Student Loans, 50% Save Rates, and Being a Capitalist: JL Collins, Godfather of Financial Independence, Returns

The Money with Katie Show

Money with Katie

Self-improvement, Education, Business, Investing, How To

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The last time JL Collins joined me on the show (our most popular episode ever), we covered everything from millennial challenges, to his “VTSAX and Relax” approach, to lessons from his 2015 best-selling book, The Simple Path to Wealth. Now re-released a decade later with new insights, JL joins us again and we talk about: If the US Dollar still holds its reserve currency status—and what it means if it doesn't America’s student loan crisis and the myth of “good debt” The liberation of dramatically downsizing your living expenses Our culture of consumerism, and what might replace it We even had a civil dispute about capitalism (I’ll let you guess who played defense) and whether billionaires create jobs or jobs create billionaires Transcripts, show notes, production credits, and more can be found at: ⁠⁠http://moneywithkatie.com/jl-collins⁠. — 📙 ⁠⁠Preorder your copy⁠⁠ of Rich Girl Nation (out 6/10), and receive 3 free book bonuses! Money with Katie’s mission is to be the intersection where the economic, cultural, and political meet the tactical, practical, personal finance education everyone needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This message is brought to you by Apple Card.
0:03.2	Picture this. Somewhere in the world, an Apple card user is getting 3% daily cash back on the purchase of an iPhone 16 at Apple.
0:10.1	That's not all. They also earn 2% back on the new shoes they bought using Apple Pay.
0:15.0	Visit Apple.co.C.O. slash card calculator and see how much daily cash back you can earn.
0:20.1	Subject to credit approval,
0:21.2	Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms, and more at
0:24.9	applecard.com.
0:30.0	I think the real tragedy is if you come to the end of your life and you've struggled and you've
0:37.2	carried debt and you've
0:39.2	worked at jobs that are soul crushing or even just don't give you satisfaction, and then you
0:45.3	find out you could have not bought as many trinkets, then you find out you could have taken
0:51.3	some of that income you earned and bought assets and watched
0:56.0	your freedom in the process. That's tragic.
1:03.5	Given the market turmoil earlier this year, it's coincidental that J.L. Collins is releasing a new
1:10.1	edition of his bestseller, The Simple
1:12.2	Path to Wealth, a book which has sold nearly a million copies. Five years have passed since I read
1:19.2	it for the first time, and there has truly been no better time in recent memory for a reread.
1:26.1	This time, completely different sections of this book resonated with me.
1:31.5	So, for example, I learned that the Social Security Trust held in Treasury bonds is 7.8%
1:38.9	of the national deficit.
1:41.3	That is to say, the Social Security program is the beneficiary of the government
1:46.3	paying back 7.8% of our debt. And by comparison, China only owns about 2% of U.S. debt.
	...

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