Do you have any financial tips & tricks that have helped you save money I’ve the years? Even the simplest suggestions are welcome .

Or conversely maxed out your credit cards & spent every last cent on hookers & blow and have some cautionary tales to tell?

My dad is the one of the cheapest people ever which is great as I don’t think I’ve paid for hardly any furniture in my home as it’s just him finding people giving away stuff online or passed down from relatives.

I have a spare account that I just pay rent & utilities into, with adding extra money on top of rent that way I have money put away for utility bells.
I need to start using Raiz as I remember someone on PW recommend it, I have the app but never set it up, (it rounds up your card payments).

I’ve definitely noticed how much money I was wasting on takeaway food from working. I was always at work in the evening so I would venture out to nearby food places most of the time on my break which definitely adds up.
Now with my workplace being shut and most food places take away only I’ve definitely been cooking at home more.

Eating out is such a sneaky terrible drain on expenses. Wife and I finally took a look at our spend after our time in Boston, and I think like 55% of our monthly burn rate was dining out or ordering in. Fucking insane! Thank God for coronavirus forcing us to stay in and cook (and eat rice and canned beans).

Use a budget program that can sort your spending into categories. Makes it REALLY easy to see what are needed expenses and what are not, and what percentage of your income is going to what.

Dealing with credit cards, get three cards with fairly high balances, no annual fees and offer balance transfers. If you have credit card debt, move the money you are paying off from one card to the next with the no interest for 6 month option. Will cost you 6% of the balance usually, but freeze interest payments for six months. Saves thousands if you are slowly paying off large debts.

Finally, learn to cook. Preparing your own food costs a tiny fraction of what it costs to eat out these days. The price of two meals eating out (if you do not do dollar menus stuff at least) can feed you for a week at home doing batch cooking and freezing a weeks worth of meals at once.

If you like stews, soups or chilies get an instant pot. Press and forget method of cooking them. Pays for itself over time due to how cheap these meals are to make.


For grey area tips...

To get any book you want, use Library Genesis.  The actual URL changes as the site is taken down so google it.  

Great place to get free movies is F2Movies.  Just use a adguard or something.   Alternatively get a Raspberry Pi and turn it into a Kodi Box.

www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/kodi/

Another great use for the Raspberry Pi is to make a retro gaming machine.  RetroPie is used for this and plays most old games from emulators perfectly.

retropie.org.uk/

Omnibus internet lander with links to a lot more places to get grey area stuff is WebOas.is.  DDL tab covers your download needs while stream tab offers links to dozens of stream sites.  Game wares are in the network tab.  Updated regularly to replace dead sites with new ones.  Lots of other features built into the site from a web torrent system to image editor.  Easily the best website I found in the last 20 years.

weboas.is/

Get an emergency fund (3-6 months of expenses) and put it in a HYSA like Ally. Best scenario is it keeps up with inflation, but you won't get much. Don't stress what petty return you're getting anyway as it's not an investment. Only reason it's in a savings account anyway is to make it as liquid as possible. Online banks like Ally simply offer a better rate than the pennies your local bank/CU are. Do this so that when shit hits the fan you don't have to dip into your credit cards or take out a loan. What's the saying... the average American doesn't have enough stashed away for a $500 car repair? THIS IS WHY! Kinda hard to build up if you're living paycheck to paycheck, but more really need to look into this. Build it up and don't touch it until something happens. Use the cash to pay down the expense and then build it back up. Currently 80% back to my goal after dipping in it for some needed purchases. Hoping to be at 100% before the Post Office closes shop.

If you can't give up eating out, get used to carrying cash. Swiping a card or storing that info on an app makes you more likely to spend more since the feeling is the same if you spend .01 or $100. With cash you have a budget you're working with. I used to give myself an "allowance" of cash for the week that I used for fast food and gas. Of course if I bothered to learn to cook and meal prep it wouldn't be an issue, but I'm weak that way.

Don't have children. Obviously not an option if they're already here, but consider it. It costs what 300k to raise one to college? Pretty penny. There's a reason the government pays people to have kids. I know that's to create future tax payers to keep this house of cards afloat, but you know what I mean. I imagine it's costing you a lot more than 10k or however much you get at tax time. Seriously fuck dem kids. Not literally of course.

