Financial Freedom and Breaking Cycles: David Dindi’s Vision

Josh DeTar: [00:01:00] Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is David Dindi, the CEO of Atomic Invest. While David likes to say he’s typically a quiet and reserved, very private [00:02:00] person who doesn’t really like people to know a ton about him, he sure has a fascinating story to tell. Born in Kenya, David lived there for six years before moving to Austria.

He then lived in Austria through his teenage years before coming to America for college in Palo Alto at a small college You may have heard of by the name of Stanford. I don’t know if it rings any bells Each of those places though taught David new and unique life skills Life in Kenya taught him how to be scrappy and to make do with what you have Austria taught him perfectionism and the importance of quality.

And being in America brought about a new hunger and ambition to create. It’s the combination of these things, among others, that gave David his desire to start a company. Curious about how the world works, David was fascinated by how intellectual curiosity Could impact a complex topic like finance. He studied chemical engineering to understand how matter [00:03:00] works.

Understanding society and how it works is also a lot like trying to understand matter. And the skills he learned in chemical engineering translated over to his desire to learn about human behavior. As the CEO of a new company, David gets maybe one weekend a month or so these days where he actually takes a day off.

Um, but when he does take that occasional day off, he said, one of the things he loves to do is just get out and run. Uh, he said back when he was in San Francisco, he would run upwards of 15 miles every Sunday. And like everything in life running tests you and my friend David here seems to love to be tested.

So David, I have a feeling we’re gonna have some pretty fascinating conversation today. Welcome to the show.

David Dindi: Thanks for having me here, Josh.

Josh DeTar: I’m going to kind of preface this episode today by saying, uh, I’m just going to call it out super bluntly. Uh, David’s company that he started, he started to actually solve a lot of the problems that we’re going to talk about today. Um, but I promise don’t worry, don’t bail out now. This is not a [00:04:00] sales pitch.

David’s not about to run you through a demo, so just bear with us here. But you know, one of the reasons that I was really, really looking forward to having David as a guest on the podcast is. This topic is actually really, really interesting to me personally. Um, you’ve probably heard me talk about it in previous episodes.

We’ve dabbled in it and if you know me well enough, you’ll probably have heard me make this, uh, you know, set of comments in other conversations as well, but A lot of the topics that we’re going to talk about today are around really everyday Americans, um, and their access to be able to have information, education, insights, knowledge, and tools to start leverage investing.

And really to be able to kind of close some of the wealth gap and specifically looking at generational wealth gaps. And, you know, this is an area that I’m extremely personally passionate about for community financial [00:05:00] institutions. Um, because if I’m being honest, I think this is a massive missed opportunity in our industry.

We talk about how incredibly focused we are on building strong, healthy, financially stable communities and community members in it. And we don’t offer investing as a part of the core services of that, right? So yes, I love my community financial institutions. I love our phenomenal savings products. And right now some of the rates on, uh, you know, CDs and money market accounts are pretty darn good.

Um, That changes that goes up and down. But if we’re really looking to create retirement level money, generational wealth type money, um, we’ve got to get a little bit more creative and step outside of the boxes of some of those quote unquote, traditional, safer investments, um, look to actually leverage access to stock market and other types of investing avenues and tools.

And so this is [00:06:00] kind of David’s specialty. And so while we’re not here to talk about Atomic Invest and their platform and how they’re doing some of this, um, I think some of that’s going to shine through today just by how we talk about some of the things that David’s passionate about. So David, I want to kind of kick things off by starting from your perspective.

So from your perspective as somebody who has gained a significant amount of Insight into the world of investing and finance. Um, what do you see is some of the challenges that we face here in America of people having access to these kinds of tools and knowledge

David Dindi: That’s a good question. I’d say that the thing that prevents many people from investing is friction. It takes effort to think about investing. You have to open a brokerage account. You have to move money to that brokerage account. You have to decide what you want to invest in and how you want to allocate your resources.

Unless [00:07:00] someone has guided you in terms of how to do that well, or unless you’ve made the effort to research that on your own, it’s something that would be too high an activation barrier for you to make that initial. And so when we think about friction, it’s a question of what are the points of friction and how can you eliminate those points of friction?

One point of friction that you mentioned is education. How can people understand how to invest and feel comfortable around investing, uh, very early on the other point of friction is really. The need to think about your banking needs and your investing needs as two separate relationships. I think that if we can fuse both of them together so that your bank account essentially doubles as an investing account or your investing account doubles as a bank account.

I think that that will remove some of the thought work that’s necessary to start that investment journey for many Americans.[00:08:00]

Josh DeTar: from just the standpoint of, um, the impact that that has then too. So if you look at kind of the stratification of Americans and their sophistication and not just sophistication, but I guess. Um, utilization of investing as a, as a tool and a technique for how they allocate their, um, you know, financial resources.

What do you see as kind of some of the different buckets that people fall into and what are kind of the implications of that? And maybe what are some of the, um, you know, historical or societal factors that have played into people falling into one of those buckets?

David Dindi: I would really place it into two buckets. At least from what we see at Atomic. The first bucket are, uh, folks that feel that they’re not in a position to start investing, either because they don’t have the means, uh, to take risk with their money, or alternatively, they don’t understand enough about [00:09:00] investing.

They don’t understand about how the market works to feel competent enough to take that specific leap. The second bucket are people who in one way or another already have a prior, either it was their parents or their friends or their educational or their upbringing that helps them feel that it’s important to start investing as quickly and as early as possible.

It’s important to set aside a set amount every month to allow that to compound over time. I think that there’s a significant dichotomy in America between, you know, those who feel that they’re not ready to invest and those who really started investing early enough. And part of the time, you know, it does.

There is a divide between different demographics of Americans in that respect. There is a divide based on, you know, where they are from an income spectrum perspective as well. But I think fundamentally, I do see that difference being least on the on the 1 side, [00:10:00] people feeling like they don’t know enough or that they’re not ready to start investing when the actual purpose of investing is to start as early and as quickly as possible.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, that is an interesting problem, right? Because, um, Um, I see a lot of that even in my own, um, you know, personal circle, uh, a lot of people that fall into the camp of just, uh, Oh, I don’t think I have enough. So I’m just not going to do anything at all to, um, you know, my dad is a perfect example. Actually.

