6 ms·

Have you found any resources that are helpful, high quality, free, and sane?

by rg111 5y ago

hirvi74 5y ago
Bogleheads.org is a great source of information too. Though, the site and forum users are strong believers in a particular investment strategy, many have great finical advice for the common man too. There appears to be quite a lot of overlap with /r/PersonalFinance, which would make sense considering much of the financial advice given by both sources is philosophically agnostic and somewhat ubiquitous in the world of personal finance.
Ozzie_osman 5y ago
Yes. The r/personalfinance wiki on subreddit has some great starter content in a wiki[1] that's not a content marketing funnel into any product/service. For investing-specific content, bogleheads also has a pretty awesome wiki [2] (though somewhat ideological, given that it's mainly around the "Bogle" philosophy). These wikis are great because they're neutral (nothing to sell you) and also aggregated from thousands upon thousands of questions/answers/advice in each respective community. (I work on a startup in this space and while we build a product, not content, we've basically read everything else out there). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index/ https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index/ [2] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page
- pjscott 5y ago
  I second the recommendation of the /r/personalfinance wiki. In particular, their FAQ answer to "I have $X, what do I do with it?" is a concise, simple-to-follow basic blueprint for handling money that should work well for most people: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics
  - Ozzie_osman 5y ago
    The flowchart version of that "what do I do with it?" is pretty awesome https://m.imgur.com/lSoUQr2 https://m.imgur.com/lSoUQr2
  - hirvi74 5y ago
    The only major point of the flowchart that I disagree with is the part about paying off mid to low interest debt. I suppose that is where the "personal" part of personal finance comes into to play. For example, a person will post something like, "Should I pay off my $50k student loans at 4%-6% as fast as possible, or should invest more?" Common responses include: 1. "Would you take out a $50k loan at 4%-6% to invest?" 2. "Paying off your loans is a guaranteed 4%-6% return." The problem I have with this advice is that in the case of response #1, that is somewhat of a false equivalence. Also, I am not sure outside of a HELOC where one could even get a $50k loan for 4%-6%. Even in this environment currently, I see banks advertising their low interest loans which clock in around 8%-12%. (I'm not counting margin loan rates in this example). As for #2, I feel like this advice is okay at face value, but tends to fall apart once one takes more factors into account. One such factor people often miss is that one must use post-tax income to pay off student loans. Thus, in the US, assuming the person asking for advice has any income at all, then he or she must pay 10% <= x <= 37% in taxes to pay a 4%-6% loan, thus it's a guaranteed loss of 10% to 37% to get a guaranteed return of 4%-6%. I'm not trying to downplay the powerful psychological aspect of paying off debt, but I do think more people should consider the mathematically optimal option as well (making the minimum payments on debt while maxing out tax advantaged savings before making additional payments on debt). After all, time is the most important factor in the compounding returns/interest formula, and one can make more money but not more time. Plus, inflation slowly chips away at loans just as much as savings.
    - quickthrowman 5y ago
      IKBR will lend to you at 2.5ish% on margin https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=46376 https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=46376
      - hirvi74 5y ago
        I see that thrown around a lot, but I can't bring myself to do it. I believe that using margin loans properly requires a lot of knowledge and some strokes of luck. I've seen people get burned and some people do well with margin. It's one of those things to me where it makes sense to use margin loans, but only if I have a high enough balance to support it. But if I have a high enough balance to survive a margin call, then I probably wouldn't need the margin in the first place, except if I were trying to invest the margin on top of what I already have, which I wouldn't be doing in most cases.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Checking out a copy of 'the intelligent investor' from your local library would fit all three criteria you mentioned. Buying at least one share of Berkshire Hathaway comes with a lifetime subscription to Warren Buffet's shareholder letters, not quite free but certainly good value for money. But in general, I think the issue is that basic financial competence doesn't require a very sophisticated model, it just requires the emotional intelligence and self-discipline to stick to a robust one. That probably can be taught, but not a lot of schools exist for it.
- gshubert17 5y ago
  Links to Berkshire Hathaway's letters to shareholders from 1977 through 2020 are available at, https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
