Reddit has become a guide to personal finance • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#161

Post by waylandsmithers » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:30 PM UTC

I would personally advise against taking advice from Reddit beyond simply basic answers about various financial products and maths.

My problem with larger communities on Reddit is that prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell. On the personal finance subreddits these include ideas like "You should always have 18 months of expenses saved" and "Any more than $10,000 for your wedding is a reckless and gross waste of money" and "Look how smart I am for having a mega-backdoor roth ira instead of a regular 401k like all the idiot sheeple."

I still think having a relationship with a financial advisor you trust is better than taking advice from strangers on the internet.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#162

Post by beatgammit » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

bluntfang wrote: post #145

m23khan wrote: post #135

I absolutely love reddit - a massive collection of discussion forums on very specific topics and most seem to be moderated by individual(s). I can find topic related to all my interests - finance, economy, devops, machine learning, politics, sports, specific country and even things like walmart and costco. Although effectiveness of advice can vary depending on topic (people are pretty opinionated on certain subreddit…

>most seem to be moderated by individual(s). How can you tell the difference between an individual and a corporate shill account to a degree that you can make this statement?

My general rule of thumb:

- > 1M subscribers - most definitely filled with shills - > 100k subscribers - probably lots of shills - I try to avoid big subs and stick mostly to smaller subs.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#163

Post by frosted-flakes » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:34 PM UTC

toberej wrote: post #108

mlrtime wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mind sharing the subreddits?

r/fire - financial independence, retire early. r/fatfire - same thing as above but for people looking to have more than "just enough" to retire (multimillion, mostly full of high earners like SWE's, agents or successful entrepreneurs where this goal is somewhat realistic). r/personalfinance & r/ukpersonalfinance - well rounded finance forum. r/frugal - okayish for if you are in a really tough spot. If you are doing o…

There are other country-specific personal finance forums on Reddit too, such as r/PersonalFinanceCanada.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#164

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

waylandsmithers wrote: post #161

I would personally advise against taking advice from Reddit beyond simply basic answers about various financial products and maths. My problem with larger communities on Reddit is that prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell. On the personal finance subreddits these include ideas like "You should always have 18 months of expenses saved" and "Any mo…

> prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell

Hmm... sounds like another community we all know. This is not a unique problem to Reddit or large communities. It's inevitable in any forum when you try to use crowdsourcing to moderate/curate content.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#165

Post by 0xJRS » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:36 PM UTC

waylandsmithers wrote: post #161

I would personally advise against taking advice from Reddit beyond simply basic answers about various financial products and maths. My problem with larger communities on Reddit is that prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell. On the personal finance subreddits these include ideas like "You should always have 18 months of expenses saved" and "Any mo…

I think most people who have read the PF subreddits came to the same conclusion that you can't live life eating lentils and driving a 93 camry forever.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#166

Post by SXX » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #159

SXX wrote: post #151

This remind me of famous: > When the shoeshine boys talk stocks it was a great sell signal in 1929 https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv...

I had non-technical people coming to me asking if I knew how to mine "bitcoins" right before the the crypto bubble popped. If I had any left it would have definitely been time to exit the market.

I seen exactly same thing happen in one of my groups of friends where no one ever had any interest in IT before that point. For a month or two before crash they was talking about their crypto investments daily even though before this all they was interesting about are some extreme sports, woman and cars.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#167

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Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#168

Post by bootlooped » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

waylandsmithers wrote: post #161

I would personally advise against taking advice from Reddit beyond simply basic answers about various financial products and maths. My problem with larger communities on Reddit is that prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell. On the personal finance subreddits these include ideas like "You should always have 18 months of expenses saved" and "Any mo…

I think one of the problems is that many reddit users deploy downvotes against people who have a different subjective opinion than them. That is the lever that drowns out dissent from the majority. I have been thinking about that for a while now, what is the proper time to use a downvote? My MO is that it is only to be deployed against those who are arguing in bad faith or being disrespectful. Differing opinions should be allowed to exist.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#169

Post by seattle_spring » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

rashkov wrote: post #129

toberej wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just lost all my savings, thanks.

I know we’re discussing reddit here, but let’s please keep the reddit-style quips off of HN

Knowing that sub, there's a really good chance that the person you responded to was not joking.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#170

Post by YawningAngel » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #164

waylandsmithers wrote: post #161

I would personally advise against taking advice from Reddit beyond simply basic answers about various financial products and maths. My problem with larger communities on Reddit is that prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell. On the personal finance subreddits these include ideas like "You should always have 18 months of expenses saved" and "Any mo…

> prevailing opinions seem to emerge, and anything that questions or disagrees with them gets downvoted to hell Hmm... sounds like another community we all know. This is not a unique problem to Reddit or large communities. It's inevitable in any forum when you try to use crowdsourcing to moderate/curate content.

How do downvotes even work here? I've been posting here for years and (as far as I know) am in good standing and don't have the option.