Money Lessons with Andrew Temte, PhD, CFA

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy treats a new skill the way he'd treat any other investment: what it costs, what it returns, and when to make it. 

He defines skill gap, upskilling, and reskilling; explains why skills go stale, with the World Economic Forum's finding that workers can expect 39 percent of their skills to be transformed or outdated by 2030; and works through a $3,000 certificate step by step, counting the money, the hours, and the years the skill will keep earning. 

Fun fact: an employer with an educational-assistance plan can pay up to $5,250 a ye...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy asks whether the work you're paid for fits the purpose you have — and what it costs you when it doesn't. 

He defines purpose, alignment, misalignment, and golden handcuffs, then prices misalignment three ways in dollars: disengagement that lets your skills fade, golden handcuffs that make leaving a calculation instead of a feeling, and drift that keeps your human capital from growing. 

Gallup's newest numbers are here, including the fun fact that low engagement cost the world economy about $10 trillion in 2025. 

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy turns from what you earn this year to what you can earn over a working life. 

He defines human capital — the competence, experience, and health an employer or customer will pay for — and measures it against the asset most families count as their largest, home equity. 

Drawing on the Federal Reserve's survey of family finances, Georgetown's lifetime-earnings estimates, and the World Bank's wealth accounts, he shows why earning power is the largest asset most people will ever own, even though it never appears on a personal balance sheet. 

H...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy turns to the earners the pay stub episodes left out: the self-employed, the independent contractor, and the side gig. 

He defines the five terms that matter — self-employed, the 1099, net earnings, self-employment tax, and estimated payments — and works through the tax bill on the same $50,000 last week's employee earned, so listeners hear what happens when both halves of Social Security and Medicare land on the self employed. 

A trip back to 1943 explains why the self-employed still pay the way every American once did, and why the IRS wants four paymen...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy adds up what a job is worth beyond the salary: the employer's share of the health premium, the employer's half of Social Security and Medicare, and the retirement match. 

He follows one employee earning $50,000 and shows that total compensation comes to $63,100, and $750 less when a default contribution rate leaves half the match uncollected. Along the way he defines vesting, points to the one line on a W-2 that shows what your health coverage costs, and shares the Bureau of Labor Statistics finding that benefits are 30 percent of what private employers s...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explains how the federal income tax is calculated, starting with four definitions every taxpayer needs: taxable income, the tax bracket, the marginal rate, and the effective rate. 

He works a single filer's 2026 tax one bracket at a time to show why someone in the 22 percent bracket pays about 13 percent, and why a raise never leaves you with less after tax. 

From there he explains how an employer estimates withholding every payday, why a refund is your own money coming back without interest, and how the Form W-4 lets yo...

In this special edition of Money Lessons, Andy takes the national debt's crossing of forty trillion dollars on August 18 and explains what the number is made of — the debt held by the public, and the money the federal government owes its own trust funds. 

He shows why interest now takes eighteen and a half cents of every dollar the government collects, and why "we'll grow our way out" and "inflation will take care of it" are the same answer. 

Ray Dalio's three-percent deficit target anchors the arithmetic, and the 2026 Trustees Reports show where the pressure land...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy reads a pay stub for the lines most people skip past. 

He sorts every deduction into two types — the ones the law requires and the ones you elected, usually in the paperwork on your first day — and explains why a health premium, an HSA, and a retirement contribution come out of your pay before your taxes are figured, and why the federal taxes don't all treat those deductions the same way. 

Along the way he clears up the most common misunderstanding on the stub: the Social Security line is a t...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy supplies the vocabulary behind three weeks of teaching on habits, defaults, and friction. 

Herbert Simon — who was never an economist — challenged his era's assumption that buyers decide with complete information, and won a Nobel Prize for finding those limits inside companies before anyone thought to look for them in customers. 

Richard Thaler named the arrangement of options in front of you choice architecture, and a decade after publishing Nudge with Cass Sunstein, he coined sludge for friction pointed at the person who has to get through it. 

Andre...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy turns from the money machinery listeners build themselves to the machinery that gets installed before they arrive. 

He starts with the default — what happens if you do nothing — and shows how much of a household's money moves according to settings that somebody at a company chose in advance. 

