful. Great.

[00:52:44] Heather Boneparth: But it just goes to show that it works both ways, right? Like we just spoke about the family where wealth, two things can be true, wealth can be used to control people, and to can be used to show that you love someone and to create legacy and, and, and deepen the love that you have for your family. Two things can be true.

[00:53:01] Barry Ritholtz: So before I get to my favorite questions, I ask, well, my guests, I, I just have to ask, what, what are the red, other red flags we haven’t gotten to? What do you think is the biggest issue that we just haven’t spoken about over the past hour?

[00:53:16] Doug Boneparth: Holding mistakes over your partner’s head. A lot of people do a lot of foolish stuff early in their adult life. In your twenties, you make some mistakes. You carry a little bit of consumer debt for in

[00:53:28] Heather Boneparth: Your forties, in your fifties. Yeah.

[00:53:29] Doug Boneparth: But, you know, whatever. Like, you, you, it happens. You YOLO’d it in your twenties and you had 10 grand in credit card debt. Then you met their, you met your spouse, they helped you pay it off. And now all they ever talk about is how were not money of it. They remind, remind them of it because I helped you pay off your debt. So I guess my point is not getting over things that are just missteps. They’re not mistakes in your life. Holding them over your spouse’s head. Because what that does is it erodes their confidence and it pulls them away from being a meaningful participant in their financial lives. Huh.

[00:53:58] Barry Ritholtz: Really, really interesting. All right, let’s jump into our favorite questions. We ask all our guests. Starting with, and this is like our speed round. We only have about five, six minutes. I love it. Who were your mentors who helped shape your career?

[00:54:11] Doug Boneparth: I’ll give you a hot take. You know, Heather and I maybe still agree with me on this one. We really had a lack of mentors in the beginning of our career. We, we found ourselves really having to figure a lot out for ourselves. And this isn’t a flexer look how, you know, I, I look, look what a big boy I am.

[00:54:25] Heather Boneparth: We’re in the market for mentors. Yeah. So if anybody listening would like to be our individual mentors, we would love that.

[00:54:30] Doug Boneparth: For me. For me, they became, they came mid-career into where we are today. Friends of ours for sure. But early on it was, it was lacking. I do view it as something where, you know, it, it built me up. It built some character here. But if I’m being honest, I really wish I had someone there to sit younger, professional Doug down regularly and say, how

[00:54:49] Barry Ritholtz: Are doing could save some time and effort.

[00:54:51] Heather Boneparth: I had one woman, one female attorney who was always one grade level above me and has been a driving force in my legal career and even brought me back to a job in a soft landing after a tough situation. She was good. So I had one mentor in my career, so

[00:55:07] Barry Ritholtz: You could give her name if you wanna give a shout.

[00:55:10] Heather Boneparth: Oh, her name’s Julia. Hey

[00:55:11] Barry Ritholtz: Julia. Let’s talk about books. What are some of your favorites? What are you reading currently?

[00:55:16] Heather Boneparth: You know, it’s really hard. I have to say. I love to read. But this past year, when you’re writing a book and promoing a book, kills it kills you,

[00:55:22] Barry Ritholtz: Kills you. Other than the research you’re doing, there’s no pleasure reading.

[00:55:25] Heather Boneparth: Every book I read was a personal finance book. Yeah. Although I love cultural commentary because again, like journalist’s brain, I read What Happened to Millennials by Charlie Wells, which I really enjoyed as somebody who,

[00:55:37] Barry Ritholtz: He’s a Bloomberg guy.

