Welcome to Money for the rest of us. This is a personal finance show on money, how it works, how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it.

I'm your host David Stein. Today is episode 477. It's part one it's

part one of our national debt master class.

In the next three episodes of money for the rest of us

in conjunction with our 10th anniversary we wanted to

have an in-depth discussion of one of the greatest potential long-term risks for investors.

The U.S. national debt.

It's a topic we have covered over 15 times on the podcast.

And the reality is, my view and concern

regarding the national debt has changed in the past decade.

In the past 10 years, I estimate I've written and spoken at least 3 million words in conjunction with the money for the rest of us free

podcast plus episodes investment guides on the website the insiders guide

email newsletter and in one book.

That's equivalent to writing 50 books, five books a year.

With all that speaking and writing has allowed me to look at a specific topic such as the national debt from many different angles to go back

to it again and again trying to really understand the topic and get better at explaining it as I come to understand it.

For this National Debt series, I relistened to a number of the episodes we released on the topic to see what I said and whether it's

still applied. Those earlier episodes are helpful in setting the stage for

this National Debt Series. I want to share with you in part one, portions of

episode one and four from Money for the rest of us released in May 2014 as well as a

portion of episode 157 released in May 2017.

The audio has been remastered, although admittedly in 2017 my delivery was a little too intense.

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