Episode 73: Jessica Dickler on Navigating Financial Influencers

Please note: This is an AI-generated transcription. There may be slight grammatical errors, spelling errors and/or misinterpretation of words.

Intro: Covering the ever-evolving retirement plan landscape to help identify the biggest opportunities for plan sponsors, CAPTRUST presents Revamping Retirement.

Matt Patrick: Hello. I’m Matt Patrick and I’m joined today by Audrey Wheat. Audrey, it’s great to be back with you. I think this is three episodes in a row that you and I have co-hosted, at least for the ones that I’ve been a co-host on. So we’re on quite a run.

Audrey Wheat: We’ve got a power duo going.

Matt Patrick: This is, yeah, this is our silent takeover of the show, Jennifer and Pete don’t know.

I’m excited for our show today because we’re going to be talking about social media and its ability to provide financial education or advice, which is a topic that we have wanted to cover for a long time on the show. So I’m excited to be able to do that.

We’re going to be joined in a few minutes by Jessica Dickler, who is a personal finance writer for CNBC and has closely covered social media and its impact on personal finance. But before we welcome Jessica in, Audrey, I’m curious to hear about how you’re using social media today and particularly if you’re bumping into any personal finance items out there while you’re on social media.

Audrey Wheat: As a millennial—I do claim that name; I’m an elder millennial—I do use social media quite a bit. I would say primarily Instagram, number one, posting and looking at content. I do get on TikTok probably more often than I would like to admit, but I don’t really post anything on TikTok. And then, of course, Facebook.

The algorithm specifically on TikTok is so interesting because I had just started using it and somehow it had figured out that I was interested in financial content. I don’t think I ever put that in there. So I do come across a lot of financial content on TikTok. Some of it’s great and some of it makes me absolutely cringe.

That’s my experience. What about you, Matt?

Matt Patrick: Have some overlap with you. I feel like I’m a boring social media user. I don’t really post anywhere. So even Facebook, I use for it sounds like the exact same purpose that you do, which just to keep up with immediate family. And that’s about all I see posting frequently on there.

I probably should post more updates so they could see what we got going on, but I’m not that active there. And then I would say TikTok is probably what I’m on second-most. And that would be much more for just, I don’t know, casual entertainment as opposed to any sort of educational content.

And then I still find Twitter or X to be relatively useful for news, if you’re willing to actively curate your feed to filter out a lot of noise that’s on there. But those are the three that I use most frequently, and I don’t really engage with finance stuff that much on there, even though it is a topic that I’m interested in.

I feel like when I was coming up, I just got ingrained in me, this real skepticism if it wasn’t a source that you knew or trusted. So I feel like I almost like when it pops up on TikTok, I skip it right away, which the downside is there’s probably really good stuff out there. And I’m just not even engaging with it. Cause unless I sought it out myself, I don’t really engage with it that much.

Audrey Wheat: Gotcha. Yeah. I often say I’m so thankful to work in this industry for a multitude of reasons, but one of the reasons is there is no way I would know as much about money if I did not work in this industry, so I look at the financial content on social media as, okay, take my brain out of the financial industry, how are my friends, same age, viewing this content and receiving the information? So I view it as someone who’s on the other side that maybe doesn’t know as much as someone in the industry.

Matt Patrick: I think that’s super interesting. Given a running theme through a bunch of episodes has been financial wellness, financial education. That’s a big topic for plan sponsors over the last few years. We expect it to be the case moving forward and I think, yeah, exactly what you’re saying.

If there aren’t tools available to people that are not in the industry or not just naturally inclined to learn about financial topics, maybe social media is filling that void for them. And that could be a good or a bad thing, depending on the sources they’re leaning on. I feel like that would be an interesting backdrop, maybe to explore this conversation of what the influence is.

And if you aren’t offering financial wellness tools or education tools, where are people going to turn in the absence of those?

Audrey Wheat: Exactly.

