Master Your Investments Once and For All
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It's me talking about Public again, obviously. Are you surprised? It is my favorite brokerage after all. By now you know Public is the only place I personally buy bonds. If you haven't heard my spiel, in the olden days I would buy treasuries through the government website and it would

always take forever. And also the branding was horrible. It kind of looked like the Toys R Us website back in the day. But with Public, it's simple and easy to invest in treasuries right from your phone. There are literally thousands of bonds to choose from on Public, not just government bonds, corporate bonds too. You can use Public for more than just your bond investments, of course. On Public, you can invest in stocks, ETFs, options,

crypto, and they even have a high yield cash account where you can earn 4.1% APY on your cash. And there's an exciting new offering on public that I cannot wait to tell you about. Now you can invest toward your future self through retirement accounts. On public, you can open a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA or both. I mean, why not?

If you're looking for a simple yet sophisticated investing experience, head over to public.com slash money rehab. One more time because trust you will thank me later. Public.com slash money rehab. This is a paid endorsement for public investing. Full disclosures and conditions can be found in the podcast description.

So I just used NerdWallet's Card Finder tool to find a better credit card for me, and listeners, this is genius. All you have to do is answer a few questions, and in minutes you'll get matched with recommendations tailored to you.

Some of these cards weren't even on my radar, but had the exact perks that I am looking to double down on. The best part? No research needed. The nerds already did that for us. So if you, like me, want to easily find the right card for you, head over to nerdwallet.com to get matched today. Disclaimer, terms and conditions apply. Credit products subject to lender approval. See nerdwallet.com for details.

I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. So tomorrow, my fifth book, The Money School, comes out. How crazy is that? And I don't write books just to write them. I promise. I keep writing them because the rules of the financial game keep changing. And I want you to not only be able to play, but

but to win. So this week, I'm going to share some financial strategies that I break down in the book. But first, let's talk about why I have to write all of these dang books in the first place. Like I said, it is the financial game that keeps changing, and it's all because of one key player, interest rates. When I wrote Rich Bitch and then Miss Independent, two of my previous books that talk about financial markets, interest rates were super low, like unnaturally low.

Changing interest rates by small percentages or fractions of a percent might not feel like a big deal, but it is the biggest of big deals in the financial world. To give you some context on this, interest rates were set to nearly zero after the housing crisis of 2008. This was done to try and prop up the economy because it was completely in the dumps. And then during the pandemic, when the dump caught fire, interest rates plummeted again.

Once things stabilized, as we all remember, the Fed then started picking interest rates up off the floor and interest rates got, quote, high. I put that in air quotes right now. I know you can't see that, but that's what people were saying. Interest rates are so high. And while they were high relative to COVID doomsday times of zero, I mean, the Fed got up to around 5.3 percent. It was nowhere near all time highs.

In the 1990s, interest rates were hovering around 5% too, but got as high as 10%. Then a decade before that, in the 80s, interest rates flirted with 20%. I mean, I'll say it again, 20 freaking percent. So if you got used to a world of rock bottom interest rates, it

It's time to snap out of it. It was a decision made by the Federal Reserve to keep us from financial Armageddon. Lowering interest rates is an emergency move, not the norm. The narrative generally is that higher interest rates are bad.

But that's an oversimplification. Sure, if you're a borrower looking to buy a home or to get a business loan, higher rates are not ideal because you'll be paying more on your loan in interest over time. But if you're an investor in high-interest-bearing vehicles or a savvy saver, this is excellent news for you because you will be earning more over time.

Interest rates are the heartbeat of the financial world and help us put our finger on the pulse of the best place for us to put our money. When rates are low, traditional savings accounts and fixed income investments offer modest returns, nudging us toward finding our higher yields in the stock market. This shift has led to a surge in stock market investments over the last 10 years, with average returns hovering around 9% after adjusting for inflation.

