Your Judgment Is Your Edge. Keep It That Way.

Hi, Tom here.

This is tmrw — a weekly note on how to think, plan, and invest with clarity. Each edition is designed to help you protect your wealth, avoid costly mistakes, and make smarter long-term decisions.

I’m glad you’re here. Let’s get into it.

Here’s where this is going. You get to choose your outcome.

I hate to write another piece about AI and your financial life, but hear me out. There are only three paths you can take from here. Everyone will end up in one of them, and I want you to choose well.

Whether you are an AI software developer or someone who never plans to use AI in any capacity, thinking through where you want to land will help you invest better, plan better, pay less in taxes, and make better decisions over time.

This is about judgment, and preserving your ability to make great financial decisions.

It’s also about preserving your peace of mind.

I was at our church’s Kids Christmas Party this past weekend, there were kids everywhere, and the event was packed. So packed that our friends and I had to eat on the ground.

While my 6’3 frame was lamenting being on the ground, I happened to be eye level to a floor sign promoting the Christmas Service. I checked it out, the designs, colors, text, etc. It was nicely done.

Then I noticed the last three sentences towards the bottom of the sign. They were formatted beautifully, but almost too beautifully, I’d seen the sentence structure before. It was the classic “three of a kind” writing that AI loves to output. 

I leaned over to my friend (who is a writer by trade), and pointed it out, he laughed and said, “that whole thing is probably made by AI. ”I laughed, and our attention shifted back to the kids and our dinner.

Last month, I wrote about the trust zone. It’s the sacred ground where you hold your beliefs about money, life, values, and investing. It’s the place of conviction and where you go to make decisions.  

AI has now jumped the fence. It is in the trust zones of millions of people. Including mine, apparently, even at a Kids Christmas Party.

This will have an influence on your financial life.

Here’s how.

“I wasn’t expecting that”

What surprised me about that little poster in my church lobby wasn’t that the poster was made by AI or that 3 sentence writing technique, it was more of the idea, that something as sacred to me as my faith and place of worship, was shaped by AI.

Not by my choice, but rather by the choices of someone else.

Your trust zone is the place you make important decisions. Decisions about your career, your family, and your finances.

Financially, it’s the place where you filter the economic landscape shaping your career, parse through investment ideas, and make decisions off your values, goals, and circumstances.

And today, we are all in this collective “AI Test Phase” – markets are ripping higher on the what’s possible, people are using it personally and professionally in incredible ways, and we’re just trying to figure out if or how to use it to make more money, pay less in taxes, and craft better financial plans.

We’re being ushered into a new age. You do not have to love it, but you do have to decide how you are going to navigate it.

I made this graphic to illustrate where we are at and the outcomes of this.

Three groups of people will emerge in the coming years:

1. People who do not use AI

2. People who outsource their judgment to AI

3. People who use AI to make life better

Let’s break this down:

Group One – Non-Users

I think many people are just going to end up walking through this odd phase of “what does this mean for me” only to find they don’t care, don’t need to care, and life just moves on. I think this is a great place to end up, if you can. But if you have any meaningful career time left, I have a hard time believing this is the place to be. We have some clients heading in this direction and I tell them that’s ok. I say you just need to understand the impacts of AI on your portfolios, the people you employ to help (advisors, CPAs, attorneys, etc), and your family.

Group Two – Outsourcing Judgment

This is the danger. It is so easy to just hand things off to AI – draft this email, respond to this text, do this, make that, I don’t know what to do here, etc. The slippery slope is when you accidentally outsource your judgment to software that looks and feels like a human. The Washington Post, mid-November, analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations to understand how people are using it. Interestingly enough, the word “yes” was used 10x more than “no”.

Hallmarks of great financial lives are built on saying “no” or “not right now” vs “yes”, I’ll leave it at that.

Group Three – Great Thinkers and Doers

For many of you, this is where to land. Where you maintain, and even grow, your ability to think, to judge, to act, using AI as a tool vs an answer. This is where you are smart enough to understand the limits of AI, how talk to it correctly, how use it to make decisions better while preserving your own judgment. This is where you retain your ability to critically think and reason, and use AI to make better decisions. There is an ocean of opportunity here.

Wisdom is applied knowledge.

Knowledge is a commodity now, and never has it been easier to get an answer that feels like wisdom.

AI is not your financial advisor.

AI is not a financial advisor.

AI is a tool.

You are the builder, you make the plans, you make the judgments.

AI is not accountable, you are.

It’s only job is to respond.

This test phase we’re in is some sort of mix of delight and uncertainty, but your goal should be simple – get to Group 3. That’s where you retain your agency, grow your critical thinking ability, and make better financial decisions.

Your financial life was built on saying no to most things and yes to a few great things, keep it that way.

I am reminded of the quote from Henry Ford:

“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”

Remember, Group 3.

Thanks for your time this week.

Tom

PS. If you’re considering an advisor change in 2026, I’m here.

I write to think clearly, invest better, and help tens of thousands of Americans think differently about money.

Money can either be a trap or a well of freedom.

I grew up in a household of financial advisors. My grandfather Cliff became an advisor in 1961, my father followed his footsteps in 1992, and I joined the ranks in 2013.

I grew up around money, in money, with a father and grandfather who helped protect and grow it. I grew up going to refugees homes in our city with my mom and married a woman who grew up on food stamps and immigrated here at age 9 from Central America.

I’ve helped hundreds of families across the country through my firm, Fjell Capital, find a better way.

Here is what I know to be true: a completely different future than what you think is possible is possible.

I’ve seen what can go right in a family. I’ve seen what hard work, transparency, risk-taking, wisdom, and partnership can do.

That’s why this newsletter is called tmrw. You can’t change yesterday, but you can build a better tomorrow.

My tmrw is for my wife of 13 years, our three young kids, building a highly respected wealth management firm and impacting millions of American’s perspective of what’s possible.

Let’s turn your reality today into a better tomorrow.

Tom