June 2, 2025 • 36 mins
What if sophisticated wealth management tools weren't just for those with finance degrees or deep pockets? In this eye-opening exploration of artificial intelligence and personal finance, hosts Jason McGinthy and Vic Rogers take listeners on a journey through the democratization of financial management in the digital age.
Money has always been a complex subject, often shrouded in specialized language and gatekeeping. But AI is changing that landscape dramatically. As Jason eloquently puts it, "The leveling of the playing field is extraordinarily efficient now," making powerful financial tools accessible to everyone regardless of background or expertise.
We dive deep into practical applications of AI across the financial spectrum. Discover how tools like Rolly can automatically track and categorize your spending across multiple accounts, giving you unprecedented visibility into where your money goes. Explore how robo-advisors like Wealthfront and Betterment are revolutionizing investment management with algorithm-driven portfolio allocation at a fraction of traditional advisor costs. Learn how Credit Karma leverages AI to help you monitor, protect, and improve your credit score—potentially saving you thousands on major purchases.
The conversation highlights real-world benefits, particularly for those in non-traditional employment. Gig workers without access to employer-sponsored retirement plans now have powerful options for building financial security. As Vic points out, "When life comes at you quick, you've got to be able to pivot quickly," and these AI tools equip everyone with that capability.
Ready to transform your relationship with money? Start small, automate one financial task at a time, and gradually build your confidence. The power of financial freedom through artificial intelligence is within your reach—you just need to take that first step.
Join the AI Ready RVA community to learn more about how these technologies are reshaping our world. Your financial future may depend on embracing these powerful new tools.
Want to join a community of AI learners and enthusiasts? AI Ready RVA is leading the conversation and is rapidly rising as a hub for AI in the Richmond Region. Become a member and support our AI literacy initiatives.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome RVA to Inspire AI, where we spotlight
companies and individuals in theregion who are pioneering the
development and use ofartificial intelligence.
I'm Jason McGinty from AI ReadyRVA.
At AI Ready RVA, our mission isto cultivate AI literacy in the
greater Richmond region throughawareness, community engagement
(00:24):
, education and advocacy.
Today's episode is madepossible by Modern Ancients
driving innovation with purpose.
Modern Ancients uses AI andstrategic insight to help
businesses create lasting,positive change with their
unique journey consultingpractice.
(00:44):
Find out more about how yourbusiness can grow at
modernagentscom.
And thanks to our listeners fortuning in today.
If you or your company wouldlike to be featured in the
Inspire AI Richmond episode,please drop us a message.
Don't forget to like, share orfollow our content and stay up
(01:07):
to date on the latest events forAI Ready RVA.
All right, welcome back toInspire AI.
Today we have a special guestand a special program.
Vic Rogers is treating us todaywith a new script.
With a little imagination,we're going to walk our audience
through discussion aboutpersonal finance and AI.
(01:30):
We're going to call it MoneyMeets Machine, where your
financial freedom through AI canbe explored.
So here we're going to dosomething interesting.
Usually I interview guests, buttoday I'd like Vic to host this
session, and we'll see wherethis goes.
So, vic, welcome to Inspire AI.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Hey, I'm glad to be back, love talking money,
looking forward to theconversation.
I did a little research just soI can make sure that the
audience is aware of some of thetools that are out there.
We'll go over a couple, talkabout demoing and takeaways,
things of that nature and, asyou see fit, if you feel that
there's some insight or someother tools, I'd love your
(02:14):
feedback on them.
Absolutely Awesome, awesome.
So one of the things that Ithink when you think of personal
finance it comes up a lot oftimes is like budgeting and
expense tracking.
Right?
So there's a tool that Iresearched called Roli.
It's an AI money tracker andwhat it does is it automatically
syncs and categorizes yourtransactions.
(02:35):
So like, say, for example, Igot a coffee and chat with Jason
and we want to go to a localestablishment here in Richmond
Best coffee spot in the city,probably.
Oh, captain Buzzy's used to bea spot in Churchill, but it's
not open anymore.
But let's just say CaptainBuzzy's, right.
This tool will track thetransactions through multiple
wallets that offer real-timeinsights and allow for you to
(03:00):
understand where your money'sgoing.
So that's a great tool forbudgeting.
Like when you hear that, likewhat are your thoughts on like
having that as a as a tool.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So, yeah, personally, I'd never heard of Roli.
However, the thing about it is,being able to see where your
money is going is super criticalto being able to manage your
budget.
I think about some of theearliest lessons I had to learn
about money management wasmanaging it to a granular point
where I actually felt like I wasin control.
(03:30):
Something my wife likes to sayis tell your money where to go.
If you take that mindset andyou develop whatever practice it
is, using whatever tool youwant, you can essentially
develop a practice of seeing thefunds where they are, where you
are spending them monthly towhatever level.
(03:52):
You can get granular,categorized, whatever, and then
you can make qualityquantifiable choices.
If you don't have an aggregator,something that is going to tell
you what you've spent yourmoney on, you might as well be
just tossing money out thewindow, right?
How do you know that you'respending them on the right
(04:12):
things?
And, to my wife's point, it'slike tell your money where to go
so that you can control it.
I like to think about givemyself goals, right?
So if I see my money moving inthe wrong direction, I get a
chance to readjust.
But I wouldn't have that if Ididn't have a tool that would
allow me to assess it, so I'vepersonally used Mint in the past
, but we know that you know it'sno longer with us you know,
(04:36):
rest in peace.
Yeah right, lately I've beenusing personal capital.
Now, personal capital isdefinitely an aggregator.
It pulls account access fromeverywhere that you want to
provide it and it shows you howwell you're doing across all the
spectrums all of your cash, allof your investments, all of
(04:58):
your credits and debits.
And so if you can pull that upon a mini dashboard on your
phone at any given time and seepretty much real-time data and
make decisions based on thatwhether or not you want to dial
back your monthly expenses onfrivolous things or you want to
look at leveraging your meritraise from your company in a
(05:21):
better way, like investing insomething new which is I highly
recommend this app will do thatfor you.
So you know, don't take my wordfor it you can.
You can try it out.
You can try out any number ofapplications.
I'm a big believer in beingable to see where your money has
gone and telling your moneywhere it should go.
So there you go, vic.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
No, 100 percent.
And then, like you know, anotherthing that was really cool,
like a feature about this toolis that you can have it take on
personas, so, like on here,references like the nagging mom,
the trusted friend, the wisementor.
So, if you need that extraincentive to check out this tool
, raleigh, r-o-l-l-y, that mightget you interested.
(06:08):
And then, also, like, a gooduse case is when you're planning
, like, a weekend getaway.
There's a function where youcan have a group trip wallet and
everyone logs in their expensesand, honestly, that sounds
really good for business owners.
So, like, if you're needing totrack your expenses and your
receipts and whatnot, like smallbusiness owners, that might be
a good use case.
So, again, good opportunity foryou to leverage artificial
intelligence to think a littlesmarter, not harder, and that
(06:30):
tool is a good use case.
Now let's talk about somethingthat's always near and dear to
my heart.
We'll talk about robo-investingand automated portfolio
management, so we'll talk abouta couple of tools here, but,
like, when you hear that, though, like, what are your thoughts
on?
Like, using ai for for thoseuse cases, jason?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
well, I think, as long as the tool that you're
using has good reviews and isbacked by a strong financial
company, it's probably fine totry out.
I've used robo advisors insegments of my portfolio so that
I can, you know, try it out andgive the market, give the
(07:10):
algorithms, a little autonomy togo in and see what it does.
You know, I've seen some decentresults.
What I haven't really done isdial up the risk factors or dial
them down.
You know it's like somethingyou kind of set and forget
because it's a fully managedservice, right?
And I personally, over the last10, 15 years, have taken my
(07:33):
personal finances very seriously, even though my wife coined the
term tell your money where togo.
I've been doing that for over adecade or more and find that by
paying attention to the marketand moving money around
accordingly, rebalancing myportfolio appropriately and
investing as heavily as possiblewhenever possible, that's my
(07:53):
secret sauce.
