Scott Galloway is probably best known these days for his two podcasts—The Prof G Pod and Pivot—both of which cover business, politics, finance, and technology. His notoriety as a talking head in the tech and business space increased dramatically in 2017 when he correctly predicted Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods a month or so before it was announced while speaking with Kara Swisher on the Recode Decode podcast (Swisher now cohosts Pivot with Galloway).
Outside of his busy podcasting schedule, Galloway is also a marketing professor at NYU, an author, a public speaker, and an investor. And with a reported net worth of $100 million, you can bet he’s also an authority on personal finance.
His legions of listeners don’t just tune in to his shows to hear his latest takes on Amazon and Google; they also look to him for advice about how average people can best put their money to work by saving, spending, and investing strategically.
Related: Scott Galloway’s net worth: The Prof G host’s wealth & income in 2025
5 of Scott Galloway’s best pieces of financial advice for young folks
Here, we’ve compiled five major takeaways from Galloway’s books, interviews, and podcasts that, when taken together, make up a roadmap young people can follow toward financial freedom—whatever that looks like for them.
1. Learn how to interact with people
Before young people even start thinking about their career or investing, they need to develop something that’s growing increasingly rare in the digital age — personability. The ability (and willingness) to interact with others in a genuine and meaningful way is absolutely crucial to anyone who wants to build a career, Galloway explains in the LinkedIn post below.
After all, the first step toward growing one’s wealth is having disposable income. For those without generational wealth, the way to do this is by getting a job. And in today’s oversaturated labor market, the best way to land a decent job with upward mobility is by meeting people, networking, collaborating, and demonstrating that you’re a “real” person who can communicate effectively and contribute to teams, projects, and goals.
2. Don’t jump into entrepreneurship—a corporate job is your friend
Speaking of getting a job, Galloway also warns young folks against the allure of entrepreneurship. The idea of starting a business—especially in the tech sector—is incredibly popular among goal-oriented individuals who are still early in their careers. For every tech startup that makes it big, however, there are thousands that fail, so the odds of going broke are far higher than the odds of succeeding in the oversaturated tech startup space.
Instead, Galloway advises, get a job with an American corporation (which he refers to as the greatest wealth generator in history). He describes corporate jobs as a great way to get rich slowly, and mentions that entrepreneurially minded folks who want a challenge should seek new opportunities to develop within their company rather than running for the hills and risking it all on a startup.
3. Live below your means—even if you make a lot of money
Once locked into a solid job at a good company, the next key to wealth building, Galloway explains, is to generate more income than you spend—regardless of how much you make. While chatting with Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast, Galloway compares two different people he knows to highlight the importance of living below one’s means in order to “feel” rich.
Galloway’s friend, an investment banker, makes millions per year, but pays high taxes due to where he lives. Between that, his alimony, child support, and—most importantly—what Galloway refers to as his “Master of the Universe” lifestyle (spending lots of money on unnecessary luxuries and symbols of wealth), he doesn’t save much money. Galloway refers to this sort of person as an example of “the working poor.”
Galloway’s retired father, on the other hand, who gets a military pension and social security income monthly on top of a small side job owning laundry machines in trailer parks, only makes around $52,000 per year, but his annual expenses total around $48,000, so he’s totally comfortable and grows his savings constantly. The way Galloway puts it, “His passive income is greater than his burn … that’s the definition of rich.”
In other words, whatever you make, spend less. Don’t waste your money on expensive symbols of status.
Related: Suze Orman’s net worth in 2025: The personal finance icon’s wealth
4. Start investing early to take advantage of compounding
One of the main reasons to live below your means—especially as a young person—is to start investing your savings early. Compounding interest, which Albert Einstein called the eighth wonder of the world, is key to Galloway’s wealth-building advice.
In his book The Algebra of Wealth, Galloway provides this example to highlight the power of compounding interest on money invested early in one’s career: “Invest $12,000 per year at 8% for ten years, then stop and watch your returns compound. If you invest this way from 25 to 35, then you will have $2.5 million when you turn 65, whereas if you start at 45, you’ll have only $500,000.”
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It also tends to be a lot easier to live below your means when you’re young and healthy because there usually aren’t kids in the picture yet, and unexpected medical expenses tend to be rarer. This provides the perfect opportunity to invest one’s savings in some sort of financial vehicle whose returns are likely to outpace inflation over the long term, like a total market ETF with a low expense ratio.
As Galloway puts it, “Investing is like planting oak trees. The best time to start is ten years ago. The second-best time is right now.”
5. Diversify to protect your wealth from loss
Protecting one’s wealth is just as important as building it. This is a difficult lesson that Galloway himself learned firsthand when he lost much of his wealth at age 35 and again at age 44, first during the dot-com crash, and later during the great recession that followed the collapse of the housing market. In both cases, Galloway had invested too much of his own money in too few companies and ventures, concentrating his wealth in such a way that it wasn’t protected from unexpected industry or market collapses.
Related: What was the dot-com bubble and why did it burst?
Galloway recovered from these losses and is now worth an estimated $100 million — partially because he learned from his mistakes and prioritized diversification.
Diversification means spreading your money out across different investments and asset types so that if one company, commodity, or market goes belly up, your losses are minimized. Nowadays, Galloway says he has a rule against allocating any more than 3% of his wealth into any one investment or venture.
“Diversification is my Kevlar vest. I can take a bullet to my chest, and soon after, I will be up and fine again. People don’t realize how powerful diversification is,” Galloway writes in The Algebra of Wealth.
The takeaway
To recap, the way to wealth for young people is to first learn how to interact and communicate effectively with others. This is the base skill necessary to succeed in a career — not to mention live a happy and fulfilling life with friends and family. Next, Galloway advises, resist getting bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Instead, opt for the safe route and get a corporate job so that you can put some money away.
To do this, of course, one must live below one’s means in order to have extra income available for saving. Don’t just put it anywhere, though; invest it in such a way that it can grow, whether through interest income, capital gains, dividends, or some combination of the above.
Finally, don’t invest too much in any specific stock or business venture. Spread your money out between assets so that if one loses its value, the bulk of your wealth remains protected and growing.
Overall, this strategy is best summarized by Galloway’s wealth-building equation, which TheStreet’s Jeffery Quiggle describes as “not just financial [but] emotional and behavioral. Each component, he says, plays a critical role in building long-term economic security.”
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