Ep. 43 The Financial Education Nobody Gave You — Let AI fill the Gaps

We spend over a decade in school and never get a single class on how money actually works. That's not an accident, and this episode is about closing that gap on your own terms.

In this episode, Jim walks through three ways to use AI as a personal financial education system: learning the language of money, simulating decisions before you commit to them, and building a learning roadmap tailored to where you actually are.

What you'll take away:

• Why "being bad with money" is a knowledge deficit you can fix, not a fixed trait
• How to use AI to decode terms like APR, credit utilization, and amortization without embarrassment or judgment
• How to have AI explain a contract or loan before you sign it — and flag what could quietly cost you
• How to run a "pre-mortem" on a big financial decision before you make it
• How to ask AI for the five financial concepts you most need to learn in the next 90 days

Jim also gets honest about being on the other side of this himself, and what it feels like to be doing all the right things and still feel stuck.

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Transcript

Jim 0:00

We spend 12 years in school learning algebra, state capitals, and how to diagram a sentence, but nobody sits us down and explains how credit scores work, what compound interest actually costs you or can gain you, or how to read a pay stub. That's not by accident. And it's not your fault, but it is your problem, and today we're gonna start fixing it. Last episode, we talked about using AI to see your financial picture and to fight back on bills. Today, we're gonna go one level deeper, because knowing how to use the tool is only half of it. The other half is knowing what to ask. By the end of this episode, you'll know how to use AI to fill knowledge gaps that were never filled for you, and how to use it to make smarter decisions before life forces you to. Welcome to the Net Wealth Nest Podcast. I'm your host, Jim LeBoeuf. Thanks for joining as we explore how to break out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle and build net wealth. Today is our second session around AI, and I'm excited to bring some more information and hopefully help you use this new tool that is continuing to get better and better every day in your financial lives. Being bad with money, it's not a personality trait. It's a knowledge deficit, and knowledge deficits can be fixed, and usually faster than people think. The moment you stop saying, "I'm just not a money person," and start saying, "I haven't learned this yet," everything changes. One is permanent, and the other, quite honestly, is temporary. Wealthy people didn't just work harder. They understand the rules of the game, rules that aren't posted anywhere obvious. Things like how interest compounds against you, how to read a contract, and how to evaluate a financial decision before making it. AI doesn't just answer questions. It can teach you the rules of game on demand for free at whatever level you need it to. Let's talk about three specific ways to use AI as your personal financial education system, starting with the stuff that costs people the most money when they don't understand it. One thing I wanna make sure I caveat before we dive into any of this, AI shouldn't necessarily be your answer engine for all things. You should double-check anything that AI gives you. Also, the way the tool is designed works best if you use it like a thought partner, not something that thinks for you. So asking a question on what you should be thinking about and then going deeper into that questions is a really, really powerful way of understanding- Financial terminology, fi- your financial picture, whatever. And we'll talk about a few of those things in just a second here. I just wanted to make sure, don't use AI as a crutch. Use it as a tool to help you become smarter and unlock things that you might not be thinking about as you look at your financial picture. So one of the first things you can do is ask AI to explain different things that you might not understand, and start to bridge the gap of the knowledge deficit that you have. An easy way to do this is financial terms. There's a lot of financial jargon in the world that a lot of people just don't understand, and you typically end up seeing these on all sorts of documents as you go through life. It could be things like APR, credit utilization, debt to income ratio, amortization. Again, these words show up in loan documents, credit card offers, mortgage applications, and a lot of people just kind of sign them without really understanding what those things are. You could type any of these terms into AI and say, "Hey, explain this to me like I've never heard it before and show me how it'll affect my money." You can have a clear answer in under 30 seconds. And again, one of the things we've always talked about is many people are embarrassed to ask these questions to maybe the banker that they're working with as they're trying to figure out what their loan might be on a house or a car. An AI is a tool that's not gonna have any judgment. It's not gonna make you feel embarrassed. So go ahead and ask those questions. You can also ask AI to explain documents before signing them. So you could take a lease, a loan, a credit card agreement and paste in the sections and all the terminology and the agreement and the, small print and say, "What are the most important things I need to understand here? What could cost me money that I might not notice?" Again, these are targeted questions of I know these are important things to ask, and I have some idea of I should be reading this and taking information out, but I don't necessarily understand it all. So help me walk through this. This alone could save the average person thousands of dollars over their lifetime. People sign things every day that they don't understand. And then the other thing you could do is ask AI questions you should even be asking. And this is kind of- Uh, eye-opening for many people when you start to walk through this. But let's pretend you're a college student fresh out of college. You can describe your situation to your AI chatbot and s- ask it, "What should you be thinking about? What should you be asking?" And so you could say something like, "I just got my first job. I have $8,000 in student loans. I have no savings yet. What kind of financial questions should I be asking right now that I'm probably not asking or might not even be thinking about?" And this could surface blind spots that you didn't even know you have. And that's kind of the real superpower of AI. It's not just answering your questions, but also helping you find questions you might not even be thinking about. So let's do this live. I'm gonna paste in the chat here into my, chatbot real quick. The same question I have. I just got my first real job. I have $8,000 in student loans, and I have no savings. And ask, "What financial questions should I be asking right now that I'm probably not asking?" And it gave me back six questions that I should be thinking about or asking as I start my financial journey with my first big job. First question: What is your actual take-home pay? Most people are focusing on their salary, but the smarter moving is understanding what your actual net pay is before you spend any money. Does my employer offer a 401match? And am I leaving money on the table by not taking advantage of that? Should I pay off my student loans first, or is there a smarter order of operations? What would a $1,000 emergency actually do to me right now? Without having a savings, what would I do, and how can I get there to protect myself? Am I enrolled in benefits I don't even know I have? HSAs, FSAs, life insurance, disability. A lot of first-time employees click through the enrollment without understanding what they're actually signing up for. Then, what habits am I building right now that will be hard to unlearn in five years? And this specifically focuses on your lifestyle and your spending patterns that you can control in those first six months or so to build good habits over the long term. This is just an easy example of how this can be a thought partner and help you think in the right direction on how to control your money. All right, step two: It can help you simulate decisions before you make them. So you could run financial scenarios before committing. So asking AI something like, "I'm considering taking a job at this location that pays me forty-five thousand dollars or a job at this location that pays me fifty-two thousand dollars. What does that actually mean for my monthly take-home pay after taxes, and how does that change if I'm also paying four hundred dollars a month in student loans?" That's a great question to ask. AI will give you a basic answer on that with l-limited information of, "Hey, these are the things you should be thinking about," and then it will probably ask you another question or two that you can continue to start to build a conversation. The point here is wealthy people run numbers before they decide things, and they have people who do it for them. The cool part is now so do you. You can also ask AI to stress test a financial situation. So maybe for a major purchase, a house or a lease. You could ask AI, "Hey, what are the real costs of this decision that people typically underestimate, and what would need to go wrong for this to hurt my finances?" this is like a pre-mortem on your own money. Most people only do the math on the best-case scenario. AI will help you show the full picture. the key here is, with these just two basic examples, is financial advisors don't just manage money. They help clients think through decisions before they make them. That's a service people pay thousands of dollars a year for. The thinking partner, the person that gives them ideas or helps them round out their questions, helps them round out their thinking. AI is now giving you a thinking partner on demand. And then the last piece I wanna talk about is building that financial IQ and continuing to do it over time. AI is not just a search engine. And so what I want you to understand is AI is a tool that can continue to help you grow your financial knowledge and continue to help you build different skills over time. You can use AI to even build a type of learning curriculum for yourself and an outline of what you should be thinking about and where should you be going. so another prompt I've seen somebody use with their AI tools is first giving the AI kind of a overview of their financial picture, how much debt they have, how much money they make, their living expenses, nothing super detailed like they're uploading their budget, which you could do that if you wanted to, but just an overview. And then they ask them, "What are five financial concepts I most need to understand in the next ninety days given my current situation?" And it builds a roadmap for you in that moment. This is something that quite frankly, coaches like myself charge real money for, a personalized learning path based on your actual situation, not just a generic book or a course. The funny thing about all this is some people have brought this up to you and said, "Jim, like, you're doing coaching. Why would you tell people this information? isn't that going to hurt people who are interested in working with you?" And here's the honest truth. AI can provide a ton of knowledge, research all the things. As it currently stands, it's not, completely automated where it's going to, you know, reach out to you in a moment of, struggle or if you're having an issue, or it's not going to know that you had an upcoming financial decision and, congratulate you on whatever the outcome was. Now, it could get there in the future. You never know. But people like interacting with people, and so I'm not super concerned about that, but also the tools out there. And so what I would say is knowledge is the, first step. Accountability is what turns knowledge into action, and that's the gap that we fill at Net Wealth Nest is we will provide the knowledge, we will provide the tools, but the accountability piece is what moves, somebody from paycheck to paycheck out of that and building their net wealth.