And to give all of that controlover to a robo advisor I've I'm
not quite comfortable with muchlike I don't like a financial
advisor who, on top of dozens ofother clients, is barely paying
attention to mine, right Like Idon't mind having a
conversation with a financialadvisor from time to time, but
(08:17):
I'm not the type of personthat's going to give over
control to that person and eventhough I know that you know
they're certified and they have,you know my interests at stake,
because otherwise they wouldn'thave a job.
I kind of feel like the roboadvisors the same thing but I
personally like to be able topush the buttons and and have a
little bit more access to whathappens with the ins and outs.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I got a great story about that right, and I listened
to a podcast called the moneyguy finance.
I think that's the I thinkthat's the name of it and we
will be considered a financialmutants because you and I both
kind of approach, invest in thesame way.
But it took me some time to getthere.
I know, when I first came intoa little bit of money, I had a
buddy of mine who was afiduciary planner, right, well,
(08:59):
fiduciary financial planners.
So, like you know, those arethe people who they're not
trying to push those mutualfunds on you that have high
expense ratios or fees orwhatnot.
You know they're trying to lookout for you because if you win,
they win Right.
And what happened with me was Igave them about five thousand
dollars and I started to look tosee where the money was and I
(09:20):
noticed that it hadn't grown.
So, you know, once I gotcomfortable and I was like, well
, if I just take this 5K out andjust throw it in Vanguard's S&P
500, if I would have done thata couple of years ago, like I
would have had a better ROI,right, but I had to get the
comfort and the confidence to dothat Right.
So, like.
I think that for individualswho are interested in having
(09:41):
their own hands on the money, wecan talk about a couple of
different use cases about usingprompts to identify the right
times to enter the market thingsof that nature right.
But if you're like a gig economyworker or if you're a person
who doesn't have, like, a 401k,things of that nature this tool
Wealthfront, is a pretty cooltool because what it'll do is it
offers people the ability to,like, invest in IRAs.
(10:04):
I always tell people if you canmax out your Roth IRA every
year, because if you don't havea 401k, definitely do that.
Or if you have kids and youwant to get their college
savings plans up to date, youcan do a 529.
That's a good use case, right.
So this tool Wealthfront whatit does is it builds a
diversified investment portfoliobased on your risk profile.
(10:26):
So you tell it what your riskprofile is and then it'll
automatically rebalance and whatit makes sure is that harvest
tax losses to optimize yourreturns, right.
So like when you speak towanting to control some people
who are interested in that,right.
And like I can't just listen toKramer all day, or you know a
lot of these guys.
(10:46):
That's a decent tool, it's aself-driving money tool and some
of the, you know, key takeawaysthat I've seen is that a lot of
times the allocations aredynamically tied to like what
you tell it versus like you know.
You tell it that, hey, I wantto invest 10 bucks and I want
that 10 bucks to grow to 10,000.
Right, so like, well, not evenreverse, but like that's kind of
(11:07):
it's going to, it's going to goas you, as you see fit, but
watch it though.
You know, always watch yourmoney.
I think I think you've beenkind of speaking to that a lot
of times like, don'tautomatically trust everything.
Like you could use this tooland then, once you get
comfortable, start, you know,open a brokerage account and
start, you know, investingindividually Right, but like,
again, you know, wealthfrontpretty pretty good tool and I
like the fact that it pushespeople into like IRAs and these,
(11:30):
these accounts like that, tomake sure that you know there's
a little bit of stability andsavings there.
Cause like, honestly, if you canget a Roth IRA, you max that
out every year, pre-tax, right,definitely do that.
So when you retire, um, youknow, you don't have to worry
about um, a lot of, a lot ofissues, but, um, you know it's
another tool outside of thatI'll speak to.
But, like when you hear that,though, like for folks who are
(11:51):
like scared of money, like Ithink ai might help you feel
more comfortable about it.
Like with me, it was just oneday I started listening to a lot
of financial podcasts.
I always talk about earn yourleisure.
You know those are guys whoreally got me on this, on this
journey, and then I just took itwas a good buddy of mine.
He got married to me.
You know I took the money outof where he had it at and I put
(12:11):
it in Fidelity, and you knowit's been to the moon since.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, no, that's a great story.
I think about personal journeys.
One thing I would say aboutrobo advisors is it does take
the complicated factors out ofthe situation.
So if you find one you cantrust right and you have some
money to put into it, you don'tmind leaving it there for the
(12:35):
long haul.
You don't want to react tothese crazy markets and say, oh
my God, I'm losing, you know,20% today.
I got to get it out of themarket.
Like, if you do something likethat, then you probably
shouldn't be paying closeattention to it.
I do want to say we're notfinancial advisors, so take this
for what it's worth.
(12:55):
We're just a couple of guysrunning a podcast and talking
about AI here, essentially, sothis is not financial advice by
any means.
However, the personal journeyand experience, as well as how
you feel in doing anything withyour money like that's all a
very personal thing.
So, whether or not you'rewilling to go and become a
(13:19):
student of finances personalfinances and go and take real
control of your financial life,or you want to set it and forget
it like a 401k or whatever,like you do that right and we're
just offering some ideas aboutyou know what tools exist out
there that you might want to goand dabble with.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And you know, because you mentioned it, you know
we're going to date the podcast,but you know, when the current
administration issued thetariffs back at the top of April
, april was a bloody month.
You know I, every day I keptseeing comparisons to the 87 or
(14:01):
Black Monday.
I think it was 87 or 88.
Forgive me if I'm off on theyear.
I know it was in the 80s.
I was born in 85.
So you know, give me some graceon that.
But 08, market crash.
You know, every day I kepthearing that this is the worst
thing ever and if you would seethat and you would panic and you
would want to take your moneyout, then individually managing
(14:24):
your account probably isn't thebest bet.
You know, using one of thesetools is.
But like I don't know about you, but when I saw that, I got
excited Like I needed to havedry powder, which for those who
aren't initiated, that's justlike excess capital to invest,
right, like I had so much drypowder built up for like years.
I was like I years, I was justwaiting for that opportunity and
(14:45):
when it hit, I was there andone thing I'll tell you is I
didn't buy anything, thinkingthat I'm going to spend the
money now and I'm going to takeit out in a couple of months.
I'm investing for when me andmy wife are posted up on
somebody's island somewhere whenwe're 50 or 60.
This is long-term investing,right.
So, like, when you're investing, like you have to have a plan
(15:09):
and if your plan is that thismoney is going to go to
retirement, cool.
If you want to do short-terminvesting, like options and
stuff like that, that's a good.
That's a good play.
But, um, not going to talk aboutthat on this on the show.
But to that end, though, Ispeak to what happened in april
as, like, the market was justterrible.
Bitcoin was down, everythingwas down, right, but now we're
(15:29):
closer to the end of may,everything has pretty much got
back to where it was prior to um, you know the tariffs coming in
now.
Um, if you're a person whofollows politics or follows the
market, like, one of the thingsthat I I initially um
hypothesized was that thisadministration was going to have
situations like that.
So I was waiting and I washoping that there was going to
(15:51):
be volatility.
There's going to be morevolatility.
So, just like um, one if notthe best, one of the greatest um
duos ever charlie munger andwarren buffett.
You know their mantras wasalways buy when the buy when
those are.
Well, what's the term it's like?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
it's about the fear and greed index.
But it's something to theeffect of like be fearful when
others are greedy, which meansyou know, don't buy in like 100
percent when the when the greedindex is high, 100% when the
greed index is high, and thenwhen the fear index is in the
other direction, where there's alot of fear in the market and
(16:30):
people are selling off, that'swhat you want to buy 100%.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
That's like with Bitcoin.
Right now, bitcoin is up tolike 110.
When it was down to like 20,000, I think, like 22, nobody
wanted to buy it.
That's the time to buy Again toavoid all of that.
If you aren't trying to followthe market.
