[00:02:28] Nicole Lapin: Thank you for that. My mission… I started because I knew nothing about finance or personal finance. We don’t learn this stuff in school. I grew up in an immigrant family. So I didn’t talk about any advanced money concepts, much less like basic money concepts, mortgages, credit cards, all that.

[00:02:48] Nicole Lapin: Like I didn’t even learn that until after college. And I went to a fancy college and took economics classes and stuff like that. But I never learned any of the practical stuff that you actually need. To have to be an adult and have your financial life in order. So I wanted to make it my mission to teach my former self, this girl who was super clueless, who was smiling and nodding and not joining basic money conversations, but she was smart and she had figured out harder things in life.

[00:03:19] Nicole Lapin: And. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t learn about money, but now that I know about money, it became my mission to make sure that other people didn’t make the same mistakes I did. 

[00:03:29] Kyle Grieve: So as you pointed out in prior interviews, most people don’t learn financial literacy in school, like you just said, whether that’s elementary school, high school, post secondary, and very few people have the luxury of having parents who can pass down financial wisdom to their children.

[00:03:43] Kyle Grieve: Why do you think it’s so difficult for people to try and learn financial literacy on their own? 

[00:03:47] Nicole Lapin: I think it’s just something we don’t talk about. I think it’s really taboo. It’s probably our last taboo, Kyle, that we still have. We’ll talk about just about anything before we talk about money. I’ll be out to dinner with my girlfriends and we’ll talk about all the dating and all the everything.

[00:04:07] Nicole Lapin: And then I’ll ask them what’s in their banking account or what they’re making this year. And it’s not because I want to shame them. I certainly don’t. I want to help them, but it becomes crickets, and I’m like, wait a minute. We just talked about something super personal and now this is crickets?

[00:04:25] Nicole Lapin: What’s in your savings account is crickets or what you’re investing or not investing is crickets. And it shouldn’t be that way because I think if we open up this dialogue, we get over this intimidation factor that all of financial news and information is just full of a bunch of jargon. It is a bunch of jargon.

[00:04:45] Nicole Lapin: But once you can speak that language, you can join the conversation. It’s like any language really. If you go to Japan and you don’t speak Japanese, you’ll be really confused. You go to Wall Street and you don’t speak the language of money. You’ll be really confused until you speak it. And then you’re like, duh, that was obvious.

[00:05:01] Nicole Lapin: You just don’t remember it because now you know it. You didn’t remember the time when you thought it was jargon and crazy and you were clueless. And so it’s really about just joining that conversation. I think the jargon is the thing that keeps people out of the conversation the most. 

[00:05:17] Kyle Grieve: So let’s say I haven’t saved a dime in my life, and I have no idea what I want to do with any money that I begin to save.

[00:05:23] Kyle Grieve: What would you say is the most important point you’d make to someone in my position that would just blow my mind about saving money and Trying to compound it. 

[00:05:32] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, I think compound interest is a great wow factor, right? Compound interest is this amazing force. And so often it’s been used against us in the financial system.

[00:05:42] Nicole Lapin: So we’re used to it with credit cards and mortgages and whatever, where we’re taking on debt, but it can be used in our favor. When we invest, and so that same force that makes your credit cards snowball out of control and become bananas in no time, that same force can be used in your favor. If you’re investing money, if you’re putting money away, then you can take advantage of that amazing force.

[00:06:09] Nicole Lapin: So I think one example could be if you put a hundred bucks a month away, starting at 25, by the time you retire, you have a million dollars because of compound interest. But if you just started 10 years later and that’s 100 times 12 times 10, so 12 grand, like it’s still a good amount of money, but it’s nowhere near the amount that you would lose because you waited 10 years.

[00:06:32] Nicole Lapin: So if you waited 10 years and you were 35 and you put a hundred bucks a month, in an S& P 500 index fund, which we can talk about, like just basically something that tracks the market, then you’d have 300 grand by the time you retire. Like 300 grand is a lot of money, but it’s not the million dollars that you could have gotten if you put 12 grand in over that last decade.

