June 26, 2025 • 16 mins
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In this episode of the Debt Free Dad podcast, host Chris Hawkins discusses the concept of financial noise and its implications on our personal finances. Drawing a parallel between financial noise and radio static, Chris explains how contradictory financial information from various sources can create confusion and uncertainty. He then explores the rising trend of content creation using AI tools, highlighting the potential dangers of relying on AI-generated financial advice. Chris emphasizes the importance of carefully evaluating the information you consume to ensure it's well-researched and reliable.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Hawkins (00:00):
Have you ever been driving down the road and
you're tuned to a radio station?
You're bopping along to themusic, you're singing along,
you're dancing in the car and asyou keep driving, eventually
that station fades out, youstart to get static, maybe even
you get a bleed over fromanother radio station on that
(00:21):
same frequency and it becomesvery hard, very impossible, to
continue to listen to thatstation because there's so much
noise.
There's the static and maybeeven the talking or the singing
or the music from the otherstation bleeding over.
Well, I want to talk about whatfinancial noise is in today's
(00:42):
podcast and a new form offinancial noise that I think you
need to be aware of.
Let's talk about it on thisedition of the Debt-Free Dad
podcast.
This is the Debt-Free Dadpodcast, where we help normal,
everyday people like you takecontrol of your finances so you
(01:04):
can live a happier, lessstressful life.
My name is Chris Hawkins and Iwill be your host for today's
episode.
From 2005 to 2008, my wife andI paid off just under $100,000
in debt and we have been debtfree except for our house now,
for good gracious 17 years nowSeems like a long time ago.
(01:27):
So, financial noise let's talkabout what it is.
I want to start with.
Perhaps a magazine, maybe amagazine that comes out every
month and there are a bunch offinancial investing magazines
that come out and ideally, thatpublisher wants you to buy that
(01:48):
magazine every month, or maybethey want you to subscribe and
have it delivered every month.
And so in order to get you orto entice you to buy that
magazine each and every month,well, there has to be new
articles, different information,and sometimes from one edition
(02:10):
to the next, one month to thenext month, you may see a
completely different set ofarticles, in some cases articles
that might disagree with or saysomething completely contrary
to an article that was in theprevious month's magazine.
But you see, if you're thepublisher of the magazine, you
have to create new content everymonth, because if you publish
(02:33):
the same magazine, say in Julythat you published in June well,
people who bought it in Junearen't going to buy the July
edition, and so they have tokeep publishing new information
all the time, and sometimes theinformation that's published and
I say sometimes, actually a lotof the time the information
(02:55):
that you read in one magazinemay be different or contrary to
information that you read themonth before or two months
before, etc.
Well, let's take blog posts,let's take podcast episodes.
In order to get people tocontinue to listen, you have to
put out new information, andsometimes I've seen blog posts
(03:19):
by the same blog owner sameauthor, same writer, same
publisher, same blog owner, sameauthor, same writer, same
publisher where they tend togive different advice in one
blog post than they did inanother, and so that's one form
of financial noise.
When you're getting inconsistentinformation, even from the same
(03:40):
source, you start to questionwhat is it that I'm reading?
What is it I'm supposed tolearn?
Which station am I tuned to?
And all you in your mind?
It's sort of like that noisethat happens on the radio
station.
It's static, it's unclear whatit is that this author or this
(04:02):
publisher is encouraging you todo, and so what it does is.
It creates some level ofuncomfortableness, some lack of
clarity, questioning what youshould be doing, who you should
be listening to.
This is normal.
It's been going on for a longtime.
(04:24):
You go back to you, ask oneperson for a piece of advice.
They may give you what theythink is the best thing that you
should do in a situation, andsomebody else may give you a
second piece of advice, someoneelse may give you a third piece
of advice and a fourth, etcetera, and the more advice that
you get, the more unclear youbecome.
