Financial Feminist - 219. Which Investing Platform Should I Choose? Advisor vs. Robo-Investor vs. DIY

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi team, before we get into the rest of today's episode, we need to talk about the upcoming stock market crash. And I'm putting that in quotes. We are covering all of your questions, all of your fears and concerns in our live investing masterclass. If you're listening to this episode the day it came out, that masterclass is happening tonight. So I would love to see you. If not, you can join the replay. Couple things before we get into the rest of the episode. The unknown is super scary. It's super scary on a good day, yet alone when Trump is in charge. And what happens is it leads people to panic. Panic causes more panic. Stock market crashes are caused by investors not thinking of the stock market over the long term. They panic and then they pull their money out,

Starting point is 00:00:43 which leads others to do the same. And then it turns into this panic avalanche that causes a stock market crash and thus typically also leads to a recession. I have millions of dollars in the stock market, everybody. If anybody should be freaking out and panicking, it is me. But I'm not. Why am I not freaking out? Because I understand it's a long game. I understand this is a roller coaster filled with peaks and valleys. This is what the stock market does. It goes up and it goes down. A reminder that you have not lost money in the stock market unless you choose to sell your investments.

Starting point is 00:01:19 And as a reminder, panic selling is the thing that leads to the stock market crashing or to a recession. It's just like when you buy a house, if it goes up in value, you don't get the value on that asset unless you choose to sell. It's the same thing with a loss. And finally, during market downturns, there's always a reason to invest, whether the stock market is performing well or it's underperforming. It is no accident that I became a millionaire in 2021 after I invested my earnings during the COVID crash, the last time the stock market underperformed. And it's because stocks are on sale.

Starting point is 00:01:54 Stocks are on sale. So a reminder for the rest of the episode, we are staying the course, we're not panicking, and we're definitely not allowing Trump to influence our own decisions about our financial health. We have to remember to continue to invest, continue to prioritizing our own financial freedom, our own financial flexibility, and stay the course as always. Let's get into the rest of the episode. Today on the show, we are talking all about investing, exactly where to do

Starting point is 00:02:21 it, how to pick an investing platform that's right for you, and all of the mistakes you're making right now that are losing you thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let's get into it. Hi Financial Feminist. Welcome back to the show. I am thrilled to see you as always. My name is Tori. I am a multimillionaire, a New York Times bestselling author, and I have helped over 5 million women save money, pay off debt, start investing, start businesses, and feel

Starting point is 00:03:00 financially confident. Here on this show, we talk about how money affects women differently. We talk about how to fight the patriarchy by getting rich. And today on the show, we are taking one of the most requested topics, which is investing generally, but specifically, how do I choose the platform that's right for me? We've talked about investing a lot of times on the show, everything from retirement accounts to exactly how to pick your investments and more.

Starting point is 00:03:24 And I will just say right off the top, if you're listening to this episode today, the day it came out, we are doing a live free investing workshop all about the secrets of the stock market, how to overcome some of the narratives you've been believing that have kept you from investing or kept you from investing consistently. So before we even dive into this episode, I don't want you to miss out on that. So go to the link down below. You can also go to herfirsthundredk.com slash secrets. And if you're listening to this, not on the Thursday it came out, we are probably doing this workshop very, very soon.

Starting point is 00:03:54 We do it on a pretty regular basis and you can also get the replay. So sign up anyway. It's free. There's no reason for you not to sign up. I would love to be able to teach you live or on that replay. So again, herfirsthundredk.com slash secrets. One of the biggest hangups though, when it comes to investing is the getting started part, right?

Starting point is 00:04:12 And when you get started investing, there seems to be, before you've even made any decision, a million decisions to make, right? Before you even decide like, this is what I'm going to invest in, or this is the type of account I'm going to open, you have to just figure out like where am I going to invest? Like not only the stocks and the companies, the actual platform or the actual experience of investing. Do I DIY it? Do I use a robo advisor? Do I go with a financial advisor? Is there something else out there? So

Starting point is 00:04:43 today we're going to talk about exactly what these things are, the DIY, the robo-advisors, the financial advisors, the pros and cons for each one. And if you stay till the end of this episode, I'm going to give you my favorite, absolute favorite tool for learning how to invest. The platform that I use, the platform that I recommend

