Don't Buy That Investment Just Because You Heard About It on a Podcast

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Shari Rash (1:28): Okay. Raise your hand if this has happened to you. You're driving to work, half caffeinated, podcast playing, and the host starts talking about some stock or ETF or fund, and they sound so confident. They've got

Unknown Speaker (1:43): the

Shari Rash (1:43): data. They've got the story. They've got that energy that makes you feel like if you don't act now, you are literally leaving money on the table. So you pull up your brokerage app at the next red light and click buy. Don't lie.

Shari Rash (1:59): We've all done it. Or maybe it's a newsletter you subscribe to or a tweet or sorry, an X post from someone with a verified check mark and 400,000 followers who definitely knows what they're doing, or your friend who made a killing on something last year and has been very casually mentioning it ever since. And you think to yourself, they sound smart. They sound successful. This sounds like a good idea.

Shari Rash (2:28): So you buy it and maybe it goes up. Great. You feel like a genius. Thank goodness you're at the right place at the right time hearing that ticker on your podcast, on your X feed, in your newsletter, reading it. Or maybe it goes down and you're just sitting there like, well, what was I even thinking buying this?

Shari Rash (2:51): And here's what I want you to hear today. The investment itself might not be the problem. The real risk is making financial decisions without a strategy that's actually built for your life. And listen, if you've done this, if you've bought that investment, if you're listening to the podcast, reading the articles, trying to get investment advice, I give you so much credit. Like, that is great that you are taking this into your own hands and wanting to better your financial self.

Shari Rash (3:35): However, though, you're getting advice or taking recommendations from someone that doesn't know you, doesn't know your strategy, doesn't know what you already own. So that's what we're going to get into today. I'm Shari Rash, financial planner, founder of GWA Wealth, and your host here at Everyone's Talking Money. I've been in this industry for nearly two decades. I've watched smart, successful, financially capable women make this mistake over and over again.

Unknown Speaker (4:06): It's because no one told them the truth about how investment information actually works. So today, I'm telling you the truth. We're going to talk about the hidden danger of taking investment advice from podcasts, articles, social media, and talking heads. We're talking about how you might actually be buying the same investment over and over again without realizing it. And we're talking about what it looks like to have an actual strategy instead of a collection of random purchases you made while feeling inspired.

Shari Rash (4:40): So let's get into it. So first, the real problem isn't the advice. It's the missing context. So I want to start with something that might feel a little uncomfortable because it's true. There is no such thing as a universally good investment.

Shari Rash (5:00): I know you've heard people say buy index funds or real estate always wins or just invest in in the S and P 500 like it's gospel. And there is truth in all of those things, but it's missing the most important part of the equation, which is you. Here's what I mean. When you hear someone say this ETF is great or this stock is a winner or you should really be in this fund. What you are receiving is a recommendation completely stripped of context.

Shari Rash (5:36): In context, when it comes to financial advice is literally everything. What's your income? What does your cash flow look like right now? What's your timeline? Are you investing for something happening in three years or thirty years?

Shari Rash (5:52): What's your actual risk tolerance? Not the one you think you have during a bull market, but the one you'd have watching your portfolio drop 30% in a month. What are your goals? And also, what do you already own? That last one, that's the one people almost never think about.

Shari Rash (6:13): I had a client, brilliant woman, corporate executive, genuinely one of the sharpest people I've ever worked with, who came to me with what she described as a well diversified portfolio. She had accounts everywhere. Her four zero one ks through work, a Roth IRA she opened herself, a taxable brokerage account she'd be contributing to for years. And she felt good about this as she should. Just from that alone, she's doing all of the right things.

Shari Rash (6:41): She's diversified. Right? Wrong. When we actually sat down and looked at what she owned in all three accounts across all three platforms, she was holding essentially the same thing. Different fund names, different tickers, but all tracking the same index.

Shari Rash (7:03): She thought she had a diversified portfolio. And when you look at it, it looks diversified. It does look like there were different names, different tickers. She thought she was diversified, but she had a really expensive way to own one investment. And that is the conversation I want to have today because it's so much more common than people realize.

Shari Rash (7:28): The same investment can be perfect for one person and completely wrong for another. Context is not a nice to have. Context is the whole thing. So let's talk about the copy paste problem. Because here's what happens when we consume a lot of financial content, which honestly is what I'm encouraging you to do, so bear with me.