[00:55:38] Heather Boneparth: Oh, it’s, it’s a, he, he basically tells the story of, of where we were post nine 11 through the eyes to present day through four different folks, like, and followed them on their journey. It was just, I thought it was a, a brilliant commentary on, on where we were and where we find ourselves. And it was, it found a way to like frame it all very positively on, on our future. And I just, I, I loved it. But I’m actually looking forward to reading more nonfiction or more fiction this year. And should I say it, I’m about to read the Heated Rivalry books. Rachel Reads. Rachel reads books. If you know, you know,

[00:56:13] Barry Ritholtz: I hear heated rivalry. I think of Doris Kearns Goodwin, I don’t know. There

[00:56:17] Heather Boneparth: Is Residence if you know, you know,

[00:56:22] Doug Boneparth: Last book I read. I have to go fiction. I have to go sci-fi. I have to escape the world of business and finance. I, you know, we, we write these books and, and I know all our friends who write them as well, but I like to escape. Like if I’m gonna read, I’m gonna enjoy them.

[00:56:34] Barry Ritholtz: You you’re talking to a sci-fi guy hit me.

[00:56:36] Doug Boneparth: It was long overdue. I read Snow Crash was the last one I read, which if you know was the first. Did

[00:56:41] Barry Ritholtz: You read Neuromancer

[00:56:42] Doug Boneparth: Also? No, no, not yet. But it’s a little geeky here. It’s okay. I’m, I’m here for it. But you know your first, you know Wow. Calling the Metaverse before the Metaverse. Right. That, that was really cool. Finally got it. Took two more.

[00:56:53] Barry Ritholtz: I’m trying to remember which book The Future is here. It’s just not evenly distributed. Is that Snow Crash?

[00:56:59] Doug Boneparth: I don’t think so.

[00:57:00] Barry Ritholtz: Okay.

[00:57:00] Doug Boneparth: No, but that was great for a video game guy who always dreamed of a world that was, you know, alt reality. That was super cool.

[00:57:07] Barry Ritholtz: And I, and you read, I’m assuming you read Ready Player One, right?

[00:57:11] Doug Boneparth: No, I actually have Get Out, I haven’t even watched the movie so before because I wanted, ’cause I wanted to read Snow Crash before it, so

[00:57:18] Barry Ritholtz: I was flying on a plane. Yeah. And sat down with that book and we landed and I was done. Yeah, yeah. It

[00:57:23] Doug Boneparth: Was that. Yeah. I’m told it. I’m told It’s amazing that that’s next flight. That’s

[00:57:26] Barry Ritholtz: Your assignment for

[00:57:27] Doug Boneparth: Today. Next. Well, that’ll be my next flight book.

[00:57:29] Barry Ritholtz: Yeah. Absolutely. 30 seconds. What are you streaming or listening to these days?

[00:57:33] Doug Boneparth: Landman. Awesome. Show

[00:57:35] Heather Boneparth: Next on our queue. That’s

[00:57:36] Doug Boneparth: Next. You have to watch it. The Pit of course.

[00:57:38] Heather Boneparth: Pit massive.

[00:57:39] Doug Boneparth: It’s a little too grizzly.

[00:57:40] Barry Ritholtz: Oh, fair enough,

[00:57:41] Heather Boneparth: Fair enough. My life was like watching like this fall

[00:57:43] Doug Boneparth: Out.

[00:57:43] Heather Boneparth: We watch a lot of sci-fi. Yeah. Fallout is our, is our comfort.

[00:57:47] Barry Ritholtz: Have you guys seen Three Body Problem? The book?

[00:57:49] Doug Boneparth: No. I, I caught it. I didn’t, we didn’t go there. We love a lot of postapocalyptic type stuff. We watch

[00:57:55] Heather Boneparth: A lot

[00:57:56] Doug Boneparth: Of apocalyptic Silo, Fallout. Those types of shows really, really take us there. I know.

[00:57:59] Barry Ritholtz: Try, try Three Body Problem. I think it’s Apple TV. I don’t remember. But it was really, it was really worth seeing. Final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career in fill in the blank? Journalism, legal practice, financial planning.

