In this episode Justin and Jared dive into a lightning round covering AI in wealth management, the growing appeal of “anti-tech” living, and how to think about gold in today’s market. They explore how AI is transforming the financial planning profession—enhancing efficiency while still requiring human judgment for deeper, more personalized decision-making. The conversation also highlights a cultural shift toward choosing simplicity and “friction” in a hyper-optimized world. Finally, they discuss how to approach gold and commodities within a portfolio, emphasizing the importance of having a clear investment framework and balanced strategy.

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Welcome to Financial Planning for Oil and Gas Professionals, hosted by certified financial planners Justin Brownlee and Jared Machen of Brownlee Wealth Management, the only podcast dedicated to those of you in the oil and gas profession to help you optimize investments, lower future taxes and grow your wealth.

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Welcome back to another episode of FPO G Nature Planning for Oil and Gas Professionals.

This week on the podcast, we're going to do a lightning round.

For those of you that this is your first time listening, that means we cover a few different topics.

10 Minutes or less.

We'll see how many we get to.

But I know first one's on the docket.

We're going to talk about AI and wealth management, we're going to talk about anti technology technology and then we're going to talk about gold.

Justin, so I'm curious, AI and wealth management, right?

Like, I feel like this is the first time we're really talking about AI, but, but I'm just curious for you generally, what are your thoughts about AI?

And on a scale of 1 to 10, how scared are you about your job being replaced by artificial intelligence?

You know, it is interesting.

We have been using AI pretty regularly for a while now, quite a while, and it's been incredibly helpful.

I think there's a couple different thoughts about where AI can go.

One end of that extreme is just job replacement and humans are not needed for a ton of things.

The other end of that spectrum, or maybe this is middle of the spectrum, is AI is an incredible tool that makes things wildly more efficient, sharper, kind of an optimizer.

And we have certainly seen that to be the case.

I want to say something, Jared.

I would say up to this point with AI and wealth management, we're actually not in a different place by and large than we were 15 years ago.

Ish.

And do you remember how many calls there were, how many predictions there were that robo advisors were going to be this force that just ended the need for a financial advisor?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean think about, there were so many companies that that was their fundamental value proposition.

And a lot of those companies either no longer exist or have been absolved, you know, acquired by a larger company.

But yeah, that was, there was a lot of doom and gloom about robos taking our jobs.

Right.

And I mentioned that.

Not doing that at all.

But I do think the end product isn't totally dissimilar in the sense that an AI or, sorry, a robo advisor, could completely handle the allocation, the rebalance, the monitoring and the management of a portfolio.

Right.

And what it did is it really shifted to where the marketplace started to demand more of their advisory services.

The marketplace began to demand, hey, why are you not reviewing my tax return?

Why are you not reading through my revocable living trust?

Why are you not thinking through an asset protection plan?

That one facet of the job really became kind of solved with technology.

And that's not too dissimilar from where we are today with AI.

But what do you think?

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy to think about, you know, when I started in the profession over 10 years ago, like a big portion of my job was things that are now done automatically, right?

Like, like.

And like.

So, like preparing paperwork and opening up five trust accounts, three IRAs.

That was, you know, and completing the TOAs.

That was a logistical undertaking.

And hundreds of pages of paper and flagging and all that stuff.

And of course, taking meeting notes.

That's a huge thing.

Hey, what did we talk about?

What's the follow up?

And now AI does all of the heavy lifting of that for us, right?

And I think there's been a ton of service expansion.

I would say generally I'm, I'm not super scared about job replacement, right.

I think a few things, I think a few things are true, right?

Like what you're saying there will be productivity gains, right?

I would argue, like, every firm should be using AI, right?

And so I think that if you're not using AI, then I think you should be scared about job replacement.

But AI should enhance the job you do.

And I think, you know, that increases.

One of two things happens.

Either services get better or costs get reduced, right?

Like if your advisor is still charging you 1% for portfolio management.

Might have been worth it, honestly.

But like today, no, absolutely not.

Right?

Like the industry has gotten too good, the technology's gotten too good for that to be what you, you're paying for.