Shari Rash (7:52): We start to hear about what's working for other people, and our brains being the beautifully pattern seeking machines that they are go, well, if it worked for them, it'll work for me. It's a natural conclusion, and it's almost never the right one. Think about who's talking about their investments online or in your podcast feed. They might have a significantly higher income than you or lower for that matter. They might be fifteen years older and already have a base built.

Shari Rash (8:22): They might have a completely different risk tolerance, which is a fancy way of saying they can emotionally and financially handle losses that would be devastating for you. They might have a timeline that's totally different or goals that are nothing like yours or a portfolio that is completely different than what yours is. I'll give you an example. A few years ago, everyone was talking about tech heavy growth funds. The gains were incredible.

Shari Rash (8:50): People were showing screenshots. It felt almost irresponsible not to be in it. And then 2022 happened, and those same funds dropped fifty, sixty, 70%. Now for someone young with decades ahead of them with a high income and strong cash flow, that drop, while unpleasant, was survivable. They could hold.

Shari Rash (9:13): They could buy even more. Time was on their side. But someone closer to retirement needing to have access to money in the next five to seven years, that same investment wasn't aggressive. It was reckless. And not because the investment itself was bad, but because it was the wrong investment for that person at that stage of life.

Shari Rash (9:36): Their strategy solved their problem, not yours. You are not investing in someone else's life. You are investing in yours. And your life has specific details, specific timing, specific goals, and specific circumstances that no podcast host, including me, can fully account for. I can give you frameworks.

Shari Rash (9:59): I can help you think, but your strategy has to be built for you, not borrowed from someone else's Instagram highlight reel. Performance chasing is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. So let's talk about FOMO for a second. I know no one says that anymore, but the concept still applies. Financial FOMO specifically, fear of missing out, because it's a very real and very expensive force in people's financial lives.

Shari Rash (10:30): Here's the cycle, and I want you to see if any part of this feels familiar. Step one, you hear about something that's been performing really well. Step two, you feel that little pull, the I should be in this feeling. Step three, you buy it. Step four, it goes up a little more and you feel validated.

Shari Rash (10:50): Step five, it starts to drop and suddenly you're anxious. Step six, it drops more and you're spiraling. Step seven, you sell. Step eight, it goes back and you're furious. And then repeat.

Shari Rash (11:03): Wash, rinse, and repeat. That's performance chasing, and it's one of the most reliable ways to consistently buy high and sell low, which is, for the record, the exact opposite of what you want to do. Here's a little like insider baseball. When you're hearing about the next hot stock on TV, it's usually too late. We're usually behind.

Shari Rash (11:31): You're usually buying when it's close to being at a high. When we hear about the investments people talk about excitedly, biggest gains are likely already behind it. The people who made serious money on it got in before the hype, before it was talked about on podcasts and TV shows and in newsletters. You hearing about it now, you're not early to the party. You're actually late.

Shari Rash (12:02): And I'm not saying this to be harsh. I'm saying it because I want you to stop chasing and start strategizing. There's a reason every investment comes with the disclaimer, Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. You've seen it a thousand times. It's so ubiquitous.

Shari Rash (12:21): It's basically wallpaper. But it is true every time. And yet emotionally, when we see something that went up 40% last year, our brains want to believe it's going to do the same thing again. And that's not logic. That's hope.

Shari Rash (12:35): And hope is not an investment strategy. By the time you hear about it, the biggest gains may already be behind it. The antidote to performance chasing is having a clear plan that keeps you anchored When you know why you own what you own and it actually fits your life and your goals, you are dramatically less likely to get pulled off course by the next shiny thing because you have a reason to stay the course. Without a plan, every headline feels urgent. With a plan, you can evaluate it calmly.

Shari Rash (13:14): So next, let's talk about the hidden trap. Thinking you're diversified when you're not. This is the segment I really want you to pay attention to. I want you to pay attention to all the segments, but this one surprises people the most. I call it the illusion of diversification.

Shari Rash (13:31): We all know diversification is good. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Spread your risk. I've heard even the least financially engaged person say some version of this. The concept is widely understood.

Shari Rash (13:46): But here's what most people don't understand. Different names do not mean different investments. So let me paint you a picture. You're a smart, engaged, financially motivated woman. You're consuming content, podcasts, articles, YouTube, newsletters, and from all these different sources, you're getting recommendations.

Shari Rash (14:08): So you buy an ETF from a podcast. You read about a different fund in an article and buy that one too. Your friend swears by hers, and then there's whatever's in your four zero one k plan defaults you into. For sources, for purchases, surely that must mean we're diversified. Not necessarily.