[00:06:51] Nicole Lapin: Yeah. So that’s this beautiful, amazing, wonderful, brilliant force of compound interest that you can use in your favor and literally just make your money work for you while you’re doing nothing. You work so hard for your money. I think it’s time it returned the favor. 

[00:07:08] Kyle Grieve: Absolutely. I agree. So before we get into index funds, I have one other question.

[00:07:12] Kyle Grieve: So I really enjoyed some of your points on some of the stories that you discussed that people give themselves who are trying to rehab their finances and make these stories up as a reason to not take care of them, whether that’s, I don’t have enough money or I’m not a math person, et cetera.

[00:07:26] Kyle Grieve: Why do you think people tell themselves these stories in the first place? And how can I reframe these stories to help them improve and save? 

[00:07:33] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, these are the greatest hits stories that people will tell themselves to say that they can’t get their financial life together. I don’t have enough money to start.

[00:07:42] Nicole Lapin: I’m bad with numbers or I’m bad with math or I’m too old. Those are like the three greatest hits usually and you don’t need a lot of money. to start. You just need the most time possible. And are you too old? I don’t know. Like you’re never as young as you are today. So today is the best day ever to start because you’ll never be younger than you are right this moment.

[00:08:03] Nicole Lapin: And yeah, like a numbers math person. I started as a poetry major, Kyle. Like I started as a poetry major. I didn’t know anything about math. Like the basics, right? That you need to get your financial life. In order, you don’t need a graphing calculator. You just need basic, a 5th grader can do the math.

[00:08:23] Nicole Lapin: It’s the humanities part, it’s not the math part that actually is the thing that trips you up the most. It’s the relationships that are the hardest to navigate. It’s not the physical can you put this into… A budget or can you like, you don’t need to also calculate a lot of the stuff. I went through the C F P program and needed to actually calculate manually all of this interest and all of the taxation and blah, blah, blah.

[00:08:47] Nicole Lapin: You just put it in the calculator. You don’t need to calculate bond yields and stuff like that. Like it just shows you on your brokerage app. And so it’s not that stuff that trips people up really, if you like, peel back the onion and get to the heart of it. How to talk to your friend about paying you back, or how to talk to your significant other about a prenup, or a postnup, or a will, or a trust, or stuff like that.

[00:09:11] Nicole Lapin: It’s the interpersonal workings of money that’s the hardest part. It’s not the math or the numbers. 

[00:09:18] Kyle Grieve: So let’s transition now to index funds. So I want to introduce this part because you had a really good story in your book that you discussed about Tiffany’s, which I absolutely loved. So just a little backstory before you tell it in more detail.

[00:09:30] Kyle Grieve: So you were bullied a little bit as a kid and then you basically discussed how you got an email from your bully and then you were going to go to Tiffany’s anyways. Yeah. So can you let me know a little bit more about that story again for my audience and then also discuss how you’ve used that story as a mental model to improve your thinking about money.

[00:09:48] Nicole Lapin: I grew up not having money and the girl, the popular girls like had all sorts of stuff that I didn’t and I’ll never forget this like chunky Tiffany bracelet with the dangling little heart on the bottom of it and to me that was like, Oh my gosh, I could never buy something like that. That’s amazing.

[00:10:07] Nicole Lapin: And when I was bullied by these girls growing up, they would make fun of My fake Doc Martens. This is when I was growing up, Doc Martens were cool. They called them Nurse Martens, because they didn’t have the little thing. All this stuff that happens when you’re coming of age. And you remember all of this stuff so much more, because you’re feeling these things for the first time.

[00:10:28] Nicole Lapin: And I don’t know what I ate for breakfast or what I did last night, but I remember these girls names. I remember all of these moments so vividly. And I graduated, of course, went to college, quickly started working in broadcast news, and then quickly worked up to the network level. And I was anchoring on CNBC and doing reports on the Today Show and all of this sort of high profile stuff, where People would watch it.

