Financial Advisors React to Viral Money Advice

Introduction – Viral Videos: Good or Bad? (0:00)

Brian: The team’s put together some viral videos. Let’s check out what they’ve got going.

Bo: And Brian, I am so excited because they didn’t tell us that these are viral in a good way or viral in a bad way. So, let’s dive right in.

Saving Money When You’re Young Is Stupid (0:12)

Video Clip: One of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen people do in my life is save money when they are young. If you are below the age of 25 and you are a smart, competent guy, why are you putting money in a retirement fund?

Brian: Little thing called compounding growth.

Video Clip: You can always make more money yourself than by betting on other dudes. Is it even appropriate for you as a grown man to be investing in other men? What your dream is to be in the Bahamas sipping on fruit margaritas with your girlfriends while a bunch of old men do the hard work for you of making money. Like, what are we doing here? It’s a combination of so many stupid things. First of all, you’re not intelligent enough to make your own investing decision. So you put things in the VOO, the SPX to let other people make the decision for you. Second of all, you don’t trust yourself to have the competence to make more money on your own than what is it, 10% a year? Like really? And finally, the one cope that everyone always gives me is, “Oh no, but you don’t understand. It’s tax advantaged. Then I’ll be able to pull all this money out and not pay my 40% tax when I’m 65.” Are we serious right now? When I’m 65? Like, what can I even buy with that money? Like extra applesauce.

Brian: So he’s legit. That’s legit. Well, okay, because he poo-pooed all over compound growth.

Bo: Language first. Just language. We don’t need that. Secondly, when you invest, you actually take ownership in corporations. I’m not betting on some guy or some person. When I go buy the S&P 500, I’m becoming an owner of Apple, of Google, of Nvidia, of Tesla, of Home Depot, fill in the blank. That’s what investing is. That’s not betting on someone else to manage the money. It’s literally participating in the economy in which we operate.

Brian: Look, if you want to be a millionaire by the time you’re at that retirement age, around $95 a month will get it done. If you want to be a millionaire and you wait until you’re 40 years of age, you’re going to have to save something like $1,000. 10 times as much. It is 10 times harder to do it. You can do it light and you can do it right if you start early because of that magical thing of compounding growth. The other thing that he didn’t even cover: it’s free money. These things are tax advantaged. So, I think there was a lot there. I imagine he’s probably going to try to sell you on something. Well, I didn’t know what the alternative was.

Bo: He never— all he did was poo-poo on investing. Investing is simply a place to park money that you’ve already earned so that money can start working for you.

Brian: I don’t understand why he was so upset about that. And then all of a sudden it was a normal video and then he started dropping the fog. He just seemed very disconnected. It’s almost like he wanted the explicit lyrics label on it so he could get a few more views.

$20 a Day Will Keep Broke Away (2:52)

Video Clip: What’s the best finance advice you’ve ever gotten? Save $20 a day. $20 a day times 365, $7,000 a year. Times 2 years, $14,000. 3 years, $20,000. 20 years, $73,000 cap, $78 grand. Save $20 a day and you always keep broke away. The reason why people don’t have money is not how much money you get paid, it’s how much money you save. I know people who work McDonald’s minimum wage and they make more money than people make $40 an hour because they understand where they at. So they save, trying to get high, and then the people who make more money, they spend more money and they get more habits. You know what I mean? Yeah. Hey, good luck in life. You know what I mean? But you got to save money. Without saving money, you got nothing to invest.

Brian: Give that man a podcast.

Bo: Preach, man. All right. What he said, “$20 a day will keep broke away.” Is that what he said? I like that. I like that a lot. He’s exactly right. It doesn’t matter how much money you make. It doesn’t matter where your income is. It doesn’t matter how successful you are. It matters what you do with it. So whether you make $100,000 a year or whether you make $100 a year, if you can defer some of that into the future, you can set your future self up for success.