[00:58:17] Doug Boneparth: Yeah. If we’re talking personal finance and financial planning, you’re playing a long game here. Give yourself, like, if you’re gonna figure out how to get this career going, figure out how to survive for like five, seven plus years. It’s just gonna take that kind of time to actually mature as a person in your life. So find out how to do that. Play long game. This isn’t a 1, 2, 3 year learning curve. It’s like a five to seven year learning curve.

[00:58:40] Heather Boneparth: Huh? Keep a list of your wins, keep a, keep a running list of everything good you do. And all the value that you bring to your organization. Carry that with you because being your own self-advocate is more important now than ever.

[00:58:53] Barry Ritholtz: Huh. And I, I have heard women say that’s especially important for them. Critical versus men blundering into things full of self, undeserved, self-confidence. And women often don’t apply. Let me mansplain sexism to you. Women also often I’ve had a lot of women tell me they haven’t applied for things ’cause they think, yep, I don’t check every box. Yeah. Out of 10 I have eight. And a dude

[00:59:19] Heather Boneparth: Tell is

[00:59:19] Barry Ritholtz: Like, I have three, but how hard can it be,

[00:59:21] Heather Boneparth: Be I can’t tell you how many men I know have fallen up in their careers. Right. While women have told themselves that they aren’t qualified for a position. So yes, keeping a running list and finding a way to art, to, to really articulate package that and show your value.

[00:59:34] Barry Ritholtz: And, and our final question, what do you know about the world of financial planning, investing couples money therapy today might have been useful. You know, back in 20 years ago when you guys were really first ramping up,

[00:59:49] Heather Boneparth: Understanding that time and money are inextricably linked concepts and how we spend our time is a currency when we talk. So much of this work that we did is about how we allow for couple equity at home to create greater, greater, sorry, greater equity for women out in the world in particular. And the link between time and money I love that is, is critical.

[01:00:10] Barry Ritholtz: I love that.

[01:00:11] Doug Boneparth: Fair doesn’t mean equal.

[01:00:13] Barry Ritholtz: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Solid

[01:00:14] Doug Boneparth: 50 50. Probably not a practical approach to everything you do in life. Find out what your split is. There are many couples out there who are happy with 80 20, 70 30. It works for them. What doesn’t work is when you’re not talking about it, to find out what fairness is in your relationship. That has helped us out a great deal in the last few years. Guys,

[01:00:32] Barry Ritholtz: This has been absolutely fascinating. We have been speaking with Heather and Douglas Boneparth, authors of the book Money Together. If you enjoy this conversation, well check out any of the 600 we’ve done over the past 12 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube, wherever you get your favorite podcast. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the crack staff that helps with these conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. I’m Barry Ritholtz. You’ve been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