Um, you know, my dad was in his early sixties when I finally uncovered that he hadn’t saved a dime for retirement. Um, and so we had a conversation about that’s got to change. We’ve got to fix that. I’m going to step in and help. Um, and his comment was, well, you know, it time is time is the, the, the big ticket here.

And, you know, I’ve already wasted so much of my time. There’s, there’s no point. It’s like, well, no, you still have time left. It’s just less than it was. But you [00:11:00] know, know, time, time is of the essence. And I think those two things being combined, even if you have very, very little, as long as you start really early to your point, the compounding effects can have significant impacts.

Um, and it’s just, it is amazing how much lack of education there is out there for folks. On some of that, um, information. And then two to your point, I think there’s just, there’s a lot of apprehension around investing. It’s a really scary topic for whatever reason. Um, you know, again, I’ll, I’ll use kind of my own personal.

Um, my wife, my wife is a brilliant woman. She’s very intelligent. She, uh, has been with Nike for almost 20 years, uh, leads a global product line and is very, you know, accomplished in her role and. Uh, she’s terrified of investing. Her risk tolerance is like off the scale on the zero risk tolerance. Um, she just doesn’t [00:12:00] want to touch it.

She was just never really exposed to it. Um, even though her dad actually really helped out when she was younger, um, and actually opened a TD Ameritrade account for her, bought a few stocks for her, gave them to her as a Christmas present. They had grown and turned into something over the years. So, know, even in that sense, people get really, really shy about investing and money.

And then there’s this weird stigma around almost like not okay to talk about. And you’re supposed to just know. And so I think I see people that are just even afraid to ask the question of like, where should I begin? And I think that’s one of the problems we face too, personally.

David Dindi: I agree, you know, to your point, I think that there is. There’s a fear of loss and that prevents a lot of people from investing in the first place. But then when you couple that with feeling like you don’t know enough. Uh, [00:13:00] about investing, uh, it essentially paralyzes you, makes it difficult for you to take that initial leap because you feel like you’ll make a mistake.

And so we often see not, not just people when I say a lot of people don’t start investing early enough. It’s not necessarily just because they don’t have the financial means. There are people who have the financial means to start investing, but still don’t do so because of the fear of loss and the feeling that they don’t know enough.

I don’t necessarily think that education is the only way to solve this. I do think that educational can play a big part here. If people were taught how to invest in middle school or high school or primary school, I think that would make a big difference. But I think another piece of it is around how can we make investing a lot more approachable.

How can people start investing through applications and experiences that they already use in a day to day basis? How can it be thoughtless?[00:14:00] You know, I think that I’d like to say that most of America’s retirement savings problems would be solved if your brokerage account were a bank account. Or a bank account or a brokerage account, whereby you just deposit money and it automatically invests it for you.

You don’t have to think about it. I think that if we can make investing a lot more approachable, make it thoughtless for people, I think that can help many people cross that activation energy, uh, to start investing.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, just getting started is, is a lot of the hurdle. And, um, I agree, I think, to your point. A lot of the challenges that people face in getting started come back to friction. Um, you know, and we humans were funny little creatures and a lot of times, you know, we hit that first wall of resistance and we’re like, ah, no, I’m good.

I’m done unless there’s a big enough reward on the other side that we’re willing to break through that. And I think with investing, the reward is too uncertain and you know what I find really, really [00:15:00] interesting about this. made an interesting comment about, um, Just kind of people’s, um, you know, appetite for loss and the fear of loss.

What I find so interesting is I bet you anything, David, I’ve never actually like pulled my. Um, I’d like to think that maybe my friends are doing a little bit better job of this, but if I got like a big enough pool of people that I know, I would be fascinated by the data of how many people I could survey in my network that have or don’t have some means of investing that they’re doing today versus how many of them have gambled. Right? Like, I don’t, Hey, look, if you enjoy gambling and go into the casinos, like good for you. I’m not knocking it. That’s people’s prerogative. Personally, I go to Vegas and there’s no way in hell you’re going to find me putting money in a slot machine or sitting down at a table. Cause I’m looking at the buildings and the extravagant events and things they do in Vegas.

And it was not paid for by winners. It was paid for [00:16:00] by losers. Um, So people are scared to put money into the stock market or into investments because of the fear of loss. But they’re willing to go and put 10 bucks in a slot machine. And I think a lot of times it has to do with, they’re like, well, I, it’s really tangible.

Like I’m, I’m gambling. I recognize that I’m gambling, but my risk reward is, you know, I could put 10 bucks into the slot machine and I could lose my 10 bucks and whatever. Maybe I get a free drink out of the deal. Or I could throw 10 bucks in this thing, pull this handle and all of a sudden be a millionaire and it’s instant gratification.

Whereas I can throw this 10 bucks in the stock market today. Tomorrow it might be worth 4 and the next day it might be worth 7 and the next day it might be worth 11 and I’m up a buck. And if I ride it out for 50 years, maybe it’s worth a couple thousand

and people struggle with like putting that all together I think.

David Dindi: I think that’s a great point. [00:17:00] You know, I don’t gamble myself, but if I were just to imagine what it would be like, I think when you’re putting money in a slot machine, you already know exactly how much you’re willing to lose right now. You’re hoping not to lose that amount, but you already know how much you’re willing to lose and maybe in your mental.

math, you’ve written it off as a potential loss and you’d be happy if it’s a win. Whereas with investing, especially as your portfolio grows, you don’t necessarily have that very clear floor. And I think that’s what gets people, um, a little bit more nervous about investing in the wood. There are also a couple of other things that we’ve learned over time, you know, we, we, we run into a number of investors who, or a number of prospective investors who, who don’t necessarily invest because they want to get rich now, right, they want to, to make money today and, you know, they don’t [00:18:00] necessarily see the value and having a lot of money when you are old, for instance, and can’t necessarily, Benefit from it.

And I think that comes down to this whole idea of delayed gratification, right? Investing is the definition of delayed gratification. You can either use your money today to buy tickets for a concert or to, you know, buy, like a new handbag, so to speak, or you can set that aside to be able to have a greater degree of financial independence down the line.

I think that that trade off is not as clear to people. I think folks might be a little bit too optimistic. About where they’ll be in the future. I think the other thing that I see that we see also make people invest in the wrong way is that they’re too focused on what are my returns in the short term, right?

