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Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

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Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#221

Post by brazzy »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #178
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 still think having a relationship with a financial advisor you trust is better than taking advice from strangers on the internet. What financial advisor is going to be able to make a living telling people to buy and hold a target date retirement fund from Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab? It's all pretty common sense advice, that hopefully one can verify is correct with some basic arithmetic. And advice for 90% of people…

> What financial advisor is going to be able to make a living telling people to buy and hold a target date retirement fund from Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab?

The kind you pay for by the hour and for whom it would be a criminal violation of fiduciary duty sell you an expensive whole life insurance that they get a commission for.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#222

Post by Humdeee »

mfoy_ wrote: post #192
Humdeee wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial literacy is pure garlic to every common vampire financial advisor. I have a couple friends right now that do not want wage raises because "it will knock them into the next tax bracket". Believe me, I've tried to explain how the simple concept of income and taxes work. I trusted my financial advisor years ago when I started my career. It took me a couple years to realize I was the product, not his client wit…

Almost all "financial advisors" are really just in sales.

Correct, and developing trust is a fundamental tool in every salesman's pocket.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#223

Post by Goronmon »

mgerb wrote: post #152
moksly wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t think much about it, but now that you mention it, I’ve been typing “reddit” after my google queries almost every time I search for something that isn’t a technical problem or me looking to buy something.

I've been doing the exact same thing for quite some time now. Google is filled with so many garbage results. For most things I want to see short and sweet answers by real people. Just yesterday I searched for "index funds vs etf reddit", as I'm really new to any sort of investing. The first reddit result on google has a simplified response that is to the point. Now try searching google for "index funds vs etf" and th…

Google is filled with so many garbage results.

In this case I would just replace 'Google' with 'the internet'. Switching search providers isn't going to make a marked difference the vast majority of the time, as at the end of the day, if the vast majority of the internet is filled with 'garbage' a search engine can only do so much to avoid it.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#224

Post by BlargMcLarg »

magduf wrote: post #201
iso1210 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about the US, but in the UK there are a few wage points where a small rise can lead to a reduction in net income. Specifically moving into the higher tax bracket, which removes £200 off their personal allowance if they were using the pooling allowance option -- i.e. a £100 tax rise could lead to £46 extra income but £201 extra outgoing, a net reduction of £155 There are more perverse options with housing, child…

Does the US not have marginal tax brackets? That seems really odd and dumb. The benefit cliff you cite is real, but for actual income taxes, there's no such thing as a reduction in income from higher earnings. Going to a higher tax bracket just means you pay higher taxes on money over a certain threshold. So if bracket A is 20% under $50k, and bracket B is 30% over $50k, if you make $51k, you'll pay 20% of 50k, plus…

The Netherlands has this issue as well, points of income where your marginal gain is negative, ergo losing net money when making more gross money due to losing benefits. There are also indirect problems such as losing access to certain services (cheaper housing being one). Obviously, this shouldn't be the case. Making more money gross should result in equal-or-more money net, without disadvantages, otherwise the incentive is gone.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#225

Post by the_watcher »

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…

> You should always have 18 months of expenses saved

The r/personalfinance "Common Topics" page suggests 3-6 months for most people and 9-12 for those with variable income.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#226

Post by rchaud »

tsukurimashou wrote: post #203
Humdeee wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial literacy is pure garlic to every common vampire financial advisor. I have a couple friends right now that do not want wage raises because "it will knock them into the next tax bracket". Believe me, I've tried to explain how the simple concept of income and taxes work. I trusted my financial advisor years ago when I started my career. It took me a couple years to realize I was the product, not his client wit…

> I have a couple friends right now that do not want wage raises because "it will knock them into the next tax bracket". is that not a real thing where you live?

It isn't that black and white. For example, in Canada, I can contribute a certain amount into a tax-free savings account each year.

TFSAs can be created to hold ETFs, Mutual Funds and other types of investments. I can contribute $6k for 2020, and the total I can hold in TFSA is $69,500. I can contribute more annually as long as my total is under $69.5k.

With a raise, I can accelerate my contributions and continue to enjoy tax-free gains on it. My personal average income tax rate might go up, but that's offset to an extent by whatever returns I'm making through my portfolio.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#227

Post by samfriedman »

cool-RR wrote: post #61
JackMorgan wrote: post #43

Reddit is truly amazing, such that I've mostly replaced my usage of hackernews with it. I have serious issues with anxiety, and the inability for me to filter out content related to "current news" aka "clickbait fear mongering" means when I surf hackernews for too long I'll be upset for hours afterwards as I'm riled up with current events rewritten as FUD. Reddit can be filtered by subreddit, so I've got a view with…

Care to share your collection of art subreddits?

some smaller ones focused more on professional work/discussion:

    /r/museum  
    /r/contemporaryart  
    /r/BackgroundArt  
    /r/ArtsHub  
    /r/artsphere  
    /r/CulinaryPlating (for chefs, but some of their creations are quite artistic)

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#229

Post by govg »

rtkwe wrote: post #148
throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was likely removed because the FAQ [0] already lists the differences and searching shows [1] that the question has come up before. Good culture != the ability to substitute the subreddit for Google or your own research. This is quite normal on Reddit. If questions like this are allowed, the subreddit often becomes inundated with them and there's no room for discussing anything else. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/k…

Honestly I never use reddit search. Even if I remember the actual title or parts of the title I can't find the post again. Maybe it's improved but it was absolute garbage the last time I tried.

The best way to search on reddit is to use the "site:reddit.com/r/subreddit" method on Google, quickly gets you relevant results and is not that much of an effort either.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#230

Post by lotsofpulp »

brazzy wrote: post #221
lotsofpulp wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I still think having a relationship with a financial advisor you trust is better than taking advice from strangers on the internet. What financial advisor is going to be able to make a living telling people to buy and hold a target date retirement fund from Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab? It's all pretty common sense advice, that hopefully one can verify is correct with some basic arithmetic. And advice for 90% of people…

> What financial advisor is going to be able to make a living telling people to buy and hold a target date retirement fund from Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab? The kind you pay for by the hour and for whom it would be a criminal violation of fiduciary duty sell you an expensive whole life insurance that they get a commission for.

The vast majority of people don't have enough money to go past this flow chart from /r/personalfinance:

https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.png

It would be the opposite of financial advice to pay someone to walk you through that flow chart and click a few buttons to invest it in the lowest cost index funds. I also don't recommend people hire a plumber to fix their toilet. Just youtube it. Do a few simple searches online, and you will find that you don't need to pay an "advisor", as much of their role has been obviated.

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