Just dollar cost average everymonth.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
We are definitely getting into a financial podcast
here.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
No, I mean like and this is not financial literacy
y'all, this is just two guysinto it but like, dollar cost
average is a real thing, man,and these tools can help you
with that.
It's magic, a hundred percent.
Yeah, just just ride away, yeah.
So the other tool that we'llkind of highlight and go over
and then we'll get into anothersection, it's called Betterment,
and what Betterment does is ituses algorithms to maintain your
(17:20):
optimal portfolio allocation asthe market changes, kind of
like what we were speaking to.
Like you don't have to worryabout, you know, riding the ship
when the market's up and down,right, like tools like this can
help.
Some of the things that theymentioned were like they offered
lower fees on here compared totraditional advisors, and you
(17:40):
know, a good example was youknow a user might want to invest
like 100K with Betterment andpay like a $200 annual fee,
versus a person who invests like$2,000 with a traditional
advisor and potentially savinglike thousands of dollars
because that, you know,traditional advisor might charge
a little bit more.
The key feature with Bettermentis just this automatic
portfolio reallocation at lowercost structure.
(18:02):
So, like both of those toolscan help you if you're not glued
in a Bloomberg every day.
But for those who wants to get alittle bit handsy, you know we
might we might spend a littlebit more time a little bit later
on in the show and wetransition to the, the next
topic that I can really help youwith.
I think it's important that youhave something that can track
(18:23):
your credit and monitoringprotection Right.
I think it's important that youhave something that can track
your credit and monitoringprotection right.
So I think credit karma hasbeen around forever.
When you think about using AIto track credit monitoring and
protection and things of thatnature, what are your thoughts
on that?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, I love credit karma.
I've been watching my FICOscore for years.
In the world of credit, thatgives you buying power, right.
I think it's super importantthat you do track it.
Before these applications camealong like Credit Karma, some
advice my parents gave me was tocheck with the credit bureaus
on an annual basis and becausethere's a maybe it's a
(18:59):
well-known fact by now, butyou're allowed to pull your
credit report free from eachcredit bureau annually.
So if you pay close attentionto the credit bureau monitoring
systems, you'll be able to seeand ensure that your credit is
in control, based on what youexpect us to have Like.
(19:22):
It'll tell you all of yourcredit lines, all of your.
You know whether you have amortgage open or car loans, even
every credit card that you'veever had, and by monitoring that
and making sure that you knowthere's nothing that's been open
in your name that shouldn't belike that was the whole premise
(19:44):
behind that.
Now they have like these toolsI would say Experian is probably
one that pops out, pops intomind, because they've lost my
data to hackers.
They give they give access tofree, free credit monitoring now
and allow you to lock down yourcredit, which is great, you
know I think it's it can becomekind of annoying if you forget
(20:06):
that your credit is frozen andthen you try to go and open a
credit card at a, you know atthe checkout at Dillard's or
whatever, and and they're like,oh, you've been denied.
And then you're like why?
You know you got a pretty goodFICO score here and and they're
like I don't know why, go, youknow, take a hike, and then you
(20:32):
realize like your credits frozen, like that that's kind of
annoying, but it is.
It is great in service of ofensuring that no one is going to
come and steal your, yourcredit history and do something
nefarious with it.
I've been tracking the numberand seeing how high I can get it
.
You know, when I saw it reachup into the 800s, I was like I
made it.
You know, I'm like I've arrivedand it's a great feeling
(20:56):
because you know that you canjust basically do what you need
and you don't have to worryabout, um, whether or not the
credit agencies are are going tooffer you one thing or another
and you just you ask for it andyou basically get it right 100
and you know, but yeah that'show it works.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I think, uh, we have something in common like so,
like right now and let's talkabout credit comment, come a
little bit so, like, I got itopen and it has my TransUnion
score and it has my Equifaxscore, right.
But then it also has a historyof every account that I've
opened and closed and it has myequity in my home, things of
(21:36):
that nature, right.
So just being able to look atthat stuff Absolutely amazing.
So even it gives yousuggestions.
Right right now it's saying, um, the chase, sapphire, uh,
preferred credit card is a cardthat they would suggest I would,
I would open not, not reallytake it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
They're advertising that, you know 100.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
That's what I say like, not really like wanting to
open any more credit cards.
You know, I think the next cardI'm gonna probably get uh, it's
like one of those airmanamerican express platinum cards,
just so I can get into the tothe lounges with me and the wife
go oh yeah, everybody loves agood lounge yeah, you know, and
this, this tool, though, canhelp you pay attention to that,
because if you're not aware ofyour credit score, some bad
(22:16):
stuff can happen.
You know, like, unfortunatelywith me, like you said, like the
800, like I had an 800 creditscore for like so long in my
life, but I never knew what todo with it.
Right, and it was one of thosethings where it's like, you know
, um, pandemic hit and I don'tknow why me and my wife was like
, let's buy our first home.
But you know, we was like, okay, let's, there's opportunity,
let's go and do it.
And, um, when I bought thehouse, when we bought the house,
(22:38):
we were able to get like a two,three interest rate on the home
, and I felt confident andcomfortable in my ability to
demand that kind of interestrate, specifically because I've
been tracking my credit scorefor a very, very, very long time
, you know.
So like just being able to havethat kind of confidence in
yourself when you go into likebanks, like look, if you don't
want to like Wells Fargo, if youdon't want to give me a home
(23:02):
loan.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
We're really name dropping the day, aren't we?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
yeah, I mean, I don't know man, uh, but like or or
capital, not capital bank ofamerica, right, you know any of
these places?
Speaker 1 (23:12):
what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
not capital one well, you know, we can talk about
capital one too, but you know,uh, I I don't know, do they do
capital?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
one.
Yes, you do, yes, they do theydo um home.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
They do home loans too, right, no, no, you do.
They do home loans too, right,no, no.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They got out of the business several years back.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Okay, so companies no , I didn't mean to interrupt you
, you're good.
No, no, it's all good Companieswho are buying for people's
talent.
They already know your creditscore.
So having that confidence toknow that you can compete when
(23:50):
you go in there and not justtake the first offer is a good
idea.
Even when I got my initial homeloan, I just took the first one
and I didn't even know if thatwas a good number.
And to date, the podcast.
Now, interest rates on homesare so good, oh, my God, yeah,
yeah, changed overnightbasically.
Yeah, rates on homes like, oh mygod, yeah, yeah, changed
overnight, basically, yeah, solike again, you know and I'll
give a quick overview again onyou know what credit karma is.
(24:10):
Use that, because it's going tohelp when you want to buy, even
if it's not a home with a car,if it's something, um, a
business loan, things of thatnature.
Like your credit score is thefirst thing people are going to
look at.
So, like, make sure, and ifit's bad, then you know that you
can look at credit karma to belike okay, let me tax this off,
let me, and let me, um, let meget this situated.
Let me get this situated.
So, like, not only does it helpyou when it comes to trying to
(24:31):
make sure that you're notgetting scammed, because I mean,
golly, that's such a prevalentthing around nature it could
give you confidence, like, okay,over time, like it might go
from the sixes to the sevens andand then you know if you can
get up to the eights.
You know, that's cool.
I was told that you know, onceyou get up to the eights, it's
just kind of like all right, man, you know you don't need to do
anything else.
But it was like a game though.
So I know what you mean.
Like, once you get up there,you feel kind of kind of hip,
(24:52):
you know, and then, just justfrom a high level, flag
suspicious activity and simulatehow you know final financial
decisions, like getting a creditcard, will impact your credit
score, which is importantbecause, like, if you know that
something is going to have animpact on your credit before you
do it, then it might give youan indication on if you want to
(25:15):
take that, make that decision ornot.
Um, so, so, so we've gone overa couple of different tools
sprinkled in our own personalthought processes around
personal finances and ai uh.
But the big picture, uh, isdemocratizing.
Wealth management is somethingthat artificial intelligence can
really help you with.
So, whether that's roll uh,rolly um, wealthfront, credit
(25:39):
karma, betterment, you all thosesophisticated financial
management tools can be in yourhand and you don't need a
financial degree.
