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.
> that's why if you're looking for any info, searching on reddit usually yields much more objective and generally better results.
Agreed, I often default to Reddit or HN for a lot of stuff although there are an increasing number of obvious adverts disguised as genuine posts (see r/hailcorporate for some examples).
More difficult to spot are marketing firms who curate a bunch of fake accounts, make them seem like "real people" by posting random content but interspersing this with subtle ads. There was an AMA recently from someone working at a firm that does this, they even gave their accounts personalities by posting in specific related subs (e.g. hiking, outdoors) in order to advertise boots. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now, but still my point is that even though Reddit generally leads to better advice take it with a grain of salt.
Although I don't see a reason not to trust this comment, the line about "we have seen great success with this method" had me wondering how they measure the impact of this strategy? It seems this would be quite time and effort intensive, therefore expensive. How do they know they can attribute sales to this since presumably they aren't providing affiliate links as that'd be too obvious?
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 for advice, the quality of the advice is usually somewhere between mediocre to terrible. I think this is largely because there is no incentive for experts to stick around in subs to provide good answers. And because they are tired of giving the _same_ advice over and over. This gives space to the non-experts who don't _really_ understand the concepts behind the advice they are giving and end up giving bad (and sometimes dangerous) advice because that's what they were told by other non-experts in the same situation.
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 produced content in some space and would allow their own stuff to get posted while blocking other people's submissions.
Must admit, reddit got me caring more about my finances.
It seems not many people are taught about money properly. I certainly wasn’t and non of my friends where.
I’ve always been good in that I never spent what I didn’t have and lived within my means. What savings I did have where in a zero interest current account though!
Following the finance Reddit’s at least put me in the right path. 6-12 months cash savings now in a high interest account, now have a pension plan, putting money in to ETF’s until I have enough in the ETF’s I’m willing to by some individual stocks which may not be as stable as the ETFs I have.
As someone who’s been a senior dev for 10+ years doing well but stuck in a rut I’m also finding the various cscareers Reddit’s useful about the job market. Seeing people’s salaries, negotiations, what jobs to look for, what companies to look for etc etc.
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 no FUD. Also as a personal finance hobbyest, I can sub to finance, personalfinance, financialindependence, and economics without having stories of police overreach or failures in the justice system written to scare people.
Also as a painter, there's another 10 subs I can subscribe to basically make my feed a walk through a museum.
Absolutely fantastic micro culture and I'm thrilled to have found it!
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 board for an hour or so. After 2015 (and even more so after the EU referendum) the subscriber count exploded and now it's a complete echo chamber. Try making an argument that the EU isn't some sort of Star Trekkian utopia or that Scottish independence might cause a lot of economic problems on that board and you'll get downvoted out of sight within maybe half an hour. It's very, very black and white now, the board is so fast that it's all about quick, karma-farming content rather than actual political debate.
I don't know why this seems to be a problem unique to Reddit. 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. It's a problem I'd be interested in knowing more about because I'm working on a platform with user-generated content. It's currently using a very naive "rank by votes, exclude old or heavily downvoted posts" approach but I fear this approach could lead to the same problem as Reddit.
I've just asked question in kindle subreddit about reader differences, no links/promoting/etc, next day my post was disappear. And it's common practice on reddit.
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 more than $10,000 for your wedding is a reckless and gross waste of money" and "Look how smart I am for having a mega-backdoor roth ira instead of a regular 401k like all the idiot sheeple."
I still think having a relationship with a financial advisor you trust is better than taking advice from strangers on the internet.
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.
This of course presupposes choosing that particular investment strategy, but the opportunity to ask anonymous, detailed financial questions and get thoughtful responses and ideas is great!
The Bogleheads wiki should really be the first stop for financial questions. It's a fanatic resource and I found the answers/content to be higher quality than Reddit.
Yes! I have learned tremendously about personal finance from ukpersonalfinance.
For anyone based in the UK, please go and read the content at https://ukpersonal.finance/, it is invaluable for your future. Financial literacy for the millennial generation is my #1 recommendation for general life improvement. It doesn't matter what situation you are in: in debt; with lots of savings; lack of credit options; etc... You will learn tremendously and can genuinely improve so many aspects of your life.
