Finfluenced: The Rise of Social Media Money Gurus
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #204
Finfluenced: The Rise of Social Media Money Gurus
Welcome back to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit! On today’s episode, the Lewits explore the dynamic world of financial content creators, followed by a quick recap of our Stock Market and Economic Update Webinar. Listen in now using a link below!
- Gabriel’s ‘Quick Hit’:
- With discussions around overhauling the IRS, this tax season brings uncertainty and raises questions about the filing schedule.
- The Finfluencer Phenomenon:
- Uncover the worst saving advice from social media finfluencers (financial influencers) and why following their tips could cost you more than you think.
- Market and Economic Outlook Webinar Recap:
- Explore key themes for the 2025 financial year and where the market may be headed.
- Getting to Know Steve and Gabriel:
- If you had to pick a new career, completely unrelated to your current one…what would it be?
- Do you believe in life on other planets?
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Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You are listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, building wealth for life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies, and more.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Our 2 Cents here, with Gabriel Lewit and Steve Lewit. We are excited to come to you live here this Wednesday during a little bit of a warm spell here for Chicago winter.
Steve Lewit: Well, it feels like spring is here, all of a sudden.
Gabriel Lewit: It does. I don’t recall if the groundhog saw his shadow. Does anybody remember?
Steve Lewit: I think he did.
Gabriel Lewit: Which, if he sees his shadow, it meant-
Steve Lewit: That winter will last longer, I think.
Gabriel Lewit: If he doesn’t see his shadow, it means-
Steve Lewit: He doesn’t exist. If he can’t see his shadow, he doesn’t exist.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. It is a little confusing. Isn’t that how it works? If he sees his shadow or doesn’t see his shadow?
Steve Lewit: I think so.
Gabriel Lewit: Wasn’t that … Yeah, I should look that up now.
Steve Lewit: I think it’s longer if he sees his shadow.
Gabriel Lewit: I’m confusing myself. Anywho, it seems like spring’s here. Hopefully it’s here for good, although I’m not going to hold my breath just yet.
Steve Lewit: I wouldn’t.
Gabriel Lewit: We hope you’re doing great out there, enjoying some of this warmer weather, and we’ve got a good show lined up for you here today. First thing first, just a quick reminder for everybody. We are entering into what I would call peak tax season time for tax preparation and filing for your 2024 tax returns. And we did get a couple questions because, if you’re not aware, we do offer tax preparation services here at SGL Financial. Many of you listening are our clients. Many of you are using our tax services already, but if for some reason you haven’t gotten around to it, just a quick reminder for you to go ahead and give us a call at the main office here, 847-499-3330, and schedule your 2024 tax preparation drop off appointment. Okay, so just a little plug for us there on that front.
Steve Lewit: Well, everybody kind of waits.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, they do.
Steve Lewit: It’s a timely plug.
Gabriel Lewit: But try not to wait too long because if we don’t get started on your return before essentially April 1st, the chances that we can get it done in a crunch before April 15th is smaller and smaller.
Steve Lewit: I love when people come in with boxes and say, “Here’s my preparation.”
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I like when … I’m joking when I say this, when someone comes in April 13th, “Can you get this done by tomorrow or two days?”
Steve Lewit: Yeah. A little bit late.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Try not to do that, folks. Okay. Well, also, there were some questions from a few clients of ours. They had heard some news, and again, trying to keep this just reporting, information that the Trump administration was possibly making changes to the IRS, either the tax code or cutting IRS agents. And people were actually asking the question, “Should I still file my taxes for this year?” And I just want to go out on record and say yes. For this year, file your taxes as normally, folks, whatever you’ve heard or read on social media. In fact, we’re going to talk a little bit about bad social media advice here in just a second. You do indeed still have to file your taxes this year for 2024. And we just want to put that out there, just in case you heard that or were wondering about that. Yes, that’s still in the cards for this year.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Don’t wonder about it. Pay your taxes, put your taxes on file.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And look, whether the IRS is slower, quicker … I mean, they’re always generally pretty slow every year, so that’s kind of irrelevant here. Yes, at this stage in time, you’ve still got tax returns to file. And if that changes, we’ll be the first to let you know here in future years.