So like if your advisor is thoughtfully implementing this, there should be some gains to you, whether it be an increased service or reduced cost or both.

I think there's some fundamental problems with AI specifically as it relates to our business.

One, I think, hey, financial planning is about life optimization.

While considering the financial consequences and sometimes your optimal life.

It's a very existential question and sometimes it'll be counter to what financial reasoning says, right?

Like our goal is not to help you die with a maximum pile of money, it's to make life optimal decisions.

And for an AI agent to really truly know your life and help you kind of analyze the fuzzy trade offs that are life well lived and using your capital to make your life more purposeful.

I think it's tough to replace a thinking partner to kind of have that conversation.

And again, AI can do some of that.

So I'm not saying, you know, that that's the value proposition.

I would just argue where it's the hard, it's gonna be the hardest for AI to disrupt, where there's the most humanness involved, where it's the messiest.

Right.

I think that's a great point.

And what I'm about to say might sound a little dystopian and I'm just gonna think out loud, this is not a fully formed thought.

There are some limitations with services that humans provide.

So in a sense AI can help with that because it's kind of like the anti human in that regard.

Now what obviously everyone hopes is that this doesn't, and this is in every industry, in every facet, we hope that AI doesn't turn fully anti human.

And I guess what I'm saying is I do think there is going to be an enormous demand and desire for human advocacy in every service, every part of life where AI is involved.

I don't think anyone is going to feel fully comfortable handing over the reins in every part entirely to AI.

Yeah, exactly.

And here's the thing.

AI is good at giving you half baked answers with incomplete information.

And the problem is good financial planning is actually the opposite framework.

How do I ask 10 subsequent questions to get at what are the heart is of what's actually being asked and what context am I missing?

And do I need like a great example of this is if, if I Just ask it a question of, hey, is there an estate tax where I am?

Okay.

No, there's not, but.

Okay.

I'm actually asking this on behalf of a client who lives in Illinois where there is estate tax.

Right.

Like, unless I clarify, you know, the space of residents, it'll probably give me an answer saying, generally there's not here, hey, here's these states might have it and depending on the.

I've seen it, you know, like hallucinate or when, when it's been.

When I've used it to ask questions, use incorrect pieces of legislation or give me an answer based on antiquated tax code.

But again, I think it, you know, I would say it does a lot of the first drafting well, but there needs to be an overlay that sits on top of it, that contextualizes it and making sure that it has all the correct information.

But I think at this, you know, this juncture, and of course, it's custom agents get more specialized with knowledge bases that are helpful to our industry.

I think that helps.

But if, if you just, you know, you use Mr. Advisor ChatGPT, there's a good chance that it could be categorically wrong and you won't know to ask clarifying questions to make sure it is right.

Yep, absolutely.

I do think there's an element too where there can be some fears, and there have always been significant fears around new technology forever.

One of my favorite stories is there was a pastor in England and, you know, I'm going to kind of give away the gist of the story, but this is a very long time ago, generations and generations ago.

And one time he gave a sermon on the dangers of this new technology, warning that this new technology was going to make humans less reliant on each other.

So it was going to decrease relationships, it was going to decrease family time together, connecting with real friendships just in the community.

And it was going to speed up the pace of life to where humans were no longer going to be able to thoughtfully reflect and effectively it was just going to make life worse.

This new technology, Jared, that new technology was the bicycle.

And so I want to just say that, to say, you know, there are good and bad things with every technological advancement.

And I do think it's important to adopt.

What does Nick Murray say?

Optimism is the only realism, especially if you're an investor.

You must believe that you have to adhere to that if you're going to invest.

And so, you know, I think there's a lot to kind of go into, but we're continuing to see that the new technologies that are, that are coming up are making our business more efficient.

And you know, as you've said it should with every advisory firm, it should translate to increased service or better cost.

Yeah.

And I think, right.

Like it'd be foolish to say there's no way we would get replaced.

But it's like, but it's funny because the problem is also the solution.

I think the best way to make sure AI doesn't replace you is to integrate AI into your practice.

Right.