When really they should be thinking of investing as a bet you’re making for long term. If you assume that the [00:19:00] economy is going to grow. Over the next couple of years, and so those three things essentially fear of loss, um, the difficulty, you know, dealing with delayed gratification and the desire to really see quick returns, um, and to invest under short time horizons are things that we see trip, uh, you know, subset of investors up and their journeys.

Josh DeTar: I think, uh, a great example of that is, you know, what we saw with some of the crazy days of crypto, right? Um, I can’t tell you how many of my friends that have zero interest in any forms of quote unquote traditional investing that when they were watching Dogecoin go through the roof were throwing money at it, right?

And I think that goes back to your comment of the, you know, There’s a barrier to enter. It’s delayed gratification. So a lot of people drop out at the, you know, first sign of [00:20:00] friction. And then all of a sudden they’re presented with this opportunity or seeing others getting this instant gratification.

And so all of a sudden that barrier to enter becomes… Less of a barrier. They’re more willing to cross the barrier, but two, I think kind of like side tailing this. I think a lot of the crypto investing platforms also did a phenomenal job of lowering that barrier to enter, right? I remember going through and, you know, setting up accounts with a bunch of the different, um, you know, crypto exchanges and wallets just from a testing perspective personally.

And I hate to say it, but some of them were significantly easier for me to open an account and start transacting with, uh, you know, cryptocurrencies than it was to open a savings account at my current primary financial institution.

David Dindi: Yeah, I think it [00:21:00] really comes down to the type of company that’s offering these products, whereas traditional financial services products might be offered through a bank or through a large brokerage firm that historically just hasn’t had the best user experience, whereas a crypto wallet is likely going to be offered by a startup that’s more product focused, that is really thinking about how can we

uh, take users to the journey and in a very smooth manner, I actually, you know, to your point, I agree that the crypto, um, boom that we saw was beneficial in many ways. Now, I’m sure a lot of people lost money, but I do think that it’s really helps many people take that initial risk, uh, to invest in something in a weird way.

Investing in traditional equities and ETFs seem like a very safe and boring thing [00:22:00] to do. So in a way it made what people perceived as risky to begin with, uh, uh, feel a lot safer, but at the same time it really helps people jump, uh, to start investing. Now we’ve seen a lot of people who went into crypto, moved out of crypto, but haven’t yet really set up.

Uh, investing accounts yet, and that’s a little bit sad to see, but I do think that the whole crypto phase did do good to society at least in getting many more people involved in investing in the first place.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I think it, um, it at least opened the door for a lot of people to have gone through a few of the steps of the friction of setting up. type of way to invest, i. e. through one of these crypto exchanges or wallets. And now, you know, they’re maybe a little bit more accustomed to going through the friction of opening, you know, a brokerage account and starting to do some additional types of investing.

Um, I think one of the other things that, you [00:23:00] know, I’d love to get your perspective on is, um, I think in the, world of again, quote unquote, traditional investing, there’s also just so many options. I think that’s one of the things that cause people to just, um, you know, I’ve only got a few bucks.

again, I’m, I’m worried about the risk of loss and I’m really looking for instant gratification. How do I know which stock to pick so that I pick the right one? And then, not just that, there’s about 6 million different ways to buy stocks. There’s not just stocks, but now we’ve got bonds and treasury and we’ve got, oh, by the way, college savings plans.

Oh, well, what about all of these, you know, complex, um, types of actions I can take based on my investings account. And, uh, you know, how can I leverage tax loss harvesting? And I mean, you just start to throw any one of these topics out. And again, then [00:24:00] all of a sudden that barrier to enter just goes up for people because they’re like, this is just too complex.

All of a sudden my fear of loss is higher because I don’t understand this complex system. And I think that was one of the barriers that got broken a little bit by the crypto stuff as well was it was just a lot simpler like you were just buying and selling coins and there were a bunch of different ones you could pick from obviously but you know there were also kind of the the quote golden standard ones right you had bitcoin and everybody kind of knew about it it was all over the news so it was really easy just to say okay well I want to invest a hundred bucks.

I’m going to go, you know, download Binance or Coinbase and I’m going to invest a hundred bucks in Bitcoin. Like, that just sounded a lot simpler to people, I think, than there’s all these different ways to do investing, which is the right way for you. And oh, by the way, we’re not going to help you figure it out.

David Dindi: Yeah, that’s that’s certainly the case, although I think that in that during covid [00:25:00] investing became easier because really, the primary thesis was who which company stands to benefit from one. Uh, and so I think we saw a run up on fang stocks on tech stocks as a result of it being clear for Many individual investors.

What thesis makes sense at that specific point in time? And you have this reinforcing loop that occurred as a result of it. But to your point, there are many degrees of freedom as it pertains to investing a from the asset class that you select, uh, be from the asset allocation that you have across the different asset classes that you select.

C from the timing, uh, and then D within each asset class, there are different issuers that you can potentially invest in as well. If it’s not your job, uh, like your full time job to focus on investing, it’s, it’s hard to be able to dedicate a lot of time to do the research, to feel [00:26:00] comfortable and confident doing that, uh, to be able to really start investing here is where I think.

solutions that offer more of a managed approach to investing, uh, can make a difference. Now, the challenge is that most solutions that offer a managed approach to investing just, you know, offer ETF portfolios. Uh, Uh, and so it’s a little bit like a black box where you don’t necessarily feel like you own anything, right?

Because you’re owning an ETF that’s then invested in many other positions. I think that. Much more can be done to offer managed, uh, types of portfolios that actually consist of individual positions as opposed to, uh, ETFs and other aggregating vehicles in that respect. So I think that that in between from, like, purely self directed, you make all your decisions to purely managed, we make all the decisions for you, but you don’t necessarily hold any 1 position, at least tangibly, maybe on the ETF.

I think that there’s this in [00:27:00] between phase, uh, that, that we’re yet really see take off in the market.

Josh DeTar: Yeah. That’s, uh, I agree. I think, um, again, you know, if I just kind of even look at my own personal life, um, um, You know, how many times do I hear people say, you know, I don’t I don’t know I don’t understand it’s complex I just want it managed for me and then they go to a you know wealth management advisor and they don’t meet the minimums or You know, they have to pay exorbitant fees because they don’t meet a minimum So then they again that barrier to enter is too large.