[00:10:59] Nicole Lapin: I always am amazed when people watched stuff on TV, because you don’t really see all those folks. You just see a camera. And so I got a note one day from her, this bully, and my heart sank, and at this point, I was I’d done some therapy. I was a grown ass woman. I was talking to CEOs and politicians.

[00:11:21] Nicole Lapin: I wasn’t intimidated by anyone. At that point, like I had grown and like really found comfort in my skin and I see this email from her and I am like, Oh my God, I am transported back to being like this teenage girl who is so scared by whatever this note is going to say. And she said something like.

[00:11:44] Nicole Lapin: Hey, congrats. Can you help me with my career or something like that? It’s so great to see you do well. And I’m like, what

[00:11:56] Nicole Lapin: do and whatever. And so it was a catalyst at that moment to like, do right by my former self. And I thought, you know what I’m going to do? I am going to go get that freaking Bracelet once and for all like I can buy all the bracelets I could buy like probably like the whole counter at well Definitely not like any counter at Tiffany but like the sterling silver counter I could handle and so I went over I was in New York I went over to Tiffany and I’m like, you know what?

[00:12:24] Nicole Lapin: I’m gonna feel vindicated. I’m gonna feel like I Made it or something or like I’m laughing last like I got this stupid Tiffany bracelet and I went there and I was like You know what? I could get like all the Tiffany bracelets on my hand and I was like, you know what instead I Left and I bought Tiffany stock instead and now with that Tiffany stock.

[00:12:46] Nicole Lapin: I mean it wasn’t very much it appreciated so much more than I have worn that bracelet much like after that year of vindication and like it would have collected dust somewhere and I felt much more vindicated because that was like a moment where I could say not only Do I feel empowered by what I’ve been able to accomplish, but I also now have the acumen and the wherewithal to make a really smart decision that’s going to pay dividends later on, literally.

[00:13:20] Kyle Grieve: Yeah, I love that story. It’s funny when you understand how powerful compounding is too. It’s like everything’s an opportunity cost. It’s yeah, you could have spent a couple hundred bucks on this bracelet or you could put a couple hundred bucks in the market and it’s probably going to do a lot better than a bracelet 

[00:13:34] Kyle Grieve: would.

[00:13:35] Nicole Lapin: Totally. And by the way I’m not saying don’t buy the bracelet, because also get the bracelet. I have a lot of bracelets as well. But yes, when you think about buying an iPhone or something and how much Apple stock. I wish I would have bought a ton of Apple stock when I was starting to report on technology.

[00:13:50] Nicole Lapin: Oh my god, I remember reporting when Gmail first came out, when the iPod came out. It was nothing. I didn’t know. I wish I could go back. That’s why I try to do this, to help others just in that moment. If I bought some Apple stock I would still be talking to you. Cause like at this point I don’t do it for the money, but yeah.

[00:14:12] Nicole Lapin: It still hurts. 

[00:14:14] Kyle Grieve: I know that during the pandemic, you got your Twitter or ex DMs flooded with people asking if they should buy XYZ stock. And from your responses that I researched, it seemed like most of them were the same. It was forget stocks and go with index funds and chill. Can you expand a little bit on the system for the audience?

[00:14:32] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, index funds and chill, Netflix and chill is also cool too. The DM slips, the not so fun and sexy kinds that I get, were like, should I get? Zoom, or should I buy NVIDIA or whatever? And this was mostly from people who are buying into the market or starting to invest for the very first time.

[00:14:52] Nicole Lapin: And I understand why you would want to say that because the impetus is to get rich quick. What can I buy really quickly? That’s going to make me a bunch of money. And. I don’t like fun, sexy times with my money. I like boring, boring, slow and steady times. I don’t want to gamify it. I don’t want to do some crazy crypto thing.

[00:15:14] Nicole Lapin: I don’t want to do anything wild. I just want it to stay Growing nicely safely. And that’s what I suggest to first time investors to instead of looking for the hot stock that they’re going to put their money in look at an index fund, which is a basket of a bunch of different stocks.