And so I think, and figure out what are the human things that you need to do and let AI do those things.

I'd also be curious for like our listeners.

Send us a comment or you know, respond on the video.

Comment, whatever, send us an email.

I'm curious like if you're a petroleum engineer, what is, what does that look like?

Right.

Or if you're a manager of petroleum engineers or if you're at C suite.

I'm curious how you are using AI in your practice and also how scared are you about job replacement and or versus job kind of augmentation enhancement.

All right, Justin.

Well, I feel like any conversation about AI can be kind of doom and gloom, kind of existential, but I think kind of conversely getting back to what makes us human, I want to talk about anti tech next.

Technological overlords, artificial general intelligence.

That's all kind of scary existential stuff.

But I love your framing of optimism is the only realism, especially as an investor.

You just have to believe that we're going to benefit from this.

But I do kind of want to highlight this story.

You share this with me.

There's a guy named J.C. foster and he used to work at SpaceX and he started a coffee company and it's called Pure Steel and there's no plastic, it's one button.

And it's like, it's just, I don't know, I see more and more stuff like this.

Another example is it's called the Light phone and they've sold hundreds of thousands of these phones and it's basically like a dumb phone.

It's just like, it's like a jitterbug.

It's where you're like a Nokia brick phone with all that functionality.

And you know these things sell for $300 a piece and it's like, it's basically a dumbed down phone.

But I don't know, it's kind of in the wake of all of this technological advancement, AI is going to take over everything.

Oh, I have a humanoid robot.

That's my barista.

This guy who worked at SpaceX quit or left or I don't know.

But now he's allocating his time, energy and attention to making a coffee machine with one button.

I don't know, I just.

It's just fascinating.

I'm curious what you make of that and how that may or may not be connected to the prior conversation we had about AI taking over everything.

It's a very compelling example of what you said.

Technological advancements do have this kind of byproduct of it making things less human.

And we desire a return to things that are real and things that are human on the kind of kitchen utensil item.

It is amazing that we are all buying coffee machines that are more like rocket ships today.

And it's like, what are we doing?

I was telling you about a story.

Gosh, this is a few months ago.

So my family and some friends of ours, we were staying just at a vacation house for a few days and the house is maybe 5, 10 years old.

So it's brand new oven is one of those smart ovens, just really high end oven.

And Jared, the oven wasn't working.

You couldn't turn the oven on.

So we kind of talked to customer service, they confirmed, yeah, it's not working.

The fascinating thing, this oven had a touchscreen.

So what did work is I could check my email on this oven, I could watch YouTube on this oven, but we couldn't bake cookies.

And what a ridiculous thing.

Why in the world would I ever.

Oh, we could listen to podcasts, which, you know, maybe that is.

Yeah, maybe, maybe FP o n G needs to hit the oven circuit.

But what a perfect example of we don't need ovens to play us YouTube videos or help us check our email.

We just want to push a button and have it reliably get to 375 degrees.

But I do think that's like very like emblematic of like we can overdo it, right?

And I think like what it is to be human is I think to like.

My dad talks about this idea and he like instilled it for me from a young age of like, sometimes we choose friction, right?

Like sometimes we, we choose the less efficient way because it supports somebody in some way or, you know, or you walk because the view is better or, you know, you pay a little extra for this thing because the person who made it, you know, has dignity in making it, right.

There's a lot of times where you can over optimize to where you just dehumanize.

Right.

And so I think, I think I love kind of these stories back to back because I think AI is taking over, technological advancement is ramping up.

But also conversely, there are some things that will always kind of make us human.

And I think as AI slop, everything becomes over engineered and AI infiltrates everywhere, I think we'll crave humanness more.

And kind of choosing like if everything's over optimized, it's kind of, you kind of end up in this dystopian state where everything does everything and nothing.

That's right.

It's this tricky dynamic where as things progress, it can be very good.

So think about the just tech boom in the US over the past 20 years.

Well, guess what, there are some pretty incredible parts to that because we are talking about take the Magnificent Seven or zoom out a little bit and include 20, 30 different publicly traded tech companies.

And really you could go to hundreds public and private companies.