Brian: You have to live on less than you make. That’s the reality. You live on less than you make. That creates the margin that actually allows you to start saving, investing, and eventually your army of dollars works harder than you can. That’s what he’s saying. Just do something. I love that the numbers of $20 a day lines up quite nicely with what you can do in a Roth IRA. So, if you haven’t even started an investment account, load yourself up today. If you need more, go to moneyguy.com/resources. We’ll hit you up with some free stuff.

Roth IRAs Are a Government Scam (4:36)

Video Clip: Is a Roth IRA still worth it in 2026? Listen, I don’t like Roth IRAs. George Bush created the Roth IRA. You know why he did it? Because he needed money. And there was a ton of money locked into 401(k)s. There was lots and lots of money back then, the economy was going down, and he needed to unlock this money that hadn’t been taxed. Well, how does he do it? Hey, convert your money into a Roth IRA and pay the taxes now so you won’t have to pay it later. I’m earning money on that. Why would I give it up to the government so that I don’t have to pay taxes later? I really don’t like the Roth IRA. And I know everybody pushes back, but if you do an apples-to-apples comparison of the true cost, you’re going to do better in a traditional 401(k).

Brian: Can I tell you why this is BS and bogus? The Roth IRAs when they came on the scene, remember the funding limits were around $2,000. Roth conversions also had an income cap on them. It wasn’t until 2010 that they lifted the cap off of where high-income and wealthy people could start doing Roth conversions no matter how much money they made. So, I disagree. And actually, I know in my book Millionaire Mission I give the history of the Roth IRA and it was a truly bipartisan support bill to try to encourage people, and Senator Roth who kind of pushed things forward—the quotes on the why were directly to impact and benefit the saver so that they have money in the future. So I’m not as cynical as that, you know, that George W. Bush decided he needed a little extra jingle in the Treasury and this is why we got Roth.

Bo: Well, and also he’s completely wrong. His apples-to-apples was absolutely inaccurate. If your tax rates are going to be lower in the future than they are today, then yeah, you should save in pre-tax. But if you’re in a low tax bracket environment today and it’s likely your income is going to increase and be higher in the future, Roth 100% makes sense. There is a tax arbitrage that exists. Whether you have a higher tax rate right now, lower tax rate now, higher tax rate in the future, lower tax rate in the future, they are not apples to apples. There absolutely is a better choice than the other depending on your unique circumstances. He’s just absolutely wrong on that. Traditional does not always win out.

Blowing on the Monitor to Move the Stock (7:12)

Video Clip: [Person blowing on monitor to make stock price go up]

Brian: Is he blowing? What? What’s going on there, bro? I think he’s kissing.

Bo: No, okay. I think he was trying— I think he’s trying to get the thing to go up. I think he was blowing on it to try to make it go up.

Brian: I’ll be honest with you. I remember the first time I ever went fishing with my granddad, he told me if I held my mouth a certain way that I’d catch more fish. Now I realized as a grown man that he was just— that didn’t work. That’s not the way. Don’t you see he’s like— I feel like somebody told him, “Hey, if you want to really amp up the buy low, sell high, just hold your mouth just like this right by the monitor.”

Bo: Well, it’s like when you play golf and you hit that shot and you start trying to like move it with your body and it’s ineffective. I think a lot of people when it comes to investing are under the impression that they have more control than they actually do. But at the end of the day, we don’t get to control what the market does. We don’t get to control when the stock goes up, when the stock goes down. What we do get to control is how we participate in it and how far out on the risk spectrum we want to be and how much we can save into it. As for day-to-day, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter fluctuations, that’s out of your control. And if you think you can control it, or better yet, you can read it, you might be in for a rude awakening.