You know it's like somethingwhere it makes the barrier to
entry a lot easier.
Like our parents, you know itmight have been harder for them
to have this kind of information, you know.
But, like, take advantage ofthe technology right now.
(26:02):
You know the level.
The leveling of the playingfield is extraordinarily
efficient.
Now, and another use case that Ireferenced earlier was just
like if you're an Uber driverand you want to automate savings
, when you're an Uber driver,you don't have a 401k.
You don't have business Excuseme you don't have a 401k.
You don't have medical benefitsand things of that nature.
(26:23):
One thing you can have, though,is some financial security.
You can have your money bestashed away for an emergency
fund.
I always hear these statisticsabout how a lot of Americans
don't have a very like a littlebit of money and a little bit is
relative but they don't have Xamount of dollars for something
(26:43):
crazy happening.
Right?
Use AI to help you get intosituations, because life comes
at you quick, and when it comesat you quick, you got to be able
to pivot, and you got to beable to react fastly, right?
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1 (26:54):
though.
Well, I think there's some ruleout there.
I don't know how it's evolvedover the years, but they do say
have a savings that's built upso that you can manage through a
few months of loss of job.
Or one of the biggest lessons Ilearned over the years was when
stuff hits like tires are neededfor a car, or maybe even just
(27:18):
planning to buy a car in thenext couple of years, like you
know, your car's getting upthere in age and you're spending
more on maintenance than youreally want to, and maybe more
than you would if you had, youknow, just a new car payment,
like things like that aredefinitely predictable, right?
So if you pay attention, like Isaid earlier, to your money
(27:39):
where it's going and you thinkabout the future just enough so
that you can kind of identifywhat's coming around the corner
for the next six to 12 months,then putting money aside is
absolutely a life changer, right?
Because, like I was saying,when the tires needed to be
(28:01):
replaced or the summer hit andthe sprinkler system was going
to go off and start billing meat 300 bucks a month for water,
right, it's like I saw thathitting the accounts and I'm
like man that hurts, right, butplaying in the head and and
moving a little bit of money inpreparation for those things
(28:25):
again is a game changer and Isay, if you can let AI do that
for you, then absolutely 100%.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
So we're wrapping up.
You know, wrap up everything ina crescendo.
Start small, automate.
One task, one category.
Don't use all these tools atonce because you don't want to
overwhelm yourself.
So if you're using a budget toolto track grocery spending, or
if you're using Credit Karma toprepare for something that
you're going to and again datingthe podcast, if the tariff
(28:58):
situation enhances, it's beensuggested that iphones are going
to go through the moon soon,right?
So if you want to buy an iphonewhich is crazy to say because I
know me, you come from the oldschool where phones wasn't as
much as like a thousand dollars,for iphones, nothing that's
going to jump up to like 2k.
But if you want to buy aniphone, or if you want to buy
(29:19):
something bigger, like inseptember, like start tracking
your, your credit score and getyour stuff situated, so like if
you need to borrow some money ortake out a loan, like I'm not
suggesting taking out a loan foran iPhone, but you could take
out a loan for a bunch ofiPhones for a business.
Either way you go, one of thefirst things you should probably
look at is making sure that youunderstand what your credit
(29:40):
power is and spend like fiveminutes a week just reviewing
best practices and throw it inthe chat GPT.
This is actually one of thefirst times I think we hadn't
even really spoke to like chatGPT or like LLMs on this show.
But you can ask those LLMs totell me about, hey, what are the
best practices with X, y and Z.
(30:00):
Teach me a new tool every day.
And, just like research it, goto YouTube Academy.
Youtube Academy is the bestfree academy out there.
And just over time, just onceyou get comfortable, share it
with your network.
I think that's one of the keytakeaways I like to tell people.
Share it with your network.
And once you have communitybecause I love talking to this
guy, jason man once you havecommunity because, like, I love
(30:21):
talking to this guy, jason man,you know, because, like, when
you have community of peoplethat are like minded, you make
it makes it easier to do, youmake you make you more
comfortable and you know itmakes it easier to you know, get
out there and I'm doing apodcast on AI and finance.
That's wild, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, I'd be interested to see what Jack
O'Gorman thinks about thisepisode because he's big into
finances and investing and allthe coins out there and he could
probably share a lot of hisexperience with the audience.
But yeah, I love the directionof this discussion today.
I personally feel like wealth.
You know democratizing wealthmanagement is going to.
It can change people's worldsand they have to allow it, they
(31:10):
have to try it.
You know it's like any otherthing out there that's available
for people to use.
If you're not exposed to it andyou don't give it a shot, you
don't do your homework and tryto figure it out, then you're
not going to be able to takeadvantage of it and you know
that's going to leave a lot ofpeople behind.
So I think, in the spirit ofthis show, in the spirit of our
organization, ai Ready RVA, wecan't preach enough about doing
(31:34):
that and we want this communityto thrive.
We don't want to see anybody inthis community left behind.
You know, regardless of yourbackground or where you're from,
of course, and how much moneyyou have.
Like the world is changing andthe playing field is, like you
say, leveling.
It's only going to make iteasier for those that have to
(31:57):
have more and those that don'thave to get and those that don't
have to get right.
And you know, you just got touse the concepts and build on
them and diversify your thinkingbeyond what you may have
thought the world was about inthe past, because it's not about
that anymore, right, it's aboutknowledge.
It's about tools and access totechnology, and anybody can get
(32:20):
with that program.
So join us at AI Ready RVA.
Any upcoming event is betterthan no upcoming event, right?
So find a niche that will helpyou explore this space better.
Join a cohort, become a memberof AI Ready RVA and get access
to this stuff today, because thefuture, your future, will
(32:44):
depend on it.
Am I right, vic?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Oh, a thousand percent.
You know what?
Because you just so eloquentlymentioned events, can I share
the next AI Ready event and ourpersonal event coming up in June
?
So AI Ready presents Money andFinance Cohort Summer Session
sponsored by EEPON.
We're going to have a gentlemanI'm not going to butcher his
(33:09):
name, but he's the senior vicepresident of data management at
Bank of America Come in and talkabout how machine learning can
address regulatory andcompliance risks compliance
risks go over real world datascience techniques used in
enterprise scaling and thendiscuss the journey from
(33:31):
identifying risk to buildingpatent worthy solutions.
I think that this is going tobe a great session when it comes
to like businesses looking todiscuss artificial intelligence
Non-members 15.
But if you get your membershipand you join a cohort, it's free
.
So that's 15 a month.
So make sure you become an aiready rva subscriber member and
we're always looking forfounding funders.
(33:51):
So if you want to become afounding funder or a corporate
member, we have price structureson there.
And again, that event is june11th, from 5, 30 to 7, and it's
going to be at the eponttechnology location and it's
going to be at the eponttechnology um location and it's
going to be at 34 31 west leestreet in richmond virginia.
And if you forgot everything Isaid, just go to ai ready dot
com.
(34:12):
You'll see the events and thenrvacom no, I messed that up a
couple times when I'm on board.
I need to be better at that,will.
Both the wills.
Don't kill me for that, guys.
And then, uh, not too far afterthat, I got one of my first
summer ai workshops coming up.
Um, it's going to be uh aisales tactics, where you can
learn how to boost leads,pinpoint audiences and win deals
(34:32):
.
It's going to be sponsored byscore, the metropolitan business
league and the central virginiaafrican-american chamber of
commerce.
That's going to be on june 20that the 1717 downtown um
location.
Uh, the uh the innovationcenter.
It's going to be on the rooftopfrom two to four, one of the uh
first events that uh I'mgetting to do with.
(34:53):
Uh score, we got three-partseries and uh shout out to the
nbl.
Metropolitan business league isa great organization if you're
interested in them.
Um, they're sponsoring theevent as well as the Central
Virginia Black Chamber ofCommerce.
That's going to be on.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
June 20th again.
Is that with your business?
Sustainable Growth, creative,yes, yes, with.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
SGC.
So we're going to be out heredoing AI workshops all summer.