They decide not to do it And But there really does need to be some level of management as you start to get into the more complex things and you start to put more into it and have, you know, more objectives that you’re trying to accomplish. Um, so, for me personally, like this, I, so I grew up in a family that, um.

Um, you know, my mom was a paycheck to paycheck person. Um, my parents split when I was young. [00:28:00] My parents are both very intelligent people. Um, but I just, I didn’t get taught a lot of, especially the more complex topics around financial management. Right. And my story really started when I was, you know, 17, 18 and was actually saved by a credit union.

from just making the simplest of day to day stupid mistakes of overdrafting accounts, bouncing checks because I didn’t know how to manage my finances. and that really set me on a personal journey of, I think like you, like curiosity took over. And I was like, I, okay. They got me from being a total idiot and at least like now I have enough money in my bank account to cover that check that I just wrote and yes, I am old enough to still remember writing checks.

Thank you very much, um, to, okay, if I’m going to get in on this, like now I want to know everything. And so then I started good, go down a path of kind of self education and. So I actually, uh, [00:29:00] got a friend from a financial advising firm to sponsor me to take my series seven. And what I found was fascinating through that process was going through that, you know, they were saying through all of my coursework and everything, you know, you, if you pass the series seven, you’re going to be smarter than 98 percent of Americans, um, on investing. And I got through it. I passed my series seven. And I still felt like an idiot, you know, and I was like, Oh, gosh, that’s actually terrifying that I’m now supposedly more educated than 98 percent of America on how investing works. And I still feel like I’m missing so many pieces to this puzzle. And so even fast forward to today,

kind of Like it really does take some level of management. And if this is not your day to day, so I mean, I’ve taken and passed the series seven. I have my own investing accounts. I [00:30:00] do like to play with when to your point. Like if I have Um, you know, some knowledge about a specific industry or stock, you know, maybe I’ll go and do some investing on my own through my own brokerage account.

But other than that, basically everything I have managed by somebody because that’s their day to day job, right? Um, and there is a huge, huge gap in between the services that I use to do my own investing and the stuff that I just play around with for fun. And what my financial advisor manages for me.

There’s a huge gap in between those two. Right? And I think there’s a huge opportunity, especially for community financial institutions to step in and fill that gap.

David Dindi: And I’m just curious, from your perspective, a huge gap in which way specifically?

Josh DeTar: Um, just in the sense of being able to give people a low barrier access tool to be able to accomplish the [00:31:00] investing. And then the education, insight, skills, and tools to be able to support managing that. And from a… Hey David, you’ve never invested in your life and you have 4 to your name. Where are we going to start to?

Hey David, you’re a, successful 30 year old with a reasonable bank account. You’ve got your day to day covered. You’ve got a reasonable savings account. Like here’s some of the different tools that you can use in investing to start creating wealth to. Hey David, you’re a successful 50 year old.

You exited, uh, this killer tech company. You got a ton of money in the bank. You’ve been investing for a long time. Let’s start to get really, really sophisticated about how we’re doing that. And let’s create and pass down generational wealth to your kids. So they start out with a better success. There’s a lot that happens in that process.

Um, and, and I think that that is a big area of opportunity for community financial institutions to [00:32:00] step in and start playing a part in some degree.

David Dindi: Yeah, I agree. And I think it comes down to the fact that the industry, let’s say in an industry that, that generates revenue from an AUM perspective, there are two ways in which you can build a big business. One way is to focus on having very few clients that have very large assets from where you can generate revenue from that AUM.

The other is to have. a very large number of clients, each of which might have smaller. Balances, but collectively, they’re large enough for you to reach the same, you know, place from a revenue perspective. Now, I think much of the wealth world has really focused on the initial model of focusing on very few clients that have larger balances and providing them.

very high touch services. Not much work has been done to do the same [00:33:00] in the latter model of providing these services to many people, even folks that might initially just be starting with 4 in that respect. So we spoke about how there is the fear of loss. We spoke about the delayed gratification. I think the other piece is the industry as a whole hasn’t made a significant effort.

Uh, to trying to help, folks that are really at the early phases of their journey, they’re really only enter. Uh, down the line. And so one of the things that was very important to us was really to focus on. How can we make a, an investing solution that is accessible to everyone so that anyone can get started regardless of where they are.

And at the same time, how can we make sure that we’re bringing the sophistication that, you know, as you mentioned, that 50 year old who exited from their tech company and has a lot of different. capabilities to the disposal. How can we actually make those capabilities commonplace? One of the things [00:34:00] that is still not widely accessible, even to the mass affluent.

Is being able to borrow against your, uh, securities, uh, to be able to use that for various different life expense expenses that you might have still. That’s something that you typically only see, uh, at, you know, the family office level, but being able to take out a.

And to use that to finance a wedding, for instance, it’s something that just hasn’t been made available to the masses yet. And so I think that degree of sophistication is something that will start to see become more common place, even for people who are starting with very little balances to begin with.

Josh DeTar: that’s a really cool topic that you brought up. Um, because it is actually also really interesting to me just how many different, um, Um, how many different vehicles are available for leveraging people’s finances, right? That that truly are not [00:35:00] commonplace, but that actually have like significant impact opportunity on people’s lives.

Um, and you know, this can be, like you said, literally across the board. Um, so my father in law retired a couple of years ago. Uh, he was a very successful, partner in a gastroenterology clinic, um, and did very well for himself and, uh, had done very, very well at, you know, setting aside money even early on.

Um, and then, you know, growing how much he set aside as he got older and closer to retirement, um, in investing. And so, you know, the vast majority of his wealth when he retired and what he and mom planned to use through retirement, uh, was in investments. And they had a full blown financial advisor that they had done all of this through for decades.

They’ve used this same person. And, um, when they retired, [00:36:00] he literally retired, David, and like the next month is when the market tanked.

David Dindi: That’s a good

Josh DeTar: And so all of a sudden he watches his retirement fund go down. Right when he’s starting to actually draw out of it. And so he and I were having this conversation about how he was kind of stressed out about like this is how much money we had planned to live on.