The basic form of financial literacy that is unbelievable to me that people still need to be told this: >Income should always exceed expenses; work to minimize expenses and maximize income. >You should always be saving money. A fool and their money are soon to part. >Time = money. The purpose is to maximize both. >Loans are assets and must be paid back plus interest. The last step, learn double entry accounting and manage your budget tracking everything. If you don't even do that, you aren't even aware of what you blow your money on to know where to start.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  Loans are not assets, they are liabilities.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    In double entry accounting, when you receive a loan, you increase liabilities and assets. You don't just increase liabilities.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - FabHK 5y ago
      When you take out a loan, you receive cash. That cash increases your assets, while the loan increases your liabilities (such that your equity does not change - until you have to pay interest.). (Though, notably, for a bank the client deposits are liabilities, and the loans to clients are assets, indeed.)
      - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
        Of which none of what you said contradicts what I said...
        FabHK 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rwmj 5y ago
For the UK, http://monevator.com http://monevator.com and https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/
paulpauper 5y ago
Fire subs can be useful. r/fatfire, /r/financialindependence/ "Put it in index funds and do not touch it unless you need the money for an emergency", is as good of advice I have seen and will put you ahead of most people. Of course, there is more to it than that, such as the type of fund, the type of account, age, expenses, and other stuff.
vmception 5y ago
A lot of the generic risk averse advise is good enough for a very broad population Even in the sources mentioned in this article, as well as the reddits mentioned in other comments. Its just overly risk averse to be plainly wrong in some cases. But not wrong enough that you wont be fine, they just dont really tolerate deviance enough. You need to know when to graduate and leave the playpen.
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
For a long time, Google Finance [1] & SeekingAlpha [2] were great sources of content on financial information. The former had great charting/data, but it is completely changed now. The latter, although it was not targeted towards beginners, provided a great amount of value in both articles, has depth of coverage across asset clasess, and the comments sections, but the site is now paywalled.. Mr Money Moustache [3] & Financial Samurai [4] are both good sources of Financial Independence type of content. I used this in conjunction with: r/personalfinance (great for thinking about spend to saving/investment ratios) r/wallstreetbets (best for binary bets and high opportunity situations - only use with a speculative small percent ) r/realestateinvesting (all RE of course) r/investing (general stuff) There are a number of high quality videos on Youtube that I have found to be particularly good, depending on your own financial situation. Dave Ramsey, although maligned, is great for those with debt problems. I have no debt, and so his content has limited application for me. I also read Investopedia [5] for general terms, Tastytrade [6] for options coverage, and many brokers provide a large amount of free content to understand investments. [1] https://www.google.com/finance/ https://www.google.com/finance/ [2] https://seekingalpha.com/ https://seekingalpha.com/ [3] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ [4] https://www.financialsamurai.com/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/ [5] https://www.investopedia.com/ https://www.investopedia.com/ [6] https://www.tastytrade.com/ https://www.tastytrade.com/
lastofus 5y ago
Rob Berger's youtube channel is pretty great, especially w.r.t investing for retirement. He's quite articulate and straight to the point on a lot of somewhat complex topics. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9C17-OMxa-7oRSaCtztObw/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9C17-OMxa-7oRSaCtztObw/fea...
mmmrk 5y ago
I've had trouble locating English language resources, but if you speak German: - finanztip.de plus their social media presence are a great way to start - Stiftung Warentest/Finanztest for general financial product tests - Finanzfluss' social media presence is great, too. - Smaller scale sources like Finanzwesir, Gerd Kommer's books plus his company's blog for well researched treatises of all things finance, backed by data. - Education by workshop companies like Madame Moneypenny that teach hands on. Those are my favorite sources.
Kluny 5y ago
This book is an excellent start and the author has made it available for free as a PDF (you can also get it on Amazon) http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/ifyoucan.pdf http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/ifyoucan.pdf It lays out an effective retirement strategy in the first paragraph or so, and spends the rest of the book explaining it. Short and easy read. The strategy has to be adapted somewhat for non-Americans - if you're Canadian, the adaptations can be found at https://canadiancouchpotato.com/ https://canadiancouchpotato.com/. Like I said, it's a start, but it also recommends a lot of good and trustworthy resources to continue your learning after you read it. I found it through /r/personalfinance as the other commenter suggested.