Matt Patrick: All right. We are now joined by Jessica Dickler. Jessica, welcome to the show.

Jessica Dickler: Thank you. Thanks so much.

Matt Patrick: So we gave a really brief background on who you were in the intro, but maybe could you give us a little more background on your history and why we might be speaking to you on this subject today?

Jessica Dickler: Yes, I cover personal finance for CNBC. Previously, I worked at CNN for a long time, covering personal finance there. I got into this almost 20 years ago. So it’s been a long time and a lot has changed over that period. When I started in 2004, that was before even the great recession. So we’ve seen a huge wave of interest in personal finance and it’s been a really interesting ride.

Audrey Wheat: So in the intro, Matt and I talked a little bit about how we personally use social media for our personal lives, but also how our work has bled into it with working in the financial industry. So Jessica, how do you use social media both personally and professionally?

Jessica Dickler: Well, it has varied a bit. I used to post them more on X. Now I do it more on LinkedIn because I feel like a better conversation gets rolling that way. And then personally, I like Instagram just to keep up with friends or to see what’s trending. But I try to keep most of my social media engagement pretty limited cause I, I find it can be a big distraction. So I would like to say I’m not a huge social media user, but sometimes it depends on the day.

Matt Patrick: That’s interesting, Audrey. We didn’t even mention LinkedIn in the first part there. So you, Jessica, you do get good engagement from your stories when you post on there?

Jessica Dickler: Yeah; I posted one the other day and there were a few hundred comments and people were actually talking to each other, which was cool. And I do like to see the way things are engaged with more so on LinkedIn than other platforms.

Audrey Wheat: Jessica, you talked about how you’ve covered personal finance for about 20 years. How did you initially get into covering that as your beat as a reporter?

Jessica Dickler: Like I was saying earlier, when I started, it was before a lot of these major changes were happening in the country. And I think it was the great recession that really set off this idea—interest, because for a long time, what was happening, finance issue, people were losing their homes, their jobs.

It wasn’t just about big banks or the stock market, it was very personal. And I think a lot of people needed advice and information on what those next steps would be for them. And that really generated an interest in the topic that didn’t exist at all before that. And then, at the same time, I started out after graduate school. I was young and living in New York and while I’ve been covering personal finance, I’ve also been living it myself.

I got married and had children and bought a home and we’re saving for college. My kids are in high school now. That’s something very much at the forefront of my daily life, and to write about those topics and talk to experts and relay that information has been—it’s just been really fulfilling.

It’s something that I’ve enjoyed doing very much.

Matt Patrick: I feel like getting back to the engagement piece, those types of articles, like the ones that you write, where you’re talking about your personal experience and trying to relay this information that I’m sure that people take that to heart a lot more. Like it’s not just some advice I’m getting from someone who—I don’t know if they’re anything like me, but it’s a lot more relatable if you can talk through like, this is something that’s going on in my life.

And I think that’s good advice that I could pass along to others that are out there. So I’m sure that has been interesting.

Jessica Dickler: Yeah, and it’s not often I write in the first person, although I definitely have when I’ve encountered my own experience and I want to share that. But I also talk to people all the time that are wrestling with their retirement savings or job changes or family dynamics. And when I hear from regular people about their experiences, I love when people want to share their stories because I think that’s what also pulls other people in. when they see like, I’m not alone here. I am also struggling with what has happened and what that means for me or what related to whatever it could be, but I love when people want to share their experiences.

Matt Patrick: That’s great. I think it’s a perfect pivot into getting into that. I think that’s good context where we’ve been thinking about it through this idea of people, they’re in their retirement plan at work; sometimes they have tools available, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes if there’s nothing available, maybe friends or social media or just the internet in general, they can start to fill that void through there.

I was talking to my dad about recording this episode. And he was like, remember when he was working and he had a personal interest in this in general. And so he was like, people at work would just be taking his advice on things and he’s, Hey, I’m not—I wasn’t saying that to give you advice, but you could just see people were grasping for anything to be able to go off of.