I retired at this age because I thought we would have enough and you know, hopefully the market will rebound. But over the next couple of years, I’m probably going to face some uncertainty of what my portfolio is worth and how much can mom and I draw out of each year to be able to live off of. And so, uh, you know, he and I were talking about that and I actually recommended to him, Hey, look at taking out a loan against the portfolio because if you drain money out of that account, when the market is down and you sustain losses on it versus paying a couple of percentage points on a loan that you take out of that, [00:37:00] when the market rebounds, you’re going to make that money back.

And it’s probably going to cost you a lot less of your retirement money to use this. He had no idea it existed as an opportunity. He then reached out to his financial advisor. His financial advisor had no idea that that existed. Ultimately, I helped lead them to, uh, the conversation, found out it did exist, it was an opportunity, and they took that.

And it’s been a really smart move for them, right? But I mean, that’s what I mean. It’s like this stuff does get so incredibly complicated that even people that do it for a living don’t fully understand what mechanisms are available. And then to go to somebody who’s never done investing, uh, you know, who works a gig job and lives paycheck to paycheck and be like, you should get into investing.

They’re like, no way, dude, what are you talking about? Like this system is too complicated. It’s rigged. It’s too risky. It’s this. Um, and I think again, going back to community financial institutions have a really unique opportunity [00:38:00] because they’re the trusted custodian of our financial lives.

And especially when we start talking about that gig worker who lives paycheck to paycheck and doesn’t think that they have the opportunity to start investing. Those are typically the types of people that our community financial institutions are serving the most and have the most opportunity to help Right and what I think was an interesting wake up call for our community financial institutions We’ve touched on earlier too.

I think that there was a wake up call from the crypto craze So I thought it was really really interesting. I had a bunch of conversations with our customers when you know when Bitcoin was north of 60, 000 a coin and Everybody and you know, their dog walker was investing in Bitcoin and crypto and I have a lot of our credit union customers coming to me and being like, Josh, we’ve got to implement, you know, the ability to buy, sell, hold crypto and digital banking. And my first question was always why? Well, because you know, our, our members want to be able to buy and [00:39:00] sell crypto and were their trusted resource. So we should be offering it this for them. Or, you know, they would come back to me and say, well, we, you know, we ran an ACH report on the core and we saw a ton of money leave last month, the Coinbase.

And, uh, and you know, my rebuttal was always, okay, cool. So before we go through all this work to go and implement crypto, for your members to be able to buy sell hold in your digital banking. What are you doing in just traditional investing that’s not really a fad that’s been around for forever? Well, nothing. I’m like, well, why, why nothing? If you’re telling me that you all of a sudden need to be a part of crypto, why haven’t you not been a part of this? I challenged a lot of folks. I said, okay, so you’re, you’re telling me you just ran an ACH report for a bunch of money that’s been leaving to, um, Coinbase, how much left to TD Ameritrade, how much is [00:40:00] going to traditional brokerages? Um, and what I found was really interesting was it really slowed the role of a lot of our credit unions and community banks deciding that they needed to all of a sudden jump on this bandwagon for crypto, but it also made him start thinking, Oh, you know what? You’re right. Like this is actually a big opportunity for us to provide services to our communities and giving them.

Lower friction, lower barrier to enter ways of doing traditional investing. Um, you know, setting up their family members for the things that they know they need to be doing, you know, college savings plans and, Oh, maybe we could do some of that and there could be some stickiness to that. So I think there was also kind of a wake up call from the crypto craze in that sense as well.

David Dindi: Yeah, certainly. And, you know, to your point, it is low hanging fruit for community banks and credit unions to offer investing because the 1st place that a customer would look if they’re thinking about investing [00:41:00] is what does their financial institution offer if you think about the activation funnel. To onboarding such a customer, it’s, it’s, it’s much easier to onboard such a customer with a credit union than it is to have them go to a new app altogether, because the credit union would already know quite a lot about the customer to be able to streamline that process and to personalize that journey.

And so this really comes back to the point that I mentioned earlier about, there really shouldn’t be friction between banking and investing. It should all be one. It should be very easy for, as a matter of fact, whenever someone opens a bank account, there should be a brokerage account open at the same time, of course, with their consent, uh, and there should be an opportunity for them to elect to have things be automatically managed for them so that whenever there’s excess cash, that cash can be invested for them.

I think that, you know, having that little. Or removing that friction, uh, to investing could go a very long way [00:42:00] for most Americans from our experience.

Josh DeTar: Yeah. I think to your point, that’s that, um. They’re kind of the trusted source, so they’re usually, especially when you, you know, lack some of that education about, you know, Hey, if I wanted to invest some money, where would I go? If you don’t know the answer, yeah, I would say that your first thought would probably be well, where’s my money today?

Well, it’s in my bank or my credit union. I’ll start there, right? And a lot of, uh, community financial institutions do offer some mechanisms for investing, but a lot of times it’s, you know, they have a Schwab advisor who sits in the office on Thursdays type of thing. and, technology is, technology is a really, really cool equalizer.

Um, I think it’s bringing down those barriers for entry for people. It’s giving more people access. And you know, one of the topics we haven’t really touched on a ton, um, yet too, is just, is that kind of inequality [00:43:00] in the, you know, income, Savings, investing, access to funds and tools that exists in America.

Right? I mean, we have everything from completely unbanked and underbanked folks to the wealthy, wealthy elite and kind of everything in between. And, you know, the vast majority of us Americans, we fall on one end of that spectrum and it’s not the end of the spectrum that’s able to buy, you know, tickets on, uh…

Blue origin or whatever to fly up to space. So, you know, there’s, um, there’s just, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of good that can be done by also helping to put some mechanisms in place to help bridge that wealth divide, um, and give people access to creating some more sustainable and generational wealth.

Right? That’s setting our. communities and individuals up for much higher degrees of success. And like you touched on earlier, right? Time is, time is a huge element of that. So even if we can just help start [00:44:00] educating folks and giving them tools through technology to be able to lower their barrier and enter to Just throw a buck at it.

I mean, literally, if you have a dollar, if you’re one years old and you throw a dollar at it, believe it or not, that can actually turn into something. Um, and so, you know, I think technology is an amazing equalizer of being able to get those tools to more people.

