Together with

Hey Future Funders family,

In times where divisions feel like they are at an all time high, we are reminded that the one thing we could get every parent with small children to agree on is… abolish daylight savings.

Okay let’s get to it…

💬 Quote Of The Week

🥗 The Appetizers

Quick News Bites

🚂 The Fed, jobs, and the consumer. Three important pieces of economic news recently all point to the same thing: a slowing economy. The Fed meeting resulted in holding interest rates where they are; they noted that inflation is cooling and want to give it more time (Wall Street is betting they are done raising rates).

The monthly jobs numbers for October were weak as the economy added 150K jobs vs. expectations of 180K and we saw slowing wage growth… again.

Lastly, the Consumer Confidence Index declined for the third straight month now sitting at levels mostly seen during recessionary times.

Our take: The economy is clearly slowing, but it was interesting to see the stock market up last week despite this news (the S&P 500 index was up almost 6%).

The reason for this is investors think (for now) all of the above just means interest rate increases are done (higher interest rates = bad for stocks).

We think it’s a matter of time until investors pivot from looking solely at the Fed to actually realizing slowing growth is bad too… therefore, we would be careful making new investments over the next six months.

🧑‍🎓 For financial advice, there’s no place like home. A recent survey found that not all of our college kids are taking their financial cues from TikTok.

In fact, nearly two-thirds (64%) said they look to parents or family members the most for financial advice, compared with 1% who said they seek the advice of celebrities.

Our take: We were pleasantly surprised by these stats, but the bigger problem— and reason we created Dinner Table Discussions— is that we as parents were not taught much about money growing up… so how do we teach them?!

In a few months we will roll out a better solution to this question for our readers, but for now we are here to offer resources (and as always, with zero judgement and perpetual encouragement).

🍽️ The Main Course

A Dinner Table Discussion

Be Careful What You Wish For

🚀 What’s happening: The Biden Administration just signed an Executive Order, finally putting some long overdue guardrails around AI. But as the famous saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

How did we get here?

For about a year, Congress (you know, the people that actually are supposed to make the laws) has been bickering back and forth about what to do with artificial intelligence.

They have held hearings and currently even have a few bills drawn up, but nothing can seem to get any momentum yet (which is… so on brand for Congress). Given that they still haven’t done anything about protecting our kids from social media, we aren’t holding our breath on AI.

So what happened?

Whether you think the Biden Administration was tired of waiting for Congress to act, or just wanted to seize a moment for some sort of positive press… an Executive Order was signed to create a framework of rules that the industry will have to follow (as an aside, Executive Orders basically have the same legal authority as a law, they can just be reversed by any President with a stroke of the pen).

What’s in it?

The text is vague, but there are some positives and negatives to the 8 broad principles it lays out (you can read the full text here).

Positives

• We liked the requirement of government agencies to come up with a labeling system to help people determine if an image or text was created by AI or a human.

• We also liked that the order promised to enforce consumer protection laws creating penalties for any violation of privacy or personal data.

Negatives

• There was no guidance on how copyright or other forms of intellectual property will apply, and this will be a mess for the courts to figure out.

• Also, the order promotes close collaboration between the private sector and the government as new applications are developed (not sure how we feel about this one tbh).

Where does that leave us?

Ultimately, Congress is going to have to get their act together and do something with a bit more teeth as we are behind other nations (EU is set to finalize regulation this year) and this technology will only get more and more advanced.

Oh… and in the meantime, Elon Musk still thinks that AI could take over humanity, so there’s that.

👪 Closer to home: While we hoped we would get some AI regulation, we are now a bit cautious knowing that the devil is in the details of how this all gets implemented. It will likely fall on local government agencies to make a lot of judgement calls (which to us sounds like there is a lot of room for error).

The AI space is likely going to continue to evolve much faster than the government is able to keep up, which means that we as parents all need to learn as best we can to stay ahead.

Doing some reading, investigating, and most importantly talking to your kids about it around the dinner table can all be great ways to learn.