Cause it’s just something I’m not that knowledgeable about. With that in mind, curious for your thoughts, getting into what is out there on social media. We’ve seen you written a lot. You’ve written a lot about TikTok. Sounds like you’re on Instagram and LinkedIn a bunch, but I guess, what are the sources that you feel like people are most leaning on when they’re looking for this content or interacting with the content?

And then, what type of advice do you feel like they’re most likely to run across?

Jessica Dickler: I think you hit on it exactly, which is that the big takeaway is that financial advice that spread on social media is so accessible and it used to be that you wouldn’t have access to financial advice unless they knew someone like your dad or they had a financial advisor, which wasn’t that common.

So especially for younger adults there’s a need for advice from someone that you could hopefully trust and that would help you make some smarter money moves. And that’s where social media has really thrived because I think if it gets picked up on social media and it’s shared and people are commenting on it or trying it and said, I did this, then it almost It feels like you have that person that’s vetted in a way that you can look to and be like, Oh, here, I see some advice and I could take this and maybe it would help my situation.

And it could be anything. I see all kinds of stuff from taxes to budgeting. There’s no shortage of information that is shared online.

Matt Patrick: It’s so interesting too, you’re talking about the trust element of it and just thinking, Yeah, I listened to a one-way relationship where it’s like you end up knowing a lot about the hosts because that’ll just leak through and what they’re talking about or they’ll directly talk about their family or their career or what they have going on in their personal life as you start to really know them and they almost are like a friend or a trusted person there and I guess the same is true for an influencer online, where if you watch enough stuff and you like them, it is like, I’m getting this advice from a friend and it carries more weight or you trust it more because of that.

Jessica Dickler: That’s definitely something I’ve noticed on TikTok specifically is that there’s this sort of air of authenticity where people post and they’re just in their casual clothes, they’re on the go picking up their kids and it feels like you’re engaging with someone in this super informal, friendly way and then you feel like you almost know them.

But I do think that can also give you that false illusion of trust.

Audrey Wheat: Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about how in the financial industry, we are such a heavily regulated industry. There’s licenses, there’s compliance requirements. Financial advisors are not allowed to text their clients anymore. Everything has to be monitored. And then you have, like you said, this accessible advice that financial influencers can put out.

Some of them aren’t affiliated with any type of financial company. This is merely a hobby for them. How people can differentiate between someone who has credentials, is qualified and then almost like leaning on a friend through their favorite influencer on social media?

How can people differentiate there?

Jessica Dickler: Yeah, that is such a good question because it’s not immediately apparent how to do that, but you can do that and you should do that and that’s one of the things that I have learned by just covering these topics is that you just need to do your own vetting. Like you said, they may not be licensed or registered anywhere and you want to know that if you’re going to take some financial advice from somebody and oftentimes financial advice is very personal.

So it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of situation. But there are ways to look up whether somebody has a certification, a license, whether they’re registered, if they’re a financial advisor or an investment broker. You should be looking them up and it’s pretty easy to cross check that.

Audrey Wheat: Yeah. I’ve noticed a lot of the financial influencers go live on TikTok. So I have commented on the live before: Hey, are you registered? Are you a CFP? No one has ever answered that question on the live, and I’m not even doing it as a troll. It’s people that I follow, but BrokerCheck is so easy to access, so do your homework there, for sure.

Matt Patrick: I feel like there’s also just a brand of social media content out there where it’s the benefit or the appeal is, The people operating within the system are going to tell you this, but here’s the way to work around that.

Or here’s the thing they don’t want you to know. That appeals to people where you’re like, Oh yeah, I’ve got the secret there. So it’s almost like they wouldn’t have those credentials and people are like, I’m going to go with it because a CFP is going to be trained in the same way.