Cash Out Your 401(k) and Invest in Real Estate? (8:33)

Video Clip: Babe, why did you cash out your 401(k)? Oh, so in 2019, I cashed out over $100,000 out of my 401(k) to invest in real estate. And that’s because 401(k)s are the single greatest scam that anybody can invest in. Now, for 99% of people, if you have no discipline financially and you don’t want to invest your own money, for sure, get your employer match. That’s fine. But what 401(k)s are designed for is the US government literally said most people don’t have enough discipline to actively invest money on their own. So we’re going to create a program that forces people to get into equities, aka the stock market. And so the 401(k) is designed for you to not pay tax right now and then draw on it later at paying less tax. But the issue is I’m going to be really, really rich at 65 years old and I’m going to be in a higher tax bracket. So you are literally having no benefit to having a 401(k) because you have zero control with that capital that’s inside the vehicle of the 401(k). I’m not your financial adviser. I’m not giving financial advice. If you want to ride that 401(k), do it. I’m just saying that if you want to understand how to actively invest your money in real estate and businesses and stuff like that, it’s much better to pay the 10% penalty to go ahead and get that money out of the 401(k) to where you can control it and actually grow it and do something with it.

Bo: I don’t understand all these people poo-pooing on this. They’re like, “Oh, you put money in a 401(k) and that money has to sit there until you get to 65.” Yeah, that’s the point. The 401(k) money, that’s retirement money that’s supposed to be for you later in life. But that’s why we like saving into Roth IRAs and saving into 401(k)s and saving into after-tax brokerage. And we’re not even against real estate, but it’s not an all or nothing. And you want to make sure that you’re doing it in the right order. At 65, you’re going to need that money. So why would you not use this unbelievable tax-incentivized vehicle to build assets?

Brian: The argument falls apart if you just did a Roth 401(k). Over 80% of employers offer Roth 401(k)s. That’s where you don’t get a deduction now, but you get that compounding growth completely tax-free forever. So, if you’re young and you really want to leverage things, that’s what you ought to take advantage of. It’s a really good opportunity. The other thing, look, it’s better to be lucky than good sometimes. He did this transaction. Let’s face facts. He took a 10% haircut immediately to pay a penalty, plus income taxes on it. So he gutted his 401(k) to put it into real estate. Now, he’s likely lucky because he got it right before the huge inflation run-up of real estate that happened in 2021. In that three-year period, real estate markets made over 50%. But if you think that we don’t have reversion to the mean with real estate— did he really make a smart decision or did he just get lucky with the timing of this? And anybody who watches this bad advice, you have to understand that leveraged debt, yes, it can make you better returns, but there is tremendous risk. If you don’t believe that there’s a game where when markets go bad and real estate markets go bad and we hit recessions, big pocket banks taking from little pocket wannabe real estate investors is one of the most horrendous things you’ll ever see. And it happens usually once a decade. Just don’t be on that side of the game. The easiest thing to do: build a good base and deepen your own pockets. We love 401(k)s. We love index funds. So then you can get into leveraged debt down the road when you actually can afford it.

PE Ratios and Always Be Buying (12:09)

Video Clip: JP Morgan published a chart around the end of 2024. And it was a scatter diagram showing over the years the relationship between the S&P 500 at purchase and the return over the next 10 years. It was a negative correlation, which means the higher the PE ratio you pay, the lower the return you should expect. Makes perfect sense. And it showed that historically if you bought the S&P when the PE ratio was 23, in every case—there were no exceptions—your annualized return over the next 10 years was between 2 and minus 2. That’s all you have to know. One of the most interesting things about the S&P: on average it has returned 10% a year for 100 years. But do you know that the annual return is almost never between 8 and 12%? It either kills it or it dies.

Brian: You know how you fix all this? Always be buying. Because you know every year in the financial markets, specifically the S&P—I’ll use the same example as him—there’s about a 14% spread just intra-year from the highs and lows. So you could make the argument that even throughout the year the price, if you’re using things like the forward price-to-earnings ratio, you’re going to have tremendous variances in that. No matter what that number is, I hold my nose and I’m always buying. Every month for me, it’s every week. I have the money just popping. And what happens is the yo-yo goes up and down—that’s the daily prices of the market—yet we walk higher and higher up that mountaintop of expanding returns, expanding economy, because I believe in the law of accelerating returns. You make money. Instead of trying to beat the market, be the market. That’s where success lies.

Bo: Yeah. When it comes to investing, it’s more about your time in the market, not timing the market, entering at the right PE and exiting at the right PE. It’s about actually being in the game. And that’s why if you’re saving in a 401(k), if you’re adding to your Roth monthly, if you’re participating in an after-tax brokerage account, and you can do it on a systematic, consistent basis, you will recognize those 10% returns over the long term.