Speaker 3 11:18

Before we wrap, here's what I want you to do. Everything I share on this podcast is meant to help you understand the game of money, but knowing where you stand in that game is actually what changes the next 30 days. That's why I built the financial pulse check at netwealthnest.com/pulse. It's two minutes, a handful of questions. It'll show you whether the biggest leak in your financial life right now is your spending, your income, or your follow through. Because the fix is different for each one, and most people are working on the wrong one. I've been on the other side of this. I know what it feels like to be doing all the right things and still feel stuck. The pulse check is the same diagnostic I start every coaching conversation with. Take it. It's free. Netwealthnest.com/pulse. All right, let's wrap it up

Jim 12:04

Okay, for the recap. Point one: use AI to learn the language of money. No more signing things you don't understand. Two: use AI to simulate decisions before you make them. Run the numbers on major financial moves. This is what wealthy people do, and they have physical people they pay to do this. You've got a tool now probably in your pocket that can do the same thing or something very similar. Three: use AI to build personal financial learning roadmaps based on where you are. That is a great move to understand where you are and where you can go, and at least get you some knowledge to get you started. look, the financial system was not designed to teach you these things. It was designed to profit from you not knowing them. That can change today for anyone willing to use the tools that are now available. If this episode showed you how much you didn't know you didn't know, imagine having people around you that are learning this, That's exactly what we're building at Net Wealth Nest. Come check out our individual coaching, and coming soon we will have a community as well. Please subscribe, share this with somebody who needs it, especially anyone that's just starting out, and then leave us a review. And lastly, our next episode, we're gonna take everything we've learned in this series so far and point at something bigger, using AI to explore whether entrepreneurship or a side hustle is actually right for your situation, and how to pressure test a business idea before you risk a single dollar. That one's gonna be good. Don't skip it. Thanks for joining today. I'll see you for the next episode. My name's Jim. Bye everybody. Net Wealth Nest LLC and Podcast is an educational platform committed to providing resources and information to empower individuals on their financial journey. Please note, we do not provide financial, tax, or investment advice. All financial decisions should be made in consultation with a qualified professional who understands your unique circumstances. Seeking personalized advice is a smart and necessary step before making any major financial commitments. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you found value in this episode, please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Net Wealth Nest, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. We read every comment, and they help us improve and guide what topics we dive into next. And hey, if you-- something you heard today resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend, a family member, a coworker, your barber, your barista, even a stranger in line. You never know who might need this message. Remember, building net wealth is a journey, but you don't have to do it alone. Stick with us, and together, let's grow your net wealth nest.