>Yes! I have learned tremendously about personal finance from ukpersonalfinance.
I would not be so vigorous in endorsing any subreddit, especially not one that is related to financial matters. I will attempt to frame my salvo, with the express intent to inform. No money was lost.
After trying to subscribe to Freetrade and Trading212 (Robinhood equivalents). I was unable to register with the former ─ a bug they mention regarding deep links in their FAQ, referencing an older version of iOS. I followed their instructions on troubleshooting, without any success ─ found an arcane way to get to the chat session (really hard, without being subscribed to the service), which resulted in no action. However, it was really surprising to find out that asking for help in this subreddit, where this app is held in high regard, elicited no response and only downvotes. Always assume some inherent bias, where money is concerned; don't follow blindly and stumble across problems, after the event.
Seconded. You get generally quite well-informed discussion on /r/UKPersonalFinance, no pushing products or shallow reviews which is what you get if you try to Google same type of content.
Also the discussion is two way, so you get to ask questions without paying hundreds to an IFA. In some instances you probably should speak to an IFA (or an accountant) for a holistic overview of your particular situation, but redditers are quite quick to point that out too.
Anonymous people over the web have become guides to personal finance, reddit just facilitates that. The same advice was available during the "blogging/RSS era".
Yes, the advantage of Reddit is that you can more easily see the group consensus on an issue, as well as differing opinions (as long as those differing opinions aren't considered so extreme/wrong that they get heavily downvoted, which is certainly possible).
There is whole generation of people who were reading goldbug blogs and absorbed investment advice from iconoclastic bloggers. They also read Mises and Larry Kudlow's articles to learn economics.
You can still see the result. The most common response to any bad economic news is short 1-4 sentence outburst about how Fed is printing money, no matter how irrelevant it is to discussion.
> Anonymous people over the web have become guides to personal finance, reddit just facilitates that. The same advice was available during the "blogging/RSS era".
Every generation needs their own form. Before blogging/RSS it was cable financial news on TV, before that magazines, and before that I don't know.
Basic financial literacy (creating a budget, tracking it, adjusting) is sorely lacking.
Today, you may be adept at trading $10k of stocks on Robinhood using money that you're parents gave you hoping over the year for a big 20% win, but you'll equally forget that you have $10k of credit card debt with interest accruing at 30%.
I had non-technical people coming to me asking if I knew how to mine "bitcoins" right before the the crypto bubble popped. If I had any left it would have definitely been time to exit the market.
I use Reddit a lot and I find some of the finance focused subreddits to be really repellent. I don't know if this is because, while I have a degree in economics, I'm not an investor or that I just have a low tolerance for some of the conduct that frequently shows up in those communities.
I really like /r/povertyfinance though clearly those folks are often going through way, way more trying circumstances I am. I guess I'd be more interested in finances for the alienated precariat.
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.
As the web matures around several core destinations, I find that Googling becomes increasingly less valuable. If you want to shop you go straight to Amazon. If you want advice you go to Reddit. Dev query? Stackoverflow. etc. The long tail of web-pages that Google used to be so great it is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
If you want to see the future of Social Networks, look no further than Reddit. Reddit is the Future of Social Networks.
The Next Social network, the one what will eat Facebook's lunch, just like Facebook ate MySpace's lunch, will not be people-to-people based, but it will be People-to-topic and topic-to-topic based; media-rich and mobile-friendly.
And no, it won't be Reddit, too much Legacy crap with Reddit and not enough novelty.
If it is not people-to-people based, it’s not a social network. That’s what defines the category and makes it distinct from other forms of interaction.
Reddit is a web forum, a form of interaction that predates social networks; they never went away. Reddit is just the best platform yet for creating and hosting them.
This form of interaction—short conversations organized by topic—predates even the Web, via newsgroups. It is one of the oldest patterns of interaction on the Internet. For a few people it arguably even predates the Internet, via direct-dial BBS.