[00:15:34] Nicole Lapin: It follows an index. So an index and I’m sure your listeners know is You know, something that tracks a bunch of different assets. The S& P 500 is an index. The NASDAQ is an index. Indexes or indices, the jury’s out on that one. But there are a lot of different indices, right? Indexes. And when you buy into the S& P 500 index fund, an S& P 500 index fund, there are a lot, there are a lot of different tickers.

[00:16:01] Nicole Lapin: By the way, this is another question I get because Then people will say, Okay I searched index fund and the my Schwab portal or whatever. You need an actual ticker symbol to buy into an index fund and index funds can be like mutual funds or ETFs, which are exchange traded funds that you can buy and sell like stocks, but you’re getting a diversified exposure to the stock market just by buying one thing.

[00:16:24] Nicole Lapin: And what’s cool is that Over time, the market, and when people say the market, they mean the S& P 500 as like a broad barometer of the market has beaten what fund managers say they can do to beat the market time and time again, a majority of fund managers do not beat the market. So like, why then try to beat it?

[00:16:47] Nicole Lapin: Just join it, just buy it. And so that’s what I often said. It’s like what Warren Buffett put in his own will for his own wife to do with their money, put a majority of it in low costs, S& P 500, Vanguard, like you can buy Vanguard, you can buy other stuff, index funds. So that’s where my like mug, some of our swag says index funds and chill.

[00:17:08] Kyle Grieve: Excellent description. So one of the biggest problems that investors have, whether that’s stocks, indexes, crypto, et cetera, is that they panic when prices drop and they end up selling. So what advice would you give to those who have had bad experiences in the stock market before, but maybe you want to start trying again, getting some money in there?

[00:17:25] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, I would say dollar cost average, which is Just fancy terminology for putting little bits of money in at regular intervals so that you are safeguarding yourself from the fluctuations of the market. This adage on Wall Street, one of the few truisms, buy low, sell high. Another one is it’s better to beat low expectations.

[00:17:47] Nicole Lapin: Great. We don’t know when the low is, we don’t know when the high is. That’s the problem. And when you, let’s say, have 1, 200 bucks, and you want to go try to put your money in the market, instead of putting 1, 200 bucks in the market today, we don’t know where the low is, we don’t know where the high is if it’s at a low, we’d be stoked that we bought today if we could zoom out to a chart, if it was at the high, we’d be like pretty annoyed.

[00:18:11] Nicole Lapin: Instead, you take that 1, 200 bucks and put 100 bucks in the market every month for the next year. And over time, you’re going to get the average of what the price would be. over that period of time. So like this dollar cost average idea is basically just, you have some money, put it in at different periods of time.

[00:18:30] Nicole Lapin: And overall you’ll make up for the ups and downs of the market. 

[00:18:33] Kyle Grieve: Love it. So my dad is one of the most risk averse people I know. He has all of his savings in bonds instead of indexes because he doesn’t like seeing his portfolio drop at all. So I’m always trying to get him to get some exposure to the stock market as bonds it barely beats inflation, but.

[00:18:49] Kyle Grieve: What advice would you give to those who think indexes are too volatile to invest in? 

[00:18:54] Nicole Lapin: Bonds are rocking right now. Like bonds and CDs are doing okay right now. So you’re dead. I understand that he’s done it for a long time, so he probably didn’t make a lot of interest. But look, like there are bad years for the market for sure.

[00:19:07] Nicole Lapin: And the point of being invested into the market via index funds, for instance, is to have growth over time. Like the optimal part of that. sentence is overtime. It’s not a quick thing. It’s not I’ll put my money in and oh, you’re saying it’s going to make seven to 10 percent in the market. Like cool.

[00:19:29] Nicole Lapin: So does that mean 10 percent next month? I’m just going to get it out. Sweet. Like I get this great return. No, it’s over time. And so like inflation adjusted, you’re probably looking at about 7% Over time, like you have to really put your blinders on for this. And if you have that time, like if you have that a long time horizon, then the market is, has historically I like to look at big swaths of data, has historically returned that great percentage over time.

