From Gas Prices to AI: What It Means for Your Money

Our 2 Cents – Episode #250

From Gas Prices to AI: What It Means for Your Money

This week’s episode of Our 2 Cents is full of timely insights and practical advice. We’re breaking down why gas prices are rising, sharing smart financial organization tips for April, and discussing whether AI could impact your career. Listen in now!

1. Why Are Gas Prices So High?:
   • Gas prices are on the rise, but the reasons may surprise you.
   • A few small adjustments (like driving habits and maintenance) can help stretch your fuel a bit further.
2. April Money Moves to Get Organized & Stay On Track:
   • April is Financial Literacy Month, making it the perfect time to get your financial life in order.
   • We share helpful tips to get organized and stay on track with your finances; from taxes and documents to contributions, accounts, and investments.
3. Is AI Coming for Your Job?:
   • AI is changing how work gets done, but not replacing every role.
   • The key question isn’t if, it’s whether you’re prepared.

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Podcast Transcript

Announcer: You’re listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial, Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news, trends, strategies, and more.

Gabriel Lewit: Welcome everybody to Our 2 Cents. It’s been a morning of minor technical difficulties here, but I think we’ve got this working. And if you’re listening to this, then that means we got it working, which is the hope.

Steve Lewit: Well, I think that’s the hardest thing I’ve done all week.

Gabriel Lewit: No, I don’t think so. If that’s the hardest thing you’ve done all week, you’ve had an easy week.

Steve Lewit: Oh, okay. That is true. That is true.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, we hope you’re doing great.

Steve Lewit: I find technical glitches are so frustrating because you can’t … We got all these wires in front and different holes and different plugs, and it’s like you don’t know which one goes where.

Gabriel Lewit: That is very true. Technical difficulties, if you’ve ever experienced them with computers, are very frustrating. So hopefully you don’t have any like we had, and hopefully we resolved all of ours and we can proceed forward with a phenomenal show here for you today.

Steve Lewit: And we can resolve all of your technical difficulties.

Gabriel Lewit: We are not IT. You do not want to call us for those IT problems.

Steve Lewit: Do not call us.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Only financial problems. With those, we can solve for you.

Steve Lewit: All day long.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, just a quick update. Looks like the Artemis II rocket in case you were wondering has passed the moon and has headed home.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, I was very excited. I was. I am very excited about that.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. It’s taken some beautiful photos. If you haven’t had a chance to go online and look at them, just I think amazing. High resolution images of the globe that we somehow inhabit that’s just floating out there in the middle of nowhere.

Steve Lewit: Very tiny little thing.

Gabriel Lewit: Pretty cool stuff. So yeah, fingers crossed, a great splash down whenever they come home. And then I guess we have to wait another couple of years to the next mission.

Steve Lewit: Did you watch any of the live broadcasts?

Gabriel Lewit: Not live, but the recorded takeoff. It was really cool. Very cool.

Steve Lewit: Yep.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. So other updates here. There’s still some uncertainty about the Iran situation. There’s a tentative ceasefire as we speak here that could waffle one of two ways. Either it will hold or it will not hold.

Steve Lewit: Well, that’s true, Gabriel. I mean, what a prediction.

Gabriel Lewit: But it’s kind of right in the middle at the moment. Okay.

Steve Lewit: It’s pretty tentative.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Isn’t that like the Yogi Berra Isms where he always said really-

Steve Lewit: Yeah, the market will go up or down.

Gabriel Lewit: It’ll go up or down, yes. The ceasefire will hold or not hold.

Steve Lewit: The ceasefire will hold or not hold. Write that down folks.

Gabriel Lewit: Folks, you heard it here.

Steve Lewit: Put Gabriel’s name on it.

Gabriel Lewit: You heard it here first, okay? Now, if it holds, the hope is that the markets will continue to stabilize and they’ve already rebounded a little bit since the truce was announced, so it’s jumped right back up, so that’s a very positive sign. If it goes the other way, you could fall right back down. So this is still some turbulent times here. So if you have questions or concerns, let us know. Now, we did want to talk a little bit today. There’s been a lot of questions about gas prices rising.

