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

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#381

Post by isoskeles » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #373

isoskeles wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As I said in my prior message, Ally Bank has 1.6% on savings. I think CapitalOne 360 has either 1.6 or 1.7, Discover has something similar, etc. I think Tab Bank has a little higher rate. These aren't hard to find. You probably won't find a full 2.0% anywhere currently.

I know they aren't hard to find, I have an account at Ally Bank. My question was specifically 2%.

Anyway, 1.6% is going away given the Federal Reserve just cut rates by 50 bps yesterday. Expect an email from Ally soon.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#382

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

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…

I'll gladly upvote someone I disagree with as long as I believe they're arguing in good faith.

But when you have bad faith commenters (Like echoing Charlie Kirk's claim that Bernie wants to tax everyone making over $29K 52% [0]), or people being just downright rude, I'll downvote, even if they're posting opinions I agree with. Discourse only moves forward if people are civil and truthful. In more extreme cases of rudeness, I'll report/flag.

[0] https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1231005642413858816

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#383

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

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…

> I don't know why this seems to be a problem unique to Reddit. [...]

I think it's a matter of scale.

Reddit gets a couple magnitudes more traffic than HN. When your userbase is smaller, it's easier to keep it civil. Also, HN has a very strong stance against low-effort shitpost comments. They are quickly flagged and removed by moderators with a comment explaining the policy with a link to the guidelines. That's not to say HN is a "NO FUN" zone, but the funny comments are usually at least clever in some way, and not the same damn joke that has been told a million times.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#384

Post by NicoJuicy » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

marblar wrote: post #320

GFischer wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes they do. They require proof of payment

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#385

Post by Muuuchem » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

teach wrote: post #310

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…

My wife gets this a lot with nutrition. She has a freaking PhD in Nutrition Science and also is a registered dietitian but god forbid she suggest that maybe bacon isn't the mostly healthy of foods in most subreddits.

Well nutrition isn't exactly a settled science. There are many problems with studies and as a result we have a wide variety of sometimes contradictory conclusions from them. New conclusions and findings come out but the nutrition community is unable to achieve a consensus understanding on these types of aspects of a diet. There are too many confounding factors involved in studies and it is nearly impossible to design a study that will show the exact effects of eating bacon on the diet without other dietary considerations tainting the results. Like for instance lots of new studies are coming out recently claiming that our disdain for saturated fats is highly misguided. However, nutritionists cannot come to a consensus because old school people stick to what they learn in school without keeping up with studies, people distrust the new studies or argue in favor of the many contradictory studies, etc...

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#386

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 10:02 PM UTC

auiya wrote: post #111

Kneecaps07 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If it were up to /r/personalfinance, everyone would have three credit cards and that's all they would ever use and it would solve every financial problem ever. They fail to realize that many people (myself included!!) are just not equipped for credit cards and it can cause huge problems.

What does "just not equipped for credit cards" mean?

Poor self control. They'll spend money on a credit card without considering whether or not they'll be able to pay it off in a reasonable amount of time.

In some cases, they have negative cash flow but don't realize it because they haven't sat down and truly inspected their budgeting and spending. They're constantly deciding which bill they can choose not to pay so that they can still make rent. They think getting a credit card will give them breathing room, so they get a one and slowly the balance creeps up, or it jumps up because they suddenly think they can afford that fancy $2,000 TV.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#387

Post by shostack » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

semicolonandson wrote: post #52

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.

I just finished listening to an engaging series of podcasts by Michael Lewis (author of Flash Boys, The Big Short etc.) about the loss of referees in our society. It's called Against the Rules: https://atrpodcast.com/ Much of reddit still has functioning referees in the form of its moderators, but I'm seeing signs of it cracking — e.g. when I researched the backgrounds of certain moderators I found out that they prod…

This is a growing concern. There's simply zero transparency, accountability, or ability to verify who is actually moderating these communities.

I'm particularly concerned about political subs, those dealing with hot button issues, and global news. There is zero way to tell if a mod is acting in a potentially alarming manner.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#388

Post by maest » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #285

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.

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…

Reddit also has a big problem with astroturfing. There are 2 really prominent use cases:

1. (mostly) US politics, with shills on all sides 2. corporate advertising. r/hailcorporate takes this to the extreme sometimes, but there are plenty of astroturfed posts supporting or advertising various brands reddit.

Think about how much companies would pay to have the discussion around their brand monitored and controlled on a forum with millions of eyeballs.

Also, reddit accounts being farmed for karma then sold on is an open secret.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#389

Post by prawn » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #33

prawn wrote: post #22

People incentivised by karma systems seem to create better information sources than when they’re incentivised by money. Think about how often you turn to Stack Overflow, Reddit, forums (Whirlpool in Australia) over AdSense/affiliate blogs. The latter are almost always biased and essentially misleading.

Albeit probably only because they aren't yet being exploited by companies to the extent that search engines are. I don't expect it to last. Googling used to find you this level of grassroots enthusiast information but now is mostly content farms.

I often append forum, reddit, whirlpool, etc to a search to avoid the content farms. I think it will hold out for a while longer.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#390

Post by dwild » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #365

dwild wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw that I was downvoted... I have no idea what's wrong with my comment. That downvote button should definitely force to comment and explain why you downvote.

Think of it another way. This statement: > It's never disadvantageous to make more money (except if you're on government benefits as mentioned, where there are some weird effects). is essentially equivalent to: > If you're not on government benefits, where there are some weird effects, then it is never disadvantageous to make more money. But if the wording was done the second way, you probably wouldn't have had a pro…

Thanks for the input, you do bring an excellent point. I wouldn't agree that they are equivalent though, one is formed specifically to give the impression that it's never disadvantageous, while the other isn't. Parentheses aren't used to bring essential information, which in this case, it is essential.

This is why I would have less problem with the second one. I would still precise that some of theses benefits aren't really a choice, they are tax break that just happens to be offered because of your income, so sure if you already went beyond that income, you aren't on that government benefit... but at one point you weren't beyond that income and you did made less money once you went beyond.