Hello everyone,
I would like to keep this community active, as it is probably a topic everyone is interested in.
However one of the main issues I have is that back on Reddit, most of the content was about people sharing personal stories/concerns with their financial situation. Not really something that easy to emulate as we have a much smaller group of people.
Is there any other type of content you would like to see? I sometimes feel like personal finance strategies are usually detailed well enough in the various wikis (we might want to copy Reddit’s one at some point, but for the time being, I guess just go back there).
Should we orient it more like an open question community with things such as “what is the best change you made in your investment strategy?” “what do you always plurge on beyond reason?”
Feel free to share your opinion!
I am a complete nobody (and not even part of the community) But I think something like common scams (and strategies of saving money by not falling for both “India scammers” and “Big Evil corporations”) would be great.
Not memes. Anything but memes.
I think a community like this should have two goals:
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Be on the fairly cutting edge of personal finance topics like saavy tips for current credit cards, tax codes, retirement plans, and retail promotions that help people maximize their money and plan for futures.
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Maintain resources for basic financial literacy. IMO these are best done as sidebar items since they don’t change much day to day, but they are critical for bringing in new members and frankly helping people since most schools don’t do it.
I do think part of #2 is letting people ask dumb questions (What do I do now?), but only if their situation is not obviously covered in the sidebar. As sidebar grows, these should become less frequent.
Good points
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I think adding basic advice, “How do I apply for a credit card”, etc would be helpful and something that people can link back to in the future.
This is an awesome idea. I’m very intimidated by the mortgage process - so maybe a walkthrough of what that is like and what to expect?
I like the more personal questions like (your suggestion) “what do you always plurge on beyond reason?”, as well as small tips threads. I’m not American or in the US, so usually the investment part of the personal finance communities is just completely irrelevant to me, thus my preference :)
One thing to note is on Reddit you’re used to looking at lots of disparate granular communities e.g. /r/finance, /r/FIRE, /r/personalfinance, /r/povertyfinance, /r/wallstreetbets, /r/stocks, meme subs like /r/pfjerk… While this community is small, we can be all of those things. You start general and then as the niche groups find the content they want to see or is most relevant to them is getting drowned out, they can splinter off. This is why most of what I’ve been posting is more in line with the historical content on /r/stocks rather than /r/personalfinance. There is some cross-talk, but /r/personalfinance is mostly questions about individual financial situations as well as a repository of FAQs. We don’t have a wiki, so the latter is essentially impossible unless we just make huge posts and pin them (which is still worth considering), and with only a couple hundred members the former is not a viable content model.
I want to learn how the world of finance works under the hood
Anything specific? I’m happy to make some posts.
I’m not a finance professional, but I feel pretty confident in discussing a wide variety of topics because it’s a personal passion of mine. For example, I have the following in my personal spreadsheet (and a ton more):
- mortgage amortization table - basically how much you’re paying off your loan each month; works for any fixed term loan, like auto and whatnot
- retirement date projections
- debt payoff simulations
- Social Security benefit calculator - pretty specific to SS, not sure how many US subscribers we have
- tax estimator - again, US-specific, and I’m happy to go into detail about how taxes work
And other topics I’m happy to discuss:
- comparison of types of interest - bank interest (CD/savings), stocks (can go up and down), non-taxable (e.g. municipal bonds; US specific, but could be generalized)
- budgeting - I do it my own way, but I’m familiar with multiple
- portfolio composition/strategies - how bonds work, and which types you should consider as well
And probably a bunch more. I’m happy to throw together a sample spreadsheet on Google Sheets to share with others as well for anything I write a post about.
However, I don’t want to just spam this community if there isn’t any interest, or if it would just be overwhelming to people starting out. So if there’s something in particular you would like to understand better, I’m happy to help, and I’m sure others would like to add to the discussion as well.