[00:19:59] Nicole Lapin: And so that’s what I would say to anyone who’s trepidatious about going in the market. If you feel like you’re going to check your brokerage every single day, then I don’t know, maybe like your mental health is valuable and maybe you want to take some baby steps. Like in my last book I went from lowest risk to highest risk.

[00:20:19] Nicole Lapin: So like putting your toe in the investing water with money market accounts, money market funds, CDs, bond treasuries, whatever, and then getting into more risky assets. So like the higher the risk, the higher the reward too. And then you get to really cuckoo stuff like currencies and commodities and crypto and VC investing, which is really risky.

[00:20:47] Nicole Lapin: And you shouldn’t, if you have a little bit of money to play with, like that’s not the place to start first. 

[00:20:54] Kyle Grieve: Yeah. And then, so in terms of, let’s say for people who maybe are a little bit older, like my father, who’s getting into his seventies now, would you do the traditional stock bond mix where you have that the same percentage of your age and bonds and kind of thing?

[00:21:07] Kyle Grieve: Or do you know, do you not subscribe to that theory? 

[00:21:11] Nicole Lapin: I think it really depends. I think that the rule that you’re talking about is putting if he’s 70, then putting your age in bonds. So like 70 percent in bonds because he’s older. And so like historically that’s been risky. It’s really hard to come up with a hard and fast rule around this stuff, especially without seeing a bigger picture because maybe something else might be more advantageous.

[00:21:34] Nicole Lapin: But if you’re just starting out, that’s a really good rule, easy rule of thumb to start. With a portfolio. And then bam, you have a portfolio. So I’m nearly 40, which is crazy. So like for easy math, right? So 40 percent in bonds, 60 percent in equities or stocks. And then all of a sudden I have a portfolio.

[00:21:56] Nicole Lapin: With different things that I like at the end of my next year on this planet, I rebalance it and I look at see like how much are in each. And then I say, okay there’s like now after a year has gone on, there’s a little bit more in bonds. And so it’s like trimming the hedges, you just like pruning and then and getting back to something That is a good benchmark for you to build from.

[00:22:21] Nicole Lapin: That’s all it is. 

[00:22:22] Kyle Grieve: Yeah, that makes sense. So a lot of our listeners are maybe not necessarily beginner investors and do own some individual stocks in their portfolios. How would you suggest people optimize their mix of index funds and stocks if they want to go with having individual stocks? 

[00:22:37] Nicole Lapin: That’s a case by case preference, really like I have individual stocks and I have index funds and I have a bunch of different kinds of index funds.

[00:22:46] Nicole Lapin: And I would say before getting into a new sector, look at a fund for that first. If you’re like, I’m really hot to trot on technology right now, look at QQQ instead, which is the fund that tracks The Nasdaq, or if you’re like, damn, I’m really excited about some semiconductor company or something or like mining or I want international exposure.

[00:23:10] Nicole Lapin: I just feel like there’s a fund for everything. And sure, like you want to buy some Berkshire stock, go for it. If you feel like that’s going to just be a sure thing forever and ever in the end or whatever else, like I would just keep it to a reasonable amount of what you have invested in equities and reasonable is not for me to decide at the moment.

[00:23:29] Kyle Grieve: Yeah. So let’s hop in and talk a little bit about the role of AI in finance. So on a recent episode of your podcast, Money Rehab, you discussed the use of AI in finance in a little more detail. I’m interested in knowing more about how AI can offer high level investing advice that normally would have only been available to high net worth individuals.

[00:23:48] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, what’s cool about AI is that it helps you with these very human whims that we have so buy low, sell high. That’s something that we know as a truism on Wall Street, but right when the market starts crashing, you’re like, Oh my God, get me out of here. This is bananas. Like it’s going to tank.

[00:24:08] Nicole Lapin: It’s like going to zero. And historically, that’s not happened. We’ve never not recovered from a single recession or depression in us history. And it probably if treasuries collapse, like we have worse problems than getting our money out of the market, right? That’s zombie apocalypse vibes.

