This week on Your Money Guide on the Side, we’re tackling one of the questions I used to get more than any other—right after “Should I buy gold?” and “Is my advisor secretly bad at this?”

We’re talking about how to vet your own portfolio. Not how to invest—that’s for another episode. This is about taking the pulse of your current investments and asking: Does this still make sense for my life?

You’ll walk away with 7 practical steps to audit your own portfolio, whether you DIY, use an advisor, or have a Frankenstein’s monster of accounts stitched together from every job you’ve ever had. We’ll walk through questions like:

• Do you understand what you own—or is it the Donkle McFlonkerton Growth Fund?
• Can you see all your accounts in one place—or are they scattered like mustard packets in your fridge?
• Are your fees reasonable—or are you quietly tipping a deli worker $18 to assemble your own sandwich?
• Can you access your money when you actually need it?
• Is your portfolio accidentally built for a version of you who can stomach rollercoaster markets…but actually can’t?
• Are you diversified—or just holding Apple stock four different ways under four different fund names?
• And finally: Is it simple enough to forget about?

Because believe it or not, that’s the goal. Not to beat the market, but to build something so clean, boring, and well-designed that it just hums along in the background—freeing up your brain for better things. Like your family. Or your dog. Or binge-watching season three of Is It Cake? without guilt.

🎯 This episode is for you if:

• You’ve got multiple accounts and no idea what’s inside them.
• You’re unsure what you’re paying in fees—or if those fees are fair.
• You want clarity, simplicity, and confidence in your investments, without learning Latin.
• You suspect your portfolio is more complicated than it needs to be.
• You want a clear, evergreen checklist to revisit any time your finances feel murky.

Quick Favor?
If this show has been helpful, I’d be grateful if you’d leave a review on Apple Podcasts or share it with someone who might need a financial tune-up. Every episode is built to be evergreen—so whether you’re listening today or in 2035 while AI dogs are walking themselves, my goal is for it to still make sense, still help, and still cut through the noise.

Thanks for being here.

Let’s run the sanity check.

How secure is your future benefit and what should you actually do about it?

Taylor Sohns is a Certified Financial Planner™ and co-founder of Life Goal Wealth Advisors. Before starting his own firm, Taylor spent over a decade inside some of Wall Street’s biggest investment shops — the ones that build the ETFs, mutual funds, and hedge funds you’ve probably been pitched. Now he works on the other side of the table, helping everyday investors align their portfolios with their real-world goals.

📚 What We Discuss with Taylor Sohns:

🧮 02:30 — “Coming back to the math” — social security basics
📊 05:20 — The cumulative payout — monthly benefit vs. break-even point
❤️ 08:15 — Spousal benefits — why your timing affects more than just you
📉 11:50 — Social security cuts — what to consider beyond just “take it early”
💼 15:55 — Working after you start social security — common myths
📅 18:00 — Who should wait, who shouldn’t — the role of base rates and earning history
🧠 22:20 — Investment management = behavior management — risk, emotion, and real-life planning
🎯 26:15 — How risk tolerance is actually measured — and how firms get it wrong
📺 29:00 — Reactive news and robust markets — longterm vision
⚖️ 33:30 — Passive vs. active investing — ETFs, experience and exposure.
🔀 37:00 — Is there a middle ground? When active management makes sense

💡 What You’ll Walk Away With

• How to assess your own social security timing with math — not fear
• What to know about spousal and survivor benefits before you make a move
• How potential cuts to the system could affect your plan (and what not to panic about)
• What it really means to “work while claiming” — and who that works for
• Why risk tolerance isn’t just a form — and how to think about your own appetite for volatility
• A clearer understanding of the real debate between passive and active investing

🧾 Resources Mentioned

• Life Goal Wealth Advisors → www.lifegoalinvestments.com
• Taylor on Instagram → @lifegoalinvestments
• Social Security calculator → www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html
• CFP Board → www.letsmakeaplan.org

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Check out episode 26 with Tess Waresmith — a financial educator who shares the costly investing mistakes she made in her 20s, how to vet financial advisors, and why your ignorance is often someone else’s profit.

What if your smartest financial sidekick never sleeps, never judges, and doesn’t charge 1% AUM?

In this episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, Tyler Gardner explores how to use ChatGPT—not as your stock-picking guru, but as your emotionally-stable, algorithmic thought partner. One that can help you think better about money, values, timelines, and fees—without selling you a whole life policy disguised as “peace of mind.”

We break it down into five key ways AI can help you think more clearly, not just calculate faster:

🧭 Clarify Your Values
Ask ChatGPT: “What do I actually want money to do for me?” Spoiler: “Retire early and drink wine in Italy” is not a core value—it’s a Pinterest board. Let AI help you write a personal money mission statement and filter out everyone else’s goals.

🧠 Understand Your Risk Profile
Forget the nonsense quizzes (“If the market drops 20%, do you: A) Buy more, B) Cry in the tub...”). ChatGPT can simulate scenarios, unpack your financial behavior, and help you discover if you’re actually more golden retriever than honey badger when volatility hits.

📆 Map Your Timeline
Your life isn’t one big finish line. It’s a winding trail with sabbaticals, pivots, slow travel years, and expensive hobbies you haven’t picked yet. Use AI to draft your financial timeline and test your plan against reality—before your knees give out.

💸 Analyze Your Fees
The 1% “small” fee isn’t small when you compound it for 30 years. ChatGPT can help you unpack your advisor agreement or prospectus, run cost projections, and tell you whether you’re paying for advice—or just someone else’s lake house.

📊 Review Your Portfolio
Paste in your holdings and let AI review your diversification, concentration, expense ratios, and risk alignment. You may find out your “balanced” portfolio is just three tech stocks in a trench coat.

🔍 Bonus: Ask it to roleplay your 65-year-old self reviewing your current plan. You might learn what your future self wishes you’d done while you still have time to do it.

Bottom Line:
This isn’t about replacing all humans with robots. It’s about using sharper tools to ask better questions:

– What do I value?
– What’s my actual risk tolerance?
– When do I want money to matter?
– What am I really paying?
– Is my current strategy aligned with who I want to become?

If AI can help you do that without judgment, jargon, or sales tactics—why not use it?

So go ahead. Paste your plan. Ask the “dumb” question. And remember: the smartest people in the room aren’t the ones with all the answers—they’re the ones still curious enough to keep asking.

If this episode made you laugh, think, or recheck your advisor’s fee schedule—leave a review on Apple Podcasts or send it to a friend still paying 1.75% and calling it “normal.”