Carl Richards

Around 1995, while still a student at the University of Utah, Carl Richards applied for a part-time job after misreading “securities” in a job advertisement as “security,” and ended up working at Fidelity InvestmentsFidelity InvestmentsFidelity Investments is a privately held financial services group headquartered in Boston, United States, with FMR LLC as its parent company. Founded in 1946 by Edward Johnson 2d, it operates in mutual fund and ETF asset management, brokerage and wealth management, workplace retirement plans and digital assets. Controlled by the Johnson family for three generations, it had $7.1 trillion in managed assets and $18 trillion in assets under administration at the end of 2025.Open the full entry’ customer call center in Salt Lake City, which is how he entered the financial industry. He was studying organizational behavior at the time and did not give up his interest in human behavior and motivation as a result.⁠[1][2]

In 2003, Carl Richards’s family bought a house in Las Vegas for $575,000 (the seller’s asking price), with a loan covering the entire purchase price. Before that, they had thought they could afford a price of about $350,000. A similar house in the same neighborhood still sold for $998,000 in February 2006.⁠[3]

In 2004, Carl Richards left Merrill Lynch and founded his own registered investment advisory firm, Prasada Capital Management, in Park City, UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry. By the time the firm was sold in 2012, it had $30 million in assets under management.⁠[4]

At the end of 2004, a year after buying the house, they refinanced through World Savings Bank (later acquired by Wells FargoWells FargoWells Fargo & Company is an American bank whose employees opened millions of unauthorized accounts, leading to regulatory penalties and a $1.95 trillion asset cap from the Federal Reserve that was lifted in June 2025.Open the full entry) with a “pick-a-payment” loan, a type of loan that allows borrowers to choose their monthly payment. They chose the minimum payment, which increased rather than reduced the loan balance each month, and also added a Wells Fargo line of credit. By then, they owed more than $200,000 more than the original loan balance.⁠[3]

In the summer of 2009, Carl Richards’s family lived in the basement of his in-laws’ home in Salt Lake City while he worked to stabilize his financial planning business.⁠[3]

Beginning in February 2010, Carl Richards wrote weekly posts for the “Bucks” blog in the business section of The New York Times, pairing text with black-and-white hand-drawn sketches made with a Sharpie marker to explain financial concepts; the sketches were later shown in exhibitions in New York and Park City. The series later continued for ten years under the name of the “Sketch Guy” column.⁠[5][6]

The column came about when someone forwarded sketches from his blog to Ron Lieber, who wrote back saying he liked the sketches and wanted to try working together. Looking back, Carl Richards said he had never imagined at the time that this material could appear in The New York Times.⁠[2]

In late August 2010, Carl Richards’s family decided to stop paying the mortgage and instead sought a loan modification or a short sale (in which the bank agrees to sell the house for less than the loan balance). The house was ultimately sold for $531,000, and they then returned to Utah to live in a rental.⁠[3][4]

In November 2011, Carl Richards published a long article in The New York Times, “How a Financial Pro Lost His House,” giving a first-person account of how he, a financial planner, lost his house after his debt spiraled out of control. In the article, he wrote that one evening, at a time when the house’s value had plummeted, his debt was out of control, and his business was unstable, he went out to take out the trash, saw his wife Cori and their four children eating dinner through the kitchen window, and sat on a bucket watching for a long time.⁠[3][4]

On January 3, 2012, Portfolio (part of the Penguin Group) published Carl Richards’s The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry; the book has 178 pages and was priced at $24.95. He uses the term “behavior gap” to describe the difference between fund performance and investors’ actual returns. The catalog of Penguin Random HousePenguin Random HousePenguin Random House is a trade book publishing group headquartered in New York City. It was formed on July 1, 2013, by combining Bertelsmann’s Random House with Pearson’s Penguin, and has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann since 2020. Its roots include Random House, which grew out of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer’s 1925 purchase of The Modern Library and became a general publisher in 1927, and Penguin Books, founded by Allen Lane in 1935. The group operates in more than 20 countries with more than 300 imprints, including Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Viking, Dutton, Penguin Press, Crown and Ballantine Books, and had revenue of €4.981 billion in 2025. In 2022 a U.S. federal court blocked its planned acquisition of Simon & Schuster on antitrust grounds. Its chief executive is Nihar Malaviya.Open the full entry South Africa lists the publication date as March 2012.⁠[3][5][7]

The concept originated from bar charts he drew on a whiteboard in front of clients: he explained to them that if we are like most people, we will engage in a series of behaviors that cause us to lose a great deal of money.⁠[8]