Starting point is 00:05:02 for actually getting started investing. So stay tuned for that. But first a word from our sponsors. This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored in part by Squarespace, Quince, Gusto, Rocket Money, Public, and NetSuite. Build a beautiful website to get your message out into the world with Squarespace. Squarespace was the first purchase I ever made for my business way back in 2016,

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Starting point is 00:05:44 because that's how much I love him. Go to quince.com slash ffpod for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. Did you start a subscription during the holidays to watch that one tv show or movie that you just couldn't find anywhere else and then you just got the bill because you forgot to cancel while Rocket Money's got your back? Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash fffpod. Take the headache out of payroll with Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll at gusto.com.ffpod. Fund your account in minutes at public.com.ffpod and get up to $10,000 for transferring your old portfolio. Download the CFO's guide to AI and machine

Starting point is 00:06:20 learning at netsuite.com slash FF pod. Like I said, there are three basic ways to get started investing. The first is what's called the DIY route. That's pretty obvious what DIY means, right? Do it yourself, but we're investing on our own. We're making our own investment choices. We're deciding where and how to invest. So these DIY platforms are places like Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, right? The DIY platforms themselves are some of the most reputable

Starting point is 00:06:58 companies in this industry, right? They've been around for dozens of years, sometimes like decades and decades. And if you like talk to your dad about investing, or you like go to like a financial blog about investing, this is who you're gonna hear, right? You're gonna hear the vanguards and the fidelities discussed. And you probably know or have heard of these companies,

Starting point is 00:07:20 maybe like your company's 401k has used one of these companies, or again, like some well-meaning person in your life who maybe knows a lot about money has told you that this is where you should invest. Let's talk about the pros of the DIY platforms. The biggest pro is that they are the lowest cost. There is very, very few costs associated with this platform because you're doing it yourself. If you washed your car yourself, that is the lowest cost option. If you cut your own hair, that is

Starting point is 00:07:53 the lowest cost option. You need scissors. I will send out a bucket and a mop, but that's all you need. If you're going to wash your own car, you need a bucket and a mop and some soap. If you are cutting your own hair, you need probably scissors and please dear God, a mirror. And that's the thing with the DIY platforms. Because you're doing it yourself, these are the lowest cost platforms. There are no management fees, and we'll talk about what management fees are in a little bit, but these platforms are really known. Their bread and butter is low fees.

Starting point is 00:08:22 The second pro to a DIY platform like a Fidelity or a Vanguard or a Charles Schwab is that you have full control over your investments because you're calling the shots, right? This is your investment accounts that you are DIYing. You are doing it yourself. So the investor, you can choose your own investments within your accounts. So your own stocks, your own ETFs, which is exchange traded funds, right? Those are the groups of stocks.

Starting point is 00:08:52 We've talked about that on the show before. And you have complete control over when and how you invest and what you choose. So with the pros with DIY, right, we're looking at the two big ones. Lowest cost, it's cutting your own hair, and full control over your decisions. For the average person listening to this show, that is you, I'm going to tell you that these platforms are probably not the right fit for you. And here's why. Here are our cons. The first is that you are DIYing your own investments. And if you feel like you have enough knowledge to go in and make investment choices for yourself,

Starting point is 00:09:29 great, the average person does not. And what happens if the average person gets recommended one of these platforms, and this is probably you, you've logged into your Fidelity Vanguard Schwab account and looked at the very, very complicated interface, you probably hit the bail button. You were like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Starting point is 00:09:53 This feels super complicated. And instead of investing, you've probably just opted out. So these platforms, the very mission of these platforms is to get you investing, right? It's low cost, it's full control. That's great. But for the average person, especially the average woman, no one has sat down with you and told you how to invest. No one has sat down with you and been like,

Starting point is 00:10:16 here's what these graphs and charts mean, and here's how to navigate this super confusing platform. My not so conspiracy conspiracy theory is it's almost like these platforms are confusing on purpose Because if they confuse you you then have to go pay one of the Charles Schwab advisors Right to do it for you and some of them are free, right? So, okay Maybe it's free advice but like they're meeting with tens of clients tens of dozens of clients every day, right? So the biggest con for DIY platforms, and the reason I do not recommend them for the average person listening to the show is that you got to make your own decisions.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And the average new investor, right, the person who's listening to the show right now, you, you do not have somebody guiding you on how to navigate these platforms, how to make smart investing choices. It doesn't mean you can't, right? There's plenty of people who are so good at investing for themselves. But I don't want you to sign up for one of these platforms that has been recommended and then hit the bail button and not invest at all, right?