Jared, there are millions of millionaires in the US that were never close to the C suite at these companies and they are still building incredible wealth just having a job at these companies, that is incredibly good.

But what's not good is, you know, I saw two different headlines in the Wall Street Journal over the past month and these headlines were like one or two days apart.

One headline was, the cost of AI efforts is just truly unbelievable.

The amount that we are investing into AI as a country is rivaling basically any project that we've ever undertaken.

And then a day or two later it was an article on Amazon is laying off 16,000 employees, I think because of AI advancements.

And so that is an interesting thought.

A lot of times we will choose friction.

Like we will choose to not drive because the walk is more beautiful, like you said.

And I think we're going to see a lot of people choose, hey, this might be a more expensive option, but I'm paying for something because humans benefit if I support this company or pay this in this way or it just.

Meets a need, right?

My wife's a mental health therapist and I think, or she was prior to being a mom full time and I'm sure she'll get back into a version of that.

I can have AI, you know, simulate empathy, but they, I don't know if they can't ever really be empathetic, right?

And so like I can, you know, have a talking person that kind of like helps me troubleshoot, but also like, I want to be seen as a human, right?

And so Like, I think there will be spaces like that where, you know, I think we'll, we'll choose that friction, if you will.

Justin, I'm curious for you kind of on the, on that idea of like choosing friction.

Can you tell me, like, what's an example in your life of like something you get deep, deep satisfaction from and it's like technologically suboptimal, you know what I mean?

Like where, where like you've chosen this friction in your life and it's like definite made it better because I feel like there's so much, there's so much that helps you kind of over engineer, over optimize.

And so I'm curious for you if you have anything in your life like that.

Man, that's a really good question.

This is my gut answer.

I mean, I want to have us both unpack that question more and spend more time thinking about it.

Could be a great segment for our next lightning pod.

The first thing that comes to mind, and this may not even be a great answer.

What you were looking for, Jared, when the iPad came out, what is that, 16 years ago?

17?

Something like that.

I became enamored with ebooks.

So like building out the ibooks Apple app library.

Because what I loved is you could highlight things and then you could have a catalog where I could quickly get, hey, this is all my highlights from these books.

And I'm thinking, I want to repurchase every single ebook that I have as the physical book.

And I want more physical books.

And so yeah, that translates to anything.

Whether it's just fiction, a nonfiction, whether I'm reading the Bible, whatever it is, I crave the physical book.

Again, I've kind of gone back and forth on that spectrum where like I've gone ebooks.

I like the highlighter, but I also like physical copies.

So I agree with you.

I kind of go back and forth.

I think for me, one of my things is coffee, actually.

So like I make my own pour over every morning.

Quick pause there.

If you have the opportunity to experience a Jared pour over, it's a life changing experience.

You'll be anti AI after having one of my pour overs.

I think that's a good point.

And I Think that, you know, that's a really bad job by Nathan Steele, our fellow partner in Bradley Wealth Management, who does not drink coffee regularly.

Maybe he needs to have more of your pour overs.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

I'll start sending them.

But yeah, I love it.

It's a friction, but like it's, it's a morning ritual.

Like I could press a button, it could happen automatically.

Not only do I get better coffee, but it's a rhythm and it's like a slowness and there's no screens.

It's just me and my coffee.

And like recently Ellis has gotten involved in the process and I think, like, I don't know, kids love a job to do.

So when he wakes up and makes the coffee, he's very excited for all the steps and he's getting pretty good at em.

I don't really need to tell him everything.

And just the smile he has on his face as he brings Aaron her cup of coffee, nearly almost spilling it on himself and everyone else every morning.

It's anxiety inducing.

But it's also a beautiful thing.

That's a beautiful thing.

I follow this person on social media.

I can't even remember his name.

Simon Saurus or something.

And for years he will post his pour over with some sort of caption that says something like, every cup of coffee is sacred.

It's a pretty good thought.

Yeah, I love that.

I would also love to hear from our listeners.

Right.

Like, what's one example in your life where you get deep satisfaction from choosing a technologically suboptimal outcome?

