This week, we’re talking about what’s really going on in the AI layoff era, and why the way you interpret that moment matters almost as much as the layoff itself.

If all you hear is “a robot replaced me,” it’s easy to spiral, panic pivot, and start solving the wrong problem. But if you know how to read the room, you can make smarter decisions about your career, your money, and where to go from here.

Losing a job is already disruptive enough. The last thing you need is to turn it into a full-blown crisis about your worth. If this episode hit home, leave a review, share it with somebody who needs it, and subscribe so you don’t miss the next one.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “because AI” doesn’t always mean a robot directly replaced your job
• The 3 different things companies might mean when they blame AI
• How to tell the difference between an actual workflow change and plain old cost-cutting
• Why panic pivoting can get expensive fast
• What to look at first if you’ve been laid off
• Why becoming AI-capable matters more than becoming an “AI expert”
• How to reposition your experience without throwing away your strengths
• Why “AI-first” language doesn’t always mean your job or industry is cooked
• Why layoffs hit your identity so hard, and how to stop making it worse

Connect with Julien and Kiersten on our website, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Join our email list to get updates from us, opportunities for discounts, freebies and a quick rundown on the relevant financial and career news impacting your life.

Get our book Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away, named 2023 best overall book about investing by Business Insider and one of the best personal finance books by Forbes

If you would like to learn more about investing, check out our newest class, Making Money Grow

We spent a week talking to hundreds of high school seniors about money, and they gave us more hope than we expected. Underneath the stereotypes about “kids these days,” we found a generation that already understands more than adults give them credit for, while still being dangerously underprepared for some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives.

So this week, we’re talking about what stood out after speaking to 400+ students across 5 high schools in the Chicago area and what parents, teachers, and honestly all of us should take from it.

They knew saving mattered, they had opinions about frugality, and some were already working jobs. There were a few who were already gambling, and way too many were about to sign student loan paperwork without fully understanding what they were agreeing to.

If you’ve got a teenager, a future college student, or a young person in your life who thinks money talk is boring, this episode might help you reach them a little differently. This conversation isn’t just about teens. It’s about what happens when financial education is too late, too shallow, or too disconnected from real life.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why so many teenagers understand everyday saving but still don’t understand student loans
• The shocking number of students already seeing gambling as a real way to make money
• How “frugal” stopped being an insult and started sounding practical
• Why kids were more engaged than the grownups who usually sit through money talks
• What they got wrong about the biggest expenses in adult life and why that matters
• The difference between knowing stocks exist and actually understanding investing
• Why buy now, pay later needs to be explained as credit, not convenience
• What this experience taught us about Gen Z, money, and the adults responsible for filling in the gaps
• How parents can use AI to make money lessons click for kids who seem uninterested

Links:

• Other experts mentioned in this episode: Chris Corinthian, Berna Anat, Yanely Espinal, Dr. Paris Woods

Connect with Julien and Kiersten on our website, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Join our email list to get updates from us, opportunities for discounts, freebies and a quick rundown on the relevant financial and career news impacting your life.

Get our book Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away, named 2023 best overall book about investing by Business Insider and one of the best personal finance books by Forbes

If you would like to learn more about investing, check out our newest class, Making Money Grow

There’s a casino in everybody’s pocket now, and it’s wearing a jersey.

This week’s episode is about sports gambling, why it’s exploding right now, and the data that should make you pause before you normalize it in your house, your group chat, or your relationship.

We promise this isn’t an anti-fun sermon, it’s a reality check. If you’re someone who sports bets but has real limits in place…tell us what’s working. And if you’ve seen this start “small” and turn into something bigger in your life or somebody you love… drop a comment. People actually read them, and somebody needs that story.

We get into:

• Why “it’s just entertainment” doesn’t hold up
• The fantasy sports gateway
• The uncomfortable overlap between sports bettors, crypto people, and day traders
• The stats that made us go: oh… this is a public health issue (debt, missed bills, payday loans, bankruptcy spikes)
• How this isn’t “just a men’s issue” anymore and why women’s growth in betting makes total sense
• The darker stuff no one wants to talk about: mental health, domestic violence spikes, and what happens after “a devastating loss”
• Why we think gambling needs to be part of modern financial literacy the same way drugs/alcohol were when we grew up
• What to do if you suspect it’s becoming a problem (and why the hotline is not the solution people think it is)

Links:

• Watch - VICE documentary: “The Sports Betting Boom”
• Watch - Money on the Table - Season 3, Episode 3 - Luck is not a plan
• Read - My Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler

Connect with Julien and Kiersten on our website, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Join our email list to get updates from us, opportunities for discounts, freebies and a quick rundown on the relevant financial and career news impacting your life.

Get our book Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away, named 2023 best overall book about investing by Business Insider and one of the best personal finance books by Forbes

If you would like to learn more about investing, check out our newest class, Making Money Grow