In February 2012, Carl Richards announced the sale of Prasada Capital Management, based in Park City with $30 million in assets under management, to Buckingham Asset Management of St. Louis; terms of the deal were not disclosed. At the same time, he was hired by BAM Advisor Services, Buckingham’s sister company, as full-time director of “investor education,” responsible for producing articles and videos for Buckingham and speaking to Buckingham advisors around the country. Buckingham took over day-to-day client matters, and he said he would remain in contact with Prasada’s clients.⁠[4]

On March 31, 2015, Portfolio published Carl Richards’s The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money. The book focuses on how to create an actionable financial plan based on personal priorities rather than the pursuit of perfection, covering topics such as investment allocation and life insurance. At the time of publication, he was described as director of investor education for the BAM Alliance and as the writer of the online “The Sketch Guy” column for The New York Times.⁠[9][10]

Behavior Gap Radio is a podcast hosted by Carl Richards; the earliest episode in the show’s catalog is dated August 5, 2015. The show is updated daily, with episodes averaging about 6 minutes. It has since accumulated more than 1,300 episodes and more than 1 million downloads.⁠[11][6]

From 2016 to 2020, Carl Richards’s family lived in New Zealand, a stay that ultimately lasted four years. He said the move was almost financially irresponsible, but that after the 2008 financial crisis his wife felt it was necessary. During this period, his work with Buckingham also ended by mutual agreement after the move.⁠[2][12]

The Society of Advice, a community for financial advisors, began in 2019. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, an online conversation between Carl Richards and Jerry Colonna drew more than 1,000 registrants, after which the community took shape around a monthly conversation between him and a guest. It was later adjusted to remove the chat feature and accountability groups and return to its core format of curated conversations; it also launched The Collective, a premium tier priced at about ten times the standard membership, with an initial cohort of 19 participants and including an in-person retreat in Park City.⁠[13]

On May 3, 2021, The Society of Advice Podcast released its first episode, “How I dealt with failure with Jeremy Walter,” hosted by Carl Richards with guest Jeremy Walter, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professional. The podcast describes itself as celebrating the lives and work of people around the world who give advice for a living.⁠[14]

On September 28, 2023, the podcast 50 Fires: Money and Meaning with Carl Richards released its trailer. The show is produced by Blind Nil Audio with Chip and Joanna Gaines as executive producers, and in each episode Carl Richards asks a different guest what money means to them. The latest episode listed on the page is dated July 2, 2025, for a total of 81 episodes.⁠[15]

The show originated when Carl Richards, while traveling in New Zealand, received an email from Dave Goetsch, a producer of The Big Bang Theory, proposing a television show about money that would do for money what The Big Bang Theory had done for physics. After years of concept development, the team pitched it to Chip and Joanna Gaines’s Magnolia Network, which suggested starting first as a podcast.⁠[16]

On October 21, 2025, Harriman House published his new book, Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches, which collects 101 sketches and short essays.⁠[17][6]

Carl Richards is known for explaining financial concepts with hand-drawn sketches. He wrote the “Sketch Guy” column for The New York Times, published weekly from February 2010 for ten years.⁠[6][18]

He is also the author of The One-Page Financial Plan. Both The Behavior Gap and The One-Page Financial Plan have been translated into more than ten languages.⁠[6]

Carl Richards hosts the podcast Behavior Gap Radio and is involved in producing the podcast 50 Fires. He also founded The Society of Advice, a community for financial advisors, and hosts its monthly 90-minute conversations.⁠[6][19]

Carl Richards calls the sketches in his new book, Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches, “conversation grenades,” intended to prompt people to talk about their life priorities rather than pursue financial optimization; he calls himself the “chief conversation officer” and says he does not really care about money itself, but sees money as a “portal” to understanding one’s own values. He also hosts mountain retreats every two months.⁠[1]

Carl Richards has been married to Cori since 1995, and they have four children. He lives in Park City, Utah, holds a Wilderness First Responder certification, and enjoys hiking, skiing, and biking in the mountains of Utah.⁠[6]

As of September 2026, The Society of Advice consists of a monthly 90-minute live conversation hosted by Carl Richards, with replays and a peer community of advisors; an individual seat costs $147 per month, and there is separate team pricing for firms with 10 or more seats.⁠[19]

Behavior Gap: Official website: https://behaviorgap.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

The Society of Advice: Official website: https://www.thesocietyofadvice.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]

X: Public account: https://x.com/behaviorgap (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkingcarl/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]