{"id":342965,"date":"2026-03-23T01:03:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/342965\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T01:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:03:22","slug":"financial-advice-is-all-over-the-internet-but-can-it-be-trusted-watch-out-for-these-red-flags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/342965\/","title":{"rendered":"Financial advice is all over the internet, but can it be trusted? Watch out for these red flags"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 22, 2026 \u2014 5:00am<\/p>\n

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Real Money, a free weekly newsletter giving expert tips on how to save, invest and make the most of your money, is sent every Sunday. You\u2019re reading an excerpt \u2212 sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.<\/a><\/p>\n

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (the \u201990s and early 2000s), good money advice was difficult to come by. Your choices were pretty much either to pay for financial advice, work it out yourself, or rely on the content in various self-help books or esteemed local newspapers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of the reason why books such as Scott Pape\u2019s The Barefoot Investor or Money guru Noel Whittaker\u2019s Making Money Made Simple became so monumentally popular, as they provided clear, easy to understand financial tips to a population that was desperate for them.<\/p>\n

\"CanCan you trust the financial advice you read online?Michael Howard<\/p>\n

Then the internet came along, which has generally been regarded as a huge mistake. Suddenly, everyone could get financial advice, and \u2013 more importantly \u2013 everyone could give financial advice, and people with vested interests got a massive platform to spruik their dubious investments.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"real<\/a>What\u2019s the problem?<\/p>\n

Over the years this has led to hundreds of thousands of Australians losing billions of dollars to various investment scams ($174 million in 2025 alone, according to Scamwatch). And, according to a recent survey by corporate regulator ASIC, Gen Z are also at risk, despite being considered a more \u201ctech-savvy\u201d generation.<\/p>\n

Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z use social media for financial information, and more than half of them say they trust the advice they find there. From that, nearly a third say they buy and sell investments \u2013 usually crypto \u2013 based on advice from social media \u201cfinfluencers\u201d.<\/p>\n

What you can do about it<\/p>\n

This has set off alarm bells at ASIC HQ, which has warned Gen Z investors to \u201csense check\u201d their online money advice, concerned it could be leading to riskier behaviours. So if you are getting money advice online, what red flags should you look out for?<\/p>\n

Are they real? Not to get immediately existential with you, but we are unfortunately in an era where it has become very difficult to determine if the people on your social media feeds are actual, breathing human beings. AI has become good enough to fool the average person, and will only get better, so ensuring your would-be advisor is real is critical. This is especially pertinent when it comes to anything seemingly being promoted by a celebrity, says Sarah Megginson, personal finance expert at Finder. \u201cDeepfake videos are so convincing, so you need to exercise extreme caution before clicking on any links that seem to come from celebrities or high-profile finance experts,\u201d she says. If you\u2019re unsure, Megginson suggests a quick Google of the celebrity\u2019s name and \u201cinvestment scam\u201d should reveal whether they are legit or not. (For example, there are multiple articles<\/a> highlighting scams featuring Fortescue CEO Andrew Forrest.) If they\u2019re not a celebrity, but you\u2019re still unsure, check them out on LinkedIn or just do a general Google \u2013 if there\u2019s not much about them online, or what you find looks suspect, it\u2019s best to steer clear.Are they applying pressure? The art of the hard sell has been around for decades, perfected in the \u201980s and \u201990s by Wolf of Wall Street-esque salesmen convincing you to invest in this crappy company now before this whole thing skyrockets. Unsurprisingly, these same tactics still work decades later, but this time it\u2019s young men on TikTok convincing people to buy whatever crappy crypto coin before it goes \u201cto the moon\u201d. This is another red flag to look out for, according to ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland. \u201cThat influencing behaviour that generates hype and urgency on social media is really intricately entwined with the sorts of behaviours that we see around crypto, and it\u2019s a key cause of some of the risks,\u201d he says. \u201cYes, some people will make money when the value is on the way up, but a lot of people will lose money when it plummets.\u201dAre they promoting one single product? One of the pillars of modern financial advice is diversification \u2013 not putting all your eggs in one basket, but rather spreading your money over a range of different options. It\u2019s for this reason that exchange-traded funds are so popular for investors of all ages, with some $330 billion invested in them in Australia alone. So it should be immediately concerning when someone is spruiking one specific investment (barring commodities such as gold), and Kirkland warns it\u2019s often the case that they\u2019re being paid to promote it. \u201cMaking investment choices is very much about picking something that\u2019s right for your individual circumstances, which involves understanding you as a person, understanding your needs and aspirations, and your financial situation,\u201d he says. \u201cSo if you see somebody online that\u2019s pushing a particular investment, that\u2019s an immediate red flag.\u201dAre they teaching you something, or selling you something? Finally, it\u2019s important to delineate between people online who are providing general advice (for example, much of the advice you might read in this newsletter), and people who promise to teach you something once you sign up for their three-week course. \u201cAbsolutely no shade to those who monetise their content and advice, especially if they\u2019re offering good value products and services that can help you improve your financial situation,\u201d Megginson says \u201cBut a lot of online advice isn\u2019t neutral, it\u2019s designed to create fear and scarcity, so you\u2019re incentivised to buy what they\u2019re selling.\u201d If a video or article ends in a call to sign up for something or to \u201cbuy this course this to learn more\u201d, you should be suspicious. \u201cGood financial guidance doesn\u2019t rely on pressure tactics or urgency,\u201d Megginson says.<\/p>\n

Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers\u2019 decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.<\/p>\n

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\"DominicDominic Powell<\/a> is the Money Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 22, 2026 \u2014 5:00am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-342965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}