On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey are joined by Nick Maggiulli. Nick is the chief operating officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management and founder of the financial blog Of Dollars and Data. His new book, The Wealth Ladder, comes out next week.

Nick kicks off the show by discussing The Wealth Ladder, including the six different levels of wealth and why income is a more crucial factor to building wealth than behavior. He also talks about jobs that will be a safe haven once artificial intelligence ("AI") becomes more prevalent, the mistakes people make when buying income-producing assets, the importance of diversification, and why he prefers to invest in index funds...

If you had put all your money in Nvidia 10 years ago, you'd be doing quite well today. But for every Nvidia that has done well, there's so many other stocks that haven't. And so, really, diversification matters so much. Like I'm benefiting from Nvidia because I own it through an index fund. And that's how I think most people should be investing... I think the vast majority of their wealth should be indexed.

Next, Nick goes in depth on the spending mistakes people make that prevent them from moving up to a higher wealth level. He touches on diversification again, using Elon Musk versus Bill Gates as an example. Plus, he covers the different strategies for different wealth levels, why it's important to still focus on the nonfinancial things in life, statistical data for whether money can buy happiness, and the significance of money being a quantifiable thing...

Money is the most measurable thing. Like we can all open our bank-account app on our phone right now and there's going to be some number there... Anyone can tell you their bank balance. Not everyone can tell you their cardiovascular fitness or [how strong their relationship with their family or children or spouse is] because all these other things are not quantifiable. It's very easy to focus on the quantifiable thing. Money has created a very simple game for humans.

Finally, Nick discusses the things that financially successful people may be overlooking, why the strategy for success may vary on a case-by-case basis, and the different levels of spending freedom. He says that level two allows freedom in the grocery store, level three allows freedom at restaurants, and level four allows freedom for traveling. And he shares a handy formula for people to use when it comes to nonessential spending...

The idea is, your wealth is generating a certain amount every day. Let's just make an assumption. I assume that's 0.01% per day, which, on an annualized basis, you do that 365 days in a row. And that's roughly 3.7%, which is a conservative annual return, right? So if you assume that's true, throwing [off this amount of wealth is] like a trivial amount of money to you.

Click here or on the image below to watch the video interview with Nick right now. For the full audio, including Dan and Corey's post-interview thoughts, click "Listen" above.

Additional past episodes are located here.)

The transcript is coming soon.

This Week's Guest

Nick Maggiulli is the chief operating officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management and author of two books: Just Keep Buying and The Wealth Ladder. Before joining Ritholtz, Nick worked in litigation consulting and data analytics. In 2017, he founded the successful financial blog Of Dollars and Data. His work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Money magazine, and on CNBC. Nick graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in economics.