Steve Lewit: I have one. I said this last week that I made the mistake of buying a car that has premium gas. And last week-

Gabriel Lewit: And we all know you did it on purpose.

Steve Lewit: No, I just liked the car.

Gabriel Lewit: You made a mistake.

Steve Lewit: And I didn’t know. Last week I filled the tank. It was $92. I did not break a hundred this week, but I was $98 to fill my gas tank.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well, you knew what you were getting into there, sir.

Steve Lewit: No, but everybody is filling their tanks and having the same problem that I’m having. It’s ridiculous.

Gabriel Lewit: It is. It’s very pricey.

Steve Lewit: And we didn’t know we were going to get into this.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, the question that’s been popping up a lot is, well, why do we have these high gas prices if the US produces lots of oil?

Steve Lewit: It is mystifying.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. And there’s a broader article we found here talking about who controls gas prices in the US. So we thought we would talk about this just a little bit in case you were interested. And so there’s also concerns that even when the price of the barrels of oil come down, that the gas prices will not come down, and quite as quick either.

Steve Lewit: That’s definite. So let me just back this up, Gabriel, by saying pricing is developed by supply and demand. I mean, it’s very simple. The more the demand, the higher the price. The more the supply, the less the demand, the lower the price. Now you can take it from there.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah, you said it was very simple, but it’s not quite that simple. But yes, in the sense that there’s less supply because the Strait of Hormuz is being blocked, the prices then are going up of the remaining available supply because the demand is still there.

Steve Lewit: So, Gabriel, why if the US produces all this oil, why can’t we control our own pricing?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, and given that we’re far from, I mean, import or exporter oil experts here, we did a little research on this just to answer that question for you. And it appears it has to do with, again, a little more complex here. The US actually exports a lot of its oil.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Because there’s different types of oil, number one.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Yes. US, I believe, has a lighter grade of oil, whatever that means.

Gabriel Lewit: I think there’s also contracts that the US has entered into that require that they export some of their oil. So they cannot just, “Okay, we just are going to stop exporting it and keep it for our domestic production.” There’s also refining capacity concerns and questions, and then there’s this global economy in OPEC and these oil groups that collectively set the prices of oils of barrel that apparently, to my understanding, the US can’t just come in and be like, “Okay, we’re keeping all of oil immediately. Prices are low.”

Steve Lewit: Well, they could, except that that would shut off supply of oil that we need from other countries.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It would be, I guess, apparently very difficult or challenging to go that route.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So folks, we are really tied in

Gabriel Lewit: So, it’s a global oil economy.

Steve Lewit: You took the words right out of my mouth. We are tied into the global economy when it comes to oil. We can’t just say we have enough and be an isolationist in this part of the economic world system.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Now, if you want to know more details than that-

Steve Lewit: Don’t ask us.

Gabriel Lewit: … we’re probably not your guy. AI could probably do a better job than us answering that for you, but that’s just a little quick example. It’s just not simple, right? It’s just not that simple. It’s more complex. Now, as far as the price of gas prices, depending on where you go in the US, a big part of it, about 51% of the price of gas is based on the price of the barrels of crude oil.

Steve Lewit: Crude oil.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So if those barrels go up in price substantially, which they have, you would expect the price of gasoline to go up substantially as well.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I actually thought it was higher than that. So the crude oil price is 51% of what I’m paying at the gas tank is because crude oil prices have gone up. Yeah.

Gabriel Lewit: Now there’s various state and local taxes on gasoline. There’s also refining costs, distribution and marketing costs. And then there’s just some of the local areas, right? Some areas of the country are just more expensive than others. That’s always been a little bit confusing, I think, to folks, but it just has to do with the amount of, I believe, supply in different regional areas as well, and somehow the demand and how it all gets routed wherever it gets routed to and from, and how they do it with all the trucks and everything. Pretty amazing, first and foremost, that every pump in America somehow gets filled regularly. And actually, it’s just complicated.