Abandon the concept of a debit card. Use a credit card for every day expenses, preferable one that isn't linked directly to your bank. I have two cards that I switch between every few months as my "main" one and just use it for all my regular purchases: weekly grocery, bills, rent, etc. Keeps everything under one account and can just pay it in full every other week at payday. You're not gonna get ahead with rewards or airmiles, but you were gonna spend the money anyway so might as well get something for your trouble.

I hear people go on and on about different rules they’ve adopted, or they’re reading the latest trendy book on personal finance, and they’re still struggling.

It’s simple.. live within, or below your means.

The problem with a lot of people is, they don’t take the big things seriously and focus their energy on the small things when it comes to savings money.

Take the “ make my own lunch / coffee “ and save $50 a week theory. However in turn they purchase a home they can’t afford, with a car loan on top of that they didn’t need, finance on the speed boat/motorbike. And suddenly their paycheck is consumed by all these repayments and overheads and the apparent solution is to take a sandwich to work instead of buying a $10 sub at Subway.

I tell you, the amount of people I know doing this blows my mind, with their lifestyle exceeding or consuming every cent they earn.

Another tip, open a second account that isn’t attached to your debit card. Move the bulk of your cash into this account and set a goal on how much to move into this account on a regular basis or let’s say you want a minimum of $10k in your everyday account at the start or end of each month. If it’s April 30, and you’ve got $12k sitting there, move that $2k into the other account. Do that every month.

This is one of my big areas of interest, one of the best books to start off is:

Richest man in Babylon
Rich Dad Poor Dad

If you start there you're doing well, I'm on my phone now, but later I will post about why savings don't work these days.

But the real trick is to move 10% of your income before you touch it and don't have a card connected or anything. The idea is that you will always live on what you've got and if you earn more you will spend more.

The real trick is be born into the right environment. Most of these financial tips assume a stable environment that the poor often do not have and cannot obtain. Babylon is the classic example. Also both books misattribute chance to personal actions. All of the their tips revolve around the concept of black swan events not existing. When a black swan event does occur despite all these tips, people still lose everything. Which is where black swan theory came from, people following this system and preventing themselves from all known risks losing everything to an event they did not believe was possible, such as market collapse, health events coming out of nowhere, 9/11, ect. It is classic survivorship bias. People assume because they succeeded they did so because of their actions, but really it was just luck. People look these people however and assume their actions lead to the success and emulate them not seeing the dozens of others who did the exact same things and faced ruin.

May 2, 2020 15:24:37 GMT c said:

The real trick is be born into the right environment. Most of these financial tips assume a stable environment that the poor often do not have and cannot obtain. Babylon is the classic example. Also both books misattribute chance to personal actions. All of the their tips revolve around the concept of black swan events not existing. When a black swan event does occur despite all these tips, people still lose everything. Which is where black swan theory came from, people following this system and preventing themselves from all known risks losing everything to an event they did not believe was possible, such as market collapse, health events coming out of nowhere, 9/11, ect. It is classic survivorship bias. People assume because they succeeded they did so because of their actions, but really it was just luck. People look these people however and assume their actions lead to the success and emulate them not seeing the dozens of others who did the exact same things and faced ruin.

I love you C but that is total crap.
Completely agree that genetics and socio economic factors play a part, but that is rubbish talk.
Your local public library is likely full of books on financial literacy, investment and starting businesses.
Look at 🤯,he is learning to code during the shut down... LET me ask you what most people are doing?
People love their comfort zone and their paradigms more than the possibility of change.
Then there are those who are seriously disadvantaged,we just need to help those people.

People have asked me how I got a leg up and when I explain the long hours and learning to sell and pitch, they turn their noses up.

I mean, c has a point.

Total luck of the draw we were all born and raised in the U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, etc.

We could've just as easily/randomly been born in like Somalia or Afghanistan and been fucked. Although, presumably our standards for happiness/satisfaction would be different relative to our contexts then.

May 2, 2020 16:01:06 GMT 🤯 said:

I mean, c has a point.

Total luck of the draw we were all born and raised in the U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, etc.

