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Money For the Rest of Us

Money for the Rest of Us is a personal finance and investing podcast on how money works, how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it.

Host J. David Stein spent 17 years at FEG Investment Advisors, where he was Chief Investment Strategist for a firm overseeing $15 billion. Since 2014, he has focused on helping individuals understand investing through podcasting, video, and writing.

Episodes cover stocks, bonds, alternative investments, asset allocation, expected returns, retirement income, asset location, inflation, interest rates, and the economic forces that drive financial markets. David explains how each investment works, what the risks are, and how each connects to the prevailing market narrative.

New numbered episodes come out twice a month, with bonus episodes in between. David is the author of Money for the Rest of Us: 10 Questions to Master Successful Investing (McGraw-Hill). Learn more about the show and Plus membership, with model portfolios and premium episodes, at moneyfortherestofus.com

Copyright: © All rights reserved

Latest Episodes:

10X Your Productivity While Doing Your Best Work Nov 11, 2026

Show notes

1. How to leverage general-purpose technologies to magnify your impact and produce your best work. 2. Why stocks could fall if AI fails to meet its lofty expectations, because earnings-per-share growth will disappoint.

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Show Notes

Episode 568 Slides

Ada Lovelace Already Answered the Big Questions About A.I. by Tala Schlossberg—The New York Times

How software engineering is changing: a tale of two eras by Gergely Orosz, Jessica Salmon, and Ivan Klaric—The Pragmatic Engineer

Transcript

Episode Transcript

Topics Include:

How to use AI to 10x your productivity and do your best work
Jeff Bezos at AWS re:Invent 2012: focus on what won't change
Building a 401(k) portfolio analysis tool with AI
AI as a general-purpose technology: Ada Lovelace and Licklider
How electricity, the internet and cell phones faded into the background
How many AI tokens does a heavy Claude user use per week?
What a $100 Claude Max plan really costs Anthropic
SpaceX's 6-gigawatt data center and AI power demand
Is there too much AI data center capacity? Chat vs. AI agents
Stock market risk: record analyst earnings growth forecasts
Fast earnings growth is followed by slower growth
How investors use AI: listener survey results
Ask the Archive: an AI chatbot built on our podcast archive - Why trusted sources matter for AI answers

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Stock Pickers Keep Losing, Who's Winning? Oct 28, 2026

Show notes

As indexing grows, active stock pickers are underperforming the market by increasingly large margins, even as their skill improves. In this episode, we explore why this is happening and consider whether active managers can outperform again. Finally, we explain how to position your portfolio using index funds and ETFs without overweighting the S&P 500 Index.

Topics include:

Why active fund managers keep underperforming
Michael Mauboussin's paradox of skill in investing
How much of the stock market do index funds own?
William Sharpe's arithmetic of active management
Why index funds still have to trade
Active vs. passive: stock pickers are lagging more than ever
How index fund flows hurt active managers (Unterberg study)
Example: how $100 of fund flows moves stock prices
Who buys the stocks active managers sell?
Do fund managers sell their best ideas during outflows?
Who sells shares to index funds? Companies and insiders
Will active management outperform again?
Will retiring baby boomers crash the stock market? 19:38 How to invest when index funds drive stock prices

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Show Notes

Episode 567 transcript

Sharpening the Arithmetic of Active Management by Lasse Heje Pedersen—SSRN

We Now Know Who Really Benefited from the Index Revolution by Aaron Brown—Bloomberg

The Investing Mind by Michael J. Mauboussin—Harriman House

Who Clears the Market When Passive Investors Trade? by Marco Sammon and John J. Shim—SSRN

Passive Flows, Active Woes: Passive Investing and the Decline of Active Mutual Fund Alpha by Hannah Unterberg—SSRN

Boomer Retirement: Headwinds for U.S. Equity Markets? by Zheng Liu and Mark M. Spiegel—Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Is Boomer Retirement Still Weighing Down U.S. Equity Markets? by Zheng Liu and Mark M. Spiegel—Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

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U.S. Stocks Might Not Be as Expensive as You Think Oct 21, 2026

Show notes

In this off-week bonus episode of Money for the Rest of Us, we look at the possibility that current U.S. stock valuations are justified and the market is not overvalued.

Topics covered include:

Two ways to measure P/E ratios and which is more accurate
How record profit margins are affecting P/E ratios
How concentration risk is at an all-time high for U.S. stocks
How the stock market's direction will depend on whether profit margins expand, contract, or stay the same.
Where to invest to reduce an overconcentration in U.S. stocks.

Episode Transcript

Slides, transcript, and show notes also at: https://moneyfortherestofus.com/.

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What If You Only Invested at Stock Market Peaks? Oct 14, 2026

Show notes

We analyze long-term stock returns when investing at market peaks and bottoms, and when stocks are cheap or expensive.

We also share what we think stocks will return over the next decade and why.

Finally, we simulate the investment outcomes for someone who invests $50 per week.

Episode Transcript

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Money for the Rest of Us Update and Survey Sep 30, 2026

Show notes

I provide a short update on Money for the Rest of Us and introduce our listener survey. All survey participants will get access to an exclusive podcast episode on my worst investing mistakes and what I learned.

Take the Money for the Rest of Us Listener Survey

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Small Gains, Big Losses: The Hidden Risk in Steady Income Sep 23, 2026

Show notes

In this episode, we explore why the income we earn isn't the same as the return. We show how option income strategies work, what their historical returns have been, what drives the return, and what reasonable return expectations are.