Steve Lewit: It’s complicated. And what I don’t see on this diagram here-

Gabriel Lewit: I wish I knew more about it so I could answer it a bit more accurately for everybody.

Steve Lewit: Well, what I don’t see on here is where are the company profits on here? I don’t know if you-

Gabriel Lewit: I’m sure that’s baked into the price of the-

Steve Lewit: Oh, I know it is.

Gabriel Lewit: … of each of these items.

Steve Lewit: So, I always wonder when the prices go up, do their profits go up too? In other words, are they saying, “Okay, we can get more from the consumer because crude oil has gone up. Why don’t we squeeze a little bit out for ourselves?”

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I think I actually just read that profits in the last quarter came down.

Steve Lewit: Did they?

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Because of the lack of supply.

Steve Lewit: Interesting.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Now, a couple quick things here. We wanted to just give you a little bit of tips here. If you’re trying to make your gas last longer, ease the pain at the pump, some of the basic things you probably heard before, but just in case you haven’t, make sure your tires are inflated properly. That helps. Try not to stomp on the gas pedal at the stoplight, right?

Steve Lewit: And you should go at a certain speed.

Gabriel Lewit: Try to stay at the speed limit, which is more efficient than cruising at 78, 80 miles per hour. Now, the reality is most people don’t do these things. Some people have Priuses and electric cars. They’re probably not quite feeling the pain as much.

Steve Lewit: Right.

Gabriel Lewit: But there’s very limited things you can do, but you could attempt to stretch your gas mileage a little bit further if you were so inclined while you’re driving your vehicles.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Tune your engine, all that kind of stuff. And if you’re like me folks, I won’t change anything.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Try to limit your trips, right? Combine things into single outings.

Steve Lewit: I’m not going to do that.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, some people might or need to make their budget.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Well, if you have to, you have to. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that was marginally helpful.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, short of us going somehow out there and easing the problems in the Strait of Hormuz, I’m not sure what else we can do. We’re not quite able to do that. Me and you, I mean, personally.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, it was kind of interesting. I like the part where 51% crude oil is in my gas price. I don’t know why it’s important to me, but that’s the part I liked.

Gabriel Lewit: There you go.

Steve Lewit: There you go.

Gabriel Lewit: Now you know.

Steve Lewit: Now you know.

Gabriel Lewit: Alrighty. Well, I’d say if you have questions about that, give us a call. I’m not sure how we would help you with that. But if you have concerns about your financial budgeting-

Steve Lewit: Oh look, the phone lines are ringing off the hook.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Your financial budgeting, where things fit in, how to handle the markets during all this, that we can help you with.

Steve Lewit: Answer the phones about crude oil.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay. Well, admittedly, not our area of expertise. Well, let’s shift to something that is … We talked earlier this year about a financial planning calendar for the year, and April is organization and compliance. Fun topics here. Also, April is financial literacy month, so we thought we would mention that. So it’s all about making sure you’re feeling educated, empowered, like you understand these various things with regards to your finances. Makes people better investors, makes them more money over time, saves them in taxes. The more you know, the more you are going to earn, save, and keep. And so it’s our goal here in the month here of April to empower you with your financial planning literacy as much as we possibly can.

Steve Lewit: Well, knowledge is power, and I do believe that. So let’s go for it.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s what we’re going to do. Okay. So on the list here of organization and compliance matters. Well, the first one’s pretty simple. File your tax return. Okay. That’s a compliance item you are required to do so.

Steve Lewit: Always a good idea.

Gabriel Lewit: Or you can extend. Yes. Some people skip and they don’t pay and the IRS-

Steve Lewit: Not a good idea.

Gabriel Lewit: … hunts after them. That is not a good idea. But yes, we’re right around the corner here to the end of tax filing season, April 15th. So make sure you get that filed and don’t skip paying your taxes. They will find you.

Steve Lewit: No, they will.

