If you've got money sitting in a savings account earning next to nothing, entrepreneur and real estate investor Grant Cardone has some blunt advice: stop doing that.
"Stop savin' money—it's a doesn't work," Cardone posted on X earlier this year. "Short of storing money in an account while it waits to be [invested], saving money is not a plan to grow your wealth."
His reasoning? Banks are essentially using your money to make themselves rich. "Banks pay you 0% while they lend your money to people like me," he said. It's a pretty straightforward critique of how the banking system works—you park your cash there earning basically nothing, and the bank turns around and lends it out at much higher rates.
Inflation Quietly Eats Your Savings
Cardone's bigger concern is inflation. Last year, he said that "it's impossible to save money," pointing out that if you had $100,000 in a savings account in 2020, that same amount would only have the purchasing power of about $75,000 in 2024. "That's inflation explained simply," he said.
Instead of letting your money slowly lose value, he encourages people to invest in income-producing assets, take advantage of tax strategies, and generally put their money to work the way wealthy people do.
Why the Middle Class Is Falling Behind
In an interview with Fox News earlier this year, Cardone laid out his theory about what's holding people back financially.
"The middle class has been left behind because they've been saving money and doing the right things—and it's not working." In a post on X sharing a clip from the interview, he added, "Quit saving money. Quit buying homes. Quit saving for retirement. Quit borrowing for college."
That's a pretty radical departure from conventional financial wisdom. But Cardone believes most Americans aren't struggling because they're irresponsible—they're struggling because they're following bad advice. "If a mass group of people suffer from the same thing, it's not their fault anymore," he told Fox News. "It's because they've all been taught the same thing."
To Cardone, the old rulebook doesn't match today's economy. He thinks entrepreneurship, calculated risk-taking, and aggressive investing are the real paths to building wealth.
Not Everyone Agrees
Critics argue his approach is risky and unrealistic for many people. Not everyone has the risk tolerance or capital to become a real estate investor or entrepreneur. But Cardone insists the alternative—saving and hoping for the best—isn't working either.
"My encouragement to the middle class is get out of it," he told Fox News. "Move yourself up so there's prosperity and abundance—and not just putting everything on a credit card in life."
Whether you agree with his methods or not, Cardone's central point is hard to ignore: in an era of low interest rates and persistent inflation, traditional saving strategies don't build wealth the way they used to.