Steve Lewit: You bet. And they’re fast. They always catch up. It might be a few years later, but they do catch up.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. All right. So speaking of that, the client that asked us about that, that prompted us to bring that up on this show, had actually heard that on social media. And it got me thinking. Social media, some goods about it, I suppose, although there’s also a lot of negative things about social media. That’s not the goal of this discussion here, is to talk about whether or not it’s good or bad in general. But you can, of course, get poor advice on social media in lots of different areas, and financial advice or poor financial advice isn’t immune from that discussion here.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. There’s something about social media that makes it believable. People hear it, and they believe it almost immediately.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah. Let’s say, yeah, you see something come across your feed. It’s some dude with a financial topic that is claiming he is going to save you, I don’t know, money on taxes, and has got 2 million views. People look at that and they say, “Oh, wow. This must be real stuff.” For whatever reason, equating views-
Steve Lewit: With factual reality.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Factual, good advice. And what we’re here to share today is some of the bad advice we’ve seen on social media when it comes to financial planning, and why just views alone is not a good indicator of reliable, trustworthy advice that you may see online.
Steve Lewit: Now, I just had this thought, Gabriel. We’re on a podcast. Isn’t that considered social media too?
Gabriel Lewit: No. No, I don’t think so.
Steve Lewit: Okay. Well, the same thing could happen on podcasts. I mean, people do podcasts with millions of followers and they don’t provide accurate information.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah. I mean, you’re talking about-
Steve Lewit: I just want to assure everybody that we are providing accurate information.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I think you’re steering us down a path of … Can you trust anything you hear or read anywhere? That’s not the goal of this conversation. I’m glad you’re stirring up some mud over there. But yes, of course, here at SGL Financial, our goal is to provide you with factual, trustworthy guidance that you can rely upon. So yes, they can trust what we’re saying, Mr. Lewit, if that’s what you were asking.
Steve Lewit: That’s what I … Yeah, because you listen and sometimes even, we’ll say things that sound too good to be true. And I think I want everybody to know that everything we do is very factual, researched, fact-based, it’s not based on hype, it’s not based on reading other people’s stuff. It’s stuff that we’ve researched and employed and really tracked down, and it’s sound advice.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I would concur with that.
Steve Lewit: Okay.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. All right. So yeah, here we’re going to talk about some of the things that I’ve seen on social media from a financial advice perspective that perhaps isn’t something that you necessarily want to listen to. And some of these are going to be what I would consider to be self-obvious, but you never know here. So here’s the first one, which believe it or not, has popped up on people’s feeds, which is if you’re short on cash, get a payday loan.
Steve Lewit: My goodness.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. I would think-
Steve Lewit: That has to be the worst loan ever.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It says here, “Some payday loans fees can equate to an APR equivalent to 662%.”
Steve Lewit: Payday loans are basically a rip-off.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.
Steve Lewit: You have to be terribly desperate to do that, and yet they do them all the time.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So definitely here, if you’re-
Steve Lewit: It’s a big business.
Gabriel Lewit: Obviously, this is generally going to target people that maybe have credit card debt. There’s all these filtering and targeting criteria for you. So if you haven’t seen this ad … I haven’t personally seen this ad, but as we were doing some research on this, people have. But that’s one that naturally there are much better alternatives if you are in debt, if you need help getting out of debt, if you need assistance with planning things out financially. Just avoid the payday loan, okay?
