Z Good and Z Bad

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Investing, Education, Business, How To

4.5 • 810 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom and Don grade Gen Z investors from a recent Wall Street Journal article, discussing their portfolios, common mistakes like stock picking, active management, and crypto speculation. They move into practical retirement and college-planning questions from callers — including Roth vs. taxable accounts, 401(k) catch-up contributions, 529 plans, and college costs pushing $90 K a year. 0:04 Gen Z investing habits and media influence 1:59 Grading five young investors from a WSJ profile 7:43 Financial-flinch reflex and planning plug 12:21 Listener: starting a 401(k) at 59 15:34 Listener: using taxable funds for a Roth contribution 20:24 Listener: Roth 401(k) catch-ups and 529 trade-offs 26:08 College costs and saving priorities 28:43 Listener: opening a 529 for a grandchild 36:12 Listener: portfolio check (AVUV + bond ladder) and AVGE recommendation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Reality Radio for a really great future.
0:08.0	We're talking real money.
0:10.0	Let's play a little game.
0:11.8	Let's play a little game here on talking real money.
0:15.1	It's called Who Am I?
0:17.9	I don't remember life before the internet. Was there life before the internet? I've never made a call on a landline.
0:29.0	The way to check everything is to Google it. There's no other way to check stuff. Email? Wait a minute.
0:38.3	Isn't that like a telegraph or something?
0:42.9	Who am I?
0:44.7	I am Gen Z.
0:48.3	That's pretty good.
0:49.5	I don't have a, you know, I'm so old.
0:52.2	I don't even have a kid who's a Gen Zer. Well, I do. I do.
0:57.0	I try to place one in every generation, as you know. Yeah, it's pretty good. So what's the next,
1:01.8	have you placed one in the newest one? Let's just not go there. What do you say? It was kind of a
1:07.8	nice Saturday until you had to throw that in there. Yeah. Gen Z, that's the, that's the ones. That's 1997 to 2012 approximately. Okay. I was going to say, I call these in their 20s, basically, early 30s, I guess, something like that. 20, no, not even early 30s. Think about it. They're born between, what is it, 2000, basically 2000, 2010. You're right. So they should,
1:29.8	they would be basically in the 20s. So it's 20-somethings. And 20-somethings actually do have jobs
1:37.8	and invest and all that kind of stuff, but which is good. Which is really good. We're glad
1:42.3	they're doing it and they're actually pretty good about doing it.
1:46.3	That part.
1:47.2	They're just not very good at doing it.
1:51.3	And this comes from a length.
	...

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