How Your Pay Grows: Raises, Promotions, and Changing Jobs
In this episode of Money Lessons, Andy takes up the three ways your pay grows — a raise, a promotion, and a new job — and the one lesson that runs through all three: starting pay is the base every raise after it is applied to.
He clears up the difference between a merit increase and a cost-of-living adjustment, explains why a promotion usually pays more than a raise, and puts numbers on changing jobs with the Atlanta Fed's Wage Growth Tracker, including the stretch in 2025 when people who stayed put saw more wage growth than people who moved.
He tells the story of asking his mentor and boss, the late Roger Leithold, for a raise at 22 — and the four words Roger gave him instead. He closes with the fourteen states that now require a pay range in every job posting.
Purpose at Work: What a Job That Doesn't Fit Costs You
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.
Human Capital: Your Earning Power Is Your Biggest Asset
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.
He explains why a raise compounds the way investment returns do, why that makes skills built early worth more, and why only skills that last keep compounding.