Financial advice is all over the internet, but can it be trusted? Watch out for these red flags

March 22, 2026 — 4:00am

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Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (the ’90s and early 2000s), good money advice was difficult to come by. Your choices were pretty much either to pay for financial advice, work it out yourself, or rely on the content in various self-help books or esteemed local newspapers.

It’s part of the reason why books such as Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor or Money guru Noel Whittaker’s Making Money Made Simple became so monumentally popular, as they provided clear, easy to understand financial tips to a population that was desperate for them.

Then the internet came along, which has generally been regarded as a huge mistake. Suddenly, everyone could get financial advice, and – more importantly – everyone could give financial advice, and people with vested interests got a massive platform to spruik their dubious investments.

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Dominic PowellMoney Editor

Over the years this has led to hundreds of thousands of Australians losing billions of dollars to various investment scams ($174 million in........

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