 

~~~

 

 

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My back-to-work morning train WFH reads:

• Three economists grabbed a beer. A multibillion-dollar industry was born. The origin of the predictive markets business can be traced to an Iowa City bar in 1988. (NBC News)

• Why a ‘K-Shaped’ Economy Means More Risk for Stock Investors: Analysts say a stumble in the stock market could spell trouble for consumer spending and economic growth. That makes for a fragile balance. (Morningstar) see also Gen Z, Locked Out of Home Buying, Puts Its Money in the Market: The share of young people transferring funds to investment accounts has climbed steeply over a decade (Wall Street Journal)

• Box Spreads as a Borrowing Alternative to Margin Loans and SBLOCs: Kitces breaks down how sophisticated investors are using options box spreads to borrow at near-Treasury rates — and why it’s becoming a serious alternative to margin loans and securities-backed lines of credit. (Kitces)

• Yale’s Famed Investing Model Falters at a Fraught Time for Colleges: Many copied the Ivy League school’s bets on private equity and other illiquid investments. Now, plain old stocks and bonds are outperforming. (Bloomberg)

• Target makes drastic workforce shift to fix customer experience: Target is making major workforce changes to improve the customer experience after recent controversies and CEO transition. (The Street)

• The Existential AI Threat Is Here — and Some AI Leaders Are Fleeing: Some of the people building the most powerful AI systems are starting to quietly step away, spooked by what they’re seeing. When the builders get scared, maybe the rest of us should pay attention. (Axios) but see Meet the One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI Morals: A profile of Amanda Askell, the philosopher shaping how Claude thinks about ethics. It turns out teaching an AI right from wrong is less about rules and more about judgment calls — not unlike raising a very fast child. (Wall Street Journal)

• The Robot Revolution Is Real. Tesla Stock and More Ways to Play It. Once the purview of science fiction, automatons are getting closer to reality. Humanoid robots are moving from sci-fi to factory floors, and Barron’s lays out the investment case across Tesla, Nvidia, and the automakers. (Barron’s)

• EPA Reverses Long-Standing Climate Change Finding, Stripping Its Own Ability to Regulate Emissions: The EPA reversed its endangerment finding on greenhouse gases — the legal foundation for virtually all federal climate regulation. The agency essentially declared it no longer believes its own science. (NBC News) see also Renewables Soar Globally Despite US Climate Pullback: The rest of the world is racing ahead on clean energy even as the U.S. pulls back. Global renewable capacity surged to record levels, and the economics keep getting harder to argue with. (Semafor)

• “You Up???” Inside Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein’s Disturbingly Close Friendship The Epstein files reveal an 18-month alliance between Bannon and the disgraced financier built on mutual interest in shaping world events and politics, complete with hours of recorded interviews for a documentary that never materialized. The surprisingly cozy relationship between MAGA’s chief strategist and the convicted sex trafficker — including the texts. (Vanity Fair)

• The Lost Art of Sharing a Bottle: “When we opt out of rituals that foster closeness, we’re not just avoiding alcohol, we’re often avoiding connection itself. If staying home and not going out is weakening your social ties, that hurts you physiologically in other ways.” (Wine Enthusiast)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparth, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

A bullish broadening, in which the mega caps take a rest while the broader market breaks out

Source: Jurrien Timmer, Fidelity Investments

 

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My three-day weekend reads:

• Why a ‘K-Shaped’ Economy Means More Risk for Stock Investors: The wealthy are propping up consumer spending thanks to a multi-year bull run, while lower earners pinch pennies. That creates a fragile circular dynamic — if stocks stumble, spending drops, and the whole thing unwinds fast. (Morningstar) see also Older Americans power a gray-shaped economy: Forget K-shaped, try gray-shaped: Boomers aren’t just aging — they’re reshaping the entire labor market. Health care job growth is booming, the retirement wave is accelerating, and the economy is increasingly being built around serving people over 65. The changing demographics in the U.S. — more old people, fewer young ones — are reshaping jobs and spending in all kinds of ways. (Axios)

• The Mega-Rich Are Turning Their Mansions Into Impenetrable Fortresses: Anxiety over high-profile violence has the wealthy spending big on armed security, bunkers and even moats to keep themselves safe from intruders. (Wall Street Journal)