That’s where the danger comes in is you’re—like the appeal is in the I don’t want what just comes out of the box or what would they perceive it to be. I want the thing that is the secret or the way around that.

Jessica Dickler: Yeah, and my husband’s an accountant and he says his clients email him or call him and say maybe I could put my kids on the payroll. They’ll have what they think is some tax hack to help save some money. And it doesn’t work that way.

Audrey Wheat: So when we take the awareness of what’s happening on social media and how different types of generations are engaging with social media and financial advice, do you have any thoughts on what employers and us within the retirement industry could learn from these people, these influencers to make education and advice for finances more engaging for their participants?

Jessica Dickler: Absolutely. Sometimes I think you do have to sort of meet people where they are and this is where they are. One of the things that I thought was interesting in my coverage recently: I do a lot about paying for college and financial aid and student loans and how families manage that or could better manage that.

And one of the things that happened this year with the new financial aid form is that the financial aid office was posting on Instagram when there was a deadline due, or how to get ready for the new forms coming out or any sort of announcement. It was just straightforward information, but I set my news alert on Instagram and there it was and I thought that’s great because that’s where kids are there on Instagram and why not follow the financial aid office and see those updates as they come in and get the news as it’s happening.

You’re not necessarily logging on to the government’s website on financial aid every day to check for new announcements. So I thought that was great. I think that there are ways to put stuff out there either on social media or something like that, where you can provide a service where you’re not necessarily giving advice, but deadlines, tax changes, new information that clients should be aware of.

I do think that there are ways to do that and that ways that it has been done successfully.

Matt Patrick: I think that’s a great, positive outlook though. You know, some of this conversation could feel very negative, like, how could people go wrong with it? And you’re like, there’s some simple wins out there of people are on Instagram. You can ignore that, or you could use it to your benefit to make their lives easier.

And I bet that was extremely well received from the student aid, that example, I would have followed all that the whole way through when I was applying for financial aid growing up.

Jessica Dickler: Yeah, I agree. I think that it can really work for you and, why not put good information out there for people to benefit from.

Matt Patrick: So you mentioned earlier, Jessica and Audrey just made allusion to the generations that are on there, the generations this might impact. Is it safe to assume that it primarily impacts millennials and Gen Z and we would assume moving forward or is the impact broader in terms of social media usage?

Jessica Dickler: Yes, it does right now primarily impact Gen Z and millennials. They are the ones that are more likely spending more time online. I saw a recent stat that Gen Zers were five times more likely to get financial advice from social media. But in many ways, I think they’re just paving the way for other generations to follow.

Look at Facebook, that started out as a website for college kids to connect on. Now our grandparents are on Facebook and I think it will be the same. It will be the same.

Matt Patrick: Tough episode for Facebook. We’re all yeah, it’s for following our older family members. And that’s just how it’s going right now. But, yeah, I feel like that’s going to be such a fascinating thing to monitor, especially because, I’m sure that the application or what site is being used will change, but it is normalizing this.

Like, well, I get my information from social media or I get it from these sites and it legitimizes it in a way where I’d said earlier that look, I grew up with the Internet in a phase where there was still a ton of skepticism of everything that’s on there. And I haven’t shaken that out of me.

I feel like I’m still, Oh, if it’s not a source that I looked for myself, I’m skeptical of it, but I don’t find that is true for, even my sister, who’s a few years younger than me. I feel like she’s a little more embracing of what is on there like her friends are.

Jessica Dickler: It’s still a little bit of a minefield, though, I have to say I have with my high schoolers when they’re doing research, I’m always like be so careful with your sourcing. They’re not allowed to use things like Wikipedia, but there are primary sources is that you could find through a Wikipedia page, and then you want to check those out. It’s just a tightrope you have to walk.

Matt Patrick: I will say that’s where I draw the line. I definitely grew up in the you can’t use Wikipedia as a source, but I treat that as the definitive historical record now. I guess I couldn’t hold up my end of the bargain there.

