I've given some advice to family when asked. Some are more willing than others to really listen. I thought my closet brother would when he was looking to retire early, but when he was trying to decide whether to start SS at 62 or wait, I pointed out a pretty big flaw in his spreadsheet. I couldn't get him to see it, and finally decided it was more or less a toss-up anyway, so why bother. I don't offer anything beyond what they ask, other than to say if they have other questions, just ask. It's usually the BILs or SILs who push their spouses to ask me because they don't see me as the little kid they grew up with, I guess.
During the dotcom run-up, some co-workers and I used to discuss stock tips and investing in general. One guy really had a knack for picking winners, but I came to realize he wouldn't share his tips until a stock really started to do well, and it was often too late to jump in. Not so helpful. I'm sure he never told us about some losers, but he'd talk about his net gains in his account and they were a lot bigger % than mine. But I did learn some things from him and others about the stock picking process. Some of it had me shaking my head though. He's presume a profit margin and a company's new product, and then say if they got x% of the market and sold a million of them, they'd make this much profit per share, so the stock would go up to this price. He'd be multiplying numbers he pulled out of his azz and I wouldn't buy it. Then a few months later the company would soar past his target, but that was the dotcom era and if his numbers proved out or if it was just part of irrational exuberance. Also, it happened he got married before the bubble burst, and his wife said she wasn't comfortable with all that risk so he got out.
Another friend of mine has commented a couple times that she'd like me to take a look at her finances. She mentioned on a hike once that she had her money at VG and was in total stock/intl/bond and I laughed said that was perfect. But I later learned she wasn't doing things like taking full advantage of an HSA. She never quite followed up with a plan to sit down and look at it. Maybe it'll still happen. I'd be more hesitant except she's obviously bought into the simple VG strategy so it'd just be a matter of optimizing for taxes where possible.
I wrote up a few page document of education and advice for my son. I know he's looked at it but not really absorbed it. When he started a new job he asked details about the 401K and other benefits and I told him, then said that doc I'd sent him really had all this, and he said "Yeah, I know, but that's at home and I'm at work now."