We got another one coming up inJuly and hopefully I'll be on
another podcast by then.
We'll talk about that.
July is a little far from now,but you know the June 20th SGC's
first three-part score summerAI sessions is going to happen
and I'm super excited about it.
So yeah, check your boy out.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Excellent.
Thanks for the plugs there, vic.
I know our audience willappreciate it and hopefully we
see them out there hitting thepavement, working the network
magic and exploring what AI cando for them.
It's been great, vic.
Thank you so much.
Have a wonderful rest of yourweekend and I'll talk to you
soon.
Later, and thanks to ourlisteners for tuning in today.
(35:55):
If you or your company wouldlike to be featured on an
Inspire AI episode, please dropus a message.
Featured on an Inspire AIepisode?
Please drop us a message.
Don't forget to like, share andfollow our content to stay
updated on the latest news andevents from AI Ready RBA.
Thank you again and see younext time.
Welcome RVA to Inspire AI, where we spotlight
companies and individuals in theregion who are pioneering the
development and use ofartificial intelligence.
I'm Jason McGinty from AI ReadyRVA.
At AI Ready RVA, our mission isto cultivate AI literacy in the
greater Richmond region throughawareness, community engagement
(00:24):
, education and advocacy.
Today's episode is madepossible by Modern Ancients
driving innovation with purpose.
Modern Ancients uses AI andstrategic insight to help
businesses create lasting,positive change with their
unique journey consultingpractice.
(00:44):
Find out more about how yourbusiness can grow at
modernagentscom.
And thanks to our listeners fortuning in today.
If you or your company wouldlike to be featured in the
Inspire AI Richmond episode,please drop us a message.
Don't forget to like, share orfollow our content and stay up
(01:07):
to date on the latest events forAI Ready RVA.
All right, welcome back toInspire AI.
Today we have a special guestand a special program.
Vic Rogers is treating us todaywith a new script.
With a little imagination,we're going to walk our audience
through discussion aboutpersonal finance and AI.
(01:30):
We're going to call it MoneyMeets Machine, where your
financial freedom through AI canbe explored.
So here we're going to dosomething interesting.
Usually I interview guests, buttoday I'd like Vic to host this
session, and we'll see wherethis goes.
So, vic, welcome to Inspire AI.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Hey, I'm glad to be back, love talking money,
looking forward to theconversation.
I did a little research just soI can make sure that the
audience is aware of some of thetools that are out there.
We'll go over a couple, talkabout demoing and takeaways,
things of that nature and, asyou see fit, if you feel that
there's some insight or someother tools, I'd love your
(02:14):
feedback on them.
Absolutely Awesome, awesome.
So one of the things that Ithink when you think of personal
finance it comes up a lot oftimes is like budgeting and
expense tracking.
Right?
So there's a tool that Iresearched called Roli.
It's an AI money tracker andwhat it does is it automatically
syncs and categorizes yourtransactions.
(02:35):
So like, say, for example, Igot a coffee and chat with Jason
and we want to go to a localestablishment here in Richmond
Best coffee spot in the city,probably.
Oh, captain Buzzy's used to bea spot in Churchill, but it's
not open anymore.
But let's just say CaptainBuzzy's, right.
This tool will track thetransactions through multiple
wallets that offer real-timeinsights and allow for you to
(03:00):
understand where your money'sgoing.
So that's a great tool forbudgeting.
Like when you hear that, likewhat are your thoughts on like
having that as a as a tool.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
So, yeah, personally, I'd never heard of Roli.
However, the thing about it is,being able to see where your
money is going is super criticalto being able to manage your
budget.
I think about some of theearliest lessons I had to learn
about money management wasmanaging it to a granular point
where I actually felt like I wasin control.
(03:30):
Something my wife likes to sayis tell your money where to go.
If you take that mindset andyou develop whatever practice it
is, using whatever tool youwant, you can essentially
develop a practice of seeing thefunds where they are, where you
are spending them monthly towhatever level.
(03:52):
You can get granular,categorized, whatever, and then
you can make qualityquantifiable choices.
If you don't have an aggregator,something that is going to tell
you what you've spent yourmoney on, you might as well be
just tossing money out thewindow, right?
How do you know that you'respending them on the right
(04:12):
things?
And, to my wife's point, it'slike tell your money where to go
so that you can control it.
I like to think about givemyself goals, right?
So if I see my money moving inthe wrong direction, I get a
chance to readjust.
But I wouldn't have that if Ididn't have a tool that would
allow me to assess it, so I'vepersonally used Mint in the past
, but we know that you know it'sno longer with us you know,
(04:36):
rest in peace.
Yeah right, lately I've beenusing personal capital.
Now, personal capital isdefinitely an aggregator.
It pulls account access fromeverywhere that you want to
provide it and it shows you howwell you're doing across all the
spectrums all of your cash, allof your investments, all of
(04:58):
your credits and debits.
And so if you can pull that upon a mini dashboard on your
phone at any given time and seepretty much real-time data and
make decisions based on thatwhether or not you want to dial
back your monthly expenses onfrivolous things or you want to
look at leveraging your meritraise from your company in a
(05:21):
better way, like investing insomething new which is I highly
recommend this app will do thatfor you.
So you know, don't take my wordfor it you can.
You can try it out.
You can try out any number ofapplications.
I'm a big believer in beingable to see where your money has
gone and telling your moneywhere it should go.
So there you go, vic.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
No, 100 percent.
And then, like you know, anotherthing that was really cool,
like a feature about this toolis that you can have it take on
personas, so, like on here,references like the nagging mom,
the trusted friend, the wisementor.
So, if you need that extraincentive to check out this tool
, raleigh, r-o-l-l-y, that mightget you interested.
(06:08):
And then, also, like, a gooduse case is when you're planning
, like, a weekend getaway.
There's a function where youcan have a group trip wallet and
everyone logs in their expensesand, honestly, that sounds
really good for business owners.
So, like, if you're needing totrack your expenses and your
receipts and whatnot, like smallbusiness owners, that might be
a good use case.
So, again, good opportunity foryou to leverage artificial
intelligence to think a littlesmarter, not harder, and that
(06:30):
tool is a good use case.
Now let's talk about somethingthat's always near and dear to
my heart.
We'll talk about robo-investingand automated portfolio
management, so we'll talk abouta couple of tools here, but,
like, when you hear that, though, like, what are your thoughts
on?
Like, using ai for for thoseuse cases, jason?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
well, I think, as long as the tool that you're
using has good reviews and isbacked by a strong financial
company, it's probably fine totry out.
I've used robo advisors insegments of my portfolio so that
I can, you know, try it out andgive the market, give the
(07:10):
algorithms, a little autonomy togo in and see what it does.
You know, I've seen some decentresults.
What I haven't really done isdial up the risk factors or dial
them down.
You know it's like somethingyou kind of set and forget
because it's a fully managedservice, right?
And I personally, over the last10, 15 years, have taken my
(07:33):
personal finances very seriously, even though my wife coined the
term tell your money where togo.
I've been doing that for over adecade or more and find that by
paying attention to the marketand moving money around
accordingly, rebalancing myportfolio appropriately and
investing as heavily as possiblewhenever possible, that's my
(07:53):
secret sauce.
And to give all of that controlover to a robo advisor I've I'm
not quite comfortable with muchlike I don't like a financial
advisor who, on top of dozens ofother clients, is barely paying
attention to mine, right Like Idon't mind having a
conversation with a financialadvisor from time to time, but
(08:17):
I'm not the type of personthat's going to give over
control to that person and eventhough I know that you know
they're certified and they have,you know my interests at stake,
because otherwise they wouldn'thave a job.
I kind of feel like the roboadvisors the same thing but I
personally like to be able topush the buttons and and have a
little bit more access to whathappens with the ins and outs.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I got a great story about that right, and I listened
to a podcast called the moneyguy finance.
I think that's the I thinkthat's the name of it and we
will be considered a financialmutants because you and I both
kind of approach, invest in thesame way.
But it took me some time to getthere.