Shari Rash (14:29): Because here's what I want you to understand about the investment landscape. There are hundreds of funds that all track the same thing. Let's use the S and P 500 as our example. This is important. The S and P 500 is an index.

Shari Rash (14:45): It tracks the 500 largest publicly traded companies in The United States. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Google, Berkshire Hathaway. You know the names. It's one of the most widely used benchmarks in investing. Now, how many funds track that exact index?

Shari Rash (15:06): So many. There's the Vanguard S and P five hundred Index, the iShares Core S and P five hundred ETF, the spider S and P five hundred ETF trust, the Fidelity five hundred index fund, the Schwab S and P five hundred index fund, and many more different companies, different tickers, different expense ratios, different branding. They look totally different if you're just scanning your account, but they are all holding the same 500 companies in essentially the same proportions. So here's a scenario I see all the time. You have a Vanguard S and P 500 fund in your four zero one k at work.

Shari Rash (15:47): You opened a Roth IRA and put an iShares S and P 500 fund in there because it's what someone recommended. You have a taxable brokerage account where you bought the SPYDER, the SPY, because you heard about it. Three accounts, three different funds, three different tickers on three different platforms, and you feel good. You feel diversified. But what happens when the market drops?

Shari Rash (16:11): Everything drops at the same time by essentially the same amount because you're in the same thing. That is not a diversified portfolio. That is one investment you bought three times. Now I wanna be super clear here. There is nothing wrong with S and P 500 index funds.

Shari Rash (16:31): I love them. I use them myself personally and for my clients. They're low cost, broadly diversified within the category, and a totally legitimate core holding for a lot of people. I'm not telling you to not own them. What I am telling you is owning more funds does not automatically mean you're more diversified.

Shari Rash (16:52): The question is what those funds are actually doing and whether they're doing different things. True diversification looks at different asset classes, stocks versus bonds versus real estate investment trusts, different geographies, domestic versus international versus emerging, different company sizes, large cap versus mid cap versus small cap, different sectors, different risk profiles. If everything in your portfolio moves same direction at the same time, that's a red flag worth examining. And, the only way to note is to actually look, which is what I want you to to encourage you to do, and I'll give you the framework for that in a minute. Something else to add here is if you own these S and P 500 ETFs, then you also own Apple and you own Nvidia and you own Amazon and you own Microsoft.

Shari Rash (17:51): Again, you're not more diversified. You just have more of a concentration in those companies because, again, if you break those ETFs open, you're gonna see all of those companies that you hold separately. So it's actually making your portfolio more risky because then you're super concentrated in just a handful of stocks. So if you own funds and also individual holdings, individual stock holdings, you need to look at how your funds or ETFs are allocated to see if you're duplicated because you may be creating unnecessary concentration or unintended concentration, really. So let's talk about the media landscape for a second.

Shari Rash (18:42): And yes, I'm fully aware that I'm saying this on a podcast about personal finance. The irony is not lost on me, but please stick with me. Most financial media, podcasts, YouTube channels, newsletters, social accounts are built around a very specific kind of content. Here's what gets clicks, listens, and shares are wins, success stories, exciting opportunities, trends, hot takes, bold predictions, recommendations. You know what doesn't get clicks?

Shari Rash (19:15): I held an S and P five hundred index fund for twenty five years and was patient. That is not a headline. That's not a real. Maybe we'll make that into a real, but that is genuinely how a lot of wealth is built. Most voices in financial media are not doing anything wrong necessarily.

Shari Rash (19:33): They're creating content that performs. They're sharing information that's interesting and relevant and often educational. But they are doing this without knowing your financial situation, without seeing your accounts, without understanding your goals. Information is free. Consequences are not.

Shari Rash (19:55): And when information gets treated like personalized advice, that's where things go sideways. I'm going to say something that might be a little spicy. The person telling you what to buy on social media is often not taking responsibility for what happens when you buy it. That's not their job. They're creating content.

Shari Rash (20:16): The responsibility for your financial decisions sits with you, and ideally a professional who actually knows your situation. Which brings me back to context. It always comes back to context. The most dangerous version of financial media isn't the stuff that's obviously wrong or scammy. Those are actually easy to spot.

Shari Rash (20:37): The most dangerous version of this stuff is what sounds totally reasonable, is genuinely well researched and would actually be great advice for a different person with a different situation. That's the content that gets people into trouble because they they followed smart advice. It just wasn't their advice. So what do we do? We don't throw out all financial media.