• Who Is Paying the Trump Tariffs? Until recently the question of who pays tariffs wasn’t controversial among economists. The overwhelming consensus was that under normal circumstances tariffs — taxes on imported goods — are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. There are caveats and exceptions to this consensus, but these caveats are well understood and for the most part don’t apply to the tariffs imposed by the Trump 47 administration. (Paul Krugman) see also How a supplier of nuts and bolts could curb Trump’s tariff overreach: A new lawsuit reveals how businesses are forced to navigate an opaque and arbitrary system. (Washington Post)

• $185 billion is the down payment — the 4 skills that survive when agents code for months The infrastructure bubble for AI is actually just a down payment, and only a handful of human skills will remain valuable as AI agents become more capable autonomous workers. Here’s what changed and what it means for your career (Nate’s Newsletter / Substack)

• The British Are Furious at Donald Trump Over Chicken. They Actually Have a Pretty Good Point. The UK’s “chlorinated chicken” panic is back — Trump is pressuring Britain to accept American poultry in exchange for a tech deal, and 150,000 Brits have signed petitions to keep it out. It’s part food safety fight, part cultural identity crisis. (Slate)

• This venture capital firm believes investing in climate is ‘Obvious’—and just raised another $360 million to prove it: Obvious Ventures managing director Andrew Beebe tells ‘Fast Company’ why now’s a great time to be backing climate tech, the trendy idea he’s glad the Trump administration is killing, and why he’s still optimistic for the future of the planet. (Fast Company)

• Gallup Will No Longer Measure Presidential Approval After 88 Years: The most-cited barometer of presidential job performance since FDR is being retired. Gallup says it’s a strategic shift in research priorities. The timing — with Trump’s approval at a historic low of 36% — is purely coincidental, of course. (The Hill) see also Poll: Trump’s Ratings on Immigration Tumble as Americans Lose Confidence in His Top Issue: The one issue that was supposed to be Trump’s ace in the hole is now underwater. Americans are losing confidence in his handling of immigration, even among Republican-leaning voters. (NBC News)

• AI Helps Scam Centers Evade Crackdown in Asia, Dupe More Victims: Scam operations across Southeast Asia are using AI to scale up fraud, outsmart law enforcement, and target more victims than ever. (Bloomberg)

• The Bay Area’s most unlikely landmark: A 125-year-old light bulb that’s still burning: A typical light bulb can last about a year. The one hanging from the ceiling at Fire Station No. 6 in Livermore has lasted more than a century. The Centennial Light Bulb, as it’s known, has been glowing almost continuously since 1901. In June, it’s expected to reach its 125-year mark. Time has turned a simple light fixture into one of the Bay Area’s head-scratching curiosities. (San Francisco Chronicle)

• TV, It’s Not Just for Humans Anymore: Videos aimed at pets are drawing millions of views. But who’s actually watching? (New York Times)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparth, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office

Source: Science

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Why the Traditional Media No Longer Serves Our Needs
The Truth Matters, Chapter 1
Bruce Bartlett
Bartlett’s Notations, Feb 09, 2026

 

 

 

 

With the decimation of the Washington Post newsroom by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the crisis of the media seems to have reached an apex. I saw this coming in 2017 and wrote a book about it: The Truth Matters. Since I believe that the message of the book still resonates, I’ve decided to serialize it here on Substack. It’s a short book so it shouldn’t occupy too much of your time. Following is chapter one.

Key points:

· The fairness doctrine was obsolete and cannot be revived.

· Conservatives were underserved for many years by traditional media.

· Progressives were slow to embrace new media such as talk radio.

People have never been happy with the news media, always blaming it for lying, misinforming and being unfair to one side or the other. Thomas Jefferson expressed views on this subject that many people today no doubt would share. In an 1807 letter to John Norvell, Jefferson said,

To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day….

I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

The complaint that the news media have a built-in bias is an old one and there is truth in it. The major media have long been based in our major cities where people naturally tend to be more socially liberal. That has been one of the great attractions for living in cities rather than small towns and rural areas that tend to be socially conservative. Additionally, it’s a fact that people with a liberal disposition have tended to gravitate toward journalism as a profession, while conservatives gravitate elsewhere.