[00:24:27] Nicole Lapin: So intellectually we know the right moves to make, but we’re only human. And so I still, I know all the rules. I talk with people about the rules and the market’s up. I’m like, okay let me double down on this for a second. This is a hot market. Let me just bet the farm. Let’s get some more return right now and just ride this momentum and ride this wave.

[00:24:50] Nicole Lapin: That’s a terrible thing to do, right? Because you’re buying stuff that’s at a premium instead of buying on sale. But like buying on sale you should get a deal. But There’s so much emotion tied up into our money. And so I love AI from an investing standpoint, because it really takes that emotion out of it.

[00:25:11] Nicole Lapin: Like we’re only human. And so sometimes to optimize our investing and. Our portfolio and our overall financial life. We need something that’s more than human, which is AI. And like AI is not a scary robot. If you have used predictive text, you’ve used AI. If you’ve used Google Voice or Siri or Alexa, like that’s AI.

[00:25:33] Nicole Lapin: We’ve been using AI for a long time. And so if you’re thinking some robot is like going to come into your banking portal or your brokerage, it’s just not the case. It’s a tool that can help you get better with Riding through a lot of emotional ups and downs of the stock market. 

[00:25:50] Kyle Grieve: So what are some real life use cases for using AI that would help you ride the ups and downs of the market?

[00:25:56] Kyle Grieve: Just interested in knowing what those would be. 

[00:25:59] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, so we just launched Money Assistant, which is crazy. It’s a first of its kind podcast that’s hosted by me, Nicole Lapin, and my. AI counterpart with the company called Magnify. And so it’s Magnify’s AI powered investing assistant. And so this collaboration, it is a way for listeners to engage with personal finance, but offering a human expertise.

[00:26:25] Nicole Lapin: blend and an AI blend. And so when you have questions about what to do with your budget or what to do with your own retirement, this is a way for the combination of human intelligence and artificial intelligence to come together to create and demystify a lot of these financial matters. And so I think that using.

[00:26:50] Nicole Lapin: AI within your own investing, is just the beginning. You can really do it as an investing tool in all aspects of your financial life. And so that means just investing in yourself ultimately, which we know pays most dividends later on. 

[00:27:06] Kyle Grieve: Yeah, that’s really interesting because especially in during market downturns, when most investors are like sell, I want to get out.

[00:27:13] Kyle Grieve: Then if they had a AI robot, who’s dove through hundreds of years of research, they can be like maybe that’s not a good idea to do that right now. She probably could be going in the opposite direction. 

[00:27:24] Nicole Lapin: Yeah so Magnify, what I like about Magnify, it’s the first regulated AI investing assistant.

[00:27:29] Nicole Lapin: It’s the first SEC regulated AI that helps you invest. And so we’re all about making sure that everything here is regulated and on point, but it really helps you plan, monitor and adjust what you’re doing with your money so that you’re not driven by daily emotions. from market swings. And it’s so easy to do that.

[00:27:48] Nicole Lapin: It helps you focus on how to beat inflation or save for your goals rather than getting preoccupied with the latest meme stock, right? Because we’re all about shiny objects, especially on social media. And so it’s easy to lose track of what your goals are. And so I think what this does as a tool, like anything else, it just makes sure that you’re on track and that you’re on a realistic plan to get you to your goals.

[00:28:16] Nicole Lapin: So not only do you have a plan, you understand it and you follow it because that’s the biggest part, right? It’s one thing to say you’re going to make a plan. Information is power, but the real power lies in action, not just having the information, but doing it. 

[00:28:33] Kyle Grieve: Yeah, that’s really interesting.

[00:28:35] Kyle Grieve: So with that AI, how deep does it go in and how much individual advice can it dispense to users? 

[00:28:42] Nicole Lapin: A ton of individual advice. What I look at it as it’s like really your first advisor that’s not going to judge you at all. Even when I’ve met with financial advisors, it’s still intimidating. And so this takes all of it out of that process.

