Is The Money Guy Show Legit? What the SEC Records Show
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Most finance creators have nothing a regulator can check. The Money Guy Show is different: its two hosts say they are financial advisers at a registered investment firm, and in the United States that claim can be looked up in the SEC’s public adviser database in a minute. We looked. Here is what the records show, what the show itself says, and what its YouTube numbers look like.
Who runs it
Brian Preston describes himself as the founder and host of The Money Guy Show and the managing partner and co-founder of Abound Wealth Management, “an RIA with over $2 billion in assets under management”. He says he started the podcast “as a passion project in 2006” and lives in Franklin, Tennessee (Money Guy, About Brian). His co-host, Bo Hanson, is described as a partner and co-founder of the same firm, and as a CFA and CFP® (Money Guy, About Bo).
The YouTube channel was created on August 25, 2011 and on October 28, 2026 its About panel showed 5,712 videos and 225,802,223 total views (YouTube, @moneyguyshow).
What the SEC records show
The SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database (IAPD) is the official register of US investment advisers. On October 28, 2026 it showed:
| Record | What IAPD shows |
|---|---|
| Abound Wealth Management, LLC | SEC-registered investment adviser, SEC number 801-108697, Franklin, Tennessee. Registration approved November 23, 2016. Disclosure flag: none |
| John Brian Preston | Investment adviser representative at Abound Wealth Management since January 10, 2017; previously Preston & Cleveland Wealth Management, 2004–2016. Disclosure flag: none |
| Bo Barret Hanson | Investment adviser representative at Abound Wealth Management since January 3, 2017. Disclosure flag: none |
Sources: IAPD firm record, IAPD record for John Brian Preston, IAPD record for Bo Barret Hanson.
“Disclosure flag: none” means IAPD lists no customer complaints, regulatory actions, criminal matters or similar events for that record. The individual record is under “John Brian Preston” with the same firm and town Brian Preston gives on his own bio, which is how we matched them.
The firm’s own site describes it as “fee-only, fiduciary” and says it does not earn commissions or referral fees (Abound Wealth). Being registered does not make anyone’s advice right, and IAPD does not verify the $2 billion figure, which comes from the company. But the core claim, that the hosts are working, registered advisers with clean records, checks out.
By the numbers
We measured the channel’s recent uploads as part of our study of 312 big YouTube channels.
| Measure (October 28, 2026) | The Money Guy Show | Typical finance channel in our study |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribers (as YouTube displays them) | 708K | — |
| Median views per long-form upload | 170K | — |
| Views per subscriber | 24.0% | 10.3% |
| Like rate (likes ÷ views) | 0.98% | 1.82% |
| Long-form uploads, last 30 days | 8 | 4 |
| Median views per Short | 35.8K | — |
The channel posts often, about twice a week, and each long-form video reaches roughly a quarter of its subscriber count, more than double the finance median. Its like rate is the weak spot: under 1%, in the bottom quarter of the 53 finance channels we measured. Likes are only one signal, and the views here are strong; a channel with a bought audience usually shows the opposite pattern, many subscribers and few views. For context on what a normal ratio is, see what a good like-to-view ratio is.
None of the 15 latest long-form descriptions disclosed a sponsor in explicit terms, the test our study uses. That fits a show whose business is the advisory firm behind it.
What our checker would add
The Money Guy Show is on YouTube, one of the two platforms our free authenticity checker can score. We did not run it for this article, so nothing here is or implies a score for the channel. Run it yourself at /check/youtube/moneyguyshow; the methodology explains what it measures.
The bottom line
On “is The Money Guy Show legit?”: both hosts appear in the SEC’s adviser database at the firm they name, with no disclosures, and the firm has been SEC-registered since 2016. The channel’s audience watches far more than the finance-channel norm. The same two-minute check works on any finance creator who says they are an adviser: search their name on adviserinfo.sec.gov and read the disclosures. If they are not there and claim to manage money, ask why.
Sources: Money Guy, About Brian; Money Guy, About Bo; SEC IAPD, Abound Wealth Management; SEC IAPD, John Brian Preston; SEC IAPD, Bo Barret Hanson; Abound Wealth; YouTube channel About panel; YouTube’s public upload feeds for the channel, read October 28, 2026 (study dataset).
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