Gabriel Lewit: They will find you one day.

Steve Lewit: They don’t miss.

Gabriel Lewit: And they will give you lots of penalties in interest, or if you really don’t pay for long enough, you go to jail, which none of those are really fun. So don’t do that. Yep. Okay. And obviously here, if you haven’t done so in the past, we recommend you file your tax returns away. The copies that you receive, don’t lose them. If you get a paper copy, you can ask your preparer for a digital copy, or make sure you put them in a folder where you can find them, because having access to those old tax records and tax return files can be very important both for financial planning or for other reasons when they pop up.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. I think the rule is seven or 10 years, Gabriel. Do you know? I know there’s a rule out there somewhere, seven or 10 years, but they can be very helpful because things do happen and you need to go back and sometimes your CPA doesn’t have them, or your CPA retires and you can’t get them.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So make sure you have them is the name of the game here and just get a PDF, throw it on a folder in your computer. That’s the easiest way, and then you’ve got them all there, voila. All set. Okay. Now make sure that you’ve maximized your contributions. If you haven’t done so for the last year before you filed, might be too late if you’ve already filed, but a good time to start thinking about that for this year ahead if you haven’t done so. Starting to think about annual contribution amounts, limitations that you’re required to meet, income thresholds that you … If you did your taxes last year and you’re under a threshold, your tax preparer should be able to tell you, “Hey, you’re eligible probably this year for a Roth IRA contribution or a regular IRA contribution.”

Or conversely, they could tell you that you’re not eligible, so make sure you don’t make contributions to IRAs or Roth IRAs if you’re not eligible to do so. So making sure you’re following the laws there, understanding the rules. Same with HSA contributions if you have a health savings account, understanding if you’re able to contribute to those or not. So all these little things, just understanding the rules is really what compliance is kind of like a tough sounding name, compliance.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that sounds awful.

Gabriel Lewit: Right. But knowing the rules, the limits, the income thresholds, and being able to plan accordingly with that information in hand.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So if you’re a procrastinator and you haven’t made any of your deposits into the accounts that you want to deposit into, make sure you do that before you file your taxes because once you … I guess you could amend a return, Gabriel, if you really had to.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, most people don’t want to do that.

Steve Lewit: No, it’s pain in the neck.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So obviously here, taking advantage of tax deferred growth accounts, if you have eligibility for a Roth and you have money sitting in cash, it’s one of those no-brainer decisions where you can just put money into a Roth, make it forever tax-free. Even if you’re just leaving it in cash, I say this all the time. If you had cash in a bank account and you were eligible to put money into a Roth and you missed the window, you could just have put $8,000 of your cash-

Steve Lewit: Into the tax-free bucket.

Gabriel Lewit: … into the tax-free Roth and left it in cash. Assuming you’re over 59 and a half, you probably could access that anytime and there’s no real downside to it, right? So keep that in mind. There’s some really good things here to take advantage of. You have to know about them, which is why we are talking about them here in Financial Literacy Month, so you can take advantage of those and put them to work for you. Okay. All right. Also on the list here is now this whole schedule for the year was meant for you to follow it if you’ve been listening to our show, so making this a checklist for you in the month of April. So if you haven’t done this, I actually did this last month in March. I cleaned up my financial documents at home. I have some folders. I have files all over the place. It was feeling a little bit cluttered, so I organized it.

Steve Lewit: And let me ask you-

Gabriel Lewit: And it took me about three hours on a Sunday while I was watching a movie on TV, so it wasn’t like it was really hard labor.

Steve Lewit: All right. Let me ask you a question.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: God forbid; you pass on. Okay. Do you have all of your logins in one place?

Gabriel Lewit: I do have a file that has most of my logins, yes.

Steve Lewit: So, who has knowledge of that file? And who has login to the file?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, I probably could do a little bit better there as well.

Steve Lewit: And I’ll tell you why folks.

Gabriel Lewit: I’m not sure my wife even has the password to my computer.