[00:28:59] Nicole Lapin: And so what I like about Magnify, it’s this investing tool, the first one that really doesn’t Make you feel intimidated. Helps you learn in the process, but also like really tailor makes what the plan is for you and only you. It makes up for all of the stuff that we didn’t learn in school. It makes the fact that they didn’t teach you investing in school.

[00:29:20] Nicole Lapin: No big deal. Like every step along the way from whether you’re putting together a plan to. Buy your first house to try to pull up the returns for different funds. Like you can get that intense, like you can go and you can search for research on different sectors. Like we talked about investing in funds.

[00:29:41] Nicole Lapin: You can sort by return, you can sort by price, you can sort by all sorts of other metrics and data. And so I think it helps you at every. And even if you don’t know even what a fund is, then you start at the basics, but it grows with you as your personal situation develops and changes. As we know, Kyle, that’s the only constant in life, that beautiful change.

[00:30:05] Kyle Grieve: Absolutely. Part of what I find fascinating about AI is its ability to drastically increase efficiency and decrease costs across, honestly, like every industry it looks like. So how are you seeing that AI is being utilized by index funds and the financial industry in general? Do you think that will benefit the consumer or will most of the value end up going to corporations?

[00:30:26] Nicole Lapin: I think that everybody will win if it’s adopted more on a personal level. Our mission in each of our Money Assistant episodes are to sit down with people that are faced with real life financial challenges and help them strategize for financial milestones. Our goal is to give these tools and these resources That have traditionally been available only to the wealthy to hopefully democratize those for everybody else.

[00:30:52] Nicole Lapin: Now, if that means that person who never imagined they would have bought a fund or a stock or whatever buys one, sure. Does that company make money too? Absolutely. But then that individual also is investing in themselves and their own portfolio and will make money. So I think as soon as you empower people on an individual level to make money, like I’m not even mad about the fact that.

[00:31:16] Nicole Lapin: Corporations, banks, brokerages are also making money because then that floats all boats. 

[00:31:24] Kyle Grieve: Absolutely. And are you aware so let’s say you’re an index fund and you start using AI to help put together your index and put it in whatever order and concentrations you need. Are they going to be able to leverage the fact that they can do that to help reduce fees even more?

[00:31:39] Kyle Grieve: Is that a possibility? Are they fixed with their fee structure that they have now? 

[00:31:44] Nicole Lapin: That might be above my pay grade for how index funds are priced, but we’ve already seen costs come down across the board. So I think the more people that’s just basic economics, right? The more people that are going to be invested, the more costs have to come down.

[00:32:01] Kyle Grieve: It’s interesting because with the whole robo advisor thing, it makes a lot of sense because like you said, you can go in and now you can talk to an AI the robo advisors similar. At least you’re talking to a computer or a computer program rather than a human who can judge you.

[00:32:14] Kyle Grieve: And maybe, and hopefully they’ll be able to give you just more pinpointed advice because it seemed like before I knew anything about finance, I remember going into a bank and ask them and they’re just asking just such a generalized questions like, How much risk do you want to take and stuff like that.

[00:32:28] Kyle Grieve: And it’s I didn’t even know what that meant at that point. So hopefully the use of AI, they can try to drive down more into your risk profile and your goals to help optimize it even better than technically a human maybe could. 

[00:32:42] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, I think what’s cool about AI and using the tool that we highlight in our show, Magnify, is that you can compare similar options.

[00:32:52] Nicole Lapin: Like you can ask for performance of different categories. You can understand some of the search results. So like common things that you would ask your money assistant, which is so cool. Who doesn’t want a money assistant? Are things like compare the top five bond funds for return yield fees, right? Or analyze the top three results or compare similar funds to SPY or VOO.

[00:33:16] Nicole Lapin: And what that does is it uses this artificial intelligence, but it puts you in the driver’s seat. So I do know that 80 percent of investors believe personalized guidance will lead to better outcomes. And 84 percent of Americans are actually positive or neutral on using AI and getting help from AI in general.

[00:33:37] Nicole Lapin: So I think that the things that we’re really going to see increase are the ability to analyze data and trends, conduct faster research on different investments or strategies, and stay on track for your goals. So I think that people who are using this tool to then ultimately pull the trigger is a sweet spot where you’re like, I do have control, but I also have this assistance.