I know, when I first came intoa little bit of money, I had a
buddy of mine who was afiduciary planner, right, well,
(08:59):
fiduciary financial planners.
So, like you know, those arethe people who they're not
trying to push those mutualfunds on you that have high
expense ratios or fees orwhatnot.
You know they're trying to lookout for you because if you win,
they win Right.
And what happened with me was Igave them about five thousand
dollars and I started to look tosee where the money was and I
(09:20):
noticed that it hadn't grown.
So, you know, once I gotcomfortable and I was like, well
, if I just take this 5K out andjust throw it in Vanguard's S&P
500, if I would have done thata couple of years ago, like I
would have had a better ROI,right, but I had to get the
comfort and the confidence to dothat Right.
So, like.
I think that for individualswho are interested in having
(09:41):
their own hands on the money, wecan talk about a couple of
different use cases about usingprompts to identify the right
times to enter the market thingsof that nature right.
But if you're like a gig economyworker or if you're a person
who doesn't have, like, a 401k,things of that nature this tool
Wealthfront, is a pretty cooltool because what it'll do is it
offers people the ability to,like, invest in IRAs.
(10:04):
I always tell people if you canmax out your Roth IRA every
year, because if you don't havea 401k, definitely do that.
Or if you have kids and youwant to get their college
savings plans up to date, youcan do a 529.
That's a good use case, right.
So this tool Wealthfront whatit does is it builds a
diversified investment portfoliobased on your risk profile.
(10:26):
So you tell it what your riskprofile is and then it'll
automatically rebalance and whatit makes sure is that harvest
tax losses to optimize yourreturns, right.
So like when you speak towanting to control some people
who are interested in that,right.
And like I can't just listen toKramer all day, or you know a
lot of these guys.
(10:46):
That's a decent tool, it's aself-driving money tool and some
of the, you know, key takeawaysthat I've seen is that a lot of
times the allocations aredynamically tied to like what
you tell it versus like you know.
You tell it that, hey, I wantto invest 10 bucks and I want
that 10 bucks to grow to 10,000.
Right, so like, well, not evenreverse, but like that's kind of
(11:07):
it's going to, it's going to goas you, as you see fit, but
watch it though.
You know, always watch yourmoney.
I think I think you've beenkind of speaking to that a lot
of times like, don'tautomatically trust everything.
Like you could use this tooland then, once you get
comfortable, start, you know,open a brokerage account and
start, you know, investingindividually Right, but like,
again, you know, wealthfrontpretty pretty good tool and I
like the fact that it pushespeople into like IRAs and these,
(11:30):
these accounts like that, tomake sure that you know there's
a little bit of stability andsavings there.
Cause like, honestly, if you canget a Roth IRA, you max that
out every year, pre-tax, right,definitely do that.
So when you retire, um, youknow, you don't have to worry
about um, a lot of, a lot ofissues, but, um, you know it's
another tool outside of thatI'll speak to.
But, like when you hear that,though, like for folks who are
(11:51):
like scared of money, like Ithink ai might help you feel
more comfortable about it.
Like with me, it was just oneday I started listening to a lot
of financial podcasts.
I always talk about earn yourleisure.
You know those are guys whoreally got me on this, on this
journey, and then I just took itwas a good buddy of mine.
He got married to me.
You know I took the money outof where he had it at and I put
(12:11):
it in Fidelity, and you knowit's been to the moon since.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, no, that's a great story.
I think about personal journeys.
One thing I would say aboutrobo advisors is it does take
the complicated factors out ofthe situation.
So if you find one you cantrust right and you have some
money to put into it, you don'tmind leaving it there for the
(12:35):
long haul.
You don't want to react tothese crazy markets and say, oh
my God, I'm losing, you know,20% today.
I got to get it out of themarket.
Like, if you do something likethat, then you probably
shouldn't be paying closeattention to it.
I do want to say we're notfinancial advisors, so take this
for what it's worth.
(12:55):
We're just a couple of guysrunning a podcast and talking
about AI here, essentially, sothis is not financial advice by
any means.
However, the personal journeyand experience, as well as how
you feel in doing anything withyour money like that's all a
very personal thing.
So, whether or not you'rewilling to go and become a
(13:19):
student of finances personalfinances and go and take real
control of your financial life,or you want to set it and forget
it like a 401k or whatever,like you do that right and we're
just offering some ideas aboutyou know what tools exist out
there that you might want to goand dabble with.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
And you know, because you mentioned it, you know
we're going to date the podcast,but you know, when the current
administration issued thetariffs back at the top of April
, april was a bloody month.
You know I, every day I keptseeing comparisons to the 87 or
(14:01):
Black Monday.
I think it was 87 or 88.
Forgive me if I'm off on theyear.
I know it was in the 80s.
I was born in 85.
So you know, give me some graceon that.
But 08, market crash.
You know, every day I kepthearing that this is the worst
thing ever and if you would seethat and you would panic and you
would want to take your moneyout, then individually managing
(14:24):
your account probably isn't thebest bet.
You know, using one of thesetools is.
But like I don't know about you, but when I saw that, I got
excited Like I needed to havedry powder, which for those who
aren't initiated, that's justlike excess capital to invest,
right, like I had so much drypowder built up for like years.
I was like I years, I was justwaiting for that opportunity and
(14:45):
when it hit, I was there andone thing I'll tell you is I
didn't buy anything, thinkingthat I'm going to spend the
money now and I'm going to takeit out in a couple of months.
I'm investing for when me andmy wife are posted up on
somebody's island somewhere whenwe're 50 or 60.
This is long-term investing,right.
So, like, when you're investing, like you have to have a plan
(15:09):
and if your plan is that thismoney is going to go to
retirement, cool.
If you want to do short-terminvesting, like options and
stuff like that, that's a good.
That's a good play.
But, um, not going to talk aboutthat on this on the show.
But to that end, though, Ispeak to what happened in april
as, like, the market was justterrible.
Bitcoin was down, everythingwas down, right, but now we're
(15:29):
closer to the end of may,everything has pretty much got
back to where it was prior to um, you know the tariffs coming in
now.
Um, if you're a person whofollows politics or follows the
market, like, one of the thingsthat I I initially um
hypothesized was that thisadministration was going to have
situations like that.
So I was waiting and I washoping that there was going to
(15:51):
be volatility.
There's going to be morevolatility.
So, just like um, one if notthe best, one of the greatest um
duos ever charlie munger andwarren buffett.
You know their mantras wasalways buy when the buy when
those are.
Well, what's the term it's like?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
it's about the fear and greed index.
But it's something to theeffect of like be fearful when
others are greedy, which meansyou know, don't buy in like 100
percent when the when the greedindex is high, 100% when the
greed index is high, and thenwhen the fear index is in the
other direction, where there's alot of fear in the market and
(16:30):
people are selling off, that'swhat you want to buy 100%.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
That's like with Bitcoin.
Right now, bitcoin is up tolike 110.
When it was down to like 20,000, I think, like 22, nobody
wanted to buy it.
That's the time to buy Again toavoid all of that.
If you aren't trying to followthe market.
Just dollar cost average everymonth.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
We are definitely getting into a financial podcast
here.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
No, I mean like and this is not financial literacy
y'all, this is just two guysinto it but like, dollar cost
average is a real thing, man,and these tools can help you
with that.
It's magic, a hundred percent.
Yeah, just just ride away, yeah.
So the other tool that we'llkind of highlight and go over
and then we'll get into anothersection, it's called Betterment,
and what Betterment does is ituses algorithms to maintain your
(17:20):
optimal portfolio allocation asthe market changes, kind of
like what we were speaking to.
Like you don't have to worryabout, you know, riding the ship
when the market's up and down,right, like tools like this can
help.
Some of the things that theymentioned were like they offered
lower fees on here compared totraditional advisors, and you
(17:40):
know, a good example was youknow a user might want to invest
like 100K with Betterment andpay like a $200 annual fee,
versus a person who invests like$2,000 with a traditional
advisor and potentially savinglike thousands of dollars
because that, you know,traditional advisor might charge
a little bit more.