Arbitrage Sports Betting Will Make You Rich? (14:13)

Video Clip: I never thought I’d ever have to explain this again, but arbitrage sports betting is a lot more profitable than you think. All right, there’s a common consensus, there’s a bit of a controversy going around that arbitrage sports betting isn’t worth it and isn’t worth your time because of the small return that you’re getting. Let me put this into perspective for you. Arbitrage sports betting, you’ll get 5% ROI on average every single trade that you take. And you can place however many trades you want every single day. So your money is compounded every single day. The S&P 500, the stock market, will give you 5% on average a month. Compare the two. When you can take 5% of however much money you put in, keep in mind, arbitrage sports betting is not regular sports betting. You’re betting on both sides so that no matter the outcome, you take that 5% on average. And keep in mind, there’s tons of times where my students, my clients, even me, we get 15, 20% arbitrage opportunities. And that’s a lot more than 5%. But you could do this multiple times a day. So, your money is compounding every single day instead of per month. Why do I have to explain this? I don’t understand, bro.

Bo: Well, because they won’t let you keep doing it.

Brian: Yeah, they won’t let you keep doing it. That’s the big asterisk out there. You know, I remember I went through my own phase of maybe I could learn to card count on blackjack and beat the system because there is a statistical edge if you know how to play blackjack in the appropriate way. The problem is if you’re good at it, the Las Vegas casinos—or whatever other casinos—they put you in this black book and they say, “Nope, we’re not going to let you play in our casinos. It’s not illegal. We’re just choosing not to let you take money from us because we like taking money from the fish.” Yes, you can make good money doing these arbitrage bets. There are all kinds of really sophisticated systems that have already calculated where there’s arbitrage. You go play both sides of it, but guess what happens? Probably about the third or fourth bet you make, they cap you on what you can bet. They notify you, “Hey, we’ve noticed some unique trends in the way you’re betting, so we’re going to start lowering your bets to as low as a few pennies, few dimes, maybe a dollar or two.” They don’t let you keep doing this. So, he’s trying to sell you a system. Without a doubt, there are going to continue to be inefficiencies between the different gambling houses that let you do these sports bets, which by the way, I don’t even think that’s where— if this is what you’re doing to build wealth, you’ve lost the plot. Go ahead and start saving and investing in your Roth IRA. Understand what index funds are, but don’t let somebody sell you a system that is going to immediately get shut down because the betting companies are not going to allow you to take advantage of them.

Status vs. Wealth (16:53)

Video Clip: Do you actually want it or do you just want other people to see you have it? Like if the rest of the world was extinct, would you really be walking around with a Louis Vuitton bag? I don’t really think you would care that much. Status makes people feel important and material possessions often times can give people status. I saw a quote once that said, “It’s not about the art, it’s about the reaction of the audience.” People legitimately care more about how other people perceive things than they do about how they perceive it themselves. And the result of this is that our entire society is fake. Everybody is wearing a mask and they do things just to gain social currency.

Bo: If the reason that you’re making consumption decisions is to impress others and to put on a facade of how successful and how wonderful your life is, I worry that that’s going to be a path to not being incredibly fulfilled with what your dollars can actually do for you. Wealth is silent. It’s what sits on your net worth statement. And it’s exactly what he said. Don’t try to impress people who really don’t care. And that’s why even in Millionaire Mission I’ve detailed that car purchases are napalm for your finances, because a lot of us—that’s the first thing we do. It’s the clothes we wear. It’s the car we drive. And you’re literally driving and wearing your seven-figure future wealth because you’re not actually putting it to work. You’re living for the now. And that’s a failure recipe.

Closing (18:15)

Brian: If you don’t know what to do with your next dollar or where to go, we have a nine-step process to help you figure that out. So, go to learn.moneyguy.com and check out the Financial Order of Operations so that you too can know exactly what you should be doing with your next dollar. I’m your host Brian joined by Mr. Bo. Money Guy Team out.