Here's an interesting one, locked/drowend out in my overflowing tabs (and so a little dated)
Idiots are everywhere, including on SN and in Bitcoinland -- certainly in the investment advice space. My god.
FINANCIAL ADVICE was once doled out solely by well-paid professionals, and solely to the wealthy. Then, from the 1980s, celebrity advisers took their tips to large radio and TV audiences, especially in America. Today legions of social-media “finfluencers” spout off recommendations to anyone, anywhere
Not sure anybody should be happy about this development. This column portrays the advice-givers as bulkwark-type protection against biases/stupidities:
may not know it, but they hold up a mirror to their countries’ financial mores, pushing back against audiences’ vices or accidentally reinforcing them.
In America, no young finfluencer yet matches the stature of Dave Ramsey, the gruff 66-year old radio star turned podcaster. Much of his advice—offered in a stern, fatherly style—is evergreen, built around emergency funds, sensible saving and buying shares for the long term.
"Mr Ramsey’s advice, however, is puritanical in its attitude to debt"
Yes, he doesn't quite grasp that you need debt in order to short the currency, riding the fiat-currency bubble all the way down. #994746
Across the pond, Mr. Lewis of the "Money Saving Expert" website does something else: penny-pinching. Save on this, renegotiate utility/bank agreements, look at deeez discounts.
By his own account, until recently he barely touched the stock market. Only in the past year has he turned his attention to Britain’s individual savings accounts for shares, a generous scheme that allows people to invest up to £20,000 ($26,700) per year without incurring the usual investment taxes
"The attitude of Mr Lewis reflects the bleak reality that many Brits own barely any equities. A measly 13% of the financial assets of British households are shares, the lowest of almost any large developed economy."
Further afield, the Indians and South Koreans are funzies too:
The advice reflects the financial culture, rather than the other way around. South Koreans and Indians (at least those with financial resources) save more than Americans or Brits, but suffer from a zeal for day-trading, often backed by leverage. About 8.5m Indians traded risky equity derivatives in the last financial year, up from fewer than 1m eight years ago.
That's astonishing, especially in contrast to the outsized Nordics (#1585380).
Dave Ramsey is hilarious wrong and out of touch with reality. The guy has hundreds of millions of dollars, mostly through Real Estate and his Advisory company. He did this with leverage and debt. I don't know why anyone would listen to him.
His advice on personal finance and day-to-day microfinance makes as much sense as asking the founder or CEO of a tech company how to budget.
Even stackers, who should understand debt as shorting the currency, still react badly to the idea of debt: #1280919
I think it's deeply ingrained in human nature
probably. Like most deeply considered things, it requires training in economics (or long experience playing financial markets) to realize this counterintuitive idea