Steve Lewit: That’s right. And I’ve been thinking about this. For some reason, I was asked, “Hey Steve, if you kick the bucket,” and it was put to me that way, “If you kick the bucket, does anyone have access to your computer? Where are all your files, your logs in?” And I said, “I’m a financial advisor and you know what? I haven’t done that.”

Gabriel Lewit: On your personal side, on the work side.

Steve Lewit: On the work side we know, but all my personal logins, and God, I have lots of them, nobody knows what they are and where they are.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, sir, you need to fix that.

Steve Lewit: Well, you need to fix yours. No, no, all right, for clients.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, clients listening to the show. You’re probably in similar boats as well, which is why this is on the list for the month.

Steve Lewit: So, let’s all make an agreement that by the end of this month, folks, let’s all create this together. At the end of this month, we have all of our passwords and logins in a safe place and you let somebody know where they are so they can handle your finances if something happens to you.

Gabriel Lewit: Someone you trust.

Steve Lewit: Some of them. Yeah. The phone call that you get that says we can control your login information, just ignore that.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. So this is all part of the financial goals here for April, right? Organizing your financial documents.

Steve Lewit: I’m feeling better now.

Gabriel Lewit: Good.

Steve Lewit: It’s going to get done.

Gabriel Lewit: Good.

Steve Lewit: Because I’m making that commitment. How about you?

Gabriel Lewit: Yes.

Steve Lewit: Are you with me?

Gabriel Lewit: I’m with you, sir.

Steve Lewit: Okay.

Gabriel Lewit: We will do this together.

Steve Lewit: Okay. Everybody, we’re doing this.

Gabriel Lewit: Yes. And so the other thing-

Steve Lewit: We’re going to check up. We’re going to reach out to you.

Gabriel Lewit: The other thing is part of this, if you haven’t, is as a side note, you could download or save investment statements or pension statements and insurance policies. Just recent ones, so whoever might find your records can know about those, even if they can’t log in somewhere. It’s not a bad idea to have a printed folder in a safe place in your house or something like that as well. You could go the old school way there. Also, if you have really old out of date stuff, right? I had a client that came into me once with a box of stuff and we sometimes go through it together and there was about, I don’t know, 14 versions of the same investment statement, just each quarterly one saved going back 14 quarters. And I said, “Why are you saving all these? Why don’t we just save the current one, right? Do we really need all the old quarters?” And she agreed. I don’t do anything with these.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Well, not to top your story, but I just had a client that moved who is 75 or 78 years old and she calls me up and says, “Hey, Steve, do you have somebody that can help me clean out my basement?” I said, “Sure, what’s in your basement?” She has every tax return and statement for the last 50 years.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. 50 years could be excessive.

Steve Lewit: Yes, it could be. You’re being nice.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, it could be a little excessive, but great organization there. Good job keeping the records.

Steve Lewit: Yes. I gave her credit for organization.

Gabriel Lewit: But yes, there could be a point where you don’t need to save things much longer or go digital, right? So it doesn’t feel like it’s taking up space.

Steve Lewit: Yes. Absolutely.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Okay. So all of this is designed to help you find things quicker, your loved ones find things quicker, for you to feel organized, feel less stressed because you’re organized, you feel like, “Hey, I’ve got my arms wrapped around all of this.”

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that’s a really good point, Gabriel, because there is a good … It’s like when you take a day and just clean your house and put things away, you feel good afterwards.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s the hope.

Steve Lewit: You just feel like, “Hey, everything’s in place.”

Gabriel Lewit: I haven’t done everything yet, but when I go back into my folders now, it’s all really organized. I’m like, “Oh, this looks a lot better.”

Steve Lewit: That’s nice.

Gabriel Lewit: This is nice.

Steve Lewit: It’s relaxing to see it in place.

Gabriel Lewit: Very, very. Yeah, exactly.

Steve Lewit: That’s a great point.

Gabriel Lewit: All right. The last item here, or one of the last items is creating a master financial list. So this kind of-

Steve Lewit: That’s what we’re talking about.