We show why option income strategies have a positive expected return while sports betting has a negative expected return.

Finally, we look at other areas where we confuse income with the total return.

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Show Notes

Episode slide deck

Variance Risk Premia by Peter Carr and Liuren Wu—NYU

Cross section of option returns and idiosyncratic stock volatility by Jie Cao and Bing Han—The Journal of Financial Economics

The Price of Correlation Risk: Evidence from Equity Options by Joost Driessen, Pascal J. Maenhout, Grigory Vilkov—SSRN

Cross-section of option returns and volatility by Amit Goyal and Alessio Saretto—The Journal of Financial Economics

The Art of Put Selling: A 10 Year Study by John Marshall, Krag Gregory, Katherine Fogertey—Goldman Sachs

Low Stress Bets

Related Episodes

557: Don’t Fall in the Dividend Trap

549: Why Catastrophe Bonds Are Yielding 12%, and Should You Invest?

544: Sports Betting Is Not Investing

Article: Tail Events and Tail Risk

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The Financial System Will Be Hacked and How to Prepare For It Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

Bad actors will use AI to disrupt the financial system, transportation networks, and utilities. We should prepare now for this inevitability. We share how in this episode. We also explain why the bull market in gold will likely continue.

Topics covered include:

Why the OpenAI agentic AI breach is so disturbing
How do we prepare for cyberattacks
Why gold should be one of the assets we hold apart from the financial system
How the historical relationship between gold and real interest rates has broken down
To what extent are central banks selling dollars to buy gold
How gold ETF flows influence the gold price

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Show Notes

Episode 564 Slide Deck with Charts

Gold's Run Isn't Yet Done - Bhanu Baweja - Financial Times

Brief independent investigation of agents’ behavior, reasoning and collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face hacking incident

Are Central Banks Moving Out of Dollar Assets? - Linda S. Goldberg, Oliver Hannaoui, and Sneha Parthasarathy - Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Related Episodes

541: Debasement Fears or Meme Fever? What’s Driving the Gold and Silver Rally

563: Why Interest Rates Keep Rising and What to Do About It

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Bond Market Chaos: Why Interest Rates Keep Rising and What to Do About It Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

The national debt exceeds $40 trillion, U.S. long-term Treasury yields are at 19-year highs, the U.S. Treasury Department is intervening in currency and bond markets. We unpack it all in this episode and show you how to position your investment portfolio to lock in higher yields and protect yourself from falling bond prices.

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Show Notes

Episode 563 Slide Deck

Debt to the Penny - U.S. Treasury

Historical debt and budget tables - U.S. White House

Average U.S. national debt interest rate - U.S. Treasury

Treasury Announces Increased Sizes of Nominal Long-End Liquidity Support Buybacks Beginning September 9 - U.S Treasury

America’s Risky Debt: What Markets See That Policymakers Don’t - Hanno Lustig

Related Episodes

525: No More AAA – What the U.S. Debt Downgrade Means for Investors

463: How to Lock in Higher Yields

464: More Ways to Lock in Higher Yields

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5 Steps to Simplify Your Investment Portfolio Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

What are the steps to simplify your portfolio, given that it is likely spread across multiple accounts? We focus particularly on retirees, who have to weigh additional considerations like withdrawals, Roth conversions, and required minimum distributions.

We also explore which areas of the stock and bond markets are attractive right now as you seek to simplify and/or rebalance your portfolio.

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Show Notes and Related Content

A Complete Guide to Investing in I Bonds and TIPS (2026)

550: Asset Location: Where You Invest, Where You Live, What You Can Access

Free Investment Strategy Report

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Money for the Rest of Us Plus

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How to Navigate the AI Debt Bubble Jul 29, 2026

Show notes

We explore the expected size of AI-related debt, which vehicles hold it, what could go wrong, and how to protect yourself.

Topics covered include:

How AI capex boom compares to other large booms and busts
What fixed income vehicles hold AI-linked debt
What mechanisms are being used to transfer AI-debt risk.
How circular finance is contributing to the AI infrastructure buildout
What could go wrong with the AI infrastructure buildout that could lead to losses on AI-related debt
How to tell what exposure you have to AI debt

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Money for the Rest of Us Plus

Show Notes

AI debt slide deck used for episode

RBC Weighs $2 Billion Risk Transfer to Hedge Data Center-Linked Loans by Esteban Duarte and Paula Sambo—Bloomberg

Hyperscalers Tap External Financing as AI Capex Outruns Cash Flow—FactSet Insight

What History Tells Us About The AI Investment Boom by Larry Swedroe—Financial Advisor

Goldman Sachs Warns on AI’s Debt Tsunami — Is This the End of the AI Boom? by Rich Duprey—Yahoo! Finance

Progress and peril by Pablo Hernández de Cos—BIS

The Opportunities and Risks AI Presents for the Economy and Financial System by Governor Lisa D. Cook—The Federal Reserve

Financial Stability Report by The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System—The Federal Reserve

Financing the AI infrastructure boom: on- and off-balance sheet borrowing by Egemen Eren, Ingomar Krohn and Karamfil Todorov—BIS

How AI debt financing impacts duration supply and interest rates by Hugo De Vere, Srini Ramaswamy and Seth Searls—Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

US Life Insurers Held $807 Billion of Hard-to-Sell Credit by Alexandre Rajbhandari—Bloomberg

Insurers are funding AI infrastructure – NAIC wants to know if the ratings hold up by Paul Lucas—Insurance Business

US Corporate Bonds Statistics—sifma

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