The workplace retirement plan serves as the rare example of a default that works in the saver's favor, along with a caution that plenty of employers are still exempt from it. 

From there he takes up friction, the effort...

In this special edition of Money Lessons, Andy takes on a question that sits underneath most of personal finance: why change is so hard. 

A complaint about his band's setlist leads to the research on why musical taste is set around age fourteen — and to the study showing that appetite for financial risk locks in the same way, set by whatever the markets were doing when a person first had money in play. 

Neither one was a decision. Both feel like one.

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy opens up the machinery that moves money out of a household without ever passing through a decision. 

He starts with the narrow definition psychologists use for the word "habit" — a behavior repeated in the same surroundings until conscious decision-making drops out — and walks through the 2002 wristwatch studies that measured how often people's minds were somewhere else while they acted. 

He makes the case that habits are not a character defect but a feature that buys back mental energy, then shows why the same mechanism that makes a habit useful...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy turns from the map of your personal economy to the thing that moves money across it — decisions. 

He explains why good and bad decisions never arrive in the same size, and why one large mistake can undo a decade of quiet good ones. 

The centerpiece is present bias, the mental shortcut that treats anything happening right now as far more important than the same thing months from now, illustrated by a study of 7,752 health club members who left roughly six hundred of every fourteen hundred dollars on the tabl...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy launches a brand-new series on personal financial management by drawing the map: the six jobs your money has — earn, spend, borrow, protect, grow, and give. 

He explains why spending feels so effortless in a consumer-driven economy where household spending makes up about 68 percent of everything the U.S. produces in a year. Along the way, he introduces the idea that will guide the entire series: managing your money is stewardship of your own small economy, held in trust for your future self and the people who count on you. 

Th...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy closes the series on equity by turning to the hardest part of owning stocks: holding on. 

He explains why volatility is the price investors pay for the equity risk premium, and why the market's steepest falls and sharpest recoveries tend to arrive back to back — which is what makes market timing a losing game. 

He looks at the evidence that the more investors trade, the less they tend to keep, and at how modern trading apps are built to encourage the very activity that erodes long-run returns. 

#fi...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy makes the long-run case for owning stocks — why, over a lifetime, equities have rewarded the patient owner. 

He unpacks the equity risk premium, the extra return stocks have paid over bonds and cash since 1928, and shows how compounding turns that yearly edge into life-changing wealth. 

Andy closes with direct advice for young investors — start early, invest steadily, and give compounding the decades it needs to build the wealth a last-minute scramble never can. It's a lesson about patience, access, and the quiet power of starting now.

Andrew...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy widens the map beyond American markets to make the case for owning international stocks. 

He explains home-country bias — the natural pull to invest only in the companies of your own country — and points out that more than a third of the world's stock market value sits outside the United States. 

Andy walks through the two practical ways an ordinary investor can own foreign companies: broad international index funds and ETFs, and American Depositary Receipts, or ADRs, for a single overseas company.  

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy answers a question he has been holding since last year: if your stock trades are free, how does a broker make its money? 

He explains payment for order flow — the arrangement where your broker sells your order to a wholesale market maker that fills it and pays for the privilege. Andy walks through why your everyday orders are so valuable, where the real conflict of interest hides, and what the 2020 Robinhood settlement revealed about the true cost of "free." 

The takeaway: free isn't free — and the cost that matter...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explains the exchange-traded fund — the ETF — the vehicle most people now use to own a whole index in a single trade. 

He traces it back to the first one, State Street's SPDR, launched in 1993 to track the S&P 500, and shows how an ETF differs from the index mutual fund Jack Bogle created in 1976: one trades all day on an exchange like a stock, the other prices just once, after the close. 

Andy pulls back the curtain on the creation-and-redemption process — the quiet arrangement with large firms that does the...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy tackles a phrase we lean on without ever defining it: "the market."

He explains what a stock market index is, where the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq-100 come from, and how each one measures the market differently — the Dow by share price, the others by company size.