Agree. I either want to talk to a community for each of my interests (on a subreddit or a dedicated forum) OR to a small group of close friends or family (messengers). Only rarely would I want to broadcast generic information / entertainment to everyone I know (facebook).
One platform I'm missing is one where I could (anonymously) talk to strangers in my area. To discuss or ask about locally relevant things, or just see what people that aren't my friends think. The apps that already exist seem to be always targeted at students.
I can’t help but question what he’s actually learned when his links don’t actually explain a topic. He says he learned about mega backdoor IRAs, but then links to a thread about regular backdoor IRAs. I’m not sure he does know what differentiates a “mega” from a regular backdoor.
People get terminology wrong in niches like this all the time, especially when the terminology is so similar.
The fact that the OP even knows that a backdoor Roth IRA exists (much less a "mega" backdoor IRA) puts this person leagues above the average person, who probably doesn't even know the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, much less what an IRA even is.
Honestly, I trust sources like OP mentioned more than most financial advisors because advisors tend to pitch a product instead of conveying information. Schools aren't doing it, so that basically leaves communities like this.
I have found a very enjoyable way to browse reddit: through RSS. I make RSS feeds of the top weekly posts in the three subreddits that I follow and subscribe to those. I use hnrss for reading HN, of course.
reddit appears to me to have a lot of crap with the few nuggets in the rough. subs like personalfinance seems to be on net helpful for people, but "cousin" subs like investing are cesspits of grifters and ill informed maniacs
I too recently started using reddit for personal finance r/investing.
I was lucky in that my mom instilled the need to put money away for retirement, which I did as soon as I graduated college. On the flip side, both my parents were secretive about their finances. It was until now, as I am ensuring I am aware of my parents wishes through their golden years, that we are having honest discussions about money.
The benefit I see is that many of the subs promote transparency. My college friends and I also discuss openly our savings and investing strategies.
My financial goals are:
1) be able to live near my current lifestyle at retirement
2) Ensure both my children have money should they suffer a catastrophic loss near middle age, as my parents did for me.
I would say the meta point to this article is that in general finding unbiased information nowadays is much harder.
I was just lamenting with some friends about how much Amazon search has declined in quality in the past few years. You essentially have to do your research elsewhere (Wirecutter, etc), and then try to find an authentic version of that on Amazon.
For me the most useful advice has come in the form of “How should I spend my money?” Reddit has an excellent detailed flowchart [1] that echoes a simplified version that fits on an index card [2].
[+] [-] xelhark|6 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] lawlorino|6 years ago|reply
Agreed, I often default to Reddit or HN for a lot of stuff although there are an increasing number of obvious adverts disguised as genuine posts (see r/hailcorporate for some examples).
More difficult to spot are marketing firms who curate a bunch of fake accounts, make them seem like "real people" by posting random content but interspersing this with subtle ads. There was an AMA recently from someone working at a firm that does this, they even gave their accounts personalities by posting in specific related subs (e.g. hiking, outdoors) in order to advertise boots. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it now, but still my point is that even though Reddit generally leads to better advice take it with a grain of salt.
Edit: Found it, wasn't an AMA but just a comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/f9rjh0/he_dressed_up_...
Although I don't see a reason not to trust this comment, the line about "we have seen great success with this method" had me wondering how they measure the impact of this strategy? It seems this would be quite time and effort intensive, therefore expensive. How do they know they can attribute sales to this since presumably they aren't providing affiliate links as that'd be too obvious?
[+] [-] bityard|6 years ago|reply
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 for advice, the quality of the advice is usually somewhere between mediocre to terrible. I think this is largely because there is no incentive for experts to stick around in subs to provide good answers. And because they are tired of giving the _same_ advice over and over. This gives space to the non-experts who don't _really_ understand the concepts behind the advice they are giving and end up giving bad (and sometimes dangerous) advice because that's what they were told by other non-experts in the same situation.
[+] [-] semicolonandson|6 years ago|reply
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 produced content in some space and would allow their own stuff to get posted while blocking other people's submissions.