The key feature with Bettermentis just this automatic
portfolio reallocation at lowercost structure.
(18:02):
So, like both of those toolscan help you if you're not glued
in a Bloomberg every day.
But for those who wants to get alittle bit handsy, you know we
might we might spend a littlebit more time a little bit later
on in the show and wetransition to the, the next
topic that I can really help youwith.
I think it's important that youhave something that can track
(18:23):
your credit and monitoringprotection Right.
I think it's important that youhave something that can track
your credit and monitoringprotection right.
So I think credit karma hasbeen around forever.
When you think about using AIto track credit monitoring and
protection and things of thatnature, what are your thoughts
on that?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, I love credit karma.
I've been watching my FICOscore for years.
In the world of credit, thatgives you buying power, right.
I think it's super importantthat you do track it.
Before these applications camealong like Credit Karma, some
advice my parents gave me was tocheck with the credit bureaus
on an annual basis and becausethere's a maybe it's a
(18:59):
well-known fact by now, butyou're allowed to pull your
credit report free from eachcredit bureau annually.
So if you pay close attentionto the credit bureau monitoring
systems, you'll be able to seeand ensure that your credit is
in control, based on what youexpect us to have Like.
(19:22):
It'll tell you all of yourcredit lines, all of your.
You know whether you have amortgage open or car loans, even
every credit card that you'veever had, and by monitoring that
and making sure that you knowthere's nothing that's been open
in your name that shouldn't belike that was the whole premise
(19:44):
behind that.
Now they have like these toolsI would say Experian is probably
one that pops out, pops intomind, because they've lost my
data to hackers.
They give they give access tofree, free credit monitoring now
and allow you to lock down yourcredit, which is great, you
know I think it's it can becomekind of annoying if you forget
(20:06):
that your credit is frozen andthen you try to go and open a
credit card at a, you know atthe checkout at Dillard's or
whatever, and and they're like,oh, you've been denied.
And then you're like why?
You know you got a pretty goodFICO score here and and they're
like I don't know why, go, youknow, take a hike, and then you
(20:32):
realize like your credits frozen, like that that's kind of
annoying, but it is.
It is great in service of ofensuring that no one is going to
come and steal your, yourcredit history and do something
nefarious with it.
I've been tracking the numberand seeing how high I can get it
.
You know, when I saw it reachup into the 800s, I was like I
made it.
You know, I'm like I've arrivedand it's a great feeling
(20:56):
because you know that you canjust basically do what you need
and you don't have to worryabout, um, whether or not the
credit agencies are are going tooffer you one thing or another
and you just you ask for it andyou basically get it right 100
and you know, but yeah that'show it works.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
I think, uh, we have something in common like so,
like right now and let's talkabout credit comment, come a
little bit so, like, I got itopen and it has my TransUnion
score and it has my Equifaxscore, right.
But then it also has a historyof every account that I've
opened and closed and it has myequity in my home, things of
(21:36):
that nature, right.
So just being able to look atthat stuff Absolutely amazing.
So even it gives yousuggestions.
Right right now it's saying, um, the chase, sapphire, uh,
preferred credit card is a cardthat they would suggest I would,
I would open not, not reallytake it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
They're advertising that, you know 100.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
That's what I say like, not really like wanting to
open any more credit cards.
You know, I think the next cardI'm gonna probably get uh, it's
like one of those airmanamerican express platinum cards,
just so I can get into the tothe lounges with me and the wife
go oh yeah, everybody loves agood lounge yeah, you know, and
this, this tool, though, canhelp you pay attention to that,
because if you're not aware ofyour credit score, some bad
(22:16):
stuff can happen.
You know, like, unfortunatelywith me, like you said, like the
800, like I had an 800 creditscore for like so long in my
life, but I never knew what todo with it.
Right, and it was one of thosethings where it's like, you know
, um, pandemic hit and I don'tknow why me and my wife was like
, let's buy our first home.
But you know, we was like, okay, let's, there's opportunity,
let's go and do it.
And, um, when I bought thehouse, when we bought the house,
(22:38):
we were able to get like a two,three interest rate on the home
, and I felt confident andcomfortable in my ability to
demand that kind of interestrate, specifically because I've
been tracking my credit scorefor a very, very, very long time
, you know.
So like just being able to havethat kind of confidence in
yourself when you go into likebanks, like look, if you don't
want to like Wells Fargo, if youdon't want to give me a home
(23:02):
loan.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
We're really name dropping the day, aren't we?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
yeah, I mean, I don't know man, uh, but like or or
capital, not capital bank ofamerica, right, you know any of
these places?
Speaker 1 (23:12):
what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
not capital one well, you know, we can talk about
capital one too, but you know,uh, I I don't know, do they do
capital?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
one.
Yes, you do, yes, they do theydo um home.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
They do home loans too, right, no, no, you do.
They do home loans too, right,no, no.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
They got out of the business several years back.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Okay, so companies no , I didn't mean to interrupt you
, you're good.
No, no, it's all good Companieswho are buying for people's
talent.
They already know your creditscore.
So having that confidence toknow that you can compete when
(23:50):
you go in there and not justtake the first offer is a good
idea.
Even when I got my initial homeloan, I just took the first one
and I didn't even know if thatwas a good number.
And to date, the podcast.
Now, interest rates on homesare so good, oh, my God, yeah,
yeah, changed overnightbasically.
Yeah, rates on homes like, oh mygod, yeah, yeah, changed
overnight, basically, yeah, solike again, you know and I'll
give a quick overview again onyou know what credit karma is.
(24:10):
Use that, because it's going tohelp when you want to buy, even
if it's not a home with a car,if it's something, um, a
business loan, things of thatnature.
Like your credit score is thefirst thing people are going to
look at.
So, like, make sure, and ifit's bad, then you know that you
can look at credit karma to belike okay, let me tax this off,
let me, and let me, um, let meget this situated.
Let me get this situated.
So, like, not only does it helpyou when it comes to trying to
(24:31):
make sure that you're notgetting scammed, because I mean,
golly, that's such a prevalentthing around nature it could
give you confidence, like, okay,over time, like it might go
from the sixes to the sevens andand then you know if you can
get up to the eights.
You know, that's cool.
I was told that you know, onceyou get up to the eights, it's
just kind of like all right, man, you know you don't need to do
anything else.
But it was like a game though.
So I know what you mean.
Like, once you get up there,you feel kind of kind of hip,
(24:52):
you know, and then, just justfrom a high level, flag
suspicious activity and simulatehow you know final financial
decisions, like getting a creditcard, will impact your credit
score, which is importantbecause, like, if you know that
something is going to have animpact on your credit before you
do it, then it might give youan indication on if you want to
(25:15):
take that, make that decision ornot.
Um, so, so, so we've gone overa couple of different tools
sprinkled in our own personalthought processes around
personal finances and ai uh.
But the big picture, uh, isdemocratizing.
Wealth management is somethingthat artificial intelligence can
really help you with.
So, whether that's roll uh,rolly um, wealthfront, credit
(25:39):
karma, betterment, you all thosesophisticated financial
management tools can be in yourhand and you don't need a
financial degree.
You know it's like somethingwhere it makes the barrier to
entry a lot easier.
Like our parents, you know itmight have been harder for them
to have this kind of information, you know.
But, like, take advantage ofthe technology right now.
(26:02):
You know the level.
The leveling of the playingfield is extraordinarily
efficient.
Now, and another use case that Ireferenced earlier was just
like if you're an Uber driverand you want to automate savings
, when you're an Uber driver,you don't have a 401k.
You don't have business Excuseme you don't have a 401k.
You don't have medical benefitsand things of that nature.
(26:23):
One thing you can have, though,is some financial security.
You can have your money bestashed away for an emergency
fund.
I always hear these statisticsabout how a lot of Americans
don't have a very like a littlebit of money and a little bit is
relative but they don't have Xamount of dollars for something
(26:43):
crazy happening.
Right?