David Dindi: I agree. And, you know, the the model that you mentioned where A lot of community banks or credit unions might have a Schwab advisor, for instance, um, catering to some clients. The issue with that is the need for the clients to have the minimums right to be able to start that relationship with the advisor.

And we typically see a lot of credit unions face that problem where they do already have a wealth offering, but that wealth offering comes with a 50, 000 minimum, for instance, [00:45:00] which might not make sense for their full. Member base, and I do think that with technology, there is the ability to eliminate those minimums and to really provide this value to the full member base and not just a subset of them.

Once they’re in a position where they’ve already started to amass, um, savings.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, I was just, I was super curious. Um, I know I’ve seen different stats over the years, but I wasn’t able to pull something out of my head. So I did a quick Google search. Um, and, uh, this is, uh, an investors. com article. About, um, investing 1 a day, so essentially, you know, 30 a month, um, over the course of 20 years with just, uh, standard S& P 500 index, uh, it turns into about 13, 000, right, with 1 a

day.

David Dindi: Yeah.

Josh DeTar: 30 bucks. How many of us spend, you know, more than that on the add ons to our morning [00:46:00] coffee? You can still keep your morning coffee. I’m not even saying like, I love when I see those types of things. People are like, Oh, you spend 5 on your morning coffee. Like stop doing that and invest it and you’ll be a millionaire.

And you’re like, yeah, but also if I don’t have my coffee, I might kill someone. So, you know, it’s maybe not completely kill off my coffee, but I mean a buck a day, 30 bucks a month. Um, you know, I’d be curious to see the data on just how many people actually do have the capacity to save 30 a month, right? Um, it’s probably pretty high and it’s probably a lot higher than we think.

David Dindi: Yeah, it probably is. But then it comes down to that delayed gratification versus instant gratification issue, right,

where, you know, for someone 13, 000 in 20 25 years time might seem far fetched, whereas that additional coffee is something that that is tangible to people. And so I do think that we could still get people to save 30 a day.

I think it just has to be something that’s [00:47:00] It has to be passive, similar to what acorns had done, but you really do that, you know, at a much greater scale, to help people, you know, put some money aside in a regular basis, uh, towards their futures.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, you kind of touched on this earlier too, uh, just that the concept of, um, you know, a lot of times we feel like we don’t have enough, uh, and you need a certain amount to start or a certain amount to maintain. Or what happens if I need to stop contributing for whatever reason? And again, because a lot of the barriers, um, to enter and manage that are difficult and complex and outside of our kind of day to day course of activities.

I think that’s a big deterrent for people too. So I think where technology has also had a really cool impact is, you know, making the ability to do things like micro investing and stuff that is a little bit more mindless, right? Just, uh, kind of, uh, think of a sweep to savings, but think of a sweep to investing, [00:48:00] right?

Every time you swipe your debit card, just round it up to the nearest dollar and throw that into my investment. Yeah. It’s pennies sometimes. But pennies add up over time and consistency and frequency. It starts to add up. And those are the types of things that people don’t even notice. And you start to actually realize you do have the ability to invest more than you thought. But at a micro or, um, very small level.

David Dindi: One thing I often ask my team is what if we could create a, an abstraction whereby it’s not that you actually have to round up and move money into your investing account. But it’s as though your investing account in itself can operate like a spend account. So you can spend directly from it. So you deposit money into it.

You deposit your paycheck and that is allocated across cash, money, market [00:49:00] funds, treasury bills, equities, depending on your risk profile, and then you just spend directly from it versus there being a separate account that. You create, and then you have to have this mechanism of moving money every month or every week or every day, uh, to finance your retirement.

Now, the two can still be two separate accounts. It’s just a matter of how can you create an abstraction on top of those two separate accounts to make it feel like one. But I do think that if we can move to a model where it is like one, where it’s not that you have a brokerage account and then you have a bank account and you have to move money in between every day to.

You know, start thinking about investing, but it’s one where the moment you turn 18, you have both and the moment you earn your first dollar, it is automatically invested, maybe based on your risk profile or your liquidity needs in that way. So I think that if there was that elimination of that friction point of having 2 [00:50:00] separate accounts, at least.

Two separate accounts. Um, um, very clearly, maybe it’s still two separate accounts, but the complexity of the two separate accounts is abstracted away. I think that is what can create a truly magical experience where you don’t even have to think about investing, right? On a, you know, by default, your, your funds are working for you in one way or another.

By default, they’re invested in. Money market funds, for instance, are generating some form of yield. I think that’s the kind of world that, that we are trying to, uh, create, um, at our company.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, appreciate you talking about using technology as an abstraction layer, right? I like to think about, you know, technology as Technology is kind of facilitating that whole duck on a pond analogy, right? For our end user, they’re just looking at I did X work. I got Y [00:51:00] paycheck and I have, you know, Z money and I have all these different places it needs to go and they’re just trying to find the simplest ways to do the best they can with what they have.

That’s probably the vast majority of Americans and technology is allowing us to make. The duck on top looks super calm. Hey, this just, this is your money that you have and we’re helping you make the best use of it possible, both in the short term and the longterm. And underneath those little feet may be going like crazy, but it’s kind of our job and it’s the, the, benefit of technology that’s kind of abstracting those two.

Now I think technology should also be solving some of the underlying. feet moving around like crazy and the jumble of wires that may be underneath making all that happen. But to your exact point, right? Extracting some or abstracting some of that from the average person. So they’re [00:52:00] not having these barriers, uh, can have a big impact.

David Dindi: And, you know, once you accomplish that, then you can also start to make available financial hacks that otherwise, you know, you might have required an advisor to tell you. You can start to make those available to people more broadly. So for instance, you mentioned, uh, your father upon retirement, uh, was thinking about how can I, you know, maintain my spend without having to liquidate my portfolio, given that, you know, the portfolio is down.

I think that those types of financial hacks can then be provided more easily and seamlessly to people so that everyone is kind of like a financial genius, like taking advantage of all these arbitrage opportunities. But not necessarily having to work to get there. And so that’s another, at least when we look out in the future, we think that there’s still a lot of innovation to be done in the financial services space.

A lot of that innovation will come by being able [00:53:00] to create synergistic product offerings between different financial relationships, whether it’s banking and investing or lending and investing. And in those synergies, essentially finding new ways to. Uh, help the client by taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities, uh, that make it very easy for people to make the right financial decision automatically without them having to think about it.