We could've just as easily/randomly been born in like Somalia or Afghanistan and been fucked. Although, presumably our standards for happiness/satisfaction would be different relative to our contexts then.

Of course, but they're clearly not the people I was referring to.
If you're a non minority person born without disability and of moderate intelligence in a decent environment then your fate is in your hands.

May 2, 2020 16:07:16 GMT iNCY said:

May 2, 2020 16:01:06 GMT 🤯 said:

I mean, c has a point.

Total luck of the draw we were all born and raised in the U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, etc.

We could've just as easily/randomly been born in like Somalia or Afghanistan and been fucked. Although, presumably our standards for happiness/satisfaction would be different relative to our contexts then.

Of course, but they're clearly not the people I was referring to.
If you're a non minority person born without disability and of moderate intelligence in a decent environment then your fate is in your hands.

Oh, so white dudes.

Yeah, in that case... I totally agree with iNCY.

Only caveat being you can be born without a disability but pick one up along the way.

May 2, 2020 15:55:19 GMT iNCY said:

May 2, 2020 15:24:37 GMT c said:

The real trick is be born into the right environment. Most of these financial tips assume a stable environment that the poor often do not have and cannot obtain. Babylon is the classic example. Also both books misattribute chance to personal actions. All of the their tips revolve around the concept of black swan events not existing. When a black swan event does occur despite all these tips, people still lose everything. Which is where black swan theory came from, people following this system and preventing themselves from all known risks losing everything to an event they did not believe was possible, such as market collapse, health events coming out of nowhere, 9/11, ect. It is classic survivorship bias. People assume because they succeeded they did so because of their actions, but really it was just luck. People look these people however and assume their actions lead to the success and emulate them not seeing the dozens of others who did the exact same things and faced ruin.

I love you C but that is total crap.
Completely agree that genetics and socio economic factors play a part, but that is rubbish talk.
Your local public library is likely full of books on financial literacy, investment and starting businesses.
Look at 🤯 ,he is learning to code during the shut down... LET me ask you what most people are doing?
People love their comfort zone and their paradigms more than the possibility of change.
Then there are those who are seriously disadvantaged,we just need to help those people.

People have asked me how I got a leg up and when I explain the long hours and learning to sell and pitch, they turn their noses up.

And ask the people who took home nobel prizes in economics and they will all say that most of those library books are writing by people suffering from survivorship bias.  Survivorship bias is a well known economic theory that took a nobel prize itself.

Any theory works too if you start to say the people who do not fit into it do not count.  Which is how meritological theories work, they dismiss those who fall outside of the theory or blame them for them not doing well and refuse to see the that their success was do to the starting circumstances and the path of random events that get to them where they are now that they attribute to themselves.  

Let’s look at the definition and clearly separate financial literacy from simply this idea of it meaning being “ rich “ or wealthy.

Financial literacy is the possession of the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources.

One could argue, an individual making $45,000 a year with low debt and low overheads is making responsible, informed and effective decisions based on their financial resources just as effectively and informed as an individual earning $150,000 a year. Yet, we see the higher earner and the ability to accumulate larger sums of cash quicker as being the more financial literate of the two.

And those higher earners will be considered more success financially. A person starting with a 100 millions who makes 1 million dollars off it after a year will be considered far more successful than someone who takes 100000 dollars and makes ten thousand off of it after a year. Amos Tversky did work asking people this and found near uniformly that the person who made the million was considered more successful despite the person making 10k had a 10x rate of return.  Further research suggested the person with more money was the better investor despite the rate of return showing otherwise.

I was pre approved to mortgage a certain amount for a home, I then spent half that amount. I would be able to get a loan for a expensive vehicle, I choose to buy a cheap used vehicle on a cash purchase.

These two basic decisions give me a lot of free money. Sure, I have a comfortable income. But the premise of living below your means allows you to save money and spend on the frivolous things.

I think c, on a much more relatable and less convoluted way of addressing the question of financial literacy.. I’ve known people, and we all have, who make good and sometimes great money. They in turn spend without any regard, borrow aggressively on the strength of their income and despite an impressive income actual have very poor control over their finances.

On the flip, I’ve known those quiet achievers who make modest incomes. They save, live within their means and have a firm grip on their money. In the long game they see the benefits.

