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

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#401

Post by wolfv » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

Muuuchem wrote: post #385

teach wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is now enough evidence that there is a good amount of consensus among nutrition researchers:

https://wfpb-wolf.netlify.com/consensus.html

https://wfpb-wolf.netlify.com/scientific_studies.html

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#402

Post by greenburger » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

luckyscs wrote: post #395

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'm right at the cusp of Roth IRA contributions being taken away. If I were angling for a raise, I would make sure I made just under the limit for this year (old salary and new salary combined in proportion to time worked under each) and try to negotiate for more time off. That's about the only time I would forgot a wage raise and it would probably only be worth it for a band of 3000 around that limit.

You might want to look into a backdoor Roth contribution

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#403

Post by moksly » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:52 AM UTC

FillardMillmore wrote: post #204

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 even look to Reddit when I am looking to buy something, because as pointed out above, Reddit often presents people with a more objective view on a product in contrast to the results you'd get simply from a generic Google query on the product.

Oh I look to reddit/HN and hobby forums when I want recommendations, but if I already know I’m going to buy something specific, like a yellow “specific brand” paint for my blood bowl team, I’ll google and look for the cheapest seller.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#404

Post by moksly » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:55 AM UTC

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.

Considering you’ll often find more informative links posted on reddit than you will see in your google results, I think it may be a problem with Google. At least for my anecdotal experience.

Which is what makes other people having similar experiences interesting. Because if enough of us feel like this, then there would be a need for a better search engine. Not sure who’s going to make it though, libraries?

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#405

Post by brazzy » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:34 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #230

brazzy wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

First, that most people don't need a financial advisor doesn't mean nobody does.

Second, your "few simple searches online" or "youtube it" could just as well land a financially naive person in the clutches of the worst kind of exploitative financial predator, or some disaster prophet telling them to put everything in physical gold, or some hype train telling them bitcoin will make them rich.

It takes a certain amount of knowledge to recognize good advice, especially when it's boring.

For the vast majority of people, paying someone $100/hour to tell them to buy and hold a target date retirement fund from Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab is a much better option than the likely alternatives (going to a commission-based "free" advisor, or taking advice from random people in the internet).

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#406

Post by sobani » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 9:57 AM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #224

magduf wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ince…

The first table (image) in this post https://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1735517 shows this issue.

It's in Dutch, but the most important columns are the first (gross income), the second to last (net income, including benefits) and the last (effective tax rate on the 1000 gross income increase).

Note the last column tells us that making 1000 gross extra will increase your net income about 100 between 32K and 31K gross income. Going from 31K to 32K will even make you lose money.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#407

Post by sobani » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 10:04 AM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #193

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…

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…

This picture show the benefit cliffs in a very clear way: https://sacredcowchips.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/welfare-c...

Most important part of that picture: "The single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045."

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#408

Post by teach » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

Muuuchem wrote: post #385

teach wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Way to make my point for me.

The science is settled, but like everything else, untrained people can't tell the difference between a good study and a bad study, and the media reports on them all.

Check out the book _How Not to Diet_, which is the most recent masterwork on evidence-based nutrition.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#409

Post by shadowprofile77 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #396

sli wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/r/programming is not an anomaly. My experience is that programming-related discussion boards everywhere are like this, almost from day one. The rampant tribalism and insistence one groupthink is incredibly strong, to the point where even typos can cause a relentless dogpile and accusations that said person "has clearly never written real software in their life." You simply cannot make even one mistake, no matter how…

>The rampant tribalism and insistence one groupthink is incredibly strong Frankly, that's my perception of HN, too. Try telling someone here that running your own email server is easy, for example, and then prepare to fend off the throngs of people clamoring to be the first to tell you that email is hard (tm), and only fastmail can save us from Google's dragnet, oh also email is deprecated and we should just use sign…

And the irony that your comment gets downvoted for pointing out that HN too suffers from a tribalist mentality about certain things (it does)... All these sharp minds don't like to be reminded of their own strange little obsessions and failings as human beings.

Re: Reddit has become a guide to personal finance

#410

Post by jakehilborn » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

aguyfromnb wrote: post #367

jakehilborn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 5% interest on up-to a $20,000 balance in a high interest checking account. You'll see higher returns using a high interest checking as opposed to savings account if you can find one you qualify for. High interest checking accounts: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-interest-savings-to-get/... Automation for meeting minimum spend requirements: https://github.com/jakehilborn/debbit

> High interest checking accounts: I clicked through a few of those offers. Each one has a balance limit (after which interest drops to near zero), monthly fees, sign-up fees, or requires you to generate banking fees through another service. And how could they not? Finance isn't magic, and we are in a world of all-time low rates. There is no possible way these companies can be paying you 5% on cash without making it…

The accounts typically have sign up bonuses, not fees. I got $125 bonus for signing up. The catch is typically that they require usage of the bank debit card N times per month. The github link is a program I wrote to hit that requirement by buying 50 cent Amazon gift cards and paying cable bills in small increments.

You'll never net more than $1000/year in one of these accounts given they have balance limits. Some folks sign up for multiple high interest checking accounts in order to park more money.