Steve Lewit: Most companies are willing … If you’re straight up with them, they’re willing to give you a week or two to get money in to them. So it’s worth having that conversation before you go for a payday loan.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So not a lot to say on that one, but just to put it out there, that’s floating around on the internet. The next one that’s kind of interesting is there are some, what I’ll call … I call them fake internet gurus that claim that renting is a complete waste of time and money, and you should only build wealth in your home.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Many people feel that when you rent, you’re throwing your money away because you get nothing for it.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So where you’re going to see this, you’re going to see this on TikTok, which is still not banned yet, I don’t believe, although is being threatened with being banned and now is currently unbanned. But here’s the point. Do you have any vetting when you go on TikTok and you make a video, and proclaiming yourself this financial guru providing this advice? No, nobody vets you. It’s all just … If your algorithm shows that someone’s successful or popular according to views, it’s just going to pump that to more and more people. And thus, that’s why I’m equating views is not a good connotator to expertise.
Steve Lewit: Well, the whole idea on views, Gabriel, you know this, is these folks want to become what are called influencers. And influencers have one goal, and that is to attract readers, to attract the numbers. And to do that, you have to come out with stuff that is kind of-
Gabriel Lewit: You know what they call them, right? On the social media sites?
Steve Lewit: No.
Gabriel Lewit: Finfluencers.
Steve Lewit: Finfluencers.
Gabriel Lewit: Finfluencers, yeah.
Steve Lewit: Why fin?
Gabriel Lewit: Financial.
Steve Lewit: Oh, finfluencers.
Gabriel Lewit: Finfluencers, yeah. Yeah, so you want to be a little bit cautious there. So here, what’s the problem? Is buying a home a bad idea? No, but right now, interest rates are very high. Costs are very high. If you’re watching these things and pushing yourself into an uncomfortable financial position that surpasses your budget level or your comfort zone or your ability to pay for problems that arise or big repairs that come up, or you risk defaulting on your mortgage payment, or you can’t find a seller. All these risks could come from pushing yourself to buy a home that maybe isn’t the best idea for you. And again, that’s because you’re finding this thing on social media. You’re seemingly putting a lot of weight on it because it has lots of views and you’re just blindly following along with that advice. So that’s where you want to be a little bit cautious there. Okay?
Now, related to real estate, there’s also a lot of … I had a few clients actually send me these. This isn’t on your sheet, by the way. I just remembered this off the top of my head, Mr. Lewit.
Steve Lewit: Yes, sir.
Gabriel Lewit: I had a client that sent me this guy who was pitching his real estate investment program through social media. And the number one thing on the ad that he shared with me was, it said, “24% rate of return.”
Steve Lewit: Guaranteed.
Gabriel Lewit: 24% yields, or passive real estate investment options. And it turns out these are all over the place on social media. These guys that come out with no background, no investment fund experience, they go and buy a real estate property, they put together these fancy slide decks, they host webinars. And they’re trying to pitch you on these slam dunk, no risk, high yield real estate investments. Well, it turns out that they’re anything but. And in fact, they’re using back-tested data. They’re using projected numbers and rates of returns. These companies run by these guys have no historical experience to pull from or data. So as I vetted this opportunity that my client sent my way, I said, “Obviously, it’s your money. You can do anything you want to with it at the end of the day, but I would not put my money into this particular investment.”
Steve Lewit: That’s so interesting because I vetted another one maybe six months ago. And what we found is that they claim your money is safe because it’s backed by real estate, but what they did is they threw all that money into one pool. So you didn’t know what real estate your money was attached to. In fact, it wasn’t attached to anything. Very dangerous.
So the rule is the more return you get, the higher the risk. That rule doesn’t go away. So if somebody’s promising you a 24% return and it’s all hyped up on social media and the internet and look at all the people that are doing it. And here’s Joe from down in Tennessee, and Joe, tell him how much money you made. Yeah, I’ve been making 24% a year now for two years with Mack over there. He’s the best in the world. Don’t do it. There’s got to be a lot of risk. High returns, high risk.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And so we don’t want to spend our whole show on this here today. Those were just a couple of ideas, some of the things that we’ve seen. But the point here is when you’re on social media and you’re getting advice from people that you’re watching on TikTok or Instagram or wherever you’re watching this, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do what you would normally do, which is vet credentials. Oh, this reminds me. There’s one other thing that I see a lot, which is even guys that are CFPs, they have a credential, posting stuff. But here’s one problem, they’ve never actually provided real-life financial guidance to any clients.