Use AI to help you get intosituations, because life comes
at you quick, and when it comesat you quick, you got to be able
to pivot, and you got to beable to react fastly, right?
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1 (26:54):
though.
Well, I think there's some ruleout there.
I don't know how it's evolvedover the years, but they do say
have a savings that's built upso that you can manage through a
few months of loss of job.
Or one of the biggest lessons Ilearned over the years was when
stuff hits like tires are neededfor a car, or maybe even just
(27:18):
planning to buy a car in thenext couple of years, like you
know, your car's getting upthere in age and you're spending
more on maintenance than youreally want to, and maybe more
than you would if you had, youknow, just a new car payment,
like things like that aredefinitely predictable, right?
So if you pay attention, like Isaid earlier, to your money
(27:39):
where it's going and you thinkabout the future just enough so
that you can kind of identifywhat's coming around the corner
for the next six to 12 months,then putting money aside is
absolutely a life changer, right?
Because, like I was saying,when the tires needed to be
(28:01):
replaced or the summer hit andthe sprinkler system was going
to go off and start billing meat 300 bucks a month for water,
right, it's like I saw thathitting the accounts and I'm
like man that hurts, right, butplaying in the head and and
moving a little bit of money inpreparation for those things
(28:25):
again is a game changer and Isay, if you can let AI do that
for you, then absolutely 100%.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
So we're wrapping up.
You know, wrap up everything ina crescendo.
Start small, automate.
One task, one category.
Don't use all these tools atonce because you don't want to
overwhelm yourself.
So if you're using a budget toolto track grocery spending, or
if you're using Credit Karma toprepare for something that
you're going to and again datingthe podcast, if the tariff
(28:58):
situation enhances, it's beensuggested that iphones are going
to go through the moon soon,right?
So if you want to buy an iphonewhich is crazy to say because I
know me, you come from the oldschool where phones wasn't as
much as like a thousand dollars,for iphones, nothing that's
going to jump up to like 2k.
But if you want to buy aniphone, or if you want to buy
(29:19):
something bigger, like inseptember, like start tracking
your, your credit score and getyour stuff situated, so like if
you need to borrow some money ortake out a loan, like I'm not
suggesting taking out a loan foran iPhone, but you could take
out a loan for a bunch ofiPhones for a business.
Either way you go, one of thefirst things you should probably
look at is making sure that youunderstand what your credit
(29:40):
power is and spend like fiveminutes a week just reviewing
best practices and throw it inthe chat GPT.
This is actually one of thefirst times I think we hadn't
even really spoke to like chatGPT or like LLMs on this show.
But you can ask those LLMs totell me about, hey, what are the
best practices with X, y and Z.
(30:00):
Teach me a new tool every day.
And, just like research it, goto YouTube Academy.
Youtube Academy is the bestfree academy out there.
And just over time, just onceyou get comfortable, share it
with your network.
I think that's one of the keytakeaways I like to tell people.
Share it with your network.
And once you have communitybecause I love talking to this
guy, jason man once you havecommunity because, like, I love
(30:21):
talking to this guy, jason man,you know, because, like, when
you have community of peoplethat are like minded, you make
it makes it easier to do, youmake you make you more
comfortable and you know itmakes it easier to you know, get
out there and I'm doing apodcast on AI and finance.
That's wild, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yeah, I'd be interested to see what Jack
O'Gorman thinks about thisepisode because he's big into
finances and investing and allthe coins out there and he could
probably share a lot of hisexperience with the audience.
But yeah, I love the directionof this discussion today.
I personally feel like wealth.
You know democratizing wealthmanagement is going to.
It can change people's worldsand they have to allow it, they
(31:10):
have to try it.
You know it's like any otherthing out there that's available
for people to use.
If you're not exposed to it andyou don't give it a shot, you
don't do your homework and tryto figure it out, then you're
not going to be able to takeadvantage of it and you know
that's going to leave a lot ofpeople behind.
So I think, in the spirit ofthis show, in the spirit of our
organization, ai Ready RVA, wecan't preach enough about doing
(31:34):
that and we want this communityto thrive.
We don't want to see anybody inthis community left behind.
You know, regardless of yourbackground or where you're from,
of course, and how much moneyyou have.
Like the world is changing andthe playing field is, like you
say, leveling.
It's only going to make iteasier for those that have to
(31:57):
have more and those that don'thave to get and those that don't
have to get right.
And you know, you just got touse the concepts and build on
them and diversify your thinkingbeyond what you may have
thought the world was about inthe past, because it's not about
that anymore, right, it's aboutknowledge.
It's about tools and access totechnology, and anybody can get
(32:20):
with that program.
So join us at AI Ready RVA.
Any upcoming event is betterthan no upcoming event, right?
So find a niche that will helpyou explore this space better.
Join a cohort, become a memberof AI Ready RVA and get access
to this stuff today, because thefuture, your future, will
(32:44):
depend on it.
Am I right, vic?
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Oh, a thousand percent.
You know what?
Because you just so eloquentlymentioned events, can I share
the next AI Ready event and ourpersonal event coming up in June
?
So AI Ready presents Money andFinance Cohort Summer Session
sponsored by EEPON.
We're going to have a gentlemanI'm not going to butcher his
(33:09):
name, but he's the senior vicepresident of data management at
Bank of America Come in and talkabout how machine learning can
address regulatory andcompliance risks compliance
risks go over real world datascience techniques used in
enterprise scaling and thendiscuss the journey from
(33:31):
identifying risk to buildingpatent worthy solutions.
I think that this is going tobe a great session when it comes
to like businesses looking todiscuss artificial intelligence
Non-members 15.
But if you get your membershipand you join a cohort, it's free
.
So that's 15 a month.
So make sure you become an aiready rva subscriber member and
we're always looking forfounding funders.
(33:51):
So if you want to become afounding funder or a corporate
member, we have price structureson there.
And again, that event is june11th, from 5, 30 to 7, and it's
going to be at the eponttechnology location and it's
going to be at the eponttechnology um location and it's
going to be at 34 31 west leestreet in richmond virginia.
And if you forgot everything Isaid, just go to ai ready dot
com.
(34:12):
You'll see the events and thenrvacom no, I messed that up a
couple times when I'm on board.
I need to be better at that,will.
Both the wills.
Don't kill me for that, guys.
And then, uh, not too far afterthat, I got one of my first
summer ai workshops coming up.
Um, it's going to be uh aisales tactics, where you can
learn how to boost leads,pinpoint audiences and win deals
(34:32):
.
It's going to be sponsored byscore, the metropolitan business
league and the central virginiaafrican-american chamber of
commerce.
That's going to be on june 20that the 1717 downtown um
location.
Uh, the uh the innovationcenter.
It's going to be on the rooftopfrom two to four, one of the uh
first events that uh I'mgetting to do with.
(34:53):
Uh score, we got three-partseries and uh shout out to the
nbl.
Metropolitan business league isa great organization if you're
interested in them.
Um, they're sponsoring theevent as well as the Central
Virginia Black Chamber ofCommerce.
That's going to be on.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
June 20th again.
Is that with your business?
Sustainable Growth, creative,yes, yes, with.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
SGC.
So we're going to be out heredoing AI workshops all summer.
We got another one coming up inJuly and hopefully I'll be on
another podcast by then.
We'll talk about that.
July is a little far from now,but you know the June 20th SGC's
first three-part score summerAI sessions is going to happen
and I'm super excited about it.
So yeah, check your boy out.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Excellent.
Thanks for the plugs there, vic.
I know our audience willappreciate it and hopefully we
see them out there hitting thepavement, working the network
magic and exploring what AI cando for them.
It's been great, vic.
Thank you so much.
Have a wonderful rest of yourweekend and I'll talk to you
soon.
Later, and thanks to ourlisteners for tuning in today.
(35:55):
If you or your company wouldlike to be featured on an
Inspire AI episode, please dropus a message.
Featured on an Inspire AIepisode?
Please drop us a message.
Don't forget to like, share andfollow our content to stay
updated on the latest news andevents from AI Ready RBA.
Thank you again and see younext time.
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.