Starting point is 00:11:16 The second con I've already alluded to, which is these platforms are fucking confusing. Like I'm a financial expert. When I log into my Schwab account, I'm just like, how do I just, how do I go to my account and just buy investments? And for some reason, that takes 17 steps. It's so confusing. And there's so much information that I don't need that just bogs the experience down and overwhelms me. And again, I'm a millionaire. I know what I'm doing and these platforms are still confusing. So that's the second thing is

Starting point is 00:11:54 the interface is not intuitive. It is extremely difficult to navigate. You're like, should I short this stock? Do I buy options? It's so confusing for the average person, especially the average person who is beginning on their financial journey, who is a newbie investor or who has been investing for a while, but like, it doesn't know what's happening. DIY platforms are not the place to go. They are cheap, which is great. You get full control over your investments. Fantastic.

Starting point is 00:12:22 That's our first option of where we can invest. An ideal option if you're looking to save money, but not an ideal option if you're trying to figure out where to actually get started. Let's talk about our second option, what's called the robo advisor. So robo advisors are exactly what they sound like. Advisors that are robots, but they're not robots. It's using technology to make investing decisions for you. So these platforms include places like Betterment, Wealthfront, Wealthsimple, E-Trade. Robinhood has a version of a robo-advisor. So what's happening with these platforms is that an investor comes in and they answer some questions

Starting point is 00:12:58 about their life. How old they are, their risk awareness or risk tolerance. And for most people that come in, especially most women, they're like, I don't want anything risky. What does that even mean? Which is a bad answer, by the way, but we'll talk about that in a bit. Or, you know, how, what's the age you expect to retire? Where do you live? What are your goals? And then they're going to start choosing investments for you. The pros with these platforms, let's talk about that. The first biggest pro by far is that it's helping eliminate the overwhelm to get you started. Everything we were talking about that's a negative about the DIY platforms, right? The confusing interfaces and not knowing what the fuck you're doing.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Robo-advising mostly solves that, right? It's getting you started. It is taking over for you to hopefully make, in theory, educated investing choices on behalf of you. These platforms use algorithms to manage your portfolio, your investing portfolio, based on what you've said you want. So that's the biggest pro to these platforms. If you're looking really to just get started, they can be a really great tool for you because they're hands off, they're providing this structured investment plan with minimal effort. We'll talk about in-person financial advisors as our third option, but one of the pros of robo-advisors is that they're much cheaper than a financial

Starting point is 00:14:24 advisor. Now, you don't get the person to person touch typically, but you're paying way less money either in like a percentage fee or a retainer or an hourly rate. So we're looking at typically a like quarter of a percent to half a percent in fees. The pros of the robo advisor. These are algorithms that are in theory providing smart investment choices on behalf of you. So it's helping eliminate that overwhelm, get you started, you're paying less in fees than you would to sit down with somebody as a financial advisor, right?

Starting point is 00:14:57 And they're automated so you don't have to worry about it. However, robo-advisors are also not the place I recommend. And here's why. The first con to robo-advisors is that there's very limited personalization here, right? Some of these robo-advising platforms, most of them are making decisions about your hard-earned money based on your answer to eight questions. They're managing your portfolio and its performance and your literal money based on the answers that you gave to questions you don't even understand. Yes, of course, you can answer your age, you can answer how much you make,

Starting point is 00:15:37 but you probably can't answer what your risk tolerance is. For the average person, especially somebody who's young, your risk tolerance should actually be really high. The reason they're asking that question in the first place is to figure out how aggressive should your portfolio be? How much of your money should be in stocks compared to bonds? If you say that your risk tolerance is high, which is in theory what you want to say, what I would say if I was in my 20s.