Josh DeTar: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great point of, um, I mean, this is where, um, machine learning and artificial intelligence is also going to have some. huge impacts, right? Um, I mean, think about, uh, uh, you know, the power of chat GPT making recommendations based on your individual knowledge of your individual financial position across your entire life and being able to say, Hey David, so we saw you just retired.

Um, We looked at your portfolio. We recognize the state of the market. [00:54:00] We’ve also looked at what it would cost in terms of interest to take out a loan on this portfolio versus liquidate some of those assets to live off of now. And we’ve calculated that this is actually a smarter choice. We encourage you to leverage this product offered by us conveniently, believe it or not.

And this is a great cycle, right? This is an opportunity for those financial institutions to provide more products and services that are revenue generators for them, but are actually providing value to the consumers. And if you’ve got kind of this much better holistic picture of their entire financial relationship, then all of a sudden we have, um, you know, much better opportunity to provide meaningful benefit and value to those account holders.

Um, and have a better opportunity to understand how to cross sell products. But to your point, like if these things are all separated, that’s [00:55:00] really difficult. Um, I remember I was testing one of the, um, one of the PFM tools and it asked me to, you know, link a few different accounts and things. And, at the end of it, it told me my net worth and I had to laugh and I was like, that’s not even close, but it’s because you don’t actually have my full financial picture.

Um, and so I think being able to bring more of our entire financial. Life into one place gives that institution a better view of my entire financial picture and then being able to layer in some of the sophistication that’s coming out of machine learning and, um, you know, artificial intelligence to be able to say, Hey, we’re looking across all of this. David, you don’t need to understand this complex mechanism available to you in investing, but we do. We’ve applied it. We’ve run it through various scenarios of your financial picture, [00:56:00] and we actually recommend you take advantage of it. You didn’t even need to know it existed. You don’t even need to know necessarily the mechanics of what it is or how it works, but this is the impact that it’ll have to you if you deploy this strategy.

David Dindi: Yeah, and one of the things that, yeah, you know, we started off by by you asking me. What excites me about finance? Um, and why did I choose to, uh, invest in this space? At least invest my time in the space. I think that it’s, ripe for disruption. There are so many opportunities. I think we’re just in the, in the maybe second phase of finance.

The first phase might have been, you know, People leveraging traditional financial institutions to bank, I think went to the second phase where you have had a lot of fintechs and challenger banks that have come up to offer different value propositions to specific segments of society. I think the third phase is really around synergies between products.

Like, how [00:57:00] can you create these synergies between products? How can you own the financial relationship, uh, like the holistic, uh, how can you have a holistic view of your user and how can you use that to recommend to them the right, uh, course of action to take? Uh, you know, to meet their financial needs. And how can you personalize that so that it’s not just, you know, cookie cutter advice that everyone is getting, but it’s something that is really specific to your context, very specific to your father’s context, for instance, I think we’re not yet there, but that’s the future that I see around how financial services will evolve.

Josh DeTar: an area for both disruption, like you said, but also just opportunity for community financial institutions. You know, again, I look at, you know, my own personal story. I really and truly see community financial institutions as heroes, right? Like the work that they are doing is truly [00:58:00] heroic.

I mean, look at how much of an impact. finance has on our lives. Like what is like one of the number one causes of divorce, stress, depression, suicide is finance related, right? Like money does rule our world. Plain and simple. It really does. Um, and I loved a conversation. Um, Uh, on a podcast once with Joe Rogan and he made a comment about how, you know, money doesn’t buy happiness, but it buys freedom.

It really and truly does like money buys you freedom. It just buys you the freedom to not have to worry about certain things and it buys The freedom to be able to focus your energy on things that are happier So in some sense money does buy happiness it kind of does because if you don’t have any trust me, it’s a lot harder to be happy than If you’ve got enough that you’ve at least got your basic necessities covered, you’re not stressed about.

Am I going to make [00:59:00] my mortgage this month or my rent? Are my kids going to be able to eat today? Are they going to be able to go to a school and maybe have a better life than I have? That’s a lot of stress and having money buys some of that stress coming off of you. It buys some freedom. And so where’s one of the areas

that is help to move people out of those scenarios, help to move people out of impoverished positions where they are. They’re struggling to be able to make their rent and they’re struggling to be able to provide for their families. And especially when you look at long time horizons. So if we have the opportunity to come and step in and make an impact and bring tools and bring knowledge, And bring, you know, lower barriers of entry to be able to help people to very slowly and then snowball it, start to actually build some wealth.[01:00:00]

You’re literally giving people freedom. Like how freaking cool is that? Like how many people, how many industries can say that they’re doing that? Um, so I think that that’s a really powerful part of the mission statement and work of community financial institutions. And to your point, like this is an area that’s really ripe for opportunity, right?

For disruption. There’s lots of money to be made in it. And oh, by the way, you get to do ridiculous amounts of good in the process. Like how is this not a win, win, win?

David Dindi: wholeheartedly agree, uh, with you, um, you know, we, we typically, uh, tell folks internally at Atomic that beyond, you know, the APIs and the infrastructure that we’re creating, we’re really on a mission to eliminate financial circumstance. Uh, from the equation of success, because very often people aren’t able to fully realize their potential because they might not have the financial [01:01:00] independence to do so.

You’re certainly right that money can’t buy happiness, but it does. It does buy freedom and not freedom necessarily in your ability to travel everywhere and to do everything. I think it’s more freedom in your mind. Freedom from financial anxiety that you would have if you don’t have the means to, um, care for yourself or for your family.

And so, uh, to your point, I do think that community financial institutions stand in a very interesting position where they already have built a significant amount of trust with their members, and it’s now a question of how can they extend that trust to also help those members think about their future, uh, build wealth, not just for themselves, but for the community.

For the future generations to come. One of the things that you know, we typically see, especially in developing countries where there isn’t necessarily a retirement system or a saving system towards, um, you know, [01:02:00] being able to care for oneself in old age is that typically is more of a family based system where, grandchildren or Children will care for the parents or the grandparents.

Um, but in so doing, it essentially means that the funds that the child would typically have used to invest for their own retirement are now being directed to care for their parents and for their grandparents. Now, that’s not a bad thing. I think it’s a very noble thing, but the issue there is that it creates this.