Steve Lewit: They’re educated. They studied a lot.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. They studied. It’s like a guy saying, “Look, I passed a test to be a pilot,” but somehow never actually flew a real plane.
Steve Lewit: But I know how to fly a plane.
Gabriel Lewit: But I’m great at flying planes because I got my credential, and I’m going to tell you all how to fly planes. Please listen to me, versus somebody that’s actually flown 10,000 hours of flights in a real plane. You really want to make sure the people you’re listening to have real-world experience dealing with hundreds of clients and the challenges and the complexities that that can bring to the table, because anybody can just Google, especially now with AI, and get any kind of off-the-shelf advice and then turn around and post that on TikTok to try to get views.
Steve Lewit: Yes. Yep, good point.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s all. Just wanted to talk a little bit about that. If you’ve got any stories to share of any … I’d love to hear any, if you’ve seen any bad financial advice on social media, please send us a quick note or an email, info@sglfinancial.com. I’d love to share some feedback I get on the next show, if I hear anything from anybody that’s out there listening to this today.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, or advice that you think is too good to be true or sounds great and you might be interested in it. Let us know. We’ll vet it for you.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, that too. That too. Absolutely.
Steve Lewit: Yep.
Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So I want to switch gears here a little bit. We recently, just a couple days ago … Or last week, I guess you could say. It feels like a couple days ago, did a market outlook event here for 2025. So it’s one of our most watched events of the year. And we had a hundred plus people on our webinar live and another hundred asking for the recording. And yeah, very good turnout for this year’s economic outlook and market update.
Steve Lewit: And that is a client-only event.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. We’re not marketing it to millions of people. Ultimately here, we covered … Here’s what I’m going to boil this down to today. A lot of different themes to pay attention to or to be on your radar for 2025. And I thought it was interesting, as we started to really boil this down for the show here today, beyond a bunch of slides on a slide deck, how many themes there really were that we covered.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. We started listing these out, and we figured we’d be over in a minute or two, and then we kept coming up with another one, and another one, and another one after that.
Gabriel Lewit: Bear with me here. I’m going to list them off for you, and then we’re going to pick a couple of key things here to talk about on the show. And of course, if you want to watch the full recording, we’ve got that available. You can email us, info@sglfinancial.com to request it, but we’ll also be sending out an email to everybody with that fairly shortly. But if you’re not a current client of ours, you won’t get it. So that’s why you got to email us if you’d like a copy of it. But here were some of the themes we talked about. Interest rates.
Steve Lewit: Well, just let me set the table a little bit more on that. So the reason we think these are so important is because your finances are intermingled with all of these things. In other words, how they play changes the music of your life. We need to … I like that.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s deep, Mr. Lewit.
Steve Lewit: Do not give me a look. That’s nice.
Gabriel Lewit: Changes the-
Steve Lewit: Music of your-
Gabriel Lewit: Music of our lives. I felt like you needed a different voice for that.
Steve Lewit: These change the music of our lives.
Gabriel Lewit: There you go.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So these are important because we’re living through them. And your plans need to adjust, and maybe your expenditures and how you think. Your emotions react to these. So that’s why we made this list.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, indeed. Okay, so first one here, interest rates. We’ve talked about those a lot on the show. Are they going to go up? Are they going to go down? Are they going to stay the same? We’re not going to dig into each of these at the moment. A tariff watch, right? This year, going into 2025, we’re on tariff watch duty.
Steve Lewit: Which ones are real and which ones are not?
Gabriel Lewit: Who’s being tariffed? Who’s on a 30-day pause of tariffs? Who’s going to be tariffed? Tariff watch. Will there be market volatility this year? Well, the last couple days-
Steve Lewit: We know the answer to that one already.