Right.

And I think there should always be answers for that because it makes you human.

All right, Justin, next topic.

Okay, so we've talked about wide range of spectrums or AI overlords and then choosing friction.

I want to kind of switch gears a little bit to a listener question.

I love this question.

And I'm going to read it exactly how it was asked because it's hilarious.

Hypothetically, if you had a boomer parent who's sitting on a stockpile of gold and silver, is this the year to finally unload it?

What if they are treating the gold like Gollum coveted the ring?

What a question.

You know, I was gonna say, hey, Jared, it's time to diversify.

It's time to just let go of the gold and silver.

But now that I know that they were treating it like Gollum coveted the ring, I think, does that change my answer?

Yeah.

Like what would Gollum do without the ring?

You know?

Good point.

Yeah.

There's A big void, I think.

Okay, so generally, right, like I'm gonna give you like pragmatic, pragmatically, like I think you should have decided this ahead of time.

Like first off, right, like the best way to make an investment is when you make in the investment what has to be true for you to sell or buy more.

Right?

Like, I think a lot of people haven't thought about that.

Like, and again, I think us as humans, our emotions make muddy things up so much that making a decision when you know, there's peak euphoria or peak pessimism feels like a bad time to make a decision.

Ideally you would have thought this out ahead of time, right?

To kind of have a risk based framework.

I think my second answer would be like, like what percentage are you comfortable with as it, as it pertains to your net worth, right?

Because assuming you own a disproportionate amount, especially this Gollum character probably has.

It has a big percentage of their portfolio and it's gotten even bigger.

I would say, hey, absolutely, you probably should de risk and take some off the table and sell half.

What do you think?

Justin, I want to just highlight something you said.

You should have a very strong conviction, a very strong reason for why you own the assets that you own and that should govern your decision making in all seasons of a volatile market.

Jared, there's, you know, kind of a, a comment that gets thrown on social media within the investment world all the time.

And it is, I mean, bitcoin is a wonderful example.

Whenever bitcoin has a drop, you know, let's say it was at 120,000 and it goes down to 70,000.

Relevant, you know, example.

A lot of people will tweet something in kind of tongue in cheek, but they'll say if you liked Bitcoin at 120,000, surely you love it at 70,000, right?

But that comment, it's kind of an evergreen comment that gets shared with any asset whenever it goes through a short term price drop.

There's so much truth in that because as humans, every bit of data suggests that for whatever reason, we really struggle with that idea.

Go back to the pandemic, Jared.

There were buyers for ExxonMobil at $80 a share.

Before the pandemic, there were buyers.

This is an open, free market.

There are buyers and sellers.

So when ExxonMobil goes down to, you know, $30 share five, six years ago, surely those buyers are now ecstatic about the opportunity to buy more.

I mean, if they have, you know, the ability, the dry powder, to buy more.

But I think that's a really important idea.

Why do you own what you own?

If you have a strong conviction for the assets that you own, then that should be your North Star.

You should be impervious to price drops because that idea, if you liked an investment at 3x, well, surely you should like the idea of buying it at 2x if you know you have the liquidity to do so.

Yeah.

Also, like, I think it's important we talk about like where we are, right?

Like in the.

Here's the.

Also the interesting thing about gold, you look at gold price in US dollars and like it's not like looking at the stock market, you're not getting paid dividends along the way, right.

It's like you sit on it, hide it, right?

And my guess is this Gollum character owns a lot of it.

Physically it's not paying dividends.

It's not any of that.

Like you have to buy it and then you have to sell it.

Right.

So it's 3x in the last 6ish years or 5, 5 and change.

Remarkable, right?

That's, that's huge.

Yeah, but like if you, if you zoom out, it has gotten wrecked by the S&P 500.

And we've talked about this in future podcasts.

But like, like the idea of like a, like commodities is an asset class, generally it's oversimplifying it, but like there are environments where it tends to do really well.

Right.

Like if gold's going to keep pace with inflation, it's going to have decades where it goes nowhere and decades where it goes parabolic.

And like, you have to be prepared for that if you're going to continue to hold it in the percentage that you hold it.

