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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

#261

Post by LegitShady »

Goronmon wrote: post #223
mgerb wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Disagree. Google has gotten much worse and not because of the internet but because of their own priorities shifting.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#262

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

AdmiralGinge wrote: post #231
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…

I kind of went the other way, I prefer the discussions on HN. Any subreddit that gets over 100K (and arguably fewer) subscribers just becomes a cesspit. Take /r/ukpolitics for example, back in the day an anarcho-syndicalist could have a debate with a die-hard Thatcherite and while it'd be fairly heated, people tended to know their shit and I'd generally come away feeling like I learned something after reading the boa…

The discussion by actually passionate people gets drowned out when subs get too large. It becomes difficult to discuss things beyond an elementary level, as newcomers may not have the experience with a topic that longer subscribers would have.

If you look at old HN threads, it feels more intellectually curious than today. But HN today is still very good. I wouldn't compare HN of today vs. 5 years ago, to say, what's happened to /r/financialindependence over a similar timeframe.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#263

Post by LegitShady »

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 agree. If quartz is telling you something it's likely the opposite or about to end anyways. If there was value to be found on Reddit its just as easy to drown out as anywhere else.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#264

Post by Proziam »

leetcrew wrote: post #260
Proziam wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's remarkable how true that is of almost all forums that have been around a while. There are dead serious experts on every subject to be found on 4chan for example. Reddit is no different, but each subreddit is basically a tiny little kingdom and not all of them are run well (the LoL subreddit, for example, is a nightmare due to corporate moderation from Riot).

good lord. why would you ever voluntarily become responsible for moderating discussion about your game on a third-party platform?

Never underestimate the power of the human ego or the almighty dollar. It's just unfortunate that in many cases these motivators get used for corrupt purposes.

EDIT - Since not everyone is familiar with the RIOT games example.

In the case of RIOT, they use it to control external discussion about their game and manage PR. Since the LoL subreddit is the largest hub for LoL related discussion in the western world, it's worth it to them to play kingmaker with the moderators (and they've given those mods the same power over Valorant now as well) and place them into jobs, or just outright pay them.

Of course, this turns into corruption because the mods have straight up banned credible journalists from the space, as well push discussion into uncomfortable directions. (Hating on certain people is not allowed, hating on others totally is.)

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#265

Post by rgovostes »

xelhark wrote: post #23

I think a much bigger point can be summarized with this sentence from the article: > Seven of the top ten results are trying to sell you something, which really makes you question the objectivity of the advice. This is true when searching for pretty much everything in Google nowadays, that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results.

Virtually every blog post I've ever found on a well-known brand of orthodontic clear-aligner treatment includes a note, "by the way this post was sponsored but this is my honest opinion." Have to hand it to the marketing team.

The reviewers seem to believe they are unbiased but your satisfaction with the results may differ if you had spent $5,000 versus if you had spent nothing.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#266

Post by mroche »

bootlooped wrote: post #168
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 shou…

Reddit does have some informal guidelines (Reddiquette) on this: https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/reddit-101/reddit-b...

Summary:

DO:

> - Vote. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.

> - Consider posting constructive criticism / an explanation when you downvote something, and do so carefully and tactfully.

> - Actually read an article before you vote on it (as opposed to just basing your vote on the title).

> - Moderate based on quality, not opinion. Well written and interesting content can be worthwhile, even if you disagree with it.

DON'T:

> - Downvote an otherwise acceptable post because you don't personally like it. Think before you downvote and take a moment to ensure you're downvoting someone because they are not contributing to the community dialogue or discussion. If you simply take a moment to stop, think and examine your reasons for downvoting, rather than doing so out of an emotional reaction, you will ensure that your downvotes are given for good reasons.

> - Mass downvote someone else's posts. If it really is the content you have a problem with (as opposed to the person), by all means vote it down when you come upon it. But don't go out of your way to seek out an enemy's posts.

> - Moderate a story based on your opinion of its source. Quality of content is more important than who created it.

> - Upvote or downvote based just on the person that posted it. Don't upvote or downvote comments and posts just because the poster's username is familiar to you. Make your vote based on the content.

> - Report posts just because you do not like them. You should only be using the report button if the post breaks the subreddit rules.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#268

Post by nojvek »

Humdeee wrote: post #144
speeder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dated a woman that had this job, but using Facebook (this was some years ago too). It was not just marketing, but PR too, for example she bragged about when Whirlpool had a serious problem with one of their washing machines in my country, and it was going viral, so Whirlpool paid the marketing agency to make all fake profiles (even ones not belonging to their campaigns) make other viral posts to drown out the washi…

The sheer amount of fabrication is nauseating. I suppose it's not much different than the business model of any common ad company at it's purest essence: customer manipulation

I know of a couple of folks that were in the business. Selling twitter profiles, Instagram profiles or asking users with >10k followers to make content ads that don’t look like ads.

Marketing is a massive business. It makes a shit ton of money. FB and GOOG are ad companies at the end of the day, and there’s ton of little companies that they nurture as side effects.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#269

Post by thekyle »

basch wrote: post #138
tiew9Vii wrote: post #73

Must admit, reddit got me caring more about my finances. It seems not many people are taught about money properly. I certainly wasn’t and non of my friends where. I’ve always been good in that I never spent what I didn’t have and lived within my means. What savings I did have where in a zero interest current account though! Following the finance Reddit’s at least put me in the right path. 6-12 months cash savings now…

>putting money in to ETF’s until I have enough in the ETF’s I’m willing to by some individual stocks which may not be as stable as the ETFs I have. Are those retirement accounts or taxable brokerage. Because for many people, maxing out their IRA, 401K, and HSA is like 35K a year alone, and putting money into taxable brokerage should take a backseat unless 1) you like the gambling for its entertainment factor 2) you c…

Another thing is that 401k and IRAs might not be great for someone hoping to retire early because of the early withdrawal penalties.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#270

Post by sigstoat »

Tycho wrote: post #205

Here's a simple personal finance question that seems very hard to answer: should you overpay your mortgage, or put more money towards retirement? The well informed answers you tend to see on sites like MoneySavingExpert seem to converge on putting money towards retirement. They cite things like difference in interest rates and tax relief. But I feel the analysis is too one-dimensional, and there's actually a myriad o…

> Here's a simple personal finance question that seems very hard to answer: should you overpay your mortgage, or put more money towards retirement?

it's certainly subtle, and depends quite a bit on a person's circumstances. i feel like i've seen the financial forums answer that fairly well, though, when folks describe their personal situation (and risk tolerance!).

> It might be impossible to answer well but I feel someone should turn it into an optimization problem (in the engineering sense).

i think it might be hard to turn it into a concrete one (most of your effort would go into accurately estimating the user's current risk tolerance, and their expectations for future interest rates and cash flows), but it would be nice to see a rough flow chart produced, so that people could be walked through the steps that need to be considered.

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