(04:45):
Here you are asking people foradvice and you think, well, if I
get more people to give metheir advice, it will probably
give me some level of clarity,but usually that's the opposite.
So that's what we callfinancial noise is when you've
got information coming from avariety of different sources
that are inconsistent, whetherit be from multiple people or
(05:07):
even from the same magazine, thesame blog, etc.
And so financial noise makes itvery difficult to try something
different because you areunclear.
And I know here at theDebt-Free Dad podcast and with
the roots of personal finance,there has been a consistent
message now for 10 years.
(05:28):
That's the one thing I think Ilike about Brad and what he's
doing.
What we're trying to do here iswe are consistent.
We try to give you the sameinformation over and over and
over again so that there is nofinancial noise.
But I want to talk about a newtype of financial noise.
It's something that concerns meand something that I want all
(05:50):
of you out there who are on yourfinancial journey, trying to
learn to better manage yourmoney, to do a budget, to pay
off debt, to build wealth, allof the things that we talk about
, something that I think youneed to be aware of and be
careful of, because this is anew type of financial noise that
I think is very, very dangerous.
So let me set the stage thisway A few months ago, I saw a
(06:15):
blog post, and the title of theblog post was something along
the lines of eight mindset booksthat you should read.
Well, I love to read.
So I thought, man, I want tosee what this person, what books
do they recommend?
So I opened up the article andI went through and looked at the
eight books and some of them Ihad read.
(06:37):
Some of them I have not read,but I actually own and still
need to read.
Some of them I've heard of butdon't own and haven't read, and
others I had never heard of.
But I think there was at leastfour or five of them that I've
had, that I've read, and maybeone or two others that I hadn't
read before, that I've heard ofor that I own.
So I was a little intrigued,but I read the article and that
(07:00):
was the end of it.
I read the article and that wasthe end of it.
Well, a few days later, on myphone, I see a similar heading,
similar title, on a differentblog website Eight books that
will help you change yourmindset.
And I thought a little odd thathere's two articles within a
(07:22):
few days of each other that talkabout books to help you change
your mindset, and there justhappened to be eight of them.
Well, guess what, within a fewdays of each other that talk
about books to help you changeyour mindset?
And there just happened to beeight of them.
Well, guess what?
When I opened the article, thesame eight books.
A couple weeks later, eightbooks you should read to change
your mindset.
Now I'm becoming a littlepuzzled.
(07:44):
Open the article and youguessed it the same eight books.
Well, I noticed a similar trendSeven books you should read to
help your personal finance.
Again, I looked at the list.
Some of them I had read, someof them I hadn't read, some of
them I thought was a littleweird.
That was on their list.
But you know what?
That's the author's priority toput on their list what seven
(08:04):
books they think that peopleshould read to improve their
personal finance.
Until about a week later, sevenbooks you should read about
personal finance.
Same seven books A couple weekslater.
Another website, another blog,different author, seven books
you should read about personalfinance.
(08:26):
And, as you've guessed it, thesame seven books.
Well, about that time, afterseeing this trend, I was
watching YouTube and I wascurious about some of the
artificial intelligence or AItools that are out there, and
I'll make this short, but thereare people who are publishing
(08:51):
YouTube videos on how to useartificial intelligence, where
they will go and they will writea prompt, say in chat GPT, and
chat GPT will write an articlebased on the prompt they give
them, and then they will haveanother tool create an image for
that blog post, and then theywill have another tool that will
(09:12):
automatically publish thatarticle to their website.
You see, it's gotten to thepoint now where all you have to
do is type in a short or mediumprompt, piece together a few
other tools and you can haveintelligence write your article
for you, create the image foryou, publish it for you, and all
(09:36):
you had to do was write a shortlittle prompt.
Well, I saw the same trendhappening with podcasts.
I saw a YouTuber who says I keyin a short prompt on chat.
Gptgpt creates the content ofmy podcast.
It then sends that text throughan AI tool that will replicate
(10:00):
my voice and create an audiofile.