Shari Rash (21:04): We change how we consume it. We use it to learn, to understand concepts, to get curious, to ask better questions rather than to generate a shopping list of tickers. So let me bring this to a place that I think about a lot because it's the heart of almost every financial struggle I've seen in the nearly two decades of doing this work. It's not income. It's not the stock market.

Shari Rash (21:30): It's not even bad investments, really. It's the absence of a strategy. When you don't have a clear personal financial strategy built on your actual goals, your actual numbers, your actual timeline, every headline becomes urgent. Every drop feels catastrophic. Every opportunity feels like a this is it moment you can't miss.

Shari Rash (21:54): That is an exhausting way to live, and it leads to financial decisions that feel reactive in the moment but look chaotic in hindsight. Think about the emotional arc of investing without a strategy. You feel great when things go up. You feel terrified when things go down. You feel like you're falling behind when you hear about someone else's gains.

Shari Rash (22:17): You feel relieved when you sell something that's been making you nervous, even if selling it was exactly the wrong move. You feel FOMO when something goes up after you sold it. That is not a wealth building system. That is financial whiplash. Now think about what a strategy gives you when you know why you own every single thing in your portfolio, when you can articulate what what each piece is doing, what timeline it's on, and how it connects to your actual goals.

Shari Rash (22:48): You have something to hold onto when things get turbulent. Because things will get turbulent. That is a guarantee of investing. Markets go up and they go down, and they do things that feel insane and illogical and personal. The question is not whether volatility will happen.

Shari Rash (23:07): The question is whether you have a plan for when it does. A plan creates clarity about what you own and why. Consistency so you're not making emotional decisions based on the week's headlines. And confidence, which is honestly the thing I want most for you. Not blind optimism, but the kind of calm confidence that comes with from knowing your strategy is built for life.

Shari Rash (23:32): Without a plan, every headline feels urgent. With a plan, you can evaluate anything. So I don't want to leave you with the impression that all financial content is useless or dangerous. That's not my point. I create financial content.

Shari Rash (23:50): I obviously believe in its value. So let me draw a clear line here. Financial content is genuinely valuable when it teaches you concepts and build your financial vocabulary so you can have more informed conversations and make more educated decisions. Financial content is valuable when it explains how things work, how a Roth IRA differs from a traditional IRA, what an expense ratio actually means, how compound interest plays out over time. That is educational gold.

Shari Rash (24:24): Financial content is valuable when it encourages discipline and long term thinking. Content that helps you understand why staying the course matters, why emotional decision making costs you, why building systems beats relying on willpower. All of that is genuinely useful. And financial content is valuable when it helps you know what questions to ask. Some of the best content I've ever consumed made me realize I didn't even know what I didn't know.

Shari Rash (24:54): Financial content becomes dangerous when it tells you exactly what to buy. Specific tickers, specific funds without any knowledge of your situation. Financial content becomes dangerous when it creates urgency. Buy this now before it's too late. The window is closing.

Shari Rash (25:12): That urgency is almost always manufactured and almost never in your financial interest. Financial content becomes dangerous when it promises quick results or outsized returns without talking honestly about risk. It becomes dangerous when it triggers fears of missing out as the primary motivator for action. The best financial content makes you smarter. The worst financial content makes you impulsive, and knowing the difference is genuinely protective.

Shari Rash (25:46): Alright. We've talked about what the problem is. Now let's talk about what to do because I'm not here to give you doom and gloom with no action steps. That's that's not my style. I wanna give you a filter, a set of questions you ask yourself before you act on any investment recommendation from anyone, a podcast, a friend, an article, a financial professional, me, anyone.

Shari Rash (26:10): Before before you buy anything, ask yourself these questions. One, what problem is this actually solving for me? Not, this sounds interesting or the returns are good. What specific thing in your financial picture does this address? Does it fill a gap in diversification?

Shari Rash (26:29): Does it align with a goal you've identified? Does it serve a specific timeline? If you can't answer this, just stop. Two, do I already own something similar? This is the question most people never ask.

Shari Rash (26:44): Before you click buy, look at what you already have, not just the name of the fund. Actually, look at what the fund is investing in. Look at the holdings. Look at the index it tracks. If it's an index fund, you might already own it in a slightly different package.

Shari Rash (27:02): Three, does this match my timeline? If you need this money in three years, it should be positioned very differently than money that won't be touched for thirty years. Does the investment you're considering match what you actually need? Four, does this fit my real risk tolerance? Not your aspirational risk tolerance, your actual real tested and real market conditions risk tolerance.