Gabriel Lewit: The last couple days, there was. I think today is a big earnings report for Nvidia.
Steve Lewit: Nvidia today.
Gabriel Lewit: And that’s either going to be good or bad for the market here. I’m not sure if it came out just yet, but the market seems to be a little flat here as of reading this here today.
Then we’ve got economic disruption. What are the things that have the potential for disrupting our economy? Tariffs could do that, but there are other things out there as well. For example, what’s the tax plan going to look like? That could be good or bad. We don’t know 100% what that tax plan’s going to look like. All these impacts of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, that’s going around department to department, trying to cut costs and get rid of excess waste. At least purportedly, that’s the goal there. We don’t have a lot of data on that yet as to what’s occurred there, but that is going to be something to watch and monitor for this year. That’s out there.
As a result of that, you may have been hearing that they are slashing jobs in a variety of federal workplaces. Will that have a sizeable impact on the unemployment rate? So unemployment rate itself is one of those themes that has started to tick up a little bit here in 2025. Keeping an eye on that to see if that shifts or moves more substantially is something else to keep on the radar here for 2025.
You’ve got a variety of wars still percolating out there. You’ve got Ukraine and Russia, that’s still out there. You’ve got Gaza and Israel that’s still out there. It’s technically in a ceasefire right now. And who knows? We hope there’s not many more, or any more, and we hope the ones that are out there get resolved, but a lot of-
Steve Lewit: And how they get resolved.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, military challenges that are out there are kind of on the radar as well. Inflation is similar to interest rate watch, but inflation watch is still on the cards. It’s been a talking point.
Steve Lewit: And they kind of tie together.
Gabriel Lewit: They do, yeah. So inflation has gradually started coming down, but will it stay down? Tariffs could impact, of course, inflation. So there’s ripple effects of these different things. Cryptocurrencies. They have been a talk of the town. They’ve had a bit of a rough week as well.
Steve Lewit: Up until this week.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, they had a post-election bump and now they’re back to where they were pre-election.
Steve Lewit: About that. Yeah, that’s about right.
Gabriel Lewit: Right about there, okay? But there is still this momentum behind certain cryptocurrencies in particular, meaning Bitcoin in particular, but not so much these … What they call meme coins. Those are a bit more speculative in nature and just designed for online gambling. But yeah, what’s the future of cryptocurrency going to hold this year? We’re going to start to see a little bit more about that, okay? The Magnificent Seven watch.
Steve Lewit: It’s a big deal.
Gabriel Lewit: On our economic outlook, we talked about how the Mag Seven, this is Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Meta. Who else is in there? Nvidia. There’s a couple more. I should have had it printed out for me. Anywho. They are now making up over 30% of the S&P 500. Seven stocks making up 30% of the S&P 500 index which, of course, is comprised of 500 stocks. And that’s a very overweight position as part of that, and it’s an indicator that there could be some mismatches in what you’re seeing in the returns of the stock market as based on the S&P 500, versus what the economy’s really doing and how these companies are-
Steve Lewit: Yeah, because the S&P 500 is not the market. It’s a piece of the market. And these seven positions kind of weight in their favor, so they led the charge up the mountain. And guess what? They’re leading the charge down the mountain right now too.
Gabriel Lewit: They certainly could, yeah. We were in a recession watch for a while. And we talk about this on the outlook webinar, but recession odds have decreased, but we’re not 100% out of the woods.
Steve Lewit: Actually, they are on the uprise, on the uptick. Consumer confidence, for the first time, is not as good as it’s been for the past year.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So that’s still a story for this year. AI bubble. AI itself is another theme and another story. You’re starting to see AI everywhere, right? All the new tech is coming out with AI this, AI that. Will it be the next big thing? Maybe one day. Is it going to be the next thing before the bubble pops on it?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Look at the dot-com era. That was the next big thing.
Gabriel Lewit: The internet certainly became a big thing, but it took a while.
Steve Lewit: It still burst.
Gabriel Lewit: Housing market. Interest rates are still causing mortgage rates to be very high. My goodness.