Audrey Wheat: Remember, Matt, when we were in high school, it was, it has to be .org?

Matt Patrick: Yes. Or. gov.

Yeah. Yes. Or from a book. Yeah. And they–

Audrey Wheat: Yes.

Matt Patrick: –are the only options.

Audrey Wheat: With all this in mind, thinking about the monetization of influencing just as an industry as a whole, but of course, financial influencers are not exempt. So what are your thoughts on how some of these financial influencers make money? And will this impact the advice that users see?

Jessica Dickler: Yes. Just, the short answer is yes, it will impact the advice that you see. There could be so many potential financial motivations to anything that you see online. There are commissions or sponsorships in play, and that’s something you really need to watch out for. And I’ve seen data that a lot of the financial information that’s relayed is false.

It’s just wrong. And people do fall for it all the time; a lot of people fall for it. Some people fall for it multiple times, and that’s where you just really need to vet all of the advice. And even if you see something that sounds good, do a little bit of research before you try anything at all and see if that makes sense in your particular situation.

If there are pitfalls, when it doesn’t work, it’s just, it’s not–you can check out all that stuff.

Matt Patrick: I feel like because it’s become such a money-making venture the production quality also has just gotten so high on a lot of these videos that are out there. And it does lend itself some credibility where you’re like, if it’s produced well, and that makes it feel like it’s better researched.

And that just might not be true because you’re like documentaries or reputable sources have the budget to do something like this, but with an iPhone and some basic editing software can make something look just as good now. And I feel like that messes with my mind sometimes.

I’m like, man, this looks great.

Jessica Dickler: Yeah, but I also think that has made me so skeptical because I’m like, why are they saying that, what’s in it for them? And why are they even tagging this 1 thing? Orit just–I’m so skeptical when I see any of that. I’m like, what is the motivation there?

Audrey Wheat: Any thoughts, Jessica on the difference between communicating to male and female on social media? Who is it targeting? Do you feel that there’s a difference in the messaging? This is a leading question, so I want to hear your thoughts, but then I guess I’ll go where I’m going.

Jessica Dickler: Okay. I’m curious. I’m curious why you ask. I do think that it can vary. And I have seen a real kind of lean in to getting more women engaged, especially when it comes to budgeting and finances and which we know is an area that women have particularly been excluded from the conversation. And I see now a real push to engage more women, which can be great, but it’s also another area where you want to be correctly informed and be wary of things that are trying to attract you for maybe the wrong reasons.

Audrey Wheat: Yeah, where I was going, that’s exactly the path I was going down, and just tying back to what Matt said about the production quality. Some of the, for lack of a better term, shadiest, slimiest TikTok accounts I’ve seen are people targeting women and trying to sell financial products to them in the form of insurance, in the form of extremely complex annuities or insurance products, which doesn’t mean they’re not appropriate for anyone.

It’s being very withholding about what they’re talking about, it’s leading down a path. I go to the website and there’s all the disclosures about the products. That type of monetization is especially troubling as compared to someone that’s helping people with budgeting and is selling a little budgeting template.

To me, that’s fine. But the using it as a gateway to sell these extremely complex, expensive products, that’s where I’m concerned that a layperson may not be able to differentiate.

Jessica Dickler: It’s hard sometimes for an experienced person to differentiate sometimes with those products. There are fees. There are hidden fees and it’s hard to know. I mean, I was skiing one year and the guy on the ski lift found out–we were making small talk and he was asking me what I did.

And he was like, oh, should I get this annuity that my financial–I was like, yeah, it is so hard to know what you’re being offered and what it will cost. In some cases, that could be a great idea. In other cases, there could be so many hidden costs and it’s not the kind of information that you can take away in three minutes.

You really need to dig in.

Matt Patrick: Audrey, I’m curious. The example you gave. Why do you feel like that type of content is being directed specifically at women?

