Jill Schlesinger breaks down the financial advice flooding your FinTok feed, and share their simple test for telling the good from the bad.
If you’ve spent any time on FinTok lately, you’ve probably seen it: a confident 30-second video promising you can retire early if you just buy the right meme stock, leverage your home equity into a rental empire, or file the right obscure tax form. Some of it might be right, but most of it isn’t.
Jean Chatzky sat down with Jill Schlesinger, Emmy and Gracie Award-winning CBS News Business Analyst, and host of the new podcast Money Moves, to sort the good financial advice from the bad.
3 Types of Bad Financial Advice Going Viral
Schlesinger says most of the bad financial advice she sees online falls into one of three buckets:
The first is the get-rich-quick scheme: buy this meme stock, this leveraged ETF, this crypto coin that’s up over the past two years. “It very much keys into what has happened, not what will happen,” she said. “And it doesn’t talk about risk.”
The second is passive income: buy a laundromat, or someone’s small business. And the third, which Schlesinger says has almost become its own category, is real estate: borrow against your retirement account, buy six houses at once, turn everything into an Airbnb.
The common thread, she says, is that none of it accounts for your actual situation. “All of these things are predicated on your unique situation, what risk you wish to have, and what’s your downside,” Schlesinger said.
Of the three, she’s most wary of the real estate category. “I think the more dangerous thing is taking money out of your retirement to buy real estate, or making a decision to take all of this investment money and pouring it into one idea, one risky bet,” she said. “Anything that puts some large portion of your net worth at risk is dangerous.”
Advice Worth Paying For
If there’s a category of spending Schlesinger won’t cut corners on, it’s expertise. A former financial planner who once managed half a billion dollars, she still pays for a Certified Financial Planner and a Certified Public Accountant.
“I don’t want to think about it, and I don’t want to have to keep up with the minutiae of tax law, of changes, of ideas,” she said. “I’m all in on paying for expertise.”
Chatzky agreed, extending the idea beyond money. “Not just that kind of expertise — medical expertise, nutritional expertise,” she said. “I’m always happy to pay for a therapist.”
How to Tell the Good Advice From the Bad: Do a Gut Check Before You Follow It
Schlesinger’s advice comes down to this: don’t act on a 90-second video without running a gut check first.
“You should say, ‘I wonder who’s giving this advice?’ And you should find out whether this person is a CFP or not,” she said. “If they’re not, you should take everything with a grain of salt.” Watch for made-up credentials, too. She pointed to one creator who called himself a “real estate advocate,” a title that sounds official but means nothing.
Then check your own reaction. If a piece of advice feels urgent or exciting, that’s often your emotions getting the best of you.
Her last rule: “Get a third-party confirmation of what this advice is,” she said. If something’s exciting enough to consider, run it by someone who actually knows your full financial picture before you pull the trigger.
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