Have you found any resources that are helpful, high quality, free, and sane?

by rg111 5y ago

Have you found any resources that are helpful, high quality, free, and sane?

Bogleheads.org is a great source of information too. Though, the site and forum users are strong believers in a particular investment strategy, many have great finical advice for the common man too. There appears to be quite a lot of overlap with /r/PersonalFinance, which would make sense considering much of the financial advice given by both sources is philosophically agnostic and somewhat ubiquitous in the world of personal finance.

Ozzie_osman 5y ago

Yes. The r/personalfinance wiki on subreddit has some great starter content in a wiki[1] that's not a content marketing funnel into any product/service. For investing-specific content, bogleheads also has a pretty awesome wiki [2] (though somewhat ideological, given that it's mainly around the "Bogle" philosophy). These wikis are great because they're neutral (nothing to sell you) and also aggregated from thousands upon thousands of questions/answers/advice in each respective community. (I work on a startup in this space and while we build a product, not content, we've basically read everything else out there). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index/ https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index/ [2] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

pjscott 5y ago
I second the recommendation of the /r/personalfinance wiki. In particular, their FAQ answer to "I have $X, what do I do with it?" is a concise, simple-to-follow basic blueprint for handling money that should work well for most people: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics
- Ozzie_osman 5y ago
  The flowchart version of that "what do I do with it?" is pretty awesome https://m.imgur.com/lSoUQr2 https://m.imgur.com/lSoUQr2
- hirvi74 5y ago
  The only major point of the flowchart that I disagree with is the part about paying off mid to low interest debt. I suppose that is where the "personal" part of personal finance comes into to play. For example, a person will post something like, "Should I pay off my $50k student loans at 4%-6% as fast as possible, or should invest more?" Common responses include: 1. "Would you take out a $50k loan at 4%-6% to invest?" 2. "Paying off your loans is a guaranteed 4%-6% return." The problem I have with this advice is that in the case of response #1, that is somewhat of a false equivalence. Also, I am not sure outside of a HELOC where one could even get a $50k loan for 4%-6%. Even in this environment currently, I see banks advertising their low interest loans which clock in around 8%-12%. (I'm not counting margin loan rates in this example). As for #2, I feel like this advice is okay at face value, but tends to fall apart once one takes more factors into account. One such factor people often miss is that one must use post-tax income to pay off student loans. Thus, in the US, assuming the person asking for advice has any income at all, then he or she must pay 10% <= x <= 37% in taxes to pay a 4%-6% loan, thus it's a guaranteed loss of 10% to 37% to get a guaranteed return of 4%-6%. I'm not trying to downplay the powerful psychological aspect of paying off debt, but I do think more people should consider the mathematically optimal option as well (making the minimum payments on debt while maxing out tax advantaged savings before making additional payments on debt). After all, time is the most important factor in the compounding returns/interest formula, and one can make more money but not more time. Plus, inflation slowly chips away at loans just as much as savings.
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    IKBR will lend to you at 2.5ish% on margin https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=46376 https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=46376
    - hirvi74 5y ago
      I see that thrown around a lot, but I can't bring myself to do it. I believe that using margin loans properly requires a lot of knowledge and some strokes of luck. I've seen people get burned and some people do well with margin. It's one of those things to me where it makes sense to use margin loans, but only if I have a high enough balance to support it. But if I have a high enough balance to survive a margin call, then I probably wouldn't need the margin in the first place, except if I were trying to invest the margin on top of what I already have, which I wouldn't be doing in most cases.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

Checking out a copy of 'the intelligent investor' from your local library would fit all three criteria you mentioned. Buying at least one share of Berkshire Hathaway comes with a lifetime subscription to Warren Buffet's shareholder letters, not quite free but certainly good value for money. But in general, I think the issue is that basic financial competence doesn't require a very sophisticated model, it just requires the emotional intelligence and self-discipline to stick to a robust one. That probably can be taught, but not a lot of schools exist for it.

gshubert17 5y ago
Links to Berkshire Hathaway's letters to shareholders from 1977 through 2020 are available at, https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

The basic form of financial literacy that is unbelievable to me that people still need to be told this: >Income should always exceed expenses; work to minimize expenses and maximize income. >You should always be saving money. A fool and their money are soon to part. >Time = money. The purpose is to maximize both. >Loans are assets and must be paid back plus interest. The last step, learn double entry accounting and manage your budget tracking everything. If you don't even do that, you aren't even aware of what you blow your money on to know where to start.