Media consolidation also tended to make it more liberal. In any town with more than one newspaper, one would usually be conservative if only for competitive reasons. Partisan affiliation and ideological compatibility in editorials, news judgement and among columnists was one reason people subscribed to a particular paper. But as newspapers have closed, those with a conservative bent tended to be the first to go because they were usually the afternoon papers. Those with no competition tend toward bland mushiness when it comes to politics.

Radio and television have always tended to be more even-handed because news presentation focused on breaking stories where audio or video was available. It didn’t lend itself to commentary or editorializing. Moreover, there was a government rule called the fairness doctrine that required both sides to be presented when political endorsements were made or opinions expressed. But the main effect of this rule was to discourage the presentation of any opinions at all, rather than waste precious air time presenting alternative viewpoints.

In 1987, the fairness doctrine was abolished. Many rue this day as the one when fairness itself began to disappear from the media. But the fairness doctrine never applied to the print media and it was already clear by 1987 that cable—CNN went on the air in 1980—was ushering in a new era of news coverage. It was untenable to maintain restrictions on over-the-air media that didn’t apply to print publications or cable. It’s likely that the fairness doctrine would have been struck down by the courts if it wasn’t repealed.

It is indisputable, however, that abolition of the fairness doctrine gave rise to talk radio. Developments in the radio market were also critical; the AM band had been suffering for years as the FM band was better suited to music. Rush Limbaugh was the first to recognize that the end of the fairness doctrine meant that he could do an entire show devoted to nothing but expressing his opinions, of which he had many, all strongly felt and vigorously expressed. The AM band was well-suited to talk and was cheaper than employing disk jockeys to curate music selections.

It’s perhaps an accident of history that a strong conservative like Limbaugh was first to recognize the political potential of talk radio. It was probably also true that conservatives were underserved by the liberal sameness of conventional journalism at the time. At least in his early years, Limbaugh was a genuine news source, giving national attention to stories, research and viewpoints that were hard to find elsewhere. Before him, the only national publications with a broad reach that reflected a conservative bent were the Wall Street Journal and Reader’s Digest.

Limbaugh’s success led to the creation of Fox News by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, based on a vision long nurtured by Republican media guru Roger Ailes. With most television tilting a bit to the left, they cleverly positioned Fox in the middle of the political spectrum, which made it slightly to the right of its competitors.

The enormous financial success of conservative talk radio and Fox News stimulated growth of a vast conservative media network. Meanwhile, efforts to copy its success by progressives have uniformly failed. No one is quite sure why; it may be that those on the left are inclined to be satisfied with the traditional mainstream media. The problem is that it is dying a slow death. Something will replace it, we don’t know what just yet. Many analysts believe that virtually all print publications will disappear in a few years.

It may be that progressives have more to gain from developing new methods of acquiring news and information than conservatives, who seem very satisfied with the availability of compatible news and views on Fox, talk radio and the internet. But conservatives should avoid complacency. By having a closed-loop of news sources, they are more prone to deception by charlatans peddling conspiracy theories, fake news and extreme views far outside the mainstream. These are likely to be political albatrosses in the future.

In the long run, political parties and movements are best served by truth, accuracy and responsible news reporting. It may be that this needs to be subsidized in some way. The federal government has long done this by giving newspapers and magazines subsidized mailing rates; and radio and television stations were given extremely valuable spectrum for literally nothing. Legal requirements that certain public notices be published in local newspapers is another sort of government subsidy. Given the importance of a well-informed electorate to the functioning of democracy, it is not unreasonable to think that market forces alone may be inadequate to the job.

One idea I have had is to allow foundations and other groups to endow reporting positions at news organizations as has long been common for university professorships. Something like this is already being done at the Boston Globe, where local nonprofits are subsidizing the cost of employing a music critic, with the paper retaining full editorial control over the critic’s work.

