The Truth About Financial Influencers: What You Need to Know

In this episode of the Wealth Wise Women Podcast, certified financial planner Wes Cuprill dives into the world of financial influencers and the noise they create in the personal finance space. 

Wes shares his recent experience of downloading Instagram, a platform he had previously avoided, and how it opened his eyes to the overwhelming amount of advice available online. While social media has democratized financial education, it has also led to conflicting messages that can confuse and mislead individuals trying to grow their wealth.

Wes emphasizes the importance of filtering through the noise and understanding what financial advice truly applies to your unique situation. He discusses the potential pitfalls of following trends without a solid plan and the necessity of seeking professional guidance. Whether you're in your 20s or approaching retirement, Wes provides insights on how to create a tailored financial strategy that aligns with your goals.

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Transcript

>> Wes Cuprill: 0:00

Hello, I'm certified financial planner Wes Cuprill and this is Wealthwise Women, the show that's rewriting the narrative that personal finance in investing are, ah, just for men and just for insiders. Because whether or not the rest of my industry realizes it, the future of wealth in the United States is female. And I aim to foster that future one episode at a time. So join me every week as I attempt to add humor and entertainment to the otherwise snooze feest that is personal finance, addressing various topics along the way from the lens of how they affect women in particular. And if you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe to our channel and our newsletter, the link to which you can find on the screen or in the details below. That being said, let's get to this week's episode. Big step I took recently. I swore I would never do this at any point in my life, but I actually downloaded Instagram onto my phone for the first time ever. Considering I am part of the millennial generation. You know, it seems like Instagram should come preloaded on every cell phone that we buy. But I actually took great pride in being one of the holdouts of Instagram and being somebody who had never actually been on it. Now I will say I still am holding strong because I don't have a personal Instagram account. Well, we do have one for money and clarity. So that is the account that I have on my phone. So technically I don't have an Instagram, but I wanted to download money and clarityies onto my phone to start getting a sense of what the quote unquote fin influencers are putting out there by way of content. So I'm talking about financial influencers that are out there. With social media being so widespread these days, honestly these influencers are a dime a dozen. If you just go on Instagram and you Google personal finance or financial literacy ### I mean there are thousands of videos that you can see and it is great that personal finance has become democratized as a result of the Internet and people are much more easily able to learn more about personal finance and investing. The barriers to entry have completely come down and the ability to grow wealth and learn about how to grow wealth has never been easier. However, I think just, just like everything that was originally good, there are some ways that perversion enters the system. And one issue that I now have with these so called influencers is in their attempt to gain followers and put out content, really at this point, they're creating a lot of noise. All right, I will Take a step back and acknowledge that this could sound self serving to some. And if that's the case, I apologize. But I still feel the need to make a comment about all of the influencing content that's out there because again, there is a lot of noise. And if you're somebody who's trying to learn about how to invest and how to grow wealth, a lot of noise could actually be detrimental because you're seeing all of these different things about, okay, invest in index funds, all right, then invest in real estate, then invest in cryptocurrency. But what are all these various saving strategies? Who are the experts that I should listen to? Dave Ramsey is telling me one thing, but my friends have said I need to start following this other person who is telling me something completely different. There are some people who say, cash is king, don't use credit cards. There's other people who are saying that debt is the true way towards building a great amount of wealth. And so I think you see what I'm getting at here, where there's so much noise, it's difficult to understand, understand what it is that you have to follow. And as a financial planner myself, this is where I have to say, you have to understand what's applicable to you and your situation. This is where I struggle with all that is available on social media. You have different people saying, hey, you should do this, hey, you should do that. Hey, you should do this. And it's their way to grow their own following. But it can be at the detriment of those who are following them. It's like going to the doctor. What could work for one person could be fatal for another. If you were to say, start trying to invest a lot in crypto as kind of a side thing, that could be incredibly detrimental to your, financial security. Because what you may not realize too, a lot of these influencers are just getting paid the advertising for their following. They may not actually be all successful in the cryptocurrency space. That is a very pessimistic and negative viewpoint for me. I'm a little bit cynical in that respect, but I can't help but feel that a lot of the people out there who are espousing certain strategies have a certain skin in the game that people may not be aware of. For example, crypto, they could be receiving kickbacks from different crypto platforms as a result of the advice that they're putting out there on social media for people to consume. So again, it goes back to, while it's great to use social media as a way to learn about different things. You need to sit down and understand what is correct for you and this takes thoughts, this takes planning. You need to sit down and have a true understanding of your situation and then what are your goals in life? What are your aspirations? And really put a plan into place and only plug certain recommendations into your life that fit that specific plan. So yes, as a financial planner and myself, this is where I would say the value in seeking out a professional planner is second to none because we are app prsed to all of the different things that are out there, all of the various investment vehicles and the trends and whatnot. But we also have an understanding of applying those vehicles to your specific situation and only recommending what is right for you. For somebody who's in their 20s trying to pay off debt, the Dave Ramsey Method is absolutely a great method to follow and then shut out all the other noise. But the older you get, it may be necessary to explore other options beyond just you, know, spend less than you make. Absolutely. That's great advice. And that's why Dave Ramsey continues to be successful is nobody can deny the message that he is putting out there. But there are other things beyond just spend less than you make I wanted to take a brief moment to talk again about the Wealthwise Women Letter that I recently launched. If you haven't heard about it, the Wealthwise Women Letter is a new regular newsletter that I've started to publish that it was originally conceived as a way to supplement the podcast, but I actually think over time that's going to