It’s a vicious cycle, right, where people remain under invested. Right. And in one way or another, the future generation is paying a tax for the past generation. And so I do think that if we can break that, um, if we can break that vicious cycle and allow people today to start investing into their futures to start investing into the retirement, so that, you know, when they pass, they’re actually leaving the next [01:03:00] generation with, I think it’s important to start with to continue that compounding journey as well.

I think that is another mechanism by which we can potentially break, uh, free from intergenerational poverty. I don’t think poverty should last for more than a generation, to be honest. And the fact that it does, it means that there’s something gravely wrong with how, you know, we’re helping people start to participate in building a wealth for themselves and for their Um, Children.

Josh DeTar: I mean, I couldn’t say it any better myself. It’s, it really is. Like you said, it’s, it’s, that’s a really noble cause. I mean, you want to lay your head on your pillow at night and feel good about what you’ve done. Um, being able to, you know, Break some of these cycles and give people like human beings, other human beings, just like you and I that are just trying to make it in this world and in life and enjoy happiness and love and [01:04:00] success and all of that by giving them the opportunity to remove that barrier for finances to be, um, A reason they’re not realizing that full potential.

Like, I don’t know, there’s not very many nobler causes than that. There’s, there’s some real beauty in, you know, trying to solve some of these challenges and it really excites me to see, you know, people like yourself that. Um, that makes statements like that and then do more than just make a statement like that, like actually try and do something about like, Hey, that’s a bold statement.

Like, I don’t think poverty should last more than a generation now, granted, you know, there’s absolutely, there’s, there’s things by choice and things that we’re not going to be able to control, but. Man, even in a country as developed and successful and, um, opportunistic as America, there are still a lot of people that are in not great positions and not by choice.

And it is a responsibility of all of us. And especially those of us who’ve taken up the torch in this industry and specific to solve those [01:05:00] problems. Um, So it’s really exciting to see, you know, people like yourself taking on that, that mission. And I think, you know, when you look at community financial institutions today, um, they’re also kind of at their own crossroads, right?

I think a lot of community financial institutions are finding that their account holders are aging out. Um, they’re not bringing in younger account holders and there’s going to be a really big transition of wealth that’s happening. And I had a conversation recently with somebody who was talking about Um, you know, a lot of financial institutions have a CEO succession plan, but do they have an account holder succession plan? Like when your account holder ages out, they pass away. Where do their funds go? Does it go to somebody else at your institution because their son or daughter or grandchild banks at your financial institution? Or does it leave and go somewhere else because they’re banking with Chime? or with whoever it may be [01:06:00] that pops up between now and then.

There’s a lot of disruption that’s happening in the industry, even just from. the traditional services that community financial institutions provide. And you’re starting to see a lot of FinTechs pop up in that space. And again, they’re removing barriers, they’re removing friction, they’re making it easier.

They’re putting a higher focus on technology. They’re offering more products and services that are more tightly integrated to people’s personal positions, objectives. Um, and. You’re seeing that transition out. So as community financial institutions are looking at how do we maintain relevance one and two, how do we generate revenue so that we can maintain relevance and stay around to do what we do and the good that we do?

Um, I think this is, uh, I don’t know, Might as well be flying it behind a biplane in the sky. Opportunity of a way to do that, right? This facilitates wealth transfer where there is wealth. This is creating wealth for the next generation to then [01:07:00] pass down to the next generation and giving a vicious cycle that’s a good one.

That’s a good one. It’s staying within your institution. That’s helping to build up the next generation of account holders while servicing The last generation of account holders. Um, Oh, I think spelled it out. There’s a lot of opportunity.

David Dindi: we typically see a very similar pattern happen actually also in the RIA space. So independent RIAs that typically service, uh, say very high net worth individuals, but miss the opportunity to actually service their children because their children at least initially might not have the account balance to warrant that very high touch relationship.

But when it comes to the transfer of wealth. Kind of missing out on the opportunity to, to, to maintain that relationship across generations. And so, uh, I think the same is, as you mentioned, certainly true for community financial institutions. How can they make sure that their services that they’re rendering, even if they do [01:08:00] have a wealth offering, it’s not just a wealth offering for parents or for grandparents because of the high minimums.

Right. But it’s a wealth offering where a teenager can already start investing with them through custodial accounts, for instance, or, uh, you know, someone who’s in college can already start investing with them. with just, uh, maybe 100 a month, uh, so to speak. So I think it was an interesting opportunity for community financial institutions there as well.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, I agree. Um, David, I think I could probably talk to you for years about this topic. Um, but uh, you’re actually calling in from Austria. They’re visiting some family and friends. So I feel like I should probably let you go at some point tonight and uh, maybe let you see them. So, you know, before I turn you loose though, I got two final questions for you. First is just, you know, where do you go to get information about what’s happening in our industry? What kinds of things are you paying attention to?

David Dindi: So I, I’m an avid reader of The Economist. I find it to be very… [01:09:00] Very informative just across what’s happening across the world. I think the things that are top of mind for me right now are a, the geopolitical conflicts between the U S and China and how that affects, um, various economies and be also the trajectories that.

Various central banks are taking, uh, uh, and their attempts to tame inflation, as those are very relevant to, to atomic at this point in time,

Josh DeTar: Awesome. And so if people want to learn more about Atomic Invest and the work that you are doing, and if they’d like to connect with you personally, how do they do that?

David Dindi: we could learn more about atomic invest on our website, which is atomic vest dot com and, uh, to reach out to me, feel free to send me a DM on, uh, LinkedIn, um, under David, uh, uh,

Josh DeTar: Awesome. Thank you, sir. Well, I, uh, if you can’t tell by this episode, I’m pretty passionate about the work that you guys are doing [01:10:00] and, and I don’t even just mean Atomic Invest. They just, I mean, the industry as a collective in trying to provide more opportunities to help, um, more people have access to creating freedom of mind through solidifying their financial positions.

Um, I think that’s a really powerful and noble cause. So it’s, it’s just, it’s been a real pleasure to get to know you and see the work that you’re doing and keep up the good work.

David Dindi: Dindy, thanks for having me here today. Josh.

Josh DeTar: Yeah, of course. Thanks for being a guest on the digital banking podcast, David.