Starting point is 00:16:07 That's a good thing, right? Okay, I am saying that I want the vast majority of my portfolio in stocks. That's what we want when we're younger so that we can allow the money to gain as much for us while we have more time. But the average woman getting asked what your risk tolerance is, you and I are both going to say, nothing, nothing. I don't like risk. I want dependable outcomes. So we end up typically fucking ourselves over because no one has sat us down and actually told us what that question is really asking, which is, you know, how okay were you with stocks compared to bonds with a

Starting point is 00:16:48 potentially risky investment, but higher reward compared to the other? No one knows how to answer that question. And really the second con is tied to this as well, which is these platforms are fishing for you rather than teaching you to fish. The amount of people in our community, right? We have millions and millions and millions of women who I have taught how to invest, who I have taught how to pay off debt and save money. And I get this all the time. They'll come to me, they'll message me on Instagram in the DMs, they'll email us and they'll go, you know what, I started with X platform, Betterment, E-Trade, whatever, a couple of years ago, and it was so great to get me started. But I have no idea why they're making the decisions they're making. I have no idea what any of this means still. I've been investing for five years,

Starting point is 00:17:37 which is great, but I still can't define a stock. I don't know why they're choosing the things they're choosing. And I've handed my hard-earned money over to this platform and just trusted that it's going to work. And that's one of the issues, right, is they are fishing for you rather than teaching you to fish. And that sounds good temporarily, right? That sounds good to get you started, and it kind of is, right? If you just want to get started, great.

Starting point is 00:18:03 That's a great place to do it. However, I need you to understand these things. This is not something we can just completely opt out of, right, you can't just say this like robotic, algorithmic thing is gonna handle my money for the next 40 years. I don't know, that feels bad. Like I need you to know what's going on.

Starting point is 00:18:24 I don't need you to know everything. I don't know everything. I'm the first to say, I don't know everything about money. None of us do. But I need you to know enough to figure out if they're making the decisions that are right for you. And so that you can show whether it's a dinner party or a conversation with your dad,

Starting point is 00:18:44 or just as you're managing your money as you age with some knowledge that you can speak to. Some understanding of what's going on. The final con with robo-advisors. It's a robo. It's an algorithm. There is nobody sitting down with you, typically, and having a conversation like you and I are having right now. No one is giving you the advice. No one is helping counsel you.

Starting point is 00:19:13 No one is helping with your emotions when Trump does something crazy stupid and the stock market underperforms. No one is educating you about how this works, and no one is helping manage the emotional side of the stock market, which, frankly, people don't talk about enough. Everybody wants to talk about the gains

Starting point is 00:19:37 and if your investments make money and the strategies to become a millionaire, and all of that's great. We've talked about it on the show before, but we've also talked about the emotions of money and how that has a way bigger impact on how successful you are at managing your money than if you've picked the right stock. But traditional finance, the traditional finance industry that has built these robo advisors,

Starting point is 00:20:04 that has built these DIY platforms, doesn't want to talk about the touchy-feely of it all. When in actuality, that is the biggest determining factor between whether you're a successful investor or not, whether you understand that this is a long game or not, whether you understand and manage those spikes of emotion when the stock market does go down or when it underperforms. Or again, when someone in our government does something extraordinarily stupid that tanks the stock market. And that's what you're missing with the robo advisor. That's what you're also missing with the DIY platforms typically.

Starting point is 00:20:40 Now, some DIY platforms will allow you again to like meet with somebody like the Schwab advisors, but that leads me to financial advisors. When we come back, we are talking about your third option for investing financial advisors, and you're going to want to stick around for this one because I got a lot of hot takes. So I'll see you back here in a second. I was just up in the mountains on vacation. I went on a little Valentine's Day getaway with my partner and it was 20 degrees. It was freezing. Then literally the next day I went to Mexico for a solo vacation and it was 85 degrees and quince had me covered both places. I'm a big fan of quince. You all know this. I would be talking about them even if they weren't an advertisement. I had a beautiful winter coat that I bought from Quince that is so warm. And

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Starting point is 00:23:00 And if you want all of this and more with no hidden fees, you can try it out for three months free at gusto.com slash FF pod. That's gusto.com slash FF pod. Welcome back to Financial Feminist. I'm thrilled you're here. As we come back from this break, we've talked about two of the places you can open up an investing account. DIY platforms like Fidelity, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, and also robo-advising platforms like E-Trade or Betterment or Wealthfront. And again, I'm not naming every single option here, but you kind of get the idea. DIY, the pros. You're doing it yourself. You're saving money. The cons are, fuck, you're doing it yourself. And it's very easy to get overwhelmed in these platforms. Robo advisors are great to get you started.