[00:34:03] Nicole Lapin: I do have a little bit of help from my AI friend. 

[00:34:07] Kyle Grieve: Interesting. And so with that AI that you’re talking about, is it integrated with a brokerage account? So you can can you technically ask it to execute something for you? 

[00:34:17] Nicole Lapin: Yeah, totally. You can link all of your brokerage accounts together too. And I think that.

[00:34:23] Nicole Lapin: That’s just gonna allow for efficiency and ease when it comes to planning out what your investment strategy is at the end of 2022, more people planned on investing independently than any other way, so versus a robo advisor or versus not planning to invest at all. So I think that this It allows you to be independent and feel like you are taking control of your money, which I think is really important.

[00:34:56] Nicole Lapin: You don’t want to just like completely set it and forget it. Although there are elements of setting it, getting it that are quite powerful, but you do want to know what’s going on or like you want to do the responsible thing. One out of four people Want to invest because they believe it’s the quote unquote responsible thing to do and it is and we’ve seen that we’ve seen that through our experience, our individual and personal upbringings, how much we wish we would have invested earlier.

[00:35:25] Nicole Lapin: I had some marketing campaign at some point that said, I’m glad I didn’t invest earlier, said no one ever. No one has ever been like, yeah, you know what? I’m so stoked that I didn’t put my money in the market earlier. If you find a person that said that, please let me know. But I think that when you balance some of these macro trends, then the answer to me seems clear.

[00:35:46] Nicole Lapin: Like we’re only going to see more of this type of investing behavior. continue. We haven’t even scratched the surface. We haven’t tapped like what we could be using this for ultimately. And I think that is to empower each person to make their own better financial decisions. 

[00:36:05] Kyle Grieve: Yeah, totally. And it makes sense.

[00:36:07] Kyle Grieve: Also, like you talked a little bit about the macroeconomic backdrop and the use of AI. And like you said, hasn’t even not even really in the surface of how valuable that eventually will be, but Do you see a world eventually where the AI would like, let’s say we go back to Kobe where bond yields were it was nothing, right?

[00:36:23] Kyle Grieve: So you see a world where AI would look at those be like, Hey bond yields are at zero. Let’s minimize our exposure to bonds and maximize the stocks. And then vice versa now where bond rates are, have gone up and changing your exposure and making those suggestions to you rather than you having to follow every little nuance that’s happening in the market.

[00:36:41] Nicole Lapin: Yeah. And that’s such a powerful tool, right? And in recent years, we’ve heard horror stories of self directed investors finding themselves in bad positions due to investing behaviors that are akin to uninformed gambling and like blind following and all this GameStop madness. In part, we think that’s Because there’s just not enough access available to the intelligence needed to do more responsible, diversified, long minded investing.

[00:37:11] Nicole Lapin: So you’re not going to have a prompt come back that’s hey, check it out, GameStop killin it. But instead, understanding what bond yields are doing is an important data set that like we’re all busy and we can’t be up on every up and down and like bond yields and interest rates and everything else that are like germane to creating a portfolio that makes sense for you.

[00:37:37] Nicole Lapin: But what I think the great part about AI is just how adaptive it is. It can handle these basic questions and guidance for less than flex experienced investors. Like, how do I start? with a portfolio or how do I plan for retirement, but can also dive into more complex portfolio analysis and even break down these macroeconomic topics like inflation, which honestly, like at every step, I think people are embarrassed to ask an actual human.

[00:38:06] Kyle Grieve: Agreed. Nicole, thank you so much for joining me today. Before we close out the episode, where can the audience connect with you, learn more about your podcast and your most recent book? 

[00:38:17] Nicole Lapin: You can find Money Rehab, which is my daily finance show, wherever you get your favorite podcasts, or you can check out more on our new AI show, Money Assistant at moneyassistant.com

[00:38:29] Kyle Grieve: Okay, folks, that’s it for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show, and I’ll see you back here very soon. 

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