Mortgage rates near 7%, a Social Security fund that has started shrinking, and a new account for kids that most parents still haven't heard of. It's a lot to keep straight, and the headlines rarely explain how any of it affects your own plan.

It starts with an envelope from the US Department of the Treasury. Wheeler's family received a $1,500 refund tied to healthcare.gov marketplace fees, even though he estimates he paid only a few hundred dollars in fees over three years. The hosts explain how those fees reach families through higher premiums, why a flat refund to households that don't receive subsidies misses the people who need help most, and why the Crowleys are donating theirs to the HealthWell Foundation.

Colin follows up on last week's Social Security conversation. He walks through the 1983 reforms that kept the system running, how reserves grew to about $2.9 trillion by 2020 and have been shrinking since, and why fewer workers paying in for each retiree makes the math harder every year. The hosts talk about the $184,500 cap on Social Security payroll taxes, why investing the surplus in stocks would have bought time without solving the problem, and why they stress test client plans with reduced or missing benefits.

Next, interest rates. Corporate interest burdens are near record lows because well-run companies refinanced when rates were low, while households shopping for a home now face mortgage rates near 7%. Wheeler shares a rent vs. buy exercise the team ran for Portsmouth, Boston and Los Angeles. In every scenario they tested, renting and investing the difference came out ahead. On a $400,000 loan, the gap between 3% and 7% is about $1,000 a month. The hosts debate why Seacoast home prices hold up, how AI data center borrowing may be pushing long-term rates higher, and why the same rates that make buying expensive also let savers lock in steady income.

Colin then covers NASA's X-59, an experimental jet built to turn the sonic boom into a muffled thump, and how NASA's testing over US cities could open the door to supersonic passenger flights over land.

Wheeler closes the main segments with Trump accounts. He walks through signing his daughter up in the app, answers a question from a stranger at a coffee shop about why he'd use one instead of a UTMA, and explains why the account becoming an IRA at 18 matters. Converted to a Roth over time, after the kiddie tax years, it can grow tax-free for decades.

The episode ends with two client stories: a family who realized the upkeep on three homes was missing from their financial plan, and a longtime listener who called in to review his beneficiaries after hearing an earlier episode.

By the end, you'll understand why today's interest rates cut both ways, where Social Security actually stands, and how a Trump account fits into a child's long-term savings.

Compound Growth is produced by CoFi Advisors. If this episode raised a question about your own plan, we're happy to talk it through. [draft]

Sources:
HealthWell Foundation, healthwellfoundation.org
NASA X-59 / Quesst mission (referenced on the recording)
IRS Form 4547, Trump account election (referenced on the recording)
Brookings estimate of AI infrastructure spending (referenced on the recording; not independently verified)

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Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell

When people talk about wealth in America, the conversation usually splits into two groups: the billionaires and everybody else. A new book from economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick, The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, argues there's a huge group in between. Wheeler and Colin dig into it this week.

The book focuses on "Main Street millionaires." These are households worth $10 million or more who got there by owning private businesses: HVAC companies, car dealerships, construction firms, roofers. Together, they hold far more wealth than the Forbes 400 combined. The stat that stood out most: about 75% of households worth $10 million or more built that wealth through a privately held business. Above $100 million, it's nearly all of them.

That leads to a problem the hosts see all the time: succession. Many of these owners started out just trying to make a living, grew faster than they planned, and never decided what happens to the business next. Colin shares a private equity friend's story about valuing a roofing company whose owner has no plan for handing it to his son. The hosts look at how private equity has moved into a growing share of veterinary practices, what that has meant for pet owners' bills, and why an owner who dies without a plan can leave the family forced to sell. The takeaway: plan for your business the same way you plan for your family. That can mean a buy-sell agreement, an ESOP, insurance-funded buyouts or trust planning, with the estate tax exemption in mind.

