Erin Moriarity: My Dad Lost About $1.5 Million on Bad Investments. Here’s How to Avoid His Mistakes

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Erin Moriarity (0:18)

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Amy Arnott (0:26)

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Christine Benz (0:30)

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Christine Benz (0:51)

Hi and welcome to The Long View. I'm Christine Benz, Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning for Morningstar.

Amy Arnott (0:57)

And I'm Amy Arnott, Portfolio Strategist for Morningstar.

Christine Benz (1:00)

Our guest on the podcast today is Erin Moriarity. Erin is the originator of the Erin Talks Money channel on YouTube, where she explains personal finance and retirement planning concepts with easy-to-understand videos. Erin received her bachelor's degree in business at Northern Michigan University and completed the Certified Financial Planner program at The Ohio State University.

So, Amy, I loved hearing about Erin's thought process on providing financial information to people who weren't being well served by traditional financial advice models.

Amy Arnott (1:35)

Yeah. A couple of other highlights for me were her comments about Social Security and why people shouldn't worry too much about benefits going away due to lack of funding, as well as really the value of working with an advisor later in life, even if you're a do-it-yourself investor.

Christine Benz (1:56)

So let's get into the conversation. Erin, welcome to The Long View.

Erin Moriarity (2:03)

Thank you for having me.

Christine Benz (2:05)

Well, thanks for being here. We've wanted to talk for some time, so we're excited that we finally have the opportunity. We wanted to start by getting a little bit of information on your background. What was the impetus for you going through the Certified Financial Planner program and getting interested in personal finance to begin with?

Erin Moriarity (2:24)

I got interested in personal finance at a very young age. My grandma was a big investor, and she would teach me all about how she was investing in mutual funds. And she didn't really do individual stocks, but she used individual stocks as a teaching platform for me. So my first stock I ever bought was Campbell Soup, because if you ever saw their collecting cards, there was these cute little kids with these chubby little cheeks, so I loved them. And first stock, Campbell Soup, on my eighth birthday. And she would teach me how to track the price changes. We were in Michigan, so we had the Detroit Free Press, and I would run out and get the paper every morning to see how the stock changed. My mom was also somewhat interested in investing, but I would say much less than my grandma.

So I grew up very interested in compounding, investing.

Then I went to school. I got my degree in personal finance, and then I figured the next natural steps would be the CFP coursework, which I completed. But then I never did my apprenticeship hours, so I can't use the distinction yet.

Christine Benz (3:28)

Yeah. I had the same experience with CFP, by the way.

Erin Moriarity (3:32)

Yeah.

Amy Arnott (3:34)

Yeah. So you mentioned buying your first stock when you were eight years old, and we sometimes hear people talking about financial education, and literacy, and promoting the idea that investing in stocks is a good way to learn about investing. There are, you know, a lot of schools have the stock market game that they use as a teaching tool.

Erin Moriarity (3:58)

Yes.

Amy Arnott (3:59)

What do you think about that? Do you think that type of game can be effective?

Erin Moriarity (4:05)

I thought it was great. When I was in ninth grade, my econ class, Mr. Hills, he had us do that game. So we had a competition over the course of a semester to see who could grow their portfolio the most. So it was kind of engaging.

I remember thinking, oh, I've been investing since I was eight. I'm going to win this game. I did not win this game because it turns out predicting the stock market is harder than you might imagine. But I really like the idea of people getting their children interested with individual stocks. Not that I think that that's the best investing approach, but if you can connect them to one company, if we use like McDonald's as an example, you can take them to McDonald's and say like you own a piece of this company and there's somewhat of an attachment. If you start them with an index fund, it's very hard to explain that concept at a really young age in a way that they could get attached to it, my belief as well.