Joseph Moore: Why Timeless Financial Advice Eventually Breaks

Sometimes you have to write the book you want to read. As the 2008 financial crisis was beginning to drag millions of homeowners underwater, Joseph Moore took a personal finance class at his church. He realized that conventional wisdom about renting versus owning had put his family in a dangerous spot. "We sold our house on a Saturday," Joseph remembers. "Our neighbor put her house on the market the next Saturday. It never sold. We were the last two people off the Financial Titanic in 2008." Then a light went on in Joseph's historian brain. He wasn't the only person who followed advice like "renting is throwing away money" to poor financial decisions. But while there are countless biographies about the Rockefellers of the world, no one writes books about the folks on Main Street and the strategies that have -- and haven't -- helped them build wealth throughout history. Joseph spent the next ten years writing that book, the national bestseller How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't. On today's show, Joseph and I unpack three centuries of economic booms, busts, and shifting paradigms that have defined how Americans think about growing their money.