Starting point is 00:23:45 They're taking over for you, and they're typically less in fees than a actual financial advisor. But the cons are that they're fishing for you rather than teaching you to fish and offering typically no in-person or even like virtual person-to-person support, not just on the financial side,

Starting point is 00:24:01 but also on the emotional and psychological side. So let's talk about financial advisors. This is one of those questions that, again, everybody wants to message me about. Should I work with a financial advisor? And let me talk first about financial advisors in general. Financial advisors are the default financial professional that people think of. So when people think, I need to do something about my money, or I have questions about my money and I'm struggling, whether that's with saving or debt or investing

Starting point is 00:24:31 or something else, they think financial advisor, because that's all people know. That's not a knock on people. That's just like, that's what the industry has said. It's like, you need help? Your option is a financial advisor. But not all financial advisors are made the same. There's two big differences in financial advisors and it depends on the advisor. And if you're going to work with a financial advisor, I need you asking these two questions. These are two questions that are not only

Starting point is 00:25:06 going to completely determine the success of this relationship with a financial advisor, but also determine how much money you will either keep or lose throughout the course of your lifetime. The first question to ask your financial advisor, are you a fiduciary? A fiduciary is a financial professional who is legally obligated to act in your own best interest. And now you're thinking,

Starting point is 00:25:35 Tori, why isn't everybody legally obligated to act in my own best interest? Why wouldn't they? Well, because a lot of people are out here to scam you. And a lot of people are out here to just make money, even at the expense of you. So a lot of financial advisors, and I'm putting that in mocking air quotes, are out here who are not fiduciaries. And not every person who's not a fiduciary is a bad person or is a bad advisor. However, they have no legal obligation to do

Starting point is 00:26:07 right by you, which means that they can recommend you things that you don't actually need, but that make them a really high commission. So you'll see financial advisors, especially on social media, talk about things like indexed universal life insurance policies, which are complete scams, or how you don't need a 401k because 401ks are stupid and you should just invest in this life insurance thing. If a financial advisor is telling you to invest in life insurance over the 401k, you don't have a financial advisor, you have a life insurance salesman.

Starting point is 00:26:44 And if you ask the question, are you a fiduciary? And they don't give you a straight answer, which is yes, I am, or no, I'm not. They're probably not a fiduciary. If they're doing the like, oh, well, you know, you don't really need to be a fiduciary because I have this, but, but, but like, no, bad, bad idea. So that is our first question before we even consider the pros or cons of working with

Starting point is 00:27:08 a financial advisor. Are they legally obligated to act in your own best interest? Are they a fiduciary? The second question to ask is how do you get paid? How do you, the financial advisor, get paid? How am I going to pay you for your services? Because there's financial advisors out there who manage your portfolio for you

Starting point is 00:27:35 and take 1%, 2%, 3%, 3.5% of everything you make in the stock market. Now you're going, but Tori, 1% is not that much, right? Like 1% is not that much. Okay, but we all hope we're millionaires someday or multimillionaires, right? The average person that is my age, right? I'm 30, is going to need millions of dollars in order to retire comfortably. And 3% of a million dollars is a lot of money,

Starting point is 00:28:12 especially when nobody else are charging those kind of fees. That's a really, really high fee. So we really don't want to work with financial advisors that are charging us a percentage of our portfolio, especially the person listening to the show. When you start getting into like high net worth people, and I mean like five plus million dollars, there's some case, some like very some case to be made for these like wealth managers who are taking a percentage. But like for you and I, no, that does not make sense.

Starting point is 00:28:50 That does not make sense. It's an extremely high amount of money for noncommiserate benefit. And I'm going to call you out by name. Edward Jones, you are scamming people because they charge three and a half percent. The last time I looked, they also charge you a fee. If you want to leave them, they charge you like a $75 fee. If you want to take your account away, if you are somebody, you know, if you are somebody you love is with Edward Jones,

Starting point is 00:29:23 please get out. You are spending so much of your hard earned money for little to no return. Don't do it. So, are two questions before we consider the pros and the cons of a financial advisor. Two questions. One, are you a fiduciary?