There’s no greater example than every rockstar to go broke.


Similarly a business can have a very high turn over, and still lose money through a low gross profit and a high cost of doing business.

c,A black swan event could happen tomorrow that wiped me out, but barring serious injury or illness, i could rebuild.
We are not talking mega wealthy, just the ability to live comfortably and better than average.
I started with nothing and never attended college, I have done okay and learnt everything from scratch.

NATH45, you could easily argue that having no debt is poor financial literacy.
You need to have an understanding that an asset that appreciates is good debt, a debt for something that devalues is poor debt.

These days inflation is significantly higher that interest, which means if your savings are in the bank you are effectively losing money.

iNCY absolutely understand that.

Also, for most folks we aren’t purposely investing in any asset for purely a return. Home ownership would easily be the majority’s largest potential asset, but it isn’t with an eventual profit in mind, it’s purely a roof over ones head.

I think we’re still hung up on this idea that financial literacy is only a skill of the astute businessman and keen investor. The majority of us will only ever be of a working / middle class and may, or most likely don’t or never will possess the skillset to demand a higher than average income allowing the ability to invest, trade or generate an additional source of income.

But it doesn’t rule out the ability to make informed and responsible financial choices allowing for a comfortable life and build a degree of wealth.

May 3, 2020 9:59:46 GMT NATH45 said:

iNCY absolutely understand that.

Also, for most folks we aren’t purposely investing in any asset for purely a return. Home ownership would easily be the majority’s largest potential asset, but it isn’t with an eventual profit in mind, it’s purely a roof over ones head.

I think we’re still hung up on this idea that financial literacy is only a skill of the astute businessman and keen investor. The majority of us will only ever be of a working / middle class and may, or most likely don’t or never will possess the skillset to demand a higher than average income allowing the ability to invest, trade or generate an additional source of income.

But it doesn’t rule out the ability to make informed and responsible financial choices allowing for a comfortable life and build a degree of wealth.

Yes, I totally agree with your definition, it is what I am talking about.
The Family home generally isn't bad debt as long as people don't over pay or over extend themselves because it is an asset that appreciates.

Most of the time when i read half-assed financial literacy advice it is things like cut up all your credit cards, but that is okay if people have a problem but it isn't teaching people to be responsible with credit.
Where I like rules like "pay yourself first" is they show what human nature is and I have experienced, that often when your pay goes up, your expenses go up more... Without even thinking or knowing it.
I know there are people who don't have one spare coin at the end of the week, but lots of people could save 10% and it might sting at first but it can be done.
I did it with my wife, then when my boss went bankrupt, I was in a position to start my own company.
Even now, I put a certain amount aside without touching it.

And that is ultimately my issue with financial advice it is just not good. Very little actual science involved and most of it is from people who are successful who talk about why they are successful not realizes it is survivorship bias.

For those not really into survivorship bias, the term comes from WW2. A lot of statisticians were involved in this wars calculating ways to make the US military stronger with a lot of theory coming from analyzing weird things like bomb spread. One thing they studied was the planes that went on bombing runs. Abraham Wald, one of the brilliant minds in statistics, examined planes that returned from bombing runs and noticed most shots from AA fire hit along the wingspan or tail wing. The US military took this to mean that those were the parts of the plane they needed to reinforce, as most people would. The parts that are getting hit the most should have the most armor. But this is wrong. The parts not hit should have the most armor because those planes are not returning, showing that the nose of the plane and the payload the key part to protect if you wish the see the plane return. Later this was applied to soldiers on the ground. No soldiers were showing up with head wounds following mortar strikes to field hospitals. It was suggested here that they were helmets to avoid the shrapnel from killing them. After this we seen a far higher survival rate for mortar attacks.

In financial theory books you look at what the successful did to be successful but that is not the right question you want to ask. You want to ask why were others not successful, what did they do wrong. The hardest concept of modern statistics to understand is when testing a theory statistical is the concept of null hypothesis testing, something that made me thousands of dollars tutoring about over the years. In null hypothesis testing, and statistics in general, you do not test if a theory is correct but instead test to show a theory is likely to be from chance. And this is what most financial literacy books are. People doing things and being successful not because of what they do but by sheer chance. The reason black swan theory is so interesting in this area, is deals with counterfactuals. What happens when you do everything right and still face ruin. From here we can learn what things you REALLY need to protect from. Financial systems are considered fragile systems, ones that are subject to get variation due to chance. To counter this you want to find what will protect you from these chance events and make the systems antifragile or protected from events seen or unseen. This is why investors no longer invest their own money, only other people's money. It protect them from risk and they get money from the investees to do this whether they do well or not.