Gabriel Lewit: … is what we were just talking about, what you were just saying, but somewhere where somebody could see a list of everything on one single page, as well as having access to other records specifically for each account, but you could do a one-page summary. Some of our clients come to us with this already. Some of these we create for them. You could put on their account balances, account numbers, as long as it’s securely saved somewhere, login information and websites, key contacts like your financial advisor or insurance agents.

You could even put on their beneficiary designations, but the idea is to make sure you have a list of all your money and assets so you can reference it for you, but also other people can reference it if something were to happen to you. Okay. Now, last item here, if you haven’t done so is checking up and seeing how your investments and accounts are doing. Now, we do this, of course, at every single review meeting that we have with our clients for any account that we oversee and manage on your behalf. But if you have accounts that you haven’t looked at in a long time, you have no clue how they’re doing, what they’re in, what their performance has been, go download a statement and take a look as part of getting yourself organized and up to date here.

Steve Lewit: And if you’re not an investment kind of person and you don’t know what you’re looking at or what it really means, bring them into us. We’ll help you walk through it and give you an evaluation of how your accounts are doing.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, absolutely. We think it’s important to know what you have as a starting point so you can understand if it’s good or bad or if you want to keep it or not keep it or make any changes, you’ve got to first know what you have first.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. You got some people, Gabriel, are just not tuned into money. They have quite a lot of money, some people, and look at it once a year or let the advisor take care of it, just not interested.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s what we can help do if you fall into that boat.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. Good stuff.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, if you have questions on what to organize, how to do it, what to keep, what not to keep, anything that we just covered, if it piques a question in your mind, let us help you answer that question. You can call us here or you can set up a time to meet. If you’re not a client of ours, we can always do an introductory conversation together for 30 minutes. Call us here 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click contact us and let us help you map this all out and we can do all the heavy lifting on the organization front.

Steve Lewit: And be compliant.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes, that too. Yeah.

Steve Lewit: That’s such a harsh word, isn’t it?

Gabriel Lewit: Well, maybe we won’t put that in the email header.

Steve Lewit: But that’s what April is called.

Gabriel Lewit: That may not get the clicks we want.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, be compliant. Learn how to be compliant.

Gabriel Lewit: Oh, man. Yeah. Okay. No, thank you. We move on.

Steve Lewit: Yes, we do.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. Our last topic for today has to do with questions we got from a couple of clients that are concerned that AI is going to force them to retire sooner than expected.

Steve Lewit: It might.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay.

Steve Lewit: It could.

Gabriel Lewit: They were concerned about it. They were talking to us about it. So as always, we said, why don’t we use that to talk about on the show?

Steve Lewit: Yes. This is a worry, not only for folks that are entering retirement, for a lot of young people coming out of college, they’re finding that many jobs have been replaced by AI and the labor market has yet to really respond to that. Many jobs have been lost to AI already, but on the other side of the fence, they’re finding they have to hire people to watch over the AI. So how it’s affecting the labor market is really not clear at this point.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. It’s still pretty early, but the concern are some of the headlines that people are hearing and reading about, right? So you’ve got here saying some firms come out and say AI is hitting the labor market like a tsunami, right? These fear inducing words. Elon Musk, of course, a big AI proponent says, work will be optional within 20 years.

Steve Lewit: Yes.

Gabriel Lewit: Sam Altman, head of OpenAI says super intelligence could outperform top executives. So I guess that means we don’t have a job either.

Steve Lewit: No, no. They’re talking about super intelligence. Me and you, super intelligence can help. We outperform. Oh, you mean AI super intelligence?

Gabriel Lewit: Yes.

Steve Lewit: I thought they’re talking about us.