Shari Rash (27:28): If you'd panic sell if this dropped 30%, that's information. And it means you might not be the right fit for high volatility investments even if they have high returns. Five, does this support my long term goals? What are you actually trying to do? Retire at 55?

Shari Rash (27:47): Buy a home in five years? Fund your kid's education? Build generational wealth? Your investment should be in service of those goals, not just chasing the best performing thing of the moment. If you can answer all five of those questions with clarity and confidence, great.

Shari Rash (28:05): You're probably in a good position to evaluate whether this makes sense for you. And if you can't, then you may not be ready to act yet, And that's okay. Doing nothing is almost always better than making a reactive decision. Okay. So let's do the portfolio reality check now because I know some of you are now wondering what's actually in your accounts and I want to give you something you can do this week.

Shari Rash (28:34): I want you to do what I call the portfolio reality check. It's not complicated. It's actually pretty simple, but it might be eye opening. Step one, look at your accounts, all of them. Your four zero one k, your IRA, your Roth IRA, your taxable brokerage account, any account you've opened over the years and maybe haven't checked in a while.

Shari Rash (28:55): Pull them all up. Step two, list every investment you hold. Write them down. Name, ticker, which account it's in. Just get everything on paper or in a spreadsheet.

Shari Rash (29:07): Step three, look for overlap and duplication. For each fund, ETF or investment, look at what's actually tracked it's tracking or it's invested in. You might need to do a quick Google search on some of them, but you're looking for things that are doing the same job. Tracking the same index, holding the same types of companies, moving in the same direction in the same market conditions. Step four, simplify where it makes sense.

Shari Rash (29:36): If you have three funds that are all essentially doing the same thing, you don't need three. One might be enough. Simplicity is not laziness. Simplicity is clarity, and clarity reduces risk. And as I mentioned before, if you hold stocks that you already own inside your ETF and fund, it may not be worth it to have that concentration in that company.

Shari Rash (30:03): So that may be an opportunity to reallocate. Now I want to be transparent with you. Some of this work is genuinely complex. Tax implications, account types, timing, thing these things matter and they can be complicated. So I'm not I'm suggesting I'm not suggesting you make major moves without professional guidance.

Shari Rash (30:26): What I am suggesting is that you get informed enough to have a real conversation because the most dangerous thing you can do is not look, not know, and assume everything is fine because it's on autopilot. Clarity is protective, and you deserve to know what your money is actually doing. So let me bring this home. I've been doing this for nearly twenty years. I've sat across from hundreds of women, smart, successful, accomplished women who had been consuming a lot of financial content and still really don't have a strategy.

Shari Rash (31:02): They had a collection. A collection of things they bought over the years based on things they heard. Some of it was fine. Some of it was redundant. Some of it was actually working against them.

Shari Rash (31:14): And in almost every case, the problem wasn't that they were bad at money. It was that no one had helped them translate information into a personalized strategy. Information's everywhere. It's free and it's abundant, and honestly, some of it's really, really good. But strategy is rare and strategy is what actually builds wealth.

Shari Rash (31:38): You don't need better investment tips. You need a better system. You need to know why you own what you own, how everything works together, and what it's all in service of. Because wealth is not built from reacting to headlines. It is not built from copying someone else's portfolio.

Shari Rash (31:59): It is not built from buying whatever had the best returns last year. Wealth is built from consistent decisions that make sense for your actual life. Decisions rooted in your goals, your timeline, your values, and your specific financial picture. And that is work worth doing. If you're not sure whether your investments are actually working together or if they may be working against you, that's exactly the kind of work I do at GWA Wealth.

Shari Rash (32:28): Visit gwawealth.com to learn more about working with me and building an investment strategy that's actually built for your life, not someone else's life, yours. And if you want more practical, real talk guidance like today's episode, make sure you're subscribed to the Talking Points newsletter over at everyonestalkingmoneypodcast.com. It lands in your inbox weekly and it's the good stuff. No fluff, no jargon, just what you actually need to know. I'm Shari Rash.

Shari Rash (32:58): Thanks for listening to Everyone's Talking Money. Now go check your accounts. I'll see you next time. Before we go, a quick reminder, the information shared on Everyone's Talking Money is for informational and entertainment purposes only and shouldn't be considered personalized investment advice. Shari Rash is an investment adviser representative of GWA Wealth, a registered investment adviser, and investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal.

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