Audrey Wheat: Women, and I don’t have any this, but a lot of women are the CFO of their household, if not the CEO of their household. They are making the buying decisions. And I think that there is a lack of financial education just in general. I–most of us don’t take personal finance courses in school, but just with all of the other challenges that women have to overcome regarding money with wages and taking breaks in employment for having children and whatnot. I think that a lot of women are an especially vulnerable population, but then they do end up being in charge of household finances. And it’s a unique opportunity for people that are trying to take advantage.

Jessica Dickler: I think you’re exactly right. When there is financial vulnerability, which there is when it comes to women, then there is also the opportunity to sell something that addresses that and that creates an area for potential problems.

Matt Patrick: Yeah, because at the surface, you’re like, if there’s more content directed towards women that seems like it’s addressing a need where the family dynamics have shifted, the work culture shifted, it feels like there is maybe a need for some of that, but then to find out people using that to prey on people or push some of these products, just stressing more got to be aware, got to check your sources, got to vet it all out.

Jessica Dickler: Yeah; we know that women will be in the driver’s seat in their household at some point. That is just facts. And a lot of times that happens when maybe they don’t have all of the information on the household finances. They’ve been–like I said earlier, they’ve been excluded from a lot of those conversations.

Then they find themselves in charge of the budget and don’t really know the next step or the right place to turn. It’s a tough situation.

Matt Patrick: I think maybe putting a bow on the actual social media conversation. The term that coming out of this or the theme coming out of this, that seems the most interesting is just the element of trust and people seeking a trusted source there. And I think maybe the action item for any plan sponsors listening to this episode is as you’re thinking through this financial education, advice, wellness, whatever term you want to use for helping out your employees as they try and plan for retirement or saving for college or healthcare spending, any of those financial needs.

It just seems that, across the board, people want to have a trusted source there. A lot of plan sponsors hire an advisor because they want a trusted source for help with their plan. And your employees are no different in that regard. And I think thinking through if they don’t have a trusted source offered to them through the company or through other sources, where are they going to turn?

And it is to maybe some sources that they trust and shouldn’t with these topics. I feel like that is an interesting thing to think through as you’re trying to design a financial wellness program is trying to address these needs that people have and be thoughtful about where they might turn if they don’t have them through their employer.

Audrey Wheat: Matt, that’s a great point. And of course, our audience can always check out Jessica’s articles if they want to get some legit information that we know is trustworthy about their financials.

Matt Patrick: Or apparently just walk up to her on the ski slope and ask for advice there as well.

Audrey Wheat: Yes, exactly. Okay. So Jessica, we like to close out the show with the same question for all of our guests. What does retirement look like for you?

Jessica Dickler: That’s a great question because as I am thinking about what my next act will be when my kids go off to college and my role at home changes pretty significantly. I’m thinking less about retirement and what that next move could be, whether that’s a new activity or side gig or other type of public service. In some ways I think of reporting as a type of service, but maybe there’s another way or another aspect of my work could fulfill the new phase that I’m entering.

I’m not so much focused on retirement. Like I’m gonna sit around and golf or whatever the stereotypical retirement idea is. But just that there would be sort of another thing that I might do or be open to doing as my life changes.

Matt Patrick: Having purpose in your second act. That sounds great. So, awesome. Jessica, we really appreciate having you on. I guess for anybody Audrey made mention of and I think you mentioned earlier, but just to recap for anybody that might want to find your work out there.

What are the best places for them to find you?

Jessica Dickler: The best place would be on CNBC.com. I also post a lot of my stuff on LinkedIn, particularly articles around some of these hot topics. And it’s really fun to hear people’s feedback, especially on LinkedIn, where it tends to skew more positive. I always like hearing from readers. And maybe also on Instagram. Who knows?

Matt Patrick: Great. Thank you so much again for coming on. We appreciate the time today and thank you to everyone that listened to the show. As always, if you have the time and you enjoyed the content today, please go out and subscribe to Revamping Retirement wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you all very much.

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