It then sends it to anothertool that adds the intro and the
outros, along with backgroundmusic.
It then sends it to anothertool that takes the I guess it
takes the text from the verybeginning and creates a
transcript from it usingtimestamps, and then
automatically publishes it tothe podcast platforms.
(10:21):
And all the person had to dowas write a short prompt and let
the software take care ofcreating the podcast, including
the audio, and publishing it.
And they spent 5, 10, 15minutes creating maybe an
hour-long podcast that theyreally didn't create.
(10:43):
And so, after watching severalof these YouTube videos, what I
came to realize is that thereare a lot of lazy folks out
there who own a website, who ownblogs, who are publishing books
, who are making YouTube videos,who are doing podcasts, and all
they're doing is typing in ashort prompt into an AI tool,
(11:08):
letting all of the tools thencreate and publish that content
for them, and they look likethey're an expert, when in
reality, all they're doing isusing AI tools to help them
build their business, to buildtheir blogs, their podcasts,
their videos, et cetera, and itdawned on me why I now see so
(11:33):
many articles I've seen at leastfour or five recently that say
Dave Ramsey warns about 401ks orsomething along those lines,
all written by different authors, published to different
websites, and my initial thoughtwas man people just they
plagiarize big time now.
(11:53):
But no, I think what's dawnedon me is that there are
individuals out there who areexclusively using AI and they're
typing in a prompt letting theAI create the content and
publish it.
And that is why I continue tosee articles that say eight
(12:13):
books you should read for themindset or seven books you
should read for personal finance, because the AI is going out
there and scanning the databasesor the information that it's
has accessible on the internet,and it is looking at all of that
and basically coming up withthe same information for each of
(12:35):
these different individuals andpublishing similar blog posts,
articles, podcasts, and theindividual is not even bothering
to go through and look to seeif the article that the AI tools
are creating are identical orsimilar to something that
(12:55):
someone else has generated.
And so here's the danger Evenmore now than ever, you have to
be very leery of the informationthat you are consuming online,
because I am convinced that agrowing amount of information is
(13:16):
not researched by an individualis an individual doesn't use
critical thinking skills to sortthrough the research that
they've done, to put togethertheir own argument, their own
opinion and write it down.
They are relying on AI tools todo it, and my fear is that, as
(13:39):
this becomes more prevalent,you're going to start to see a
lot of information that is putout there about how to manage
your finances is going to begenerated by AI that lacks the
ability, at least currently, togo out do its own research, do
(14:00):
critical thinking, use lifeexperiences to use its own
struggles, to use its ownfailures, its own successes, to
use its own failures, its ownsuccesses, to make an argument
on why you should budget or whyyou should get out of debt, why
(14:20):
you should have an emergencyfund all of the various things
that we talk about on thispodcast.
So my message to you is, morethan ever, if you're looking for
information on the internet,whether it be in written format,
whether it be in podcasts suchas this, whether it be in video,
I want you to be very careful,it doesn't make it bad advice.
(14:44):
If you start to see similaradvice in other articles,
podcasts, videos, etc.
Just realize that that'sprobably not that person's
opinion, but rather an AI toolgenerating information, and I
think it's very, very dangerousfor you to rely on information
(15:08):
that a computer is generating,based on a wide variety of
different resources, many ofwhich have differing opinions.
To encourage you what youshould do, with your money.
Brad Nelson (15:21):
Now listen if you're ready to break free from
living paycheck to paycheckwhich, if you're listening, I
hope you are.
You want to reduce financialstress.
You want to build savings.
You want to finally pay offdebt for good, but you're not
sure where to get started.
Don't worry, we've got youcovered here at Debt Free Dad,
simplify my Money is sent eachSunday to your email.
We make it easy and Simplify myMoney.
It's your step-by-step roadmapto better financial control, and
(15:47):
you're also going to getstress-free money decisions that
will help you simplify yourfinancial life with proven tips
that actually work.
