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Personal finance youtube channels are full of crap here’s how to spot the red flags
Mar 16, 2024
Personal finance youtube channels are full of crap | here’s how to spot the red flags
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Hello there and welcome to the most meta youtube video of life where I talk about why you should
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not rely on youtube videos for all of your financial information about investment strategy
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and personal finance. And I'm doing all of this on my personal finance channel. Surprising I know
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The thing is though that money is so intrinsic to how we feel and operate in the world and having
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the right information can be so so empowering but on the flip side the stakes can be pretty high
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and if you get it wrong things can go really wrong and you don't want things to go really
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wrong which is why relying solely on youtube videos for information is probably a bad strategy
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even though you get that lovely dopamine hit from watching them. It's definitely not all bad though
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otherwise I would not be here but it is important that you watch these videos with a little bit of
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critical thinking going on and so in this video what I want to do is talk through some of the
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little red flags that I see and of course there is a little section at the end reserved for
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how you can use youtube to supplement your financial education i.e why you don't need to
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stop watching youtube videos altogether when it comes to personal finance because it does have
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a role to play. So the first thing that I see that I would encourage you to think about is the fact
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that a lot of youtube videos or a lot of youtube creators are prone to disguising opinions as facts
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this isn't always intentional but in the drive to sound authoritative and also in the repeated
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consumption of very similar videos information that started out as opinion can sometimes become
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an accepted fact even though it's not necessarily the case. For example if no matter what people
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say about the stock market while the probability is high that it will do better than cash in your
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savings there is no guarantee and the economy the stock market all of these things are numbers
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driven which makes them seem like a science when actually they are entirely made up constructions
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and so much of it depends on human emotions and so if you encounter somebody saying this is the way
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you should immediately question whether it is indeed the way or whether it is just a piece of
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information that's become very normalized in that person's thoughts because a lot of us on here on
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youtube are speaking from personal experience we're talking about things that we've learned
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along the way as far as the the presenter is concerned that that is a fact but it might not be
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true for you too. The second thing I wanted to point out is the fact that advice on the internet
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is not tailored to you so while there is a lot of recommendation and a lot of the recommendations
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are going to be good they're still not specific to your particular life there are so many variables
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that affect what's going to work for you your age your salary whether you have dependents how much
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money you have in savings at the moment these are all things that somebody on the side of a screen
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does not know about you and so they may be making sweeping recommendations that apply
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perfectly to a lot of people but they might not apply to you and you should always be very mindful
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of that when you are watching personal finance youtube videos and thirdly this one cannot be
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overstated 99.9% of people talking about money on youtube are not qualified to give financial advice
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and that includes the bankers and the accountants who will even confess themselves that earning a
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high salary does not necessarily mean that you're good with money. If you really want reliable
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tailored to you advice the only place to go is financial advisor or if you have not got loads
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of money to cough up get reading buy a bunch of books and the reason I say that is because as a
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rule of thumb books are researched in much more depth the people who write them i.e the authors
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usually have verifiable credentials and in the book publishing business there is a fact checking
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process it might be better or worse but it is there unlike most personal finance youtube videos
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so yeah the good thing and the bad thing about youtube is that the barrier to entry is low
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anyone can grab their phone camera and start talking about personal finance tips or investment
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strategies and that definitely has its place which I'll get to in a second but as long as you're
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consuming that kind of content you really need to be aware that the person who's talking may not be
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qualified to be telling you what you should be doing with your money. Okay so if there is so much
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shady information on youtube why am I even here? It's that I do believe that youtube has a place
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and that low barrier to entry I mentioned is really awesome because it democratizes information
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so for me a few years ago I was that girl who was a bit freaked out about the whole money thing I
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didn't understand how it worked I didn't know what I was supposed to do with it and that whole scenario
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felt quite stressful and I know so many people who feel exactly like that and the thing is that the
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finance industry is full of jargon and that makes it very unfriendly and intimidating to even start
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researching and that's forgetting the fact that there is so much information that sometimes it
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can be just impossible to know where to start so I started a youtube channel because where I got my
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first little pieces of like nuggets of information from were from talking to my friends and figuring
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out what they were actually doing with their money and if you don't have a couple of friends
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like I did who are really knowledgeable about personal finance you have youtube instead and
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that's amazing so on a very practical level I think youtube is amazing because a it introduces you to
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the idea of personal finance the things that you need to be aware of like the mindset and the
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investment concepts which are going to help you improve your financial situation there's a really
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nice concept called skill stacking and the idea is that you have a base level of knowledge and then
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you can build on each level and I think youtube is a really nice welcoming easy to digest first
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step on that ladder so it can be really helpful to a introduce you to the concepts like I mentioned
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b give you a direction for what research you even need to do and then secondly once you actually
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open you're not being bombarded by new concepts there are things that you will have heard of
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previously and there is another benefit and that is the role of motivation because it is undeniable
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that when you are watching other people on screen talking about all the stuff they've learned and all
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the success that they've had and how they've arrived at a feeling of calm and a sense of
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control that is very encouraging and having that little push can be really helpful to get you on
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the right road so in short I think youtube is a fantastic tool for your financial education or
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that journey that you're on but is really important that it is not your only source of information
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you really need to put the time in to read to really have a solid reliable grip on the subject
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and having said all of that in case you're not quite ready to dive into the reading
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come back to this youtube channel and I will see you in the next video thank you so much for watching
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