Here are some further resources we created to help:  

• Artificial Intelligence: A Parent's Guide to Navigating the Brave New World

• 10 Easy Ways to Boost Your Productivity with AI in Your Daily Life

• Movies With Artificial Intelligence: Our List Of 100

Dinner Discussion ❓

No peeking! Answer is below.

 Dining With The Average Joe

Guide to Becoming the Master of Coin

Step 1. Travel back to the period 298 A.C.

Step 2. Don't forget to take The Average Joe with you.

Their free financial newsletters will help you become a better investor and master of coin…

• You’ll be knowledgeable enough to run the king’s royal treasury.

• Clever enough to build a commodity empire selling bushels of wheat (or trade it all away for some brick).

• Stay up to date with the economic state of each of the Seven Kingdoms.

Back to the present: The Joe’s free financial newsletters are short, simple and concise — jam packed with market trends, news and insights that are relevant and impactful.

🥘 The Side Dishes

Your Money And Your Kids

💰 Wondering what your Social Security benefits will be when you retire? We found this great Social Security calculator to help you plan.

🗃️ A must flag for anyone who used 23andMe: they just sold your data to a pharmaceutical company.

🍕 Why thinking about money like a pepperoni pizza can help you explain it to your kids.

🍫 Giving you a reason to toss your kids Halloween candy: recent reports found concerning amounts of lead in 16 of 48 chocolate products tested.

🈺 Open enrollment for 2024 benefits for a lot of employees is happening now. One benefit we suggest that everyone understands is an Health Savings Account which is why we created a quick explanation of what it is.

🏦 The problem with saving money is that it’s not actually fun. Thats why we came up with a list of ways to make it (slightly) enjoyable and get the whole family involved.

🏠 A federal jury in Missouri found that the National Association of Realtors was liable for the massive sum after they concluded the trade group conspired to artificially inflate commissions on home sales. Here’s what it means for homeowners.

🧑‍💼 Think it’s too late for you to switch jobs? We don’t. This read on mid-career workers pivoting to their dream jobs was inspiring.

💸 Everyone could use some financial advice from time to time (us included!) but a big problem is just getting started figuring out who can help. That’s why we broke down a financial advisor vs. a financial coach and how each can help you.

🏠 If you are in the market for a new family home, we put together a quick 10 step checklist to help you find what you are looking for.

💸 Last week the Treasury Department announced a new Series I bond rate of 5.27% for the next 6th months (fourth highest in history). If you are thinking “what the heck is an I bond?”, don’t worry we got you covered.

🍨 Dessert

This Week’s Deals, Reads & Other Finds

🤖 The AI Tool Report will teach you how to save time and earn more with AI. Join execs from Microsoft, Tesla, and Meta who read us and learn about trending tools, powerful prompts, and the latest news. Sign up here! 

🍊 Meco is a distraction-free space for reading newsletters outside the inbox. The app is packed with features designed to supercharge your learnings from your favorite writers. Become a more productive reader and cut out the noise with Meco - try the app today!

📚 Bookbub helps millions of readers save up to 95% on bestselling ebooks. Join for free and get incredible ebook deals, straight to your inbox.

❓ The scientific evidence behind the benefits of repetition & active meditation is undeniable, and the 1-min daily question delivered to you leverages this knowledge to help you succeed in a simple way and see results after just the first question. Sign up today!

.

*our goal is to always keep this newsletter free. If you buy or subscribe to something through our newsletter we may earn a small commission, at no added charge to you, in order to help us keep the lights on

Dinner Discussion ❓

Answer: With a valuation of about $90 billion OpenAI is already worth more than Mercedes-Benz.

❤️ Invite Your Family

If like us, you believe in the power of financial freedom, we welcome you to share this newsletter with your family. Have them sign up here!

Together With The Average Joe

Today’s issue was sponsored by The Average Joe, helping you stay up on current market tends, news and insights. Check them out here.

About Us I Advertise With Us