In partnership with
Hey, it’s Dan (with my dad, Steve)
Here’s what we’re getting into today:
The advice we wish we could give our 18-year-old selves
The lessons we didn’t understand until our 30s
A quick, under-six-minute conversation packed with the stuff we had to learn the hard way
Let’s dive in 👇
📈 Time-Travel Lessons (Full Video)
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Quick Recap: What We’d Tell Our Younger Selves
18-Year-Old Steve
Finish high school.
Learn a trade or go to college with intention, not vibes.
Avoid student debt like it’s radioactive.
Don’t rush into marriage before you know who you are.
If you’re going to take risks, your late teens and early twenties are prime time.
Enjoy your life — it goes fast.
18-Year-Old Dan
Credit cards look friendly, but they bite. Pay them off every month.
Learn → Act → Fail → Repeat. That cycle builds the real skillset.
Don’t work for assholes. Life’s too short and your paycheck will be fine somewhere else.
30-Year-Old Steve
Keep debt low. Mortgage? Sure. Unnecessary loans? Not worth it.
Save 10% when you can — some years you won’t, and that’s fine.
And still: enjoy your life.
30-Year-Old Dan
The right partner builds you. The wrong one drains you. Choose wisely.
And yes… still don’t work for assholes.
Key Takeaways
Debt lingers longer than motivation.
Habits compound — good and bad.
The people you choose shape your entire trajectory.
You can start over at 18. You can also start over at 30.
A good life requires enjoyment, not just discipline.
Join the MBMC Community (Founding Member Invitation)
We’re building something here — a real community around money, life lessons, and the conversations you don’t usually get to have out loud.
And if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re part of the earliest group.
So here’s what we want to do:
The MBMC Community will be $5/month for everyone else (and eventually increase as we add more).
But the first 50 newsletter readers get lifetime access for free.
Founding members.
Locked in forever.
Inside the community, you’ll get:
Periodic live calls
Ask-the-Boomer sessions where you can throw questions directly at Steve
Q&A threads, breakdowns, follow-ups, and behind-the-scenes context
A growing library of resources as we build this thing out layer by layer
We’re in the early stages — shaping it, adding content, and getting feedback — and you’ll be part of the group that helps define what it becomes.
If you want your founding-member spot:
👉 Reply to this email with “I’m in.”
I’ll send your invite and mark your account as free-for-life.
But what can you actually DO about the proclaimed ‘AI bubble’? Billionaires know an alternative…
Sure, if you held your stocks since the dotcom bubble, you would’ve been up—eventually. But three years after the dot-com bust the S&P 500 was still far down from its peak. So, how else can you invest when almost every market is tied to stocks?
Lo and behold, billionaires have an alternative way to diversify: allocate to a physical asset class that outpaced the S&P by 15% from 1995 to 2025, with almost no correlation to equities. It’s part of a massive global market, long leveraged by the ultra-wealthy (Bezos, Gates, Rockefellers etc).
Contemporary and post-war art.
Masterworks lets you invest in multimillion-dollar artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso—without needing millions. Over 70,000 members have together invested more than $1.2 billion across over 500 artworks. So far, 23 sales have delivered net annualized returns like 17.6%, 17.8%, and 21.5%.*
Want access?
Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd
Wall Street Isn’t Warning You, But This Chart Might
Vanguard just projected public markets may return only 5% annually over the next decade. In a 2024 report, Goldman Sachs forecasted the S&P 500 may return just 3% annually for the same time frame—stats that put current valuations in the 7th percentile of history.
Translation? The gains we’ve seen over the past few years might not continue for quite a while.
Meanwhile, another asset class—almost entirely uncorrelated to the S&P 500 historically—has overall outpaced it for decades (1995-2024), according to Masterworks data.
Masterworks lets everyday investors invest in shares of multimillion-dollar artworks by legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso.
And they’re not just buying. They’re exiting—with net annualized returns like 17.6%, 17.8%, and 21.5% among their 23 sales.*
Wall Street won’t talk about this. But the wealthy already are. Shares in new offerings can sell quickly but…
*Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd.