Consumers Are Looking for Answers to These Financial Questions Right Now

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Before a consumer turns to a financial advisor to answer their personal finance questions, they often turn to the internet first. Thus, advisors can use recent search trends to inform their content and marketing – heading off prospect and client questions proactively to add value and build trust. Trending searches can help inform newsletter content, ad targeting, SEO content, and even provide fodder for check-ins with clients to help gauge their financial biases and attitudes.

Given these applications, SmartAsset examined surging search trends among personal finance topics over the past few weeks to help advisors steer their marketing and communication efforts for the best results of clients, prospects and advisors alike. Content and calculators for these topics is also included which is free to share with your client and prospect bases.

• New year, new financial plan. As they should be, people seem to be reviewing their financial plans and accounting for updated information. Among the trending search terms over the last few weeks have been “401k contribution limits 2025” (83.3% increase); “2025 roth ira contribution limits” (50.0% increase); and “Social Security payment dates” (236.1% increase).

• Elon Musk and companies. While “tsla” remains a top financial search term at an estimated 1.5 million searches per month, the searches “SpaceX stock price” (49.4%) and “how much is Elon Musk worth?” (49.6% increase) have been trending.

• Tariffs and taxes under Trump. Investors are trying to understand what Trump administration changes and tactics will mean for their money. Searches surged on keywords like “tariff definition” (82.8%), “what is a tariff” (82.4%), “trump tax plan” (50.0%), and “whos[e] tax plan are we under in 2024” (50.0%).

• Tax season is in full swing. Early birds are catching the worm, seeking out tax tools, research and services. Google dubs these keywords as trending for the last six weeks: “tax refund estimator”, “freetaxusa”, “turbotax”, “hrblock”, “where’s my refund”, “irs refund”, “child tax credit 2024”, and “tax brackets 2024”.

Other surging keywords strongly linked to financial planning include long-term care insurance, backdoor Roth IRA, cremation costs, stop limit order, capital gains on house sale, and Roth IRA. See below for a full list of personal finance search data recent highlights.

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