Personal Finance (Not Investing) • Re: Friendly advice without pay and liability

I'm not a lawyer, I'm not sure the actual liability... But I see the majority of podcasts, etc. have disclaimers about "for education purposes only" and "not to be construed as personal financial or legal advice".

Likewise, I'm well aware that there are an over abundance of lawyers willing to sue. If the story is true, someone who was a friend of my parents sued a restaurant for serving them a dish with shellfish, to which they where allergic to. If I heard it right, they knowingly ordered the dish even though they knew they were allergic. (Was never clear if they asked to have the shellfish removed or not.) They ended up getting a settlement...

When we have people over to our house, even family and close friends, we assume that we are just one incident/over zealous lawyer away from a lawsuit. That's why we have home owners insurance and an umbrella policy.

I always phrase advice by saying what I would do, and only giving generalized advice to friends.

Simplified example: "I would invest in index funds rather than individual stocks"

+1 Only when asked (never "volunteered"), I have no problem sharing "what I'd do", maybe even share "why" if they want to know. But I stop short of telling them what they should do. And I'll usually add something like "I'm not a financial advisor, lawyer, or tax advisor, so I can't tell you what you should do, but I can tell you what I'm doing..." if it's anyone but close family or friends (sometimes even them).

Statistics: Posted by SnowBog — Mon Oct 28, 2024 12:10 am

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