You're also going to gain thetools and the confidence to
tackle your financial goals headon.
You can sign up for Simplify myMoney by clicking the link at
the top of the show notes.
Thanks for joining us ontoday's show and we will see you
guys on the next episode.
Have you ever been driving down the road and
you're tuned to a radio station?
You're bopping along to themusic, you're singing along,
you're dancing in the car and asyou keep driving, eventually
that station fades out, youstart to get static, maybe even
you get a bleed over fromanother radio station on that
(00:21):
same frequency and it becomesvery hard, very impossible, to
continue to listen to thatstation because there's so much
noise.
There's the static and maybeeven the talking or the singing
or the music from the otherstation bleeding over.
Well, I want to talk about whatfinancial noise is in today's
(00:42):
podcast and a new form offinancial noise that I think you
need to be aware of.
Let's talk about it on thisedition of the Debt-Free Dad
podcast.
This is the Debt-Free Dadpodcast, where we help normal,
everyday people like you takecontrol of your finances so you
(01:04):
can live a happier, lessstressful life.
My name is Chris Hawkins and Iwill be your host for today's
episode.
From 2005 to 2008, my wife andI paid off just under $100,000
in debt and we have been debtfree except for our house now,
for good gracious 17 years nowSeems like a long time ago.
(01:27):
So, financial noise let's talkabout what it is.
I want to start with.
Perhaps a magazine, maybe amagazine that comes out every
month and there are a bunch offinancial investing magazines
that come out and ideally, thatpublisher wants you to buy that
(01:48):
magazine every month, or maybethey want you to subscribe and
have it delivered every month.
And so in order to get you orto entice you to buy that
magazine each and every month,well, there has to be new
articles, different information,and sometimes from one edition
(02:10):
to the next, one month to thenext month, you may see a
completely different set ofarticles, in some cases articles
that might disagree with or saysomething completely contrary
to an article that was in theprevious month's magazine.
But you see, if you're thepublisher of the magazine, you
have to create new content everymonth, because if you publish
(02:33):
the same magazine, say in Julythat you published in June well,
people who bought it in Junearen't going to buy the July
edition, and so they have tokeep publishing new information
all the time, and sometimes theinformation that's published and
I say sometimes, actually a lotof the time the information
(02:55):
that you read in one magazinemay be different or contrary to
information that you read themonth before or two months
before, etc.
Well, let's take blog posts,let's take podcast episodes.
In order to get people tocontinue to listen, you have to
put out new information, andsometimes I've seen blog posts
(03:19):
by the same blog owner sameauthor, same writer, same
publisher, same blog owner, sameauthor, same writer, same
publisher where they tend togive different advice in one
blog post than they did inanother, and so that's one form
of financial noise.
When you're getting inconsistentinformation, even from the same
(03:40):
source, you start to questionwhat is it that I'm reading?
What is it I'm supposed tolearn?
Which station am I tuned to?
And all you in your mind?
It's sort of like that noisethat happens on the radio
station.
It's static, it's unclear whatit is that this author or this
(04:02):
publisher is encouraging you todo, and so what it does is.
It creates some level ofuncomfortableness, some lack of
clarity, questioning what youshould be doing, who you should
be listening to.
This is normal.
It's been going on for a longtime.
(04:24):
You go back to you, ask oneperson for a piece of advice.
They may give you what theythink is the best thing that you
should do in a situation, andsomebody else may give you a
second piece of advice, someoneelse may give you a third piece
of advice and a fourth, etcetera, and the more advice that
you get, the more unclear youbecome.
(04:45):
Here you are asking people foradvice and you think, well, if I
get more people to give metheir advice, it will probably
give me some level of clarity,but usually that's the opposite.
So that's what we callfinancial noise is when you've
got information coming from avariety of different sources
that are inconsistent, whetherit be from multiple people or
(05:07):
even from the same magazine, thesame blog, etc.