But when interest rates rise, the allure of investments like bonds and CDs increases. So higher interest rates aren't better than lower interest rates. They're just different. I know that sounds simple because it is. What's a little more complex is understanding that in different interest rate environments, you should be making different investing decisions. Or if that sounds too overwhelming, you should implement a strategy that can hold steady in different economic climates.

That is what I'll teach you how to do in my new book. In The Money School, I'll help you understand how the changing interest rates will change the game because rates will shift again. The only constant in life and on Wall Street is exactly that, change. So when, not if, it happens again, you'll be ready.

While the economy has and will evolve, solid investing principles haven't and won't. And no matter who you are or where you are in your investment journey, success starts with mastering those fundamentals. As you know, I didn't learn this stuff at home. I didn't learn it at school. And

I don't say this to brag because this and $5 will get me an oat milk latte, but I did really well in actual school, like really, really well. Like I was the valedictorian of my high school and my college well. But throughout my schooling and all of the excelling that I did in it, I never ever learned any basic financial lessons, any. I mean, I got a freaking college diploma with all the bells and whistles without ever learning what a stock or a bond is.

That should be illegal. The schools I went to didn't teach me anything like what you'll find in this book, and I doubt the schools you went to did either. I had to learn this stuff in the illustrious School of Hard Knocks. And during my deepest, darkest days when I was elbow deep in credit card debt or depressed and eating brown rice and beans because of

felt a little fancier than ramen, but was the same price. I desperately wanted to find a crash course to learn the practical money lessons to help me. But there wasn't one in plain English sans jargon. So I vowed that if I ever figured out how to get to the other side of my own financial fire, I would do everything I could to bring back buckets of water for those still caught in the flames.

The Money School is just that. It is packed with all of the information I wish someone had taught me when I was taking my first steps toward long-lasting financial freedom by investing in the financial markets.

In this book, I will be the professor that you never had and honestly, I never expected to be, but always needed. The Money School is divided into courses, four of them, with three lessons each, totaling 12 lessons altogether. And if you've read my other books, you know that this is my MO. In The Money School, the first course focuses on the stock market. That's where you'll learn about one of the most potent but also accessible forces in our financial system.

The second one zooms into debt, the good kind, where you own the debt, not owe it via CDs and bonds.

The third course steps it up with more exotic or advanced securities like commodities, currencies, and derivatives. And the final part wraps it all up with how you can make a portfolio to help you reach your own financial success as you define it. There is absolutely zero reason not to succeed in the money school, whether you were a good student in actual school or not. There are no tests that will require you to memorize gratuitous information or facts. There are no grades to stress your ego out over. You

You're just doing this for yourself, the smart, whole, extraordinary version that you are now and your even richer future self. You can shout from the social media rooftops that you're doing this, or you can keep it all to yourself, millionaire next door style. However you do it, it's totally up to you. It's all on the honor system anyway. If you cheat, you're only cheating on that really important person.

who really doesn't deserve that anymore. That's you. I wrote this book to help you avoid the money mistakes I made, and Lord knows I have made a lot, by not knowing how the stock market worked earlier. I wrote this book to show you that investing can give you the feeling of always having your own back.

I hope this book helps you forgive your former self for not knowing this stuff before. And I also hope that it helps you give your future self some tough love, knowing that past behaviors that didn't serve you are no longer acceptable. So with that, enjoy the next few episodes where I'll be sharing excerpts from my book that deep dive into these best practice financial strategies.

If you want more of these strategies, you can of course order my book. It is out tomorrow at the link in the episode description. And let me just say, if you buy my book, you are really supporting me and everything I'm building here.

I know you might think, with five books out, how much does my purchase actually matter? But let me tell you, it does. It really, truly does. It supports me and my team that helped me launch this thing. It builds my publisher's faith in me. And honestly, it just means a lot to me right now when my whole world has, you know, kind of fallen apart. So with that, the class is in session on Mastering Financial Markets and Investing.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, [email protected] to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram @moneynews and TikTok @moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

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