~~~ About Bruce Bartlett:

Bruce Bartlett is a longtime observer and commenter on economic and political affairs in Washington, D.C., who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, and many others. A bestselling author, his latest book is The Truth Matters: A Citizen’s Guide to Separating Facts From Lies and Stopping Fake News in Its Tracks.

His prior writings on the Big Picture are here,

@BruceBartlett

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Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:

• Carl Sagan’s 9 timeless lessons for detecting baloney: Carl Sagan’s baloney detection kit taught us how to separate good science from the work of charlatans. In 2026, that matters more than ever. (Big Think)

• One Generation Runs the Country. The Next Cashed In on Crypto. The Trump sons have made billions in cryptocurrency while their father reshapes the regulatory landscape, but their investors didn’t always fare so well.  Nothing to see here… (Wall Street Journal) see also Binance—Whose Founder Was Pardoned—Now Holds 87% Of Trump’s Stablecoin: Binance holds about 87% of USD1, the stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture—a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange—underscoring the depth of the financial relationship between Binance, whose founder Trump pardoned in October, and World Liberty Financial, which already has added an estimated $1 billion to President Donald Trump’s net worth. (Forbes)

• Divorce, Hedge-Fund Style: Inside the Breakup at Two Sigma: A rancorous divorce, a feud between billionaires and the future of a trading powerhouse. (Bloomberg)

• Intelligence Dispute Centers on Kushner Reference in Intercepted Communication: A whistle-blower has accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of blocking distribution of a report that Jared Kushner’s name came up in an intercepted communication about Iran. (New York Times)

• Immigration Raids in South Texas Are Starting to Hit the Economy: The economic consequences of mass deportation raids are becoming visible in border communities. Businesses are struggling to find workers, farms are going unplanted, and the economic toll of mass deportation is becoming impossible to ignore. Trade groups are raising alarms about aggressive immigration enforcement hurting businesses in the region  (Wall Street Journal) see also A Raid in a Small Town Brings Trump’s Deportations to Deep-Red Idaho: Deportation operations are no longer limited to blue-state cities; deep-red communities are feeling the impact. Even ruby-red communities are feeling the shock of aggressive immigration enforcement when it arrives on their doorstep. Wilder, Idaho, prided itself on comity. Then federal agents stormed a racetrack outside of town in October, and the reverberations are still shaking the community (New York Times)

• The Misleading Chartcrime That Killed the ACA Subsidies: One bad chart made the rounds in Congress and helped justify gutting health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans. GOP leaders cited data from a Trump-aligned think tank to argue the ACA is “unaffordable”. Health economists say the numbers were spun and the full story tells the opposite. (Healthcare Uncovered / Substack)

• Uncle Sam Wants You! … to Eat “Chlorine Chicken”: The great chlorine-poultry panic of 2026 is upon us, and it’s Donald Trump’s fault. (Slate) see also How America Got So Sick: The health of a nation reflects the health of a democracy. Both are in trouble. (The Atlantic) see also Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak: Newly revealed emails undermine RFK Jr testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of measles outbreak. Kennedy later said the purpose of his trip had nothing to do with vaccines. US embassy and UN staff at the time said otherwise, emails show. (The Guardian)

• He Cyberstalked Teen Girls for Years—Then They Fought Back: How a hacker shamed and humiliated high school girls in a small New Hampshire town, and how they helped take him down. (Wired)

• Deadlier Than Gettysburg: How the cruelty of the Confederacy’s prison camps gave rise to the rules of war. (The Atlantic)

• US federal contractor hired white supremacist leader for wildfire relief: Ian Michael Elliott of neofascist Patriot Front worked ‘crisis relief missions’ funded by Department of Agriculture. US federal contractor hired white supremacist leader for wildfire relief: A federal contractor brought on the leader of the Patriot Front white supremacist group for wildfire recovery work. (The Guardian)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

Home price growth slowed to its weakest pace in more than a decade
Percent of Mortgages in Negative Equity are very high in Parts of Florida and Texas

Source: Calculated Risk

 

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~~~

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Valentine’s Day Special!

This week, I speak with Douglas and Heather Boneparth. Doug is the president of Bone Fide Wealth and Heather is the firm’s Director of Business and Legal Affairs and Chief Compliance Officer. They also discuss their new book “Money Together.” They discuss the challenges couples can face discussing their finances, why marriages with joint checking accounts tend to last well, and how to navigate money as a couple.

They discuss why in relationships, money issues are sometimes not about money, but something else.