Gabriel Lewit: No. No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to burst your bubble there.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. AI is amazing. It’s got a long way to go.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And of course, anyone that’s used ChatGPT or similar or Claude or Google on a search. It does have some pretty smart answers to things on many things. It’s not 100% correct. So it’s okay to feel a little bit nervous about this and wondering if it’s going to potentially cause you to lose your job well ahead of your planned retirement date. Okay. Now, I think a big part of this depends on what field that you’re in. Now, I don’t have the article right in front of me, but I read a report that went in and it talked about all the industries that were biggest risk factors for possible AI taking over. Okay. And one of them, of course, was computer developers and programmers. Okay. And I think we’ve talked a little bit about that even on the show.

Steve Lewit: We did. We did, yes.

Gabriel Lewit: That’s a big, big risk area right now for your job because AI really is able to do a lot of what junior developers, even regular developers, some senior developers, what they’re able to do, it can now do automatically.

Steve Lewit: Well, even our-

Gabriel Lewit: Really changing the landscape.

Steve Lewit: Even our own coding team or even Belarus, right? Is where we-

Gabriel Lewit: Somewhere, yeah.

Steve Lewit: Somewhere. Somewhere overseas.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. They are learning to use AI to do a lot of their work and I don’t know how it’s affecting their employment, but AI is much faster and much more accurate when it comes to coding.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. No, well, it’s got its pros and cons, but it definitely has the ability to almost do a job of a developer. Now, if you happen to be a car mechanic, to use a total opposite example, well, AI is probably not going to do your job. Now it might assist doing your job easier, but there’s different industries where you have more concern or less concern, right? If you’re a-

Steve Lewit: It’s the repetitive tasks.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, if you’re a traveling salesperson for a director or salesperson for a big organization meeting with departments all over the globe, AI is probably not coming for your job, but if you’re a data analyst pulling up reports and doing manual research on data, well, it might be coming for you.

Steve Lewit: Yeah, that might be questionable.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. So a big part of it is if you’re wondering about this, if you’re concerned about your job, do some self-reflecting first and foremost about … Honestly, you could use AI to ask AI if AI is coming for your job, and it would probably tell you.

Steve Lewit: It will tell you. Yes. It will tell you.

Gabriel Lewit: I hate to say it, right? It’s going to say, “Yes, we could probably do your job for you,” but that’s the first thing is assessing the risk factors for you and whether or not AI could really take over your job. All right. Now, if you’re a school teacher, probably not have to worry yet, unless you’re worried about super robot in the future with a fake human face teaching your kids, could happen probably a long ways away. If you’re a dentist, same thing. Right now, just go kind of career by career, but you’ll be able to figure this out pretty quick and then get a sense of whether or not you should be too worried or not.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. But there’s no doubt, folks, that AI in 10 years is … I might have said this before. I think this world is totally different in 10 years because of AI.

Gabriel Lewit: Warehouse workers are already being replaced by AI bots.

Steve Lewit: Yep. Oh, big time.

Gabriel Lewit: Big time. Yeah, it’s changing. It’s very much changing.

Steve Lewit: If you’re driving a truck, I would be concerned about it.

Gabriel Lewit: There is concern there about the automated truck driving.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So what happens in economies that there’s always a dispersion or displacement of the current workers, but then there’s a new that come in the future … there are new skills that are needed and the labor force redefines itself. The problem is in the transition, people do get hurt, and that’s where we are right now.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, and that’s where we think the big question that comes from that question, or the big question that comes from that question, right? Will AI take my job? Because there’s a different question that comes from that question.

Steve Lewit: From that question.

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. The question is, are you prepared if it does, right?

Steve Lewit: Or what can you do today?

Gabriel Lewit: What can you do to be prepared for it?

Steve Lewit: To redefine yourself and start thinking about … If you’re younger, let’s say you’re 40 and you’re concerned, what can you do today and redefine yourself, recreate your work, who you are as a worker.

Gabriel Lewit: Well, look, planning is-

Steve Lewit: And that’s exciting in a way.

Gabriel Lewit: It could be scary. You probably don’t want to. Let’s say you first assess whether or not your job is at risk. That’s step number one. Okay. We’re going to plan ahead. We see this on the horizon. We hear about it. It’s making you nervous perhaps. Let’s plan ahead. The first question is assessing is AI likely to come for your job.

