Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.

Compensation was paid to utilize rankings. Click here to read full disclosure.

  • Home
  • Your Survival
    • Special Report: FOOD SHORTAGE: Crazed Hoarding Is Not Preparing
    • Your Survival Guy’s Super States
      • 2023
      • 2022
      • 2021
    • Constitutional Carry
    • EMP Threat
    • Tucker Explains
    • Newport Gas Outage
    • Water
      • Emergency Water Storage
      • Let There Be Water
    • Get Your Gun and Your Training Now
    • Satellite Phones
    • Navy SEAL Survival Kit
  • Your Money
    • Coronavirus Infects Stock Market
    • Looking for a Better America
    • You Invest, They Win
    • Where to Keep Your Cash
    • Paris
    • How to Buy a Boat
    • Dead or Alive? The Future of Long-Term Investing
    • Is Vanguard too Big?
    • Cryptocosm and Life After Google
    • The Last Intelligence Report
    • The Truth Behind the S&P 500
    • RAGE Gauge
    • How Many “Retirees” Will Keep Working?
    • Your Retirement Life
    • You’ll Love This if You’re Dreaming of an Active Retirement Life
  • Weapons
    • Self Defense
    • Every Family Should Own at Least One Shotgun: Here Are Three
  • About Me
    • Your Survival Guy: “Life on Main Street Hasn’t Been This Hard in a While”
    • Preparing for Times Like These
    • My Videos/Pics
    • Music
      • RIP Neil Peart: You Will Always Be Remembered as a “Modern-Day Warrior”
    • Your Survival Guy: Make Your Bed and The Hero Code
  • You
    • Our Cabin on Kodiak, Alaska
    • If You Are in Pain, this May Help. It Helped Me.
    • How to Save for a Grandchild
    • FIRE! Financial Independence, Retire Early
    • Compound Interest
    • Arithmetic of Portfolio Losses
    • Maximum Portfolio Withdrawal Rate
    • An Efficient Frontier
    • Retirement Compounders
    • Counterbalanced Total Returns
  • Survive & Thrive
    • August 2023: Time Is Money: Are You Over 40?
    • July 2023: When Should You Take Social Security?
    • June 2023: Your Survival Guy in Rome 30-Years A.B. (After Babson)
    • May 2023: “I’m Having Major Surgery Tomorrow,” He Said
    • April 2023: Will the Black Swan Usher in Digital Dollars?
    • March 2023: How Long Have You Been in the Investment Business?
    • February 2023: 4 Life Changing Words: “You Should Try This”
    • January 2023: Stacking Wood and Compounding Money
    • December 2022: Your Survival Guy Prefers Bombardier’s Global Express 7500
    • November 2022: Arriving in Style at Le Bristol Hotel, Paris
    • October 2022: Sink Your Teeth into These Bond Yields
    • September 2022: Do You Have the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
    • August 2022: “Watch This Boat off Our Stern,” My Dad Said “He’s Coming in HOT”
    • July 2022: MONEY TALKS: Your Survival Guy’s Best Service in Paris
    • June 2022: “I’ve Been with Richard Young for Over 30 Years Now”
    • May 2022: Survive “If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail”
    • April 2022: Dream On! Fishing the Double Down in Key West
    • March 2022: Your Survival Guy Hears the Craziest Investing Stories
    • February 2022: Your Survival Guy’s 2022 Super States
    • January 2022: The Least Affordable Housing Market in the U.S.
    • December 2021: Listen Your Survival Guy is not “Mr. Peanut”
    • November 2021: Joe Biden is Weaponizing Your 401(k) Against You
    • October 2021: Time to Get Your Lazy Cash Off the Couch
    • September 2021: What’s Your Survival Guy Investing in Right Now?
    • August 2021: To Where Will You Flee?
    • July 2021: This Bubble’s Popped Baby
    • June 2021: Your Survival Guy’s Summer Job, Inflation & You
    • May 2021: You’re Telling Me Friends Ask You This Question
    • April 2021: Is There One Best Place in America for ‘Liberty Retirees?’
    • March 2021: America’s Growth Corridors
    • February 2021: Troops in D.C. & Your Authoritarian Virtual Panopticon
    • January 2021: Are You Ready for The Great Reset?
    • December 2020: Disaster Prep in Our Newport Bunker and Your Survival
    • November 2020: Election 2020 Edition: Stock Market is Predicting a Trump Win
    • October 2020: You Invest They Win, AGAIN
    • September 2020: Proud to be an American: Pro-Trump Parade Turns Rhode Island Red
    • August 2020: The Clock is Ticking: You Must Protect Your Family
    • July 2020: What Will Her Life Be Like Now?
    • June 2020: Your Survival Guy’s Home (and Money) Protection Plan
    • May 2020: Future Look at Covid-20, or the Next Deadly Virus
    • April 2020: Only Trump Saw the Risk in America’s Relationship with China
    • March 2020: Coronavirus Infects Stock Market
    • February 2020: Escape the City: Live Small, Cheap, and Safe in America
    • January 2020: Is Your Cash Safe? Probably not This Safe
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • Welcome

YOU’RE NOT A DATA POINT: Don’t Rely on a Robo-Advisor

March 3, 2022 By E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

By ESB Professional @ Shutterstock.com

Why is your lazy cash still sitting on your couch? Why is it eating your food and watching your TV for free while inflation runs hotter than ever? And it feels much higher than any government stats you’re hearing. Your Survival Guy wonders, isn’t it time you kicked your lazy cash to the curb and made it do something with its life? Of course it is. But what to do? Times, they’re a changin’.

Life Comes at You Fast. Slow It Down with My Friday Email. It’s Free.

There was a time, as my father-in-law, Dick Young, reminds me in an early morning email, when investors could invest in low-cost index funds and call it a day. Not anymore, especially with “Robo-Advisors” littering the landscape and index funds dominated by rank speculation.

“This was never Mr. Index funds, John Bogle’s intention,” Dick writes. “Not in a million years. Bogle would never have championed speculation. I knew Mr. Index funds way back at his days with Wellington Management, pre-starting Vanguard. John Bogle did a lot for the family and small business investor, and that did not include the likes of pie in the sky speculation.”

In my conversation yesterday with a prospective client, she told me she had a terrible experience with a robo-adviser. She said she felt like a data point for an algorithm. “I felt my concerns weren’t being heard,” she said. “I was just a number.”

Below is what I wrote to you months ago in the midst of the COVID-19 debacle about my concerns with the robots that I want you to read carefully. But only if you’re serious.

With casinos slowly reopening (sorry, most buffets are still closed), it looks like gamblers found a home with Nasdaq.

While the world, as we know, has basically come to an end, the tech-laden Nasdaq is up a couple percent year-to-date. Welcome to Planet Hollywood.

One is reminded of the dot.com bust especially when Shopify, a Canadian tech company, trades at a larger market cap than Royal Bank of Canada. Pop quiz: One was founded in 2004, the other in the 1800s.

Recently, I was asked about robo-advisors: You set-up an account with a low minimum, answer a questionnaire, and an algorithm invests you in a basket of mutual funds, ETFs, and/or stocks.

The robos save money on phone reps, have a big marketing spend, and a neat looking website.

But what if there’s a problem? A couple of years ago, when stocks were down 1,600 points, Bloomberg reported that the websites of robe-advisers Wealthfront Inc. and Betterment crashed. This is one of the MANY reasons robo-advisors will NEVER work for investors–NEVER. What a SHAM.

Also, it’s been my experience that investors want regular conversations about their life savings, especially when they’ve made money over a lifetime and it would take another one to replace the losses.

Losing $500 on a company like Shopify might be a cheap education to help a young saver seek out a diversified portfolio with the help of a robot.

Investing your life savings for and during retirement might require a more personal touch, especially when you have a lot more to lose than money.

Action Line:  If you need help building a portfolio that avoids the rank speculation of robo-advisors, I would love to talk with you. If you would like to get to know me before we talk on the phone, there’s no better way than signing up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter. In the letter each month, I encourage and push you to achieve the personal and financial security goals you’ve set for your family. Click here to subscribe. We’ll get to know each other, and get serious about your future success.

P.S. And that’s why Your Survival Guy’s sticking with the four-year-olds. You know Peter Thiel as one of the few people in Silicon Valley who backed presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Thiel was also a co-founder of PayPal with some guy named Elon Musk. And he was an original backer of Facebook. The guy knows a thing or two about startups. Which is why I recently reread his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.

You and I know that technologists tend to think about the future in terms of technology, much like a farmer thinks about the future in terms of farming. It’s what they do. Which is why, as an investor, I found this passage interesting and worthy your attention. Here it is:

To understand the scale of this variance, consider another of Google’s computer-for-human substitution projects. In 2012, one of their supercomputers made headlines when, after scanning 10 million thumbnails of YouTube videos, it learned to identify a cat with 75% accuracy. That seems impressive—until you remember that an average four-year-old can do it flawlessly. When a cheap laptop beats the smartest mathematicians at some tasks but even a supercomputer with 16,000 CPUs can’t beat a child at others, you can tell that humans and computers are not just more or less powerful than each other—they’re categorically different.

The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Instagram profile

E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Instagram profile

Latest posts by E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy (see all)

  • Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball - September 29, 2023
  • Your Survival Guy: “Life on Main Street Hasn’t Been This Hard in a While” - September 29, 2023
  • Your Retirement Life: Striped Bass Fishing off Block Island - September 29, 2023
  • “Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone” - September 28, 2023
  • How Joe Biden Raised Oil Prices - September 28, 2023

If you enjoyed this post, email it to a friend:

  • Email
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • WhatsApp

Related Posts

Recent Posts from YourSurvivalGuy.com

Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball

Your Survival Guy knows a lot about highly successful, fairly wealthy people because I talk to them. On the flip side, I know plenty about those who’ve won and lost a fortune. I know about the guy who can’t hold onto his money. He just spends every penny, afraid it might be gone tomorrow. And […]

Your Survival Guy: “Life on Main Street Hasn’t Been This Hard in a While”

Are you up to speed with Your Survival Guy? Do you check in daily at www.yoursurvivalguy.com? I’m E.J. Smith, Your Survival Guy. I created www.yoursurvivalguy.com to give Main Street Americans a boots-on-the-ground look at how to protect their most valued assets from natural and manmade disasters. Life Comes at You Fast. Slow It Down with […]

Your Retirement Life: Striped Bass Fishing off Block Island

Your Survival Guy received these shots of striped bass fishing off Block Island. Life Comes at You Fast. Slow It Down with My Friday Email. It’s Free. Originally posted June 8, 2022.

“Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”

Your Survival Guy has a client whose grandfather left him some money. That was nice. But the real gift was how his grandfather would teach him about money when they were together. How to roll pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters sitting on the floor and talking. Adding up the pile and feeling the weight in […]

How Joe Biden Raised Oil Prices

You saw Joe Biden demonize fracking and the oil industry throughout his campaign until the debates when Donald Trump cornered him on it, at which point he denied it all. Then, once he moved into the White House, Biden began his war on oil and helped to drive up prices on everything Americans need. At […]

Is the Philadelphia Looting Spree the Wake-up Call America Needs?

Crime has ravaged businesses across America since 2020, when radical politicians gave looters the green light to turn America into a warzone. Since then, the nation has watched with horror as roving gangs have cleaned out popular locations like Nordstroms and Apple Stores and even little gas stations. For two days now, America has watched […]

“No Way I’m Spending That Much on Those”

Your Survival Guy and Gal were in Boston this weekend, visiting our daughter and son. If you want to know what stagflation feels like, have two kids in college at the same time. Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. Take, for instance, after breakfast, strolling down Newbury Street window shopping. The next […]

What Trade Policy Serves America’s National Interest Best?

In The American Conservative, Micah Meadowcroft examines the words of one of Your Survival Guy’s favorite presidents, “Silent Cal” Coolidge, who is known for saying, “The business of America is business,” but who actually said, “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing […]

California Wants to Make the 2nd Amendment Unaffordable

California, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, is doubling the tax it demands from law-abiding gun owners on sales of ammunition and guns. It appears Newsom and the California legislature have settled on a strategy of simply pricing the poor out of their Constitutional rights as enumerated in the Second Amendment. Adam Beam reports for the […]

“You Didn’t Eat That Again, Did You?”

As Your Survival Guy, I understand the immense pressure you’re under to “do something.” Everyone’s got a plan of what to do with your money. I know this not because you tell me what they’re telling you, but just from experience. I know, for example, when you’re asking me, “Why are we holding this position?” […]

Is McCarthy Up to the Task?