And so financial noise makes itvery difficult to try something
different because you areunclear.
And I know here at theDebt-Free Dad podcast and with
the roots of personal finance,there has been a consistent
message now for 10 years.
(05:28):
That's the one thing I think Ilike about Brad and what he's
doing.
What we're trying to do here iswe are consistent.
We try to give you the sameinformation over and over and
over again so that there is nofinancial noise.
But I want to talk about a newtype of financial noise.
It's something that concerns meand something that I want all
(05:50):
of you out there who are on yourfinancial journey, trying to
learn to better manage yourmoney, to do a budget, to pay
off debt, to build wealth, allof the things that we talk about
, something that I think youneed to be aware of and be
careful of, because this is anew type of financial noise that
I think is very, very dangerous.
So let me set the stage thisway A few months ago, I saw a
(06:15):
blog post, and the title of theblog post was something along
the lines of eight mindset booksthat you should read.
Well, I love to read.
So I thought, man, I want tosee what this person, what books
do they recommend?
So I opened up the article andI went through and looked at the
eight books and some of them Ihad read.
(06:37):
Some of them I have not read,but I actually own and still
need to read.
Some of them I've heard of butdon't own and haven't read, and
others I had never heard of.
But I think there was at leastfour or five of them that I've
had, that I've read, and maybeone or two others that I hadn't
read before, that I've heard ofor that I own.
So I was a little intrigued,but I read the article and that
(07:00):
was the end of it.
I read the article and that wasthe end of it.
Well, a few days later, on myphone, I see a similar heading,
similar title, on a differentblog website Eight books that
will help you change yourmindset.
And I thought a little odd thathere's two articles within a
(07:22):
few days of each other that talkabout books to help you change
your mindset, and there justhappened to be eight of them.
Well, guess what, within a fewdays of each other that talk
about books to help you changeyour mindset?
And there just happened to beeight of them.
Well, guess what?
When I opened the article, thesame eight books.
A couple weeks later, eightbooks you should read to change
your mindset.
Now I'm becoming a littlepuzzled.
(07:44):
Open the article and youguessed it the same eight books.
Well, I noticed a similar trendSeven books you should read to
help your personal finance.
Again, I looked at the list.
Some of them I had read, someof them I hadn't read, some of
them I thought was a littleweird.
That was on their list.
But you know what?
That's the author's priority toput on their list what seven
(08:04):
books they think that peopleshould read to improve their
personal finance.
Until about a week later, sevenbooks you should read about
personal finance.
Same seven books A couple weekslater.
Another website, another blog,different author, seven books
you should read about personalfinance.
(08:26):
And, as you've guessed it, thesame seven books.
Well, about that time, afterseeing this trend, I was
watching YouTube and I wascurious about some of the
artificial intelligence or AItools that are out there, and
I'll make this short, but thereare people who are publishing
(08:51):
YouTube videos on how to useartificial intelligence, where
they will go and they will writea prompt, say in chat GPT, and
chat GPT will write an articlebased on the prompt they give
them, and then they will haveanother tool create an image for
that blog post, and then theywill have another tool that will
(09:12):
automatically publish thatarticle to their website.
You see, it's gotten to thepoint now where all you have to
do is type in a short or mediumprompt, piece together a few
other tools and you can haveintelligence write your article
for you, create the image foryou, publish it for you, and all
(09:36):
you had to do was write a shortlittle prompt.
Well, I saw the same trendhappening with podcasts.
I saw a YouTuber who says I keyin a short prompt on chat.
Gptgpt creates the content ofmy podcast.
It then sends that text throughan AI tool that will replicate
(10:00):
my voice and create an audiofile.
It then sends it to anothertool that adds the intro and the
outros, along with backgroundmusic.
It then sends it to anothertool that takes the I guess it
takes the text from the verybeginning and creates a
transcript from it usingtimestamps, and then
automatically publishes it tothe podcast platforms.