Steve Lewit: Okay. Let me ask you a question. We’re financial advisors. Can AI do financial plans?

Gabriel Lewit: It’s interesting. There is a firm out there. I won’t give the name that I just read that their CEO … Now, it’s a different kind of firm. It’s one where they were trying to do more automated advice in general to begin with, but they did have some human advisors and they were claiming that his goal as the CEO was to try to eliminate all of his human advisors by a certain timeframe. Now, I think there is always going to be a very large percentage of people when someone’s handling hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on their behalf that wants to know they’re talking to-

Steve Lewit: Their entire future.

Gabriel Lewit: Their entire future wants to know they’re talking to a real human. Okay?

Steve Lewit: Okay. So we’re in the same situation that everybody else is in.

Gabriel Lewit: But let me finish. I think if you were already naturally a DIYer and you’re just looking for some support to validate yourself, you might use this service because okay, you get a robo-advisor that truly can talk to you almost like a human, but you really don’t want a human to do it anyways. You want to do it for yourself. That could exist, but that’s a very different type of investor to begin with.

Steve Lewit: Yeah. So is there a time when we can plug in a client’s information, have AI create the plan instead of like sitting here in the team and saying, “Hey, maybe we should try that.”

Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s a little different. We’re talking here about AI replacing your job, not AI making your job maybe more efficient. So I do think AI can make many jobs more efficient, including ours. We already use it for certain things, but the question is, will it replace your job? I don’t think it’s going to replace a traditional financial advisor. For an exceptionally long time, unless there’s AI robots that are so humanoid-like and somebody still didn’t care that it wasn’t an actual human, I just don’t see it.

Steve Lewit: But if it did, folks, what we would be doing is we would be having discussions about how can we recreate ourselves as financial advisors to fit into this new model so that we can make a contribution to the business and to society and to help people. And if you’re in that boat of where you think you might be replaced or downsized, really take a look at how, and this is the question I was, how can I recreate myself to fit into this new world that is coming to us?

Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, yes, exactly. So you jumped in when I was giving a quick summary here of what someone should do.

Steve Lewit: Did I interrupt you?

Gabriel Lewit: Not exactly, but I was giving a kind of a one, two, three list, right? So first is make sure you’re aware of whether or not your job is at risk of being taken over by AI.

Steve Lewit: I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you at number two and a half.

Gabriel Lewit: Then I was going to say two is to plan ahead to say, what could you do if that were the case, right? Do you want to explore alternate careers? Do you want to figure out how, if your job gets taken over by AI, maybe they need to keep someone to manage that AI. You could get a leg up by learning how to really control the AI. So become an AI expert for your industry that would give you job security, but you want to get ahead of the curve.

Steve Lewit: Absolutely.

Gabriel Lewit: Okay. You want to have a backup plan and you want to make sure that your financial plan bottom line is in really good shape so that if something unexpected happens, it could, but don’t be caught off guard both from work as well as feeling like your whole retirement plan’s now ruined because of this. We can model this out and really get a sense of what could happen.

Steve Lewit: And Gabriel, I bet you have a number three after number two.

Gabriel Lewit: Number three is if we can help you with this in any way.

Steve Lewit: See the way I led you into that.

Gabriel Lewit: You could give us a call anytime. We’re here to help you with this. It’s a challenging question. It’s hard to navigate through all that.

Steve Lewit: It’s hard. It’s hard. You do something all your life and now you’re looking at a window where it’s like, “Hey, I might not be able to do this.” It’s hard.

Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Well, we’re here to help you with any and all financial questions you may have. Give us a call at any time. Our number here is 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click contact us or email us info@sglfinancial.com. We appreciate you sharing the show with your friends. We appreciate you listening, giving us your positive feedback. Thank you so much. We will talk to you on the very next show.

Steve Lewit: Stay well everybody.

Gabriel Lewit: Bye-bye.

Steve Lewit: Bye.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330 or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.

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