He unpacks the Dow's hidden divisor and the outsized power of a denominator, shows how a handful of giant companies can carry an entire index, and explains why SpaceX's arrival on the Nasdaq means millions of index-fund holders are ab...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy uses the 2021 GameStop saga to reveal the hidden machinery that runs underneath every stock trade. 

He explains how a struggling video-game retailer became the most heavily bet-against stock on Wall Street, why ordinary investors banded together to buy it, and how its price rocketed from about $17 to around $483 in a matter of weeks. 

Then he answers the question that left millions of people furious: why did Robinhood suddenly stop letting them buy? The culprit turns out to be the market's plumbing — the two-day settlement delay, the clearinghouse that guar...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores information asymmetry—the gap between what some market participants know and what others know—and the rules that try to keep that gap from getting too wide. 

He walks through the structural advantages built into the architecture of the market itself, the meaningful distinction between buy-side and sell-side analysts that financial pundits throw around without explanation, and the legal line that separates productive research from criminal insider trading. 

Andy then unpacks Regulation Fair Disclosure—the SEC rule adopted in 2000 that ended the worst of selective disclosure to favored...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores one of the most misunderstood practices in financial markets — short selling. He traces the origins of the practice to Isaac Le Maire and the Dutch East India Company in 1609, walks through the mechanics of borrowing shares to sell them, and explains the asymmetric risk that makes short positions fundamentally different from owning a stock. 

He brings the lesson to life with the spectacular 2008 Volkswagen short squeeze, when the German automaker briefly became the most valuable listed company in the world.

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy picks up where last week's IPO episode left off and walks through what changes once a company is publicly traded. 

He explains the lockup period that follows every IPO — using Airbnb's May 17, 2021 lockup expiration and six-percent drop as the concrete example — then breaks down the SEC's three core disclosure filings (10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K) that drive the rhythm of public-company life. 

Andy then tackles the real cost of all this — short-termism — citing Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon's 2018 Wall Street Journal op-ed and drawing on his own experience to show how t...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy walks through what happens when a company goes public — how a private business with a small group of owners becomes a publicly traded stock that anyone with a brokerage account can buy. 

The episode covers the five reasons companies decide to go public, the underwriting process and the role of investment banks, the road show and how the offering price gets set, and what happens on the first day of trading — including why the price you and I pay is almost always different from the price the institutions paid the night...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy tackles one of the most foundational questions in investing: what is a stock actually worth? Returning to value-investing pioneer Benjamin Graham, Andy walks through the three primary lenses professional analysts use to estimate stock value—relative valuation, asset-based valuation, and cash-flow-based valuation—and shows how each one offers a different angle on the same question. 

Using the dot-com bubble as a cautionary tale, Andy illustrates what happens when relative valuation becomes untethered and stock prices disconnect from underlying business fundamentals. The unifying principle: speculation can run for surprisingly long stretches, but e...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy walks through the three categories of risk that dominate the experience of owning stock: firm-specific risk, market risk, and behavioral risk. He explains why a stock's daily movement is mostly driven by company news, but why the broad market overwhelms those differences when it moves sharply—answering the listener's natural "which is it?" question. 

Using the 2008 financial crisis and the March 2020 pandemic crash as examples, Andy shows how fast and slow declines both punish panic-selling, just on different timelines. He closes with observation that most of the gap between what ind...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores leverage and margin — what happens when investors borrow money to buy stocks. He traces the story from the unchecked margin trading of the 1920s that fueled the 1929 crash through the regulatory response that reshaped modern markets, including Regulation T and FINRA's maintenance margin requirements. 

Andy walks through a margin call example to show how borrowed money amplifies both gains and losses, then closes with practical questions every investor should ask before borrowing to invest.

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores preferred stock — the hybrid security that sits between bonds and common stock in a company's capital structure. He traces its origins to the Railway Mania of 1840s Britain and the aftermath of the Panic of 1837 in America, where distressed railroads and canal companies invented a new class of shares to attract cautious investors. 

Andy explains how preferred stock borrows features from both debt and equity, defines the critical distinction between cumulative and non-cumulative preferred shares, and shows where preferred shareholders stand in the priority hierarchy alongside bondholders and common sha...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy traces the historical shift from dividend-focused investing to earnings-based valuation, showing how mandatory financial disclosure in the 1930s transformed the way investors evaluate stocks. 