Starting point is 00:29:41 Are you legally obligated to act in my best interest? And two, how do I pay you? What is your pay structure? Let's talk about the pros and cons. And I'll talk more about what we want to look for when it comes to paying the financial advisors in a second. The biggest pro to a financial advisor is you're sitting down and you're talking

Starting point is 00:30:02 to a real life person. Who again, assuming you've done your due diligence, is a credible person. So you're getting these tailored investment strategies based on your individual goals, your risk tolerance, your financial situation, and hopefully it's not just eight questions that you told an algorithm, right? You're actually having a conversation about your life, about your children, about your retirement age, about whether you're a homeowner or not, about the things you actually truly care about and how you want to use money as a tool to build a life that you love.

Starting point is 00:30:35 One of the additional pros of a financial advisor, the second pro, is that they're providing comprehensive planning for you. So they can potentially provide not just investment strategies and investment advice, they're providing comprehensive planning for you. So they can potentially provide not just investment strategies and investment advice, they're giving you estate planning, right? So wills, trusts, et cetera. They're helping you navigate taxes and they might be even helping you think about retirement planning as you get closer

Starting point is 00:31:02 to actual retirement. So I will say, if you are someone who is trying to retire in the next 10 years, I actually, this is the biggest case where I recommend a financial advisor. You know, you're in your 50s and you're trying to retire soon. I actually really do recommend a financial advisor,

Starting point is 00:31:21 at least to sit down once or twice, because they're going to help you with your personalized situation, make decisions about where your money should be, what different strategies you need to do or decisions you need to make as you get closer and closer to actually retiring. Just like we said, robo-advisors don't provide emotional support as a con. When you sit down with a real human being, they're hopefully providing you emotional support, right? They're helping you navigate not just the technical side of the stock market, but the emotional and the psychological side too. So financial advisors, again, pro personalized advice,

Starting point is 00:32:03 comprehensive planning, right? Not just about investing, not just about the stock market, but about a bunch of different money related things, emotional support. And especially again, if you are someone nearing retirement, I think financial advisors are great. That is one of the unique situations where I actually really do recommend that you sit down with someone and talk to them. My cons. We were talking about those fees before, right?

Starting point is 00:32:27 One of the biggest cons for financial advisors are the fees, especially if they are charging you a percentage. Again, if a financial advisor is charging you a percentage of your portfolio, run the other way. You are looking for a financial advisor that charges you hourly. An hourly rate. So, hey, we'll sit down for two hours and it's going to cost $125 an hour. That is the kind of financial advisor you want to work with. However, on average, if you are giving your money over to a financial advisor that's charging you 1 to 3%, that is a lot of money. That is tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime.

Starting point is 00:33:14 And again, it is not indicative or not guaranteed that you will make that money up. It's not like, you know, if I was paying a service and it was slightly more expensive, but I knew that I could get a lot out of that service and that service was going to save me money or was going to be a quality service, yeah, I might consider paying it. But here's my stat for you. When I was researching for my book, Financial Feminist,

Starting point is 00:33:41 I found this stat that blew my mind. Only 25% of professional stock pickers managed to outperform the everyday investor. So I'm going to take the jargon out of that. Only a quarter of professional financial advisors or stock pickers, right? The people who have degrees, have certifications, the people who like should be good at this are only better than you. Yes, you, the person who's like,

Starting point is 00:34:13 I don't think I know anything about money. They are only better than you 25% of the time. I'm not about to pay somebody one to 3%, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of my lifetime. I'm not about to pay them this amount of money when only a quarter of the time they're going to be better than me and you. That's not great. So we're not working with financial advisors who are charging that percentage fee, right?

Starting point is 00:34:40 Definitely not. But if we are going to work with somebody hourly, which is what we do want, they still are pretty cost prohibitive. Because the hourly fee on average is anywhere from 100 to $400 per hour, typically average 200 to $400 an hour. If you're seeing this person a couple hours every month, which feels excessive, but let's say it's, you know, two hours every month, that adds up, right? At the higher end, 400 times 12, you can do the math on that. That's $4,800 a year. I got one more thing to mention about financial advisors.

Starting point is 00:35:15 So when we come back, we are talking more about financial advisors, the pros, the cons, and I am telling you the platform that I recommend you invest in. So stay tuned. What does the future hold for business? Well, if you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. See what I did there?