Steve Lewit: Hovering around-
Gabriel Lewit: We talked a little bit about that.
Steve Lewit: … 7%. So that market is soft.
Gabriel Lewit: Yep. We’ve got a new administration with Trump. What changes will that bring throughout the year? That’s another storyline to watch. We talked a bit about international versus US asset classes and some of the collective forecasts of which will outperform in the next 10 years, international versus US. So that’s going to have a direct implication on how you build your portfolios.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Most people are enamored with the US. They think because the last 10, 15 years has been dominated by the US, but all of the forecasts have the next 10 years international outperforming the US.
Gabriel Lewit: They do.
Steve Lewit: All of them.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, they do. And that’s something to pay attention to, right? When there’s a unified agreement across many different research firms, that’s, I think, a good sign to pay attention to that.
Steve Lewit: For sure.
Gabriel Lewit: Bonds is another storyline for this year. Are they going to ever recover? People thought they would start to recover last year. They’ve really struggled to recover so far. We also have an inverted yield curve that may finally end, that’s impacting bond prices. We talked about unemployment, the health of the US economy. And then, of course, we have tax brackets.
Steve Lewit: If taxes change.
Gabriel Lewit: With the new administration, will taxes themselves change?
Steve Lewit: I have a feeling they’re going to stay the same.
Gabriel Lewit: Will the tax code change? A lot of things that have been proposed by Trump that he’d like to do, maybe getting rid of the estate tax. Of course, resetting the Trump tax cuts to maybe be permanent. Possible other changes, big or small.
Steve Lewit: Social security taxes.
Gabriel Lewit: Not taxing tips on people that get tip wages.
Steve Lewit: Taking another look at SALT.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So all these different things with taxes, the economy, markets, worldwide events. There’s a lot there.
Steve Lewit: Tremendous.
Gabriel Lewit: My goodness.
Steve Lewit: Tremendous. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: And probably interestingly enough, you’re going to see us throughout the year, we are going to touch on these as they come in and out of the news and as things evolve, but these are the things we’re paying attention to. And as you started off with, Dad, all of these things have the ability to potentially impact your portfolio design, your plan design, your investment mix, and the outlook for your money over the next 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 years.
Steve Lewit: We’ve been doing this a long time, Gabriel, you and me. And the sense that I get-
Gabriel Lewit: You know I’ve been doing this longer than you.
Steve Lewit: No, you haven’t. You’re just a baby. You’re my son baby.
Gabriel Lewit: 21 years, I’ve been doing this.
Steve Lewit: 22 years is a long time. It’s a long time. I’m 30, 32 years of doing this. Think about it. I don’t know if you feel this way, but I feel this way. Every year has its challenges, but as things are progressing, it gets faster and faster. The changes are faster. Look what this administration did. And again, I’m not saying better or worse or bad or good, but look how fast all those changes are happening. Look how fast the market reacts. Look how fast we get into war. Everything is happening quicker. And it’s a test to somebody’s finances on … Are they prepared for that? Because the time to recoup or change, you don’t have a year. You might have a month or six months. You have to make decisions quicker, more accurately, which is why I believe so much in planning.
Gabriel Lewit: If I can challenge on it a little, I say yes-
Steve Lewit: No. You can’t.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes and no.
Steve Lewit: No, I’m older than you are. You can’t.
Gabriel Lewit: I had a client that attended our outlook event and webinar and said, “So Gabe, do I have to do anything with all this information? Really helpful stuff, but is my plan okay?” Was her question. And I said, “Well, good news is we’ve built your plan in a way where none of these things occurring is going to impact you.”
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So that I agree on.
Gabriel Lewit: So, when you say speed of change, yes, things are changing, but you don’t want to be running around like a crazy chicken, tweaking things left and right.
Steve Lewit: And that’s the point.
Gabriel Lewit: And I grew up with crazy chickens on a farm in Vermont.
Steve Lewit: I think you mentioned that last week.