From there, the conversation turns to wealth taxes. Using the UK's inheritance tax changes on farmland as an example, Colin explains why owners who are wealthy on paper often don't have the cash to pay a tax on it. Wheeler runs the math on a 2% annual tax on the country's wealthiest households: roughly $160 billion a year against a deficit of nearly $2 trillion. Even taking everything the 400 wealthiest Americans own wouldn't cover a fifth of the national debt. The hosts look at where federal spending actually goes and ask whether the goal is debt reduction or redistribution, because those are two different problems. Their conclusion: the deficit can't be fixed with taxes alone. It takes spending, interest rates and growth too.

The episode ends on a practical client win. A construction business owner in Maine wanted to reward the 8 to 10 employees who had been with him from the start. Setting up a 401(k) with a generous match and a quick vesting schedule gave them real ownership and access to much higher contribution limits than an IRA. A small step that makes a big difference.

Sources:
The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick
Congressional Budget Office federal spending data (referenced on the recording; not independently verified)

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• Colin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-walker-mba-6099a038/

Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell

Everyone seems to agree AI is a bubble that's about to burst. But what if everybody's wrong? This week starts with a contrarian column arguing that roughly $1 trillion in AI build-out since 2024 is only about 2% of GDP, while past build-outs like the railroads and telecom reached closer to 25% before they peaked. At today's pace, AI wouldn't get there until around 2030. The hosts test the comparison against the Panic of 1873. Railroad track roughly doubled in the years after the Civil War, and financier Jay Cooke's bank funded long-term railroad loans with short-term borrowing. When a crash in Vienna spread across the Atlantic and depositors wanted their money back, the money wasn't there. From there, they look at today's circular AI financing, where chipmakers, cloud providers and hyperscalers are each other's biggest customers, and at Oracle's large lease commitments tied to OpenAI. Their conclusion: yes, there's a bubble, and nobody knows when it pops. The practical answer is to know your exposure, diversify, and benefit along the way without going all in.

Next up is Meta's new agentic AI, Muse. Colin tested it by asking it to review the podcast. It watched recent episodes and came back with notes on thumbnails, chapters and editing. The hosts walk through Muse's pitch: goal-first instead of a blank prompt, end-to-end encryption from the cryptographer behind WhatsApp's encryption, and passwords kept in a separate vault. They also cover the trade-off underneath it. Letting an assistant shop, schedule and watch on your behalf means handing over access in exchange for ease, and metadata still flows back to the parent company. That leads to a debate over whether AI is really the fastest-adopted technology in history, or whether most people are using it without choosing to every time they run a search.

Then a viral post from a San Francisco tech executive listing her non-negotiables in a partner, including that he be "post-economic," meaning wealthy enough never to worry about money again. The hosts run the odds, then turn to the more useful question of what role financial stability should play in a relationship.

Before the wrap, research showing that only about 23% of S&P 500 stocks outperformed the index over ten years. That's roughly a one-in-four chance for each pick, and a reminder of why buy-and-hold stock picking is harder than the success stories make it look.

The episode closes on a difficult client story. An inheritance of about $100 million lost roughly $40 million to estate taxes because no estate planning was done. The previous advisors hadn't even named beneficiaries on the accounts. Updating beneficiaries takes minutes, and at that level of wealth, the basics should never be missed.

Sources:
"Everybody's Wrong" column, JC at Paradigm (referenced on the recording; not independently verified)
Trivalent / Adam Parker research on 10-year S&P 500 constituent performance (referenced on the recording; not independently verified)
Meta Muse launch coverage and Mark Zuckerberg's AI paper (referenced on the recording; not independently verified)
The Rogers Diffusion of Innovations framework

Follow Us:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/compoundgrowthpod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CompoundGrowthPodcast
• TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@compoundgrowthpod
• Wheeler’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wheeler-crowley-0a63933b/
• Colin’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colin-walker-mba-6099a038/

Credits:
Created By: Wheeler Crowley and Colin Walker
Production, Editing and Post-Production: Tori Rothwell