(10:21):
And all the person had to dowas write a short prompt and let
the software take care ofcreating the podcast, including
the audio, and publishing it.
And they spent 5, 10, 15minutes creating maybe an
hour-long podcast that theyreally didn't create.
(10:43):
And so, after watching severalof these YouTube videos, what I
came to realize is that thereare a lot of lazy folks out
there who own a website, who ownblogs, who are publishing books
, who are making YouTube videos,who are doing podcasts, and all
they're doing is typing in ashort prompt into an AI tool,
(11:08):
letting all of the tools thencreate and publish that content
for them, and they look likethey're an expert, when in
reality, all they're doing isusing AI tools to help them
build their business, to buildtheir blogs, their podcasts,
their videos, et cetera, and itdawned on me why I now see so
(11:33):
many articles I've seen at leastfour or five recently that say
Dave Ramsey warns about 401ks orsomething along those lines,
all written by different authors, published to different
websites, and my initial thoughtwas man people just they
plagiarize big time now.
(11:53):
But no, I think what's dawnedon me is that there are
individuals out there who areexclusively using AI and they're
typing in a prompt letting theAI create the content and
publish it.
And that is why I continue tosee articles that say eight
(12:13):
books you should read for themindset or seven books you
should read for personal finance, because the AI is going out
there and scanning the databasesor the information that it's
has accessible on the internet,and it is looking at all of that
and basically coming up withthe same information for each of
(12:35):
these different individuals andpublishing similar blog posts,
articles, podcasts, and theindividual is not even bothering
to go through and look to seeif the article that the AI tools
are creating are identical orsimilar to something that
(12:55):
someone else has generated.
And so here's the danger Evenmore now than ever, you have to
be very leery of the informationthat you are consuming online,
because I am convinced that agrowing amount of information is
(13:16):
not researched by an individualis an individual doesn't use
critical thinking skills to sortthrough the research that
they've done, to put togethertheir own argument, their own
opinion and write it down.
They are relying on AI tools todo it, and my fear is that, as
(13:39):
this becomes more prevalent,you're going to start to see a
lot of information that is putout there about how to manage
your finances is going to begenerated by AI that lacks the
ability, at least currently, togo out do its own research, do
(14:00):
critical thinking, use lifeexperiences to use its own
struggles, to use its ownfailures, its own successes, to
use its own failures, its ownsuccesses, to make an argument
on why you should budget or whyyou should get out of debt, why
(14:20):
you should have an emergencyfund all of the various things
that we talk about on thispodcast.
So my message to you is, morethan ever, if you're looking for
information on the internet,whether it be in written format,
whether it be in podcasts suchas this, whether it be in video,
I want you to be very careful,it doesn't make it bad advice.
(14:44):
If you start to see similaradvice in other articles,
podcasts, videos, etc.
Just realize that that'sprobably not that person's
opinion, but rather an AI toolgenerating information, and I
think it's very, very dangerousfor you to rely on information
(15:08):
that a computer is generating,based on a wide variety of
different resources, many ofwhich have differing opinions.
To encourage you what youshould do, with your money.
Brad Nelson (15:21):
Now listen if you're ready to break free from
living paycheck to paycheckwhich, if you're listening, I
hope you are.
You want to reduce financialstress.
You want to build savings.
You want to finally pay offdebt for good, but you're not
sure where to get started.
Don't worry, we've got youcovered here at Debt Free Dad,
simplify my Money is sent eachSunday to your email.
We make it easy and Simplify myMoney.
It's your step-by-step roadmapto better financial control, and
(15:47):
you're also going to getstress-free money decisions that
will help you simplify yourfinancial life with proven tips
that actually work.
You're also going to gain thetools and the confidence to
tackle your financial goals headon.
You can sign up for Simplify myMoney by clicking the link at
the top of the show notes.
Thanks for joining us ontoday's show and we will see you
guys on the next episode.
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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.