Historian and investor Joseph Moore, PhD, spent over a decade digging through 300 years of American financial advice to find out what actually worked, and what everyday people, not just the Rockefellers of the world, were told to do with their money.

In this conversation with Melissa Joy, CFP®, Joseph explains why Americans used to say “go ahead” instead of “get ahead,” what that shift in language reveals about self-reliance and the American dream, and why perspective on how hard life used to be (one and a half shirts per person in 1870, no flush toilets well into the twentieth century) can reframe how we think about today's challenges.

They also dig into a subject close to Melissa's heart: the long, well-documented history of women managing, investing, and building wealth, from Ladies' Home Journal financial columns to Abigail Adams quietly out-investing John Adams. Joseph shares what his own real estate investing taught him about the myths of passive income, makes an unlikely defense of personal finance gurus, and reflects on how his working-class upbringing in rural South Carolina shaped a book that became a national bestseller.

What You'll Learn

• Why Americans historically said “go ahead” instead of “get ahead,” and what that language reveals about self-reliance versus collective pessimism
• How dramatically material life has improved in the last 150 years, and why that context matters when comparing today's challenges to the past
• Why the idea of a long history of stay-at-home moms is a myth, and how women's self-employment and part-time income kept most American families afloat
• The overlooked history of women investing in mortgages, securities, and real estate going back to the 1700s, including Abigail Adams's investment returns
• Why real estate is not always a passive investment, and what it actually takes to make money owning it
• A historian's case for what personal finance gurus get right, and where their advice tends to fall short
• Why saving a percentage of every paycheck in the stock market is newer advice than most people realize
• The power of living on one income and investing the other, a strategy with roots stretching back generations

Guest Bio

Joseph Moore, PhD, is a national bestselling author, historian, and investor whose self-experimentation with history's wildest financial strategies made him financially independent in his mid-40s. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and through HarperCollins and Oxford University Press. His new book, How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (and Didn't), is an instant USA Today bestseller. You can find his free newsletter and more of his writing at josephmoorebooks.com, and follow him on Instagram.

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