He walks through five essential equity metrics—earnings per share (EPS), the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, the dividend payout ratio, the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio, and the price-to-book (P/B) ratio—explaining what each one measures and when to use it. 

Andy connects these modern tools back to Benjamin Graham's pioneering work in value investing and shows how they build on dividend and buyback concep...

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores how dividends work and why they matter for investors building long-term wealth. He traces the history of dividends back to the Dutch East India Company's first payment in 1610—which was made in spices, not cash—and walks through the four key dates every dividend investor needs to understand. 

Andy also explains dividend yield, why some companies pay dividends while others don't, and how dividend-paying stocks fit into a broader portfolio strategy based on individual risk tolerance.

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy breaks down the three most common ways companies change their share structure. He explains how stock splits work — including Apple's five splits and Warren Buffett's famous refusal to split Berkshire Hathaway—and why reverse stock splits often signal trouble. 

He then explores share buybacks, how they boost earnings per share, and why investors need to look past the headline numbers to see whether real value is being created. The episode also covers dilution and why issuing new shares comes at a cost to existing shareholders. 

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explains what you actually own when you buy a share of stock. He explores the concept of the residual claim — why shareholders are last in line during bankruptcy but first to benefit when companies thrive — and walks through the four key rights of common stock ownership: voting, dividends, information, and the right to sell. The episode also covers the bankruptcy priority hierarchy and why the risk-return tradeoff of equity ownership has made stocks the primary engine of long-term wealth creation. 

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy breaks down the three fundamental stock order types every investor needs to understand — market orders, limit orders, and stop orders. He explains how each order type works, when to use them, and the tradeoffs between speed, price control, and downside protection. The episode also covers order duration, how brokerages route your trades behind the scenes, and why regulators require brokerages to seek best execution on your behalf. Whether you're placing your first trade or refining your approach, understanding these tools helps you invest with intention. 

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores the mechanics of stock trading, focusing on the concept of liquidity. He explains how liquidity affects stock prices, the role of specialists in maintaining market order, and the significance of the bid-ask spread. The conversation also covers the historical context of stock price quotations and the impact of decimalization on trading costs, emphasizing the importance of understanding these concepts for effective investing. 

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy wraps up the fourteen-episode debt securities series by exploring how to actually build a bond portfolio. He covers the three roles bonds play in a portfolio — income, stability, and diversification — and walks through the practical differences between bond funds and individual bonds. The episode also introduces the bond ladder strategy, duration matching, and popular guidelines for determining how much of your portfolio should be in bonds. Whether you're decades from retirement or approaching it, this episode turns fourteen weeks of bond knowledge into a practical framework for action. 

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy introduces the concept of duration in bond investing, explaining its significance in understanding how bond prices react to changes in interest rates. He discusses the historical context of duration, its mathematical underpinnings, and its practical implications for investors. The conversation highlights the importance of duration in managing interest rate risk and the role of advanced mathematics in financial decision-making.

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores the concept of the yield curve, its various shapes, and implications for the economy and investors. He discusses the normal upward slope of the yield curve, the significance of flat and inverted curves, and how these indicators can signal economic conditions and potential recessions. Andy also emphasizes the importance of understanding the yield curve for making informed investment decisions and interpreting financial news.

#yieldcurves #bondmarkets #financialliteracy #personalfinance #financialeducation #moneylessons #recessionsignals

In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy explores the failures of credit ratings through historical examples, including the Penn Central bankruptcy, the Enron collapse, and the 2008 financial crisis. He discusses the inherent conflicts in the credit rating system, particularly the issuer-pay model, and the implications of these failures for investors. The episode concludes with lessons learned and the importance of using credit ratings as one of many tools in risk assessment.

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In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy discusses the world of credit ratings, explaining their significance in the bond market. He introduces the historical context of credit ratings, their development by John Moody, and how they provide a simplified measure of bond quality. The episode covers the different rating scales, the factors influencing ratings, and the implications of these ratings on investment decisions. Temte also highlights the importance of credit ratings in assessing default risk and the limitations inherent in the rating system.

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