[+] [-] tiew9Vii|6 years ago|reply
It seems not many people are taught about money properly. I certainly wasn’t and non of my friends where.
I’ve always been good in that I never spent what I didn’t have and lived within my means. What savings I did have where in a zero interest current account though!
Following the finance Reddit’s at least put me in the right path. 6-12 months cash savings now in a high interest account, now have a pension plan, putting money in to ETF’s until I have enough in the ETF’s I’m willing to by some individual stocks which may not be as stable as the ETFs I have.
As someone who’s been a senior dev for 10+ years doing well but stuck in a rut I’m also finding the various cscareers Reddit’s useful about the job market. Seeing people’s salaries, negotiations, what jobs to look for, what companies to look for etc etc.
[+] [-] JackMorgan|6 years ago|reply
Reddit can be filtered by subreddit, so I've got a view with no FUD. Also as a personal finance hobbyest, I can sub to finance, personalfinance, financialindependence, and economics without having stories of police overreach or failures in the justice system written to scare people.
Also as a painter, there's another 10 subs I can subscribe to basically make my feed a walk through a museum.
Absolutely fantastic micro culture and I'm thrilled to have found it!
[+] [-] AdmiralGinge|6 years ago|reply
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 board for an hour or so. After 2015 (and even more so after the EU referendum) the subscriber count exploded and now it's a complete echo chamber. Try making an argument that the EU isn't some sort of Star Trekkian utopia or that Scottish independence might cause a lot of economic problems on that board and you'll get downvoted out of sight within maybe half an hour. It's very, very black and white now, the board is so fast that it's all about quick, karma-farming content rather than actual political debate.
I don't know why this seems to be a problem unique to Reddit. 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. It's a problem I'd be interested in knowing more about because I'm working on a platform with user-generated content. It's currently using a very naive "rank by votes, exclude old or heavily downvoted posts" approach but I fear this approach could lead to the same problem as Reddit.
[+] [-] CamelCaseName|6 years ago|reply
I have multireddits set up for whatever mood I'm in (e.g. gifs of cool things, text stories, finance, news, etc.)
r/multihub has some good collections.
[+] [-] cool-RR|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulcarroty|6 years ago|reply
So yeah, fantastic micro culture!
[+] [-] waylandsmithers|6 years ago|reply
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 more than $10,000 for your wedding is a reckless and gross waste of money" and "Look how smart I am for having a mega-backdoor roth ira instead of a regular 401k like all the idiot sheeple."
I still think having a relationship with a financial advisor you trust is better than taking advice from strangers on the internet.
[+] [-] prawn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubidium|6 years ago|reply
This of course presupposes choosing that particular investment strategy, but the opportunity to ask anonymous, detailed financial questions and get thoughtful responses and ideas is great!
[+] [-] jumbopapa|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joaodlf|6 years ago|reply
For anyone based in the UK, please go and read the content at https://ukpersonal.finance/, it is invaluable for your future. Financial literacy for the millennial generation is my #1 recommendation for general life improvement. It doesn't matter what situation you are in: in debt; with lots of savings; lack of credit options; etc... You will learn tremendously and can genuinely improve so many aspects of your life.
[+] [-] benhurmarcel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 45ure|6 years ago|reply
I would not be so vigorous in endorsing any subreddit, especially not one that is related to financial matters. I will attempt to frame my salvo, with the express intent to inform. No money was lost.
After trying to subscribe to Freetrade and Trading212 (Robinhood equivalents). I was unable to register with the former ─ a bug they mention regarding deep links in their FAQ, referencing an older version of iOS. I followed their instructions on troubleshooting, without any success ─ found an arcane way to get to the chat session (really hard, without being subscribed to the service), which resulted in no action. However, it was really surprising to find out that asking for help in this subreddit, where this app is held in high regard, elicited no response and only downvotes. Always assume some inherent bias, where money is concerned; don't follow blindly and stumble across problems, after the event.
