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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

#311

Post by rchaud »

jeromegv wrote: post #233
rchaud wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, that's not how it works. It is a marginal tax bracket. If you get in the higher bracket, it's only the new money that gets taxed at the higher rate, not your full salary. It has absolutely nothing to do with your contribution to retirement accounts. You can invest more and contribute more to your tax free retirement accounts with a higher salary (up to a point) but even if you didn't, that wouldn't make a differe…

I'm aware of how marginal tax rates are applied. That's why I said "while my average tax rate may increase" (in a hypothetical situation), I can still net more overall due to increase in the absolute $ return on the TFSA portfolio.

I'm responding with respect to the OP's comment about beign bumped into a higher marginal tax bracket. Just because you are, doesn't mean you'll automatically end up with less discretionary income.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#312

Post by nkassis »

Domenic_S wrote: post #295
bityard wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you don't get as much "blogspam" on Reddit, it has a very different problem today: The amount of misinformation and echo chambering of said misinformation on Reddit is simply staggering. Very few subs have FAQs or rules asking newbies to search the sub for their question. As a result, most of the subs I follow are littered with the same questions over and over. The other problem is that when someone does ask fo…

> As a result, most of the subs I follow are littered with the same questions over and over. I answer questions in r/personalfinance's "new" area, and the split is something like: "I am upside down on my car loan/loan is too expensive/want to get out of my current car" - 40% "How do I do I make [some crazy ROI]? I have [$small amount] to invest" - 20% "I have no money and need to pay my bills" - 20% "Can I afford to…

I'd probably read something like that. I hate buying cars. I know I'll get scammed somehow and pay more than I should.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#313

Post by beatgammit »

fierarul wrote: post #110
ZekeSulastin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... what? I can get to it from the website and Apollo perfectly well.

I must be in the bad A/B bucket because I see 'This community is available in the app' and haven't been able to use Reddit a lot on mobile for weeks / months? Google gives me this article about the new trend: https://reclaimthenet.org/this-community-is-available-in-the...

I'm guessing you're on your phone? I get prompts urging me to use their app, but I have been able to opt for the browser instead, and I use Tor fairly frequently (phone and desktop). Have you tried old.reddit.com instead?

Maybe it's specifically targeting certain browsers/platforms. I'm on Firefox on Android, maybe they're specifically targeting iOS?

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#314

Post by rchaud »

_whiteCaps_ wrote: post #271
rchaud wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just want to be clear on this point: > I can contribute $6k for 2020, and the total I can hold in TFSA is $69,500 As of 2020, the total you can contribute into a TFSA over your lifetime is $69500. But it's not a limit of what can exist in your account. Gains you make in the account do not count toward your limit.

Yes, I should have clarified that it's the total contribution that maxes out at $69.5k

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#315

Post by anon73044 »

jeromegv wrote: post #233
rchaud wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, that's not how it works. It is a marginal tax bracket. If you get in the higher bracket, it's only the new money that gets taxed at the higher rate, not your full salary. It has absolutely nothing to do with your contribution to retirement accounts. You can invest more and contribute more to your tax free retirement accounts with a higher salary (up to a point) but even if you didn't, that wouldn't make a differe…

I thought the point of contributing more to the tax free account was to lower the total taxable income? Same with making charitable contributions.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#316

Post by galkk »

> Traditional publications that offer financial advice, such as the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal, communicate authority, trust, and centuries of accumulated wisdom. Though they are objective and accurate, these sources often lack the relatability of an answer on Reddit.

objective and accurate... FT and WSJ.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#317

Post by asdfman123 »

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 have to go in with the mentality that lots of communities have been infected by exaggerated groupthink. The core values and typically accepted wisdom is usually pretty decent, but people become zealots for it and the subreddits become more like weird experiments in enforcing ideological purity.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#318

Post by isoskeles »

magduf wrote: post #294
P_I_Staker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What savings I did have where in a zero interest current account though! That's not great, but overall, I'm not making very much money from my "high-interest savings account". Maybe a grand or two over decades, but even that's generous. I don't know if it's worthy of an exclamation mark. The biggest losses are prevented by not overspending and some of the other things you mentioned.

>my "high-interest savings account". Maybe a grand or two over decades Huh? Either you have very little savings for someone on this site, or your "high-interest" account isn't high-interest. Ally Bank currently has 1.6% interest on their savings account, so you'd make $1000 in interest in 1 year with a balance of about $62k. If your savings account doesn't have at least 1.5% interest, then why do you have it? There's…

Really, 2%, where? Also, that’s probably going to get knocked down this week given the announcement from the Fed, unfortunately.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#319

Post by vntx »

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…

> HN doesn't seem to have the same issue (at least not to the point it dominates the character of the platform), despite it being essentially a clone of old-school Reddit.

That is because PG sets clear rules and actively experiments with techniques to keep HN’s integrity intact, and since HN discussions are usually of the more intellectual variety, it’s harder for shit-posters and bottom-feeders to find traction here with low effort comments.

If you want to read his thoughts, check out his essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#320

Post by marblar »

GFischer wrote: post #305
debaserab2 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found that subreddits almost become an anti-expertise forum over time - when actual experts show up to give advice, they are often downvoted if their advice goes against whatever that subreddit is cargo culting (which, as you mentioned, is often not great advice in the first place). Then the expert is discouraged from participating ever again. I've witnessed this pattern in an array of subreddits spanning from…

Maybe some subreddits, but on other subreddits you get actual top people - I´m in a couple of card game ones and I sometimes get answers from a top 50 player. You also get advice from not so good players too of course.

That seems like an unusual case because you have an external way to verify the expertise of a top 50 player. You don't have the same for a finance subreddit.
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