Gabriel Lewit: With many, many chickens and roosters. Big Red, he always chased me around. Big Red, the rooster. He even bit me once on my wrist. Yeah, he was aggressive. So I know about crazy chickens running around. So we don’t want your plan to look like that.
Steve Lewit: But that’s why … The point I was trying to make that I didn’t quite make is the same as yours. That’s why you need a plan, because that settles all of this down so you don’t have to react so quickly.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, yes. You can piggyback off my summation.
Steve Lewit: Well, that wasn’t a challenge. It was more like … Do you see the way I see it, Dad? And I do.
Gabriel Lewit: Good. We are simpatico.
Steve Lewit: We’re aligned. We’re harmonic.
Gabriel Lewit: With our three-
Steve Lewit: We’re making music together like we’ve never made before.
Gabriel Lewit: Like oil and water.
Steve Lewit: Like oil and water music.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, man. We do actually agree on most things. Okay. With a couple minutes to spare here, I want to talk to you about things that our clients would like to know about you.
Steve Lewit: Oh, here we go.
Gabriel Lewit: We haven’t done this in a little while.
Steve Lewit: You know I love this section.
Gabriel Lewit: It’s my favorite segment.
Steve Lewit: My favorite.
Gabriel Lewit: Get to know Steve.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: And then if we have time, maybe Gabe. So the first question is, if you had to pick a new career right now … Not what would you have done when you were 20. Right now, if you had to pick a new career, completely unrelated to your current one, what would it be?
Steve Lewit: Can I go back to an old career?
Gabriel Lewit: No. No. You got to pick something new. You got to pick something new.
Steve Lewit: Can it be in the arts? Like if I said I’d be an artist.
Gabriel Lewit: Were you an artist in the past?
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: What kind of artist?
Steve Lewit: I paint. You know I paint.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you can’t be a painter. That’s off the table.
Steve Lewit: I can’t be a painter.
Gabriel Lewit: No, no. You can’t anymore, no.
Steve Lewit: So, I have to pick a new career.
Gabriel Lewit: You got to pick a new career.
Steve Lewit: It can’t be anything I’ve ever done. I’d be a professional … I’d be a pianist.
Gabriel Lewit: A pianist.
Steve Lewit: That doesn’t count either, because I’m just learning piano.
Gabriel Lewit: No, I guess that would count. Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So I would make a career out of-
Gabriel Lewit: But you have to be really good at the piano to make a career out of it. Are you there yet?
Steve Lewit: We’ll see. We’ll see.
Gabriel Lewit: I guess the question didn’t ask of things you are really good at.
Steve Lewit: So, my teacher said … I said, “God, I can’t play like you.” She’s world-class. She’s played all over the world. I said, “Man, I can’t play like you.” She says, “After you put in 10 years and 10,000 hours, you might be able to play like me.”
Gabriel Lewit: Okay, so how many hours are you at?
Steve Lewit: Two years.
Gabriel Lewit: 20 hours?
Steve Lewit: Yeah, like 20 hours.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, man.
Steve Lewit: No, I’m making progress. I played a piece yesterday. It was really good.
Gabriel Lewit: Cool. Very cool.
Steve Lewit: Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: What we should do is-
Steve Lewit: What would you do?
Gabriel Lewit: In one of our podcasts, we’ll record you on the piano. And then-
Steve Lewit: And you’ll sing.
Gabriel Lewit: We’ll pause on the show, and we’ll interlude your piano piece into the … Splice it into the audio so our clients can listen to you play.
Steve Lewit: Okay, I’ll do that.
Gabriel Lewit: That would be kind of fun.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, I’ll do that. Now, what’s your deal?
Gabriel Lewit: I’m not sure how to do that.
Steve Lewit: Hey, hey. Pay attention. What’s your deal?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, you already know the answer to this.
Steve Lewit: Oh, you’d be a professional soccer player.
Gabriel Lewit: I’d be a soccer coach.
