11–20 of 263 posts
The biggest takeaway: it's easier to make money than it is to save it, and stacking cash, rather than aggressive budgeting, is the key to wealth.
It is unclear weather it is "easier" for everyone to do so, or possible. And if not, whether they are better off not trying, and instead saving and budgeting.
The biggest takeaway: it's easier to make money than it is to save it, and stacking cash, rather than aggressive budgeting, is the key to wealth.
Average People require average advice. Above average people can figure it out on their own. This piece is fine and good, and I appreciate that it was written. I agree with its thesis.
Part of the discussion should be, can the 'masses' "Generate income not based on hours worked", "Minimize taxes", and "Leverage time and debt to become wealthy like the personal-finance gurus themselves did?"... in other words, is becoming wealthy possible? It is worth being honest about the false hope these authors are peddling about "becoming wealthy", instead of what they are really advising which is, to become ab…
Those kinds of people can budget to some version of wealth (especially when you consider the median net worth of their peers is most likely only barely a positive number).
To get into "real" money (5+ million dollars in savings?), then you can't budget yourself to riches if you simply do not have the gross income, and time horizon for some amount of compounding interest. The financial advisors in this bracket are usually not telling you what to save vs. spend, but instead more commonly discussing investment diversification strategies, ways to (legally) avoid or defer taxes, etc.
I dunno who his target audience is, but I assume that the majority around here are computer programmers with anywhere from $70k/year single income to maybe $500k/year dual income ? Financial advice in general sucks. But when we get into the specifics... such as any say $150k/year programmer or higher, the generic financial advice of 6 months saving + max out 401k plan works. ------- The plan for people at average, 50…
The r/personalfinance and r/financialindependence subreddits are quite good and even cover more exotic details like the “mega back door roth” otherwise known as “after tax 401k contribution in plan conversions to roth” (which can let you add an additional 36k to a Roth IRA over the 6k limit each year in addition to the normal 19.5k for a traditional 401k). They’re mostly bogleheads so are a little risk averse, but fo…
I dunno who his target audience is, but I assume that the majority around here are computer programmers with anywhere from $70k/year single income to maybe $500k/year dual income ? Financial advice in general sucks. But when we get into the specifics... such as any say $150k/year programmer or higher, the generic financial advice of 6 months saving + max out 401k plan works. ------- The plan for people at average, 50…
Yeah, but the audience of those financial gurus are the general public. So sure, their advice might work for the top 5%, but the rest of people will never "get rich" using that advice. Even that top 5% could be better off if building passive income, businesses, etc.
People reaching 100k/year or so single income should be able to save comfortably. And a lot of programmers are on an appropriate career path to get there in a few years
Yeah except the merchants probably marked up their prices 4% to cover card processing fees so really we are just paying more for goods than we otherwise would have with cash and the card company is giving us a tiny kickback.
Let's not pretend credit card kickbacks are free money... The card companies are glutting themselves on merchant fees and we are all paying the price in the form of costlier goods in exchange for a small kickback.
The strawman is that it's all about "getting rich". Ramsey (the one I've heard talk the most) is mostly about just getting people to stop digging themselves deeper and deeper into debt where they will have no hope for even the basic stability that you need to build greater wealth upon.
The false dichotomy is that you either need a side hustle business or you need to follow sound day-to-day money management discipline. Following sound money management discipline is what gets you to the point of having some discretionary income to build your own business.