[+] [-] nagyf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nindalf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swarnie_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharma1|6 years ago|reply
Also the discussion is two way, so you get to ask questions without paying hundreds to an IFA. In some instances you probably should speak to an IFA (or an accountant) for a holistic overview of your particular situation, but redditers are quite quick to point that out too.
[+] [-] omarchowdhury|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TulliusCicero|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|6 years ago|reply
You can still see the result. The most common response to any bad economic news is short 1-4 sentence outburst about how Fed is printing money, no matter how irrelevant it is to discussion.
[+] [-] speedplane|6 years ago|reply
Every generation needs their own form. Before blogging/RSS it was cable financial news on TV, before that magazines, and before that I don't know.
Basic financial literacy (creating a budget, tracking it, adjusting) is sorely lacking.
Today, you may be adept at trading $10k of stocks on Robinhood using money that you're parents gave you hoping over the year for a big 20% win, but you'll equally forget that you have $10k of credit card debt with interest accruing at 30%.
[+] [-] djhworld|6 years ago|reply
I've always been interested in personal finance, but this community has helped me learn new things and everyone is very supportive.
[+] [-] Jlively22|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neuronic|6 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/finanzen/
[+] [-] freetonik|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Recursing|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benhurmarcel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RWSen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbmthakur|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SXX|6 years ago|reply
> When the shoeshine boys talk stocks it was a great sell signal in 1929
https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archiv...
[+] [-] h1srf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullstop|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Quequau|6 years ago|reply
I really like /r/povertyfinance though clearly those folks are often going through way, way more trying circumstances I am. I guess I'd be more interested in finances for the alienated precariat.
[+] [-] Kneecaps07|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akrymski|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willart4food|6 years ago|reply
The Next Social network, the one what will eat Facebook's lunch, just like Facebook ate MySpace's lunch, will not be people-to-people based, but it will be People-to-topic and topic-to-topic based; media-rich and mobile-friendly.
And no, it won't be Reddit, too much Legacy crap with Reddit and not enough novelty.
Clayton Christensen would agree.
[+] [-] snowwrestler|6 years ago|reply
Reddit is a web forum, a form of interaction that predates social networks; they never went away. Reddit is just the best platform yet for creating and hosting them.
This form of interaction—short conversations organized by topic—predates even the Web, via newsgroups. It is one of the oldest patterns of interaction on the Internet. For a few people it arguably even predates the Internet, via direct-dial BBS.
[+] [-] Double_a_92|6 years ago|reply
One platform I'm missing is one where I could (anonymously) talk to strangers in my area. To discuss or ask about locally relevant things, or just see what people that aren't my friends think. The apps that already exist seem to be always targeted at students.
[+] [-] cowsandmilk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beatgammit|6 years ago|reply
The fact that the OP even knows that a backdoor Roth IRA exists (much less a "mega" backdoor IRA) puts this person leagues above the average person, who probably doesn't even know the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, much less what an IRA even is.
Honestly, I trust sources like OP mentioned more than most financial advisors because advisors tend to pitch a product instead of conveying information. Schools aren't doing it, so that basically leaves communities like this.
[+] [-] clircle|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fooker|6 years ago|reply
Pick a topic which you are an expert in, then look at highly upvoted comments about that topic in a large subreddit.
[+] [-] ausbah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balls187|6 years ago|reply
I was lucky in that my mom instilled the need to put money away for retirement, which I did as soon as I graduated college. On the flip side, both my parents were secretive about their finances. It was until now, as I am ensuring I am aware of my parents wishes through their golden years, that we are having honest discussions about money.
The benefit I see is that many of the subs promote transparency. My college friends and I also discuss openly our savings and investing strategies.
My financial goals are:
1) be able to live near my current lifestyle at retirement
2) Ensure both my children have money should they suffer a catastrophic loss near middle age, as my parents did for me.
[+] [-] sna1l|6 years ago|reply
I was just lamenting with some friends about how much Amazon search has declined in quality in the past few years. You essentially have to do your research elsewhere (Wirecutter, etc), and then try to find an authentic version of that on Amazon.
[+] [-] divbzero|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/4gdlu9/how...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/01/08/46...