switch and the podcast will actually supplement the newsletter. Because I'm seeing a lot of great applications for the Wealth Wise Women Letter and I wanted to take a moment to talk to you about it. In addition to this becoming a regular commentary source on the happenings in personal finance and retirement planning, et cetera, I'm also going to start adding, certain things like an Investor Academy segment to it. We've done an Investor Academy in the past, but I think it'll be more beneficial to a lot more people if I make it sort of a regular but occasional thing in the newsletter where I take a deep dive into a particular topic around personal finance or retirement planning. Simply enter your email and you'll start getting the new editions of the letter every time I publish something in addition to the Academy. Like I said, we're going to have the regular commentary on currently relevant topics, but I'm also thinking of adding things in like reader question and answer or also some hypothetical planning scenarios. I think it might be beneficial for people to see some hypothetical applications of planning techniques and strategies. So that way they can sit there and say, okay, yeah, actually that's a lot like my situation. So I'd love to know more about what I should do as well when planning for that specific scenario or situation. So this week I'm going to publish the first edition of the wealth wise women letter academy. I'm going to cover a topic called know your number. This will be a discussion around how to decide what your number is in retirement and how to determine if you are on track for reaching that number. So if you aren't subscribed to the letter yet, now is a great time to do so. Simply go to mcealthwisewomen.substack.com. the link should be on the screen right now so you can follow that. Again, it's mcealthwisewomen.substack.com. one of the biggest ones out there now is the real estate idea. Oh, you should be pouring all of your money into real estate and making quote unquote passive income. That's obviously great. Yes, real estate is a very, very good asset class to be invested in, but it comes with a lot of downsides and you just need to be aware of those. If you don't want to play landlord, it probably isn't the best thing for you to do. But it seems like everybody on social media these days is screaming about how you should buy more property and get a stream of income from rental properties. Of course, they never talk about any of the downsides that could exist with investing in property. I mean, it takes a lot of time to find the right real estate investment. On top of that, there's all the pieces that go into getting that piece of real estate ready, finding a tenant, vetting a tenant, managing the property, managing the tenant relationship, and then all of the other aspects that go into it, such as setting up the right entity, paying the taxes on it, understanding how all of this fits into your outside budget by way of what, your other revenue streams are. So nobody talks about all of the technical pieces to it. Yes, it absolutely does continue to be a strong asset class, but there is a lot of work that goes into it. So just listening to all these people, oh, I should get into real estate. You need to understand, is it right for you if you've got all of these other things going on in your life? Maybe that's not the best vehicle for your money. There are many, many other vehicles that could be better for your money, and nobody Talks about this. Your time. If you're spending all of your time trying to figure out how to get into the real estate investing game, there's opportunity cost in that. Could your time have been better served trying to pursue other things while allowing your money to grow in say, a mutual fund? And again, with a lot of these real estate gurus, quote unquote out there on social media, a lot of them end up having courses for sale online. So again, it's very self serving. They might be trying to get you to buy a course that they have to learn more about real estate investing. So you have to understand, is this advertising that they're doing or are they really trying to help? So again, it really just goes back to understanding where you are in life and deciding, strategizing a plan that is best for you and what's right for a 20 year old is going to be different than what's right for a 30 year old, 40 year old, 50 year old, 60 year old, so on and so forth. That is where the value of professional planning can come into play. Sit down and really strategize what's right for you in your situation and based on what your goals and aspirations are for now, for 10 years from now and 20, 30, whatever the case might be. Because again, too, we're not just looking at the, at your financial situation, we're taking a look, I'm talking as a planner here, we're taking a look at all other aspects of your life, family, how many kids do you have? What are their goals and aspirations? How are they going to pay for things? Estate, planning is also a huge one. Nobody I think fully understands all of the technical aspects that go into proper estate planning. And the wealthier you are, the more complicated it gets. So there's so many different intangible pieces that you truly cannot learn from a 30 second clip on Instagram from a financial influencer. So again, yes, this is probably me being a little bit cynical about the intentions of the quote unquote influencers out there. But if they weren't making money from the content that they're putting out there, I'll be honest with you, I doubt that they would be putting out said content. A lot of it too is, it's very general. It is a great way to learn about things. Where you might go, I didn't know, know much about that. But that's where I encourage you to say, okay, let me dive into that particular topic and learn more about it before saying that's something that I should Pursue, because once you learn, know more about it, you might understand that's not the right thing for me. Maybe I need to look into something else. But again, that's where consulting an expert will also help you to understand. Okay, how might this particular thing that I heard online fit within my overall financial plan? Whether you work with someone or not, I just encourage you have a little bit of skepticism about everything that you hear and understand that it's not a good idea to say, let me try this, then let me try that. Let me try this. That's a, huge time suck and could end up costing you money in the long term. Proper financial planning takes deliberate thought and deliberate action, and it is not an overnight process. Growing true wealth does take time. And so what you need to be able to do is say, okay, I want to hear what's out there, but understand how to filter out any of the noise and say, m, that's okay. My financial plans in place, I don't need to tweak it. If there's something that you hear about that you maybe want to test how that would fit, let's have that discussion. But understand that you want to have a plan in place that you stick to. In the long term, it is better to set and forget than to constantly be tweaking because ultimately you gain no momentum when you are constantly changing direction. So, that being said, if you want to sit down with me to discuss how we might be able to help you put together a plan, just go to visitwith mcm.com. this is a no pressure, no obligation conversation. All we would do is sit down and discuss what are your goals, what are your aspirations, what are you looking for, and if we can help, we'll be the first person to tell you whether or not we can. That being said, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode and I'll see you in the next one. Thank you.