A list of their current reading/favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Hilary Allen, Professor of Law at the American University Washington College of Law. She specializes in financial regulation, banking law, securities regulation, and technology law, with a particular focus on how new financial technologies like fintech, crypto, and AI intersect with financial stability and public policy.

 

 

 

Published Book

 

Current Reading/Favorite Books

 

Books Barry Mentioned

 

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The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Danish Blend coffee, grab a seat outside, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• Something Big Is Happening: Here’s the thing nobody outside of tech quite understands yet: the reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this already happened to us. We’re not making predictions. We’re telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you’re next A developer’s firsthand account of the step-change in AI coding capabilities and what it means for software engineering as a profession. (shumer.dev) see also The Doomsday Scenario for AI and Jobs: What are the strongest cases for it and against it? Derek Thompson on the biggest divide in his coverage of the economy — the growing possibility that AI displaces workers faster than new jobs can be created, and why even optimists should take the downside case seriously. (Derek Thompson)

• Inside the Booming Business of Monster Porn: Teratophiliacs were once a niche group that bonded over their sexual attraction to monsters in obscure forums. Now—as online communities proliferate and genres like romantasy grow—monster porn is going mainstream. (GQ)

• The Big Scary Myth Stalking the Stock Market: The concentration of the S&P 500 in a handful of mega-caps has everyone spooked, but the historical record suggests top-heaviness is more normal than you think. (Wall Street Journal) see also The Fallacy of Concentration: The academic paper making the rounds on why index concentration isn’t the risk everyone assumes it is. (SSRN)

• 26 Rules to Be a Better Thinker in 2026: Ryan Holiday’s annual list of mental models and Stoic-flavored advice for sharpening your thinking. (Ryan Holiday)

• Is inherited wealth bad? Despite associations with the idle rich, the fact that inheritances are rising is a sign of a healthy, growing economy. (Aeon)

• Betting Men: Inside Kalshi and Polymarket’s Bull Market: The CEOs of Kalshi and Polymarket Are Betting On the Most Hated Experiment in Business. Prediction markets entice enterprising nerds to make and lose fortunes by wagering on everything from politics to the weather. Here’s why they’re unstoppable—and only getting more powerful. The prediction market wars are heating up, with billions in weekly volume and a legal battle over whether these are financial instruments or just gambling with extra steps. (Vanity Fair) see also Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s  Prediction market bettors on Kalshi are proving just as accurate as professional forecasters at predicting economic indicators — and even better on inflation. Turns out the crowd has one big edge: they only bet when they’re confident, while the pros have to guess every month regardless. (New York Times)

• Are We Tripping? The next billion-dollar blockbuster drug could be a psychedelic. There’s just one problem. (Slate)

• Even a Decade of Accidental Shootings Hasn’t Slowed America’s Top Pistol Maker: For years, gun owners have been suing Sig Sauer for alleged design defects in its flagship handgun, the P320. The company’s solution is to ban the lawsuits.  (Businessweek)

• Learning About Longevity From Long-Lived Animals: The secrets to extending human lifespans might lie in the animals that can already live for centuries. What naked mole-rats, Greenland sharks, and immortal jellyfish can teach us about aging — and why the biology of extreme longevity is more complex than any supplement pitch. (Works in Progress)

• The ‘Harvard of Umpire Schools’ Closes as Changing Times Favor Tech Over Tradition: The last independently-run umpire school recognized by MLB is shutting down — a casualty of robo-umps and a sport that increasingly trusts sensors over human eyes. (The Athletic)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Heather & Doug Bonaparthe, a married couple who work together and wrote a book on the financial challenges couples face: “Money Together: How to find fairness in your relationship and become an unstoppable financial team.” Our discussion sits somewhere in between financial planning and couples therapy, built around real stories that try to help couples find a healthier approach to money.

 

The Global Cost of Living Index 2026

Source: Visual Capitalist

 

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