And you know, Jared, just speaking personal preference here, I think a ton of people are with me on this, but obviously I'm very much more excited about investments where I am investing in future cash flows.

So whether it is A tiny, tiny micro example and it is an ice machine in a random parking lot.

Well, that ice machine can be a very good investment because there are future cash flows that will likely come from it.

Or whether it's the largest company in the world or any one of the largest 500, whether it's Nvidia, Coca Cola, whatever, there are likely big future cash flows.

The problem, the difficulty with gold in Bitcoin is, well, you're owning something that's more speculative in nature.

There's not an underlying mechanism that makes money on an ongoing basis.

Right, Right.

So yeah, it's speculative in the sense of the reason you own it is that somebody will pay more for it later.

Right?

Yeah.

And again, in the existential scenario where you're using gold for its physical utility.

Oh, that's a tough.

Here's the thing about gold investing is it feels like it's predicated on pessimism, which is just a hard framework to get excited about from an investor.

From an investor perspective, right.

Like the reason we invest is because like we believe human ingenuity is going to be deployed in a creative ways and that that is going to benefit society and shareholders.

Right.

Like that's why we invest.

And so the gold narrative is tough.

Right.

Like you can back test a lot of portfolios, like Ray Dalio's permanent portfolio that has a meaningful gold allocation.

Right.

And kind of end up with different asset classes that get close to a long term investment mix if you rebalance it.

But the thing is, right, the disposition that makes you overweight on gold probably is, also prevents you from using a risk management approach to sell it because it's rooted, it's fundamentally rooted in pessimism a lot of times.

That's right.

And you know, I do want to be fair on some of these comments.

There are absolutely worthy investments that may not have, you know, cash flow on them.

Like raw land is a good example.

Maybe you're not making a timber play or an agricultural play.

You're, you're just owning raw land that can be a viable investment and there obviously is some underlying value there.

So it's not as if, you know, it's 100% true with the, you know, future buying into future cash flows.

But it's a whole lot easier to get excited about assets and investments that do offer that future cash flow.

Yeah, again, like I would probably, based on what I'm hearing, it probably makes sense to unload some.

But I empathize with hey, continuing to own it.

And like if we are entering what a Lot of, you know, macro economists are calling a commodity super cycle.

You could wake up three years from now and it could be double what it is today.

And again, it's all about position.

It's all about position sizing.

This person will probably likely always have gold and silver.

So they're not gonna unload it like in, in totality, which is fine.

But just determine, hey, how much of this do I want to be in my portfolio?

And again, it kind of takes the emotion out of it.

If it doubles, I de risk, you know, if it, if it's 5% of my global portfolio and it goes to 10, okay, I cut it in half.

Okay.

If I have it at 5% of my portfolio and it crashes and I'm not excited about moving it to 5, you know, buying it back to 5% and getting it on a discount, then I'm probably not owning it for the right reasons.

But I love the idea of employing a risk based framework.

And you know, I empathize, right?

Like, hey, you know, we are entering an unprecedented territory with the balance sheets of every developed country in the world, right?

Like, so, like, I empathize like it's a scary, scary future.

And you know, the bent, like if we, if we overprint currency and inflation becomes a long term issue, gold.

Having gold will help.

Owning equities will help.

Owning raw land will help assets become scarce.

So owning assets and this is a asset to own, right?

So like, I wouldn't let it be a disproportionate percentage of your portfolio and then develop a risk based framework.

But then also think about, you know, hey, even if you have, you know, thinking about gold a lot of times being a pessimistic part of the portfolio, what part of your portfolio is optimistic?

Like, what happens if things go well?

Does any part of your portfolio more offensive?

Because gold feels very defensive to me.

That's.

Well played.

Cool.

Awesome.

Well, three topics, 10 minutes or less.

We're right at 30 minutes, so we'll wrap it up there.

Love the listener questions, love the feedback, love the engagement and we love ideas for future episodes.

And thank you so much for listening.

Like, subscribe, share.

We love growing this show podcast at Brownlee Wealth Management.

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We'll see you next time.

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