Starting point is 00:35:33 And until somebody invents a crystal ball and they really need to hurry up and figure that one out, you've got to figure it out for yourself. You've got to interpret what the future holds for every single part of your business. But until then, NetSuite is here. Over 41,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR,

Starting point is 00:35:54 all into one fluid platform. So when you're closing books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. NetSuite is one of those perfect products, especially for the larger businesses that continue to grow. And when I get to that point in my business, that's who I'm using. I'm using NetSuite.

Starting point is 00:36:09 Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash FF pod. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash FF pod, netsuite.com slash FF pod. White Lotus is back. We know it's back. It's here. I'm readyF pod. White Lotus is back. We know it's back. It's here. I'm ready for it. I love it. It's one of my favorite shows.

Starting point is 00:36:30 And if you, like me, are always trying to make sure you don't miss out on the show everybody's talking about, but then you sign up for the subscription services that you forgot to cancel, Rocket Money is the place to go. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you.

Starting point is 00:36:51 They automatically scan your bills to find opportunities to save. Rocket Money has helped over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500 million, that is half a billion, in cancel subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. Thanks to Rocket Money, I can see all my subscriptions in one place and cancel the ones I'm not using anymore. So you save more money. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash FF pod today. That's rocketmoney.com slash FFpod rocketmoney.com slash ffpod

Starting point is 00:37:30 Hello, welcome back from break. Okay, financial advisors, right? Let's review the pros really quick pros emotional support Personalized guidance. That's great cons fees fees are really expensive so we want to prioritize if we are going to work with a financial advisor doing it hourly. And the final con for me about financial advisors, there are plenty of good ones out there. There are, there truly are. I am not out here like completely shitting on financial advisors. I think there's plenty who are kind and empathetic and feminist, but there's a lot out there who aren't. The average financial advisor is what the financial industry looks like, which is male

Starting point is 00:38:15 pale and stale, as some of my fellow financial coaches and experts say. The amount of times I have heard from women in our community where they go to a financial advisor With their male partner and all the financial advisor does is speak to Their husband their male partner Doesn't look at them doesn't ask them how they're doing doesn't ask them what their goals are. It's just a bro to bro meeting that happens so often or bro-to-bro meeting. That happens so often. Or you go to the financial advisor and you talk about all of the reasons that you're scared about Trump's impact on the economy and on your investment portfolio. And he said, oh, well, you know, I voted for him because

Starting point is 00:38:57 he has good economic policies. The amount of people in the finance industry who do not share your values, who do not actually treat you as a smart human being who condescend to you, right? Like I jokingly call it, like it's your dad's financial advisor friend named Steve. And some of the Steve's are great, a lot of them aren't. So when it comes to the traditional finance industry in general, it was not built for you and I. It was not built to be feminist. It was not built to be non-condescending and non-judgmental. It was not built without the jargon and without the gatekeeping. And I will say, 99% of people listening don't need a financial advisor. You just don't. So what do we do then, Tori?

Starting point is 00:39:55 You just ran me through the three different options, and you gave me some pros, but you gave me a lot of cons. So what is the best option out there? Well, there's Stock Market School. Stock Market School is the investing platform that I built. It is not a course. It is not a workshop. It's an actual investing platform. We built the technology for you to be able to invest and to learn step by step from me and my incredible business partners who are fiduciaries, who are teaching you how to fish, right?

Starting point is 00:40:29 Teaching you how to invest in the stock market, giving you accountability and coaching. And we are never taking a percentage fee or charging you an additional fee every time you invest. We built the platform we wanted to see. And this is what I recommend to people. And yeah, I'm talking about my own product right now. I'm shamelessly plugging. I know. But I'm doing it because I've actually built something that works. Like I've actually built something with my team that I have seen thousands of women use to not only progress towards their goals to get their 100K and

Starting point is 00:41:08 beyond towards their retirement accounts, but to actually become educated investors. They know what they're doing. They know what all of these terms mean. And they're also not spending hours a day doing this. They're spending two hours or less per month on average managing and learning about investing. I'm transparent. I like talking to you about the cons. There's cons in my platform too. If you want something completely one-on-one, you want to sit down with a person one-on-one, right? It might cost you a little bit of money. We covered that before. But if that's a really