What’s wrong with a line-by-line approach to the budget? Here, Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) explains to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo why he can’t support McCarthy’s approach to running the House of Representatives. The way to fund the government is not by doing it the same way Congress has since the mid-90s, where it’s one […]

Rising Costs Are Hammering Commercial Real Estate

The commercial real estate market is getting hammered by rising costs. Not only are higher interest rates scaring away potential buyers, but high insurance costs are also killing demand. Konrad Putzier reports in The Wall Street Journal: Commercial property owners, already struggling with high interest rates and rising vacancies, face exploding insurance costs that keep […]

Your Survival Guy Fishing with Dolphins

Your Survival Guy was fishing this summer and came into these pods of bottlenose dolphins. You can see some of the famed Newport mansions in the background. Best viewed on a mobile device. Life Comes at You Fast. Slow It Down with My Friday Email. It’s Free. 

Judge Shatters California High Capacity Magazine Ban

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez shattered the state’s ban on high-capacity magazines, calling it unconstitutional. The ruling could set up a Supreme Court decision on the matter, potentially affecting similar bans throughout the country. Jonathan Stempel reports for Reuters: A federal judge in California on Friday declared that state’s ban on magazines that hold more […]

Is Your Water Safe to Drink? NOLA Residents Aren’t Sure

Residents of New Orleans are wondering whether or not they’ll have safe water to drink as forecasts for the Mississippi River levels decline, and the threat of a saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico becomes a reality. Nadine El-Bawab reports for ABC7, writing: New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has signed an emergency declaration over […]

Money 101

Trending

  • Wellington and Wellesley Funds Not Managed by Vanguard
  • “Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”
  • 2ND AMENDMENT ALERT: Biden to Create New Anti-Gun Office
  • Don’t Ask Me When to Haul Your Boat
  • Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball
  • The Folly of Windmills from Nowhere USA
  • Remembering Jimmy Buffett: The Oldest Surfer on the Beach
  • NYC Rolling Out the Robocops
  • “You Didn’t Eat That Again, Did You?”
  • Is the Philadelphia Looting Spree the Wake-up Call America Needs?

Must Reads

  • 4 Life Changing Words for Your Survival Guy: “You Should Try This”
  • Don’t Let Your Lazy Cash Eat all Your Food
  • Forty Years Ago, Jogging a Mile a Day and Still Going
  • What Kind of Life Are You Investing For?
  • BIDEN-FLATION: Here’s Why Prices Are Up At Your Favorite Restaurant
  • Will the Russian-Ukrainian War Go Nuclear?
  • CRIME WAVE: A Top Cop Shouldn’t Have to Ask His City for This
  • Your Survival Guy: Simple Prepping for Winter Storms
  • HELLO: “How’s It Going? I Don’t Know Anything”
  • Why Investors Should Forget Prices and Focus on Income

Recent Posts

  • Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #10 Powerball
  • Your Survival Guy: “Life on Main Street Hasn’t Been This Hard in a While”
  • Your Retirement Life: Striped Bass Fishing off Block Island
  • “Then One Day the Grandfather was Gone”
  • How Joe Biden Raised Oil Prices
  • Is the Philadelphia Looting Spree the Wake-up Call America Needs?
  • “No Way I’m Spending That Much on Those”
  • What Trade Policy Serves America’s National Interest Best?
  • California Wants to Make the 2nd Amendment Unaffordable
  • “You Didn’t Eat That Again, Did You?”
Only if You’re Serious
Only if You’re Serious
Only if You’re Serious
Crazed Hoarding Is not Preparing
How to Save Rainwater Effectively
Your Survival Guy in Paris
Key West Insider Guide
Your Survival Guy's Fishing Stories
Financial Independence, Retire Early
Money 101
Pandemic Creates Virtual Panopticon
Emergency Water Storage
Find Freedom in America
Second Amendment
How Can You Save Money for Your Grandchild
Great Reset
See Who's Missing the Boat
Richard  Young Reports
How You Can Save Money for Your Grandchild
Why Fidelity is Number One
The Best States for Survival
You Invest, They Win
Escape the City
Why Vanguard is Too Big for YOU
Island Life

Copyright © 2023 | Terms & Conditions

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.