Steve Lewit: Coach. Coach.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah. I don’t think I have the skills to be a soccer player, but I think I would have the skills to be a coach.
Steve Lewit: So, I never thought of that because I was never a tennis coach. I was a professional tennis player.
Gabriel Lewit: You were kind of a coach. You coached my brother.
Steve Lewit: But that’s family. That’s son stuff. Go out there.
Gabriel Lewit: So, you’re changing your answer already?
Steve Lewit: No, I’m loving the piano.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. I’d be a soccer coach. Okay, last question. Quick one for you, because I know we’re reaching our time. Do you believe in life on other planets?
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh. Yes?
Steve Lewit: Well, think of it this way.
Gabriel Lewit: Intelligent life. What about intelligent life? Do you think amoebas are out there? Yeah.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: Amoebas or intelligent life?
Steve Lewit: All of it.
Gabriel Lewit: All of it?
Steve Lewit: Think of it. There’s billions of universes. We live in one little universe. There are billions. Billions of billions of universes.
Gabriel Lewit: Billions. Billions. You just said billions a lot.
Steve Lewit: Billions and billions.
Gabriel Lewit: Billions and billions.
Steve Lewit: Don’t teach me how to-
Gabriel Lewit: Isn’t that trillions?
Steve Lewit: Listen.
Gabriel Lewit: No. That’s more than trillions.
Steve Lewit: When people call economics, “Economics,” you shouldn’t be correcting other people’s pronunciation of words. It’s not economics. It’s economics.
Gabriel Lewit: People don’t even know what you’re talking about on the show here.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. So we’re having a meeting and Gabriel keeps saying, “Well, let’s look at the economic landscape. Let’s look at the economics of the day.” And it’s the economic landscape.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know. You call it tomato. Some people call it tomato.
Steve Lewit: Nobody calls it tomato.
Gabriel Lewit: I would like a tomato on my sandwich.
Steve Lewit: That’s if you’re in England. Anyway. Listen, there are billions of universes out there. There’s got to be life somewhere.
Gabriel Lewit: I would tend to agree with you.
Steve Lewit: And there’s a whole thing going on with aliens living in the world. There might be.
Gabriel Lewit: It could be.
Steve Lewit: It could be.
Gabriel Lewit: Nobody knows.
Steve Lewit: But on the other hand, we’re a speck in … They’re not that interested.
Gabriel Lewit: Drop of water in the ocean.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Our universe is a speck. So why is everybody … All the aliens running here to live on Earth?
Gabriel Lewit: I think because they could, right?
Steve Lewit: Well, they stumbled over us and we’re lucky they didn’t crush us with their advanced equipment.
Gabriel Lewit: Sure. Yeah. You never know. Maybe it’s … Yeah, the alien exploring party like Columbus was to the US or something. Anyways. Okay. Well, that’s our show for you guys. Just a little-
Steve Lewit: Do you believe aliens-
Gabriel Lewit: I said I tend to concur that there is some life somewhere.
Steve Lewit: Do you think aliens are living with us? The current trend on social media is that aliens are living amongst us.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t think so, no.
Steve Lewit: Do you want to know the reason I know this? A friend of mine really believes and keeps sending me all this stuff.
Gabriel Lewit: Maybe you’re an alien. Maybe producer Gabby’s an alien. I don’t know. Maybe Katie.
Steve Lewit: I love my alien friends here.
Gabriel Lewit: They look normal, but what are you going to do?
Steve Lewit: What are you going to do?
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, if you have questions about life on earth, aliens, financial planning, the economy.
Steve Lewit: The economy, yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Give us a call here, 847-499-3330, or go to sglfinancial.com, click Contact Us. Or you can always email info@sglfinancial.com. And don’t forget, send us any online news or ideas or things you’ve heard or read that you think is kind of fluffy or bogus, and we’ll try to share those on the next show.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, love to hear from you all.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, thanks, everybody. Have a great day. Talk to you soon.
Steve Lewit: Stay well, everybody.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com. And be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.
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