Starting point is 00:41:44 big priority to you, stock market school is probably not the place for you. At least not right now. If you don't have any interest in managing your own accounts, and I'm gonna call bullshit on this because you should, you really, really should. I know, and we just got a couple Instagram comments about this where I've talked about this

Starting point is 00:42:00 and people were like, hell no, I don't wanna look at it. I don't wanna touch it. I don't wanna manage it. Please don't be that person. Please don't be that person. I want to teach you to fish. We're not teaching you every single thing. We're not turning you into a finance bro. You're not going to have a CPA license at the end of this, nor should you. But if you don't care about looking at your own money and you don't care about your own money's performance and you just wanna trust somebody else,

Starting point is 00:42:27 yeah, stock market school's not the best place for you. And the final con is if you have like a very, very unique financial situation, and everybody thinks you're unique, I know you are, but like I'm talking, you have just inherited a business with your family. Like somebody in your family just died and you inherited a business with your family. Like somebody in your family just died and you inherited a business.

Starting point is 00:42:47 You inherited millions of dollars. Again, you are really close to retirement, right? Like that is when you should talk to a financial advisor. But for the average person, stock market school is for you. We built it for you. We built it to be a non-judgmental, non-jargon investing platform,

Starting point is 00:43:06 where you not only learn how to invest from me with live coaching and workshops and courses and master classes, but also the actual platform that looks nothing like one of these DIY platforms that's fucking confusing. It is so easy to invest. And the amount of people who have come in and gone, oh my God, it's this easy?

Starting point is 00:43:26 Well, yeah, when you build it like it's easy, it is. We'll link Stock Market School down below. It is, in my opinion, the best place to learn how to invest because I used all of your guys' concerns and fears and questions and created this platform, which by the way has been featured on the front page of the business section of the New York Times. If you're not interested in signing up for stock market school right now, take our free investing workshop, herfirsthundredk.com slash secrets.

Starting point is 00:43:54 You're going to learn the secrets of the stock market. You're going to learn some of the myths you've been believing about the stock market and how to overcome them. We're going to talk about ways to avoid losing money. It's free. No reason to not show up. herfirsthundredk.com slash secrets. To recap, there are pros and cons of every investing

Starting point is 00:44:09 platform, including the one I've built. And it depends on your own situation. Personal finance is personal. It depends on what you want, what your goals are, how much money you do have, and also what's important to you in terms of values, how you want to be spoken to, how you want to be spoken to, how you want to be treated, the accessibility in terms of this information being gate-kept or not,

Starting point is 00:44:31 right? All of these are really important to consider when you're starting investing. But my last piece of advice for you that I have said so many times in our work, and I will continue to say, do not let analysis paralysis keep you from progressing towards your financial goals. Do not feel like you must make the perfect decision because imperfect action is better than inaction every single day. And specifically when it comes to investing, every day you don't invest, every day you're not putting money in the stock market that you could be, you are losing money because you're losing that valuable, valuable time.

Starting point is 00:45:10 And we'll do an entire other episode about this. We've talked about this before on the show with other episodes. We'll link them down below. But I know the question after this is going to be, but what about Trump? Should I continue investing? Yes. No matter what Trump is doing, no matter what the stock market's doing, no matter who's president, we continue to invest.

Starting point is 00:45:29 We stay the course. Do not let Donald Trump and the fear of what he might do or Elon Musk, do not let the fear of what these two men might do cause you to derail your own financial future. Don't let it. I can't wait to see you in the Stock Market Secrets Workshop, whether that is tonight or in the future. Again, herfirst100k.com slash secrets.

Starting point is 00:45:53 I'm thankful you're here as always. Thank you for supporting Feminist Media. Thank you for listening to the show. And we'll see you back here very soon. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist, a Her First 100k podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristin Fields and Tamesha Grant, researched by Sarah Shortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and

Starting point is 00:46:16 operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Lefeu. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100k, Kaylyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmakeva, Taylor Chil, Sasha Bonar, Ray Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Karonen, Darrell Ann Ingman, and Megan Walker. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting the show.

Starting point is 00:46:39 For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests, and episode show notes, visit financialfeministPodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to HerFirst100K.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan.

Financial Feminist - 219. Which Investing Platform Should I Choose? Advisor vs. Robo-Investor vs. DIY

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