Jtsummers 5y ago
Loans are not assets, they are liabilities.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  In double entry accounting, when you receive a loan, you increase liabilities and assets. You don't just increase liabilities.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - FabHK 5y ago
    When you take out a loan, you receive cash. That cash increases your assets, while the loan increases your liabilities (such that your equity does not change - until you have to pay interest.). (Though, notably, for a bank the client deposits are liabilities, and the loans to clients are assets, indeed.)
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      Of which none of what you said contradicts what I said...
      - FabHK 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

rwmj 5y ago

For the UK, http://monevator.com http://monevator.com and https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/

paulpauper 5y ago

Fire subs can be useful. r/fatfire, /r/financialindependence/ "Put it in index funds and do not touch it unless you need the money for an emergency", is as good of advice I have seen and will put you ahead of most people. Of course, there is more to it than that, such as the type of fund, the type of account, age, expenses, and other stuff.

vmception 5y ago

A lot of the generic risk averse advise is good enough for a very broad population Even in the sources mentioned in this article, as well as the reddits mentioned in other comments. Its just overly risk averse to be plainly wrong in some cases. But not wrong enough that you wont be fine, they just dont really tolerate deviance enough. You need to know when to graduate and leave the playpen.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago

For a long time, Google Finance [1] & SeekingAlpha [2] were great sources of content on financial information. The former had great charting/data, but it is completely changed now. The latter, although it was not targeted towards beginners, provided a great amount of value in both articles, has depth of coverage across asset clasess, and the comments sections, but the site is now paywalled.. Mr Money Moustache [3] & Financial Samurai [4] are both good sources of Financial Independence type of content. I used this in conjunction with: r/personalfinance (great for thinking about spend to saving/investment ratios) r/wallstreetbets (best for binary bets and high opportunity situations - only use with a speculative small percent ) r/realestateinvesting (all RE of course) r/investing (general stuff) There are a number of high quality videos on Youtube that I have found to be particularly good, depending on your own financial situation. Dave Ramsey, although maligned, is great for those with debt problems. I have no debt, and so his content has limited application for me. I also read Investopedia [5] for general terms, Tastytrade [6] for options coverage, and many brokers provide a large amount of free content to understand investments. [1] https://www.google.com/finance/ https://www.google.com/finance/ [2] https://seekingalpha.com/ https://seekingalpha.com/ [3] https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ [4] https://www.financialsamurai.com/ https://www.financialsamurai.com/ [5] https://www.investopedia.com/ https://www.investopedia.com/ [6] https://www.tastytrade.com/ https://www.tastytrade.com/

lastofus 5y ago

Rob Berger's youtube channel is pretty great, especially w.r.t investing for retirement. He's quite articulate and straight to the point on a lot of somewhat complex topics. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9C17-OMxa-7oRSaCtztObw/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9C17-OMxa-7oRSaCtztObw/fea...

mmmrk 5y ago

I've had trouble locating English language resources, but if you speak German: - finanztip.de plus their social media presence are a great way to start - Stiftung Warentest/Finanztest for general financial product tests - Finanzfluss' social media presence is great, too. - Smaller scale sources like Finanzwesir, Gerd Kommer's books plus his company's blog for well researched treatises of all things finance, backed by data. - Education by workshop companies like Madame Moneypenny that teach hands on. Those are my favorite sources.

Kluny 5y ago

This book is an excellent start and the author has made it available for free as a PDF (you can also get it on Amazon) http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/ifyoucan.pdf http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/ifyoucan.pdf It lays out an effective retirement strategy in the first paragraph or so, and spends the rest of the book explaining it. Short and easy read. The strategy has to be adapted somewhat for non-Americans - if you're Canadian, the adaptations can be found at https://canadiancouchpotato.com/ https://canadiancouchpotato.com/. Like I said, it's a start, but it also recommends a lot of good and trustworthy resources to continue your learning after you read it. I found it through /r/personalfinance as the other commenter suggested.