I have not read the full body of the Incerto by Nassim Nicholas Taleb as I do not like his writing style at all, but he is one of the people who made a lot of money when the housing market imploded. His book Fooled by Randomness was great and lays out how he was able to profit from economic downturns and essentially laid out how he invested in the economic downturn. Black Swan expands the ideas making it clearer he was investing against black swan events but started to move into stranger areas and began to feel like confirmation bias. The Bed of Procrustes moved into philosophy and its relationship to modern economics which was not my wheelhouse. Antifragile came after he made his money for a second time betting against black swan events and really had a confirmation bias field, but the idea of fragility and how most people are really fragile and how to protect yourself was rather good. Finally there is Skin in the Game which talks about finding measurable risks and having skin in the game, ala, some personal risk. But here I feel he made the case that you should never have skin in the game, as if get rewarded for wins and but have risk of loss, you become antifragile.

A lot of you may like this (Incy in particular) as he pushed the concept of intellectual but idiot:

"The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn't understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are "red necks" or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term "uneducated". What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: "democracy" when it fits the IYI, and "populism" when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences."

He spends a whole chapter playing with this concept that many educated people are not really intelligent and act against their self interests.

Sometime this week I will make a thread on books I suggest people read for the lot of my knowledge into area. The major intersection of psychology, education and statistics is behavioral economics. I know Theend ripped through many of the books in this area and discussed them like Blink, Nudge, Outliers and I believe Predictably Irrational. I was considering studying this and went as far as to talk to Dan Ariely over vid chat but he did not think we were a match since he has trouble editing texts and event writing due to never fully regaining use of his hands when he was lit on fire as a kid. Nice guy though, spent like 15 minutes giving me people to reach out to in NC and elsewhere and books to read. But there are handful of books you all should like that I recommend all the time that I should put together on psychology, problem solving and thinking about thinking about numbers.  My views come from these books but these books do not hold my views so to speak as most are neutral and most are well read by business students.  At UNC had a few people come by the dorm to talk about books and get suggestions from the MBA program.

I have no problem agreeing to any of that c,

In my experience two powerful subconscious shape most people's thinking:
1. The Subconscious desire to protect the Ego, this leads to blame, excuses and fear.
In my experience the brain is only concerned with immediate gratification, therefore when something challenges the ego it will react swiftly to protect it.
This is totally counter-productive in accomplishing, but the fight or flight response was never about long term goals.

2. The tendency to see patterns everywhere.
Humans are amazing at this, people remind them of other people and we get dejavu mostly because we are hard wired to see patterns.
The downside of this, (often for the reasons outlined above) we tend to score a lot of false positives.
You hear famous people interviewed and they looked back and act like they had a narrative all the way through, but they didn't.
It might have been good luck or good management, but it was likely that there was no pattern or grand plan.
I can see this is the case in the example you stated in previous posts.
We all have a tendency to conflate correlation with causation.
This is a problem on both sides.

I stand by the fact that there are a few practices and habits people can exercise, gain a few skills and greatly increase their chances of financial independence.
Today I heard a quote that really resonated with me, it was along the lines of college is burdening a generation with debt as they teach them to be cogs in a world that doesn't want cogs any more.

I saw this video come up in my recommend and couldn’t help but laugh at its absurdity



One good thing to come out of current circumstances is a lot of people are learning the importance of saving as I read people (Not that you can go out and slap $50 in More Chilli atm anyway) were saving at a hugely increased rate.

Has anyone used the Raiz (Acorn) or spaceship app before and did it work well for you?

So confused about this. How is a 14 year old in NC running a high end engine business? He was loaned the money from his 16 year old brother. Also claims to have 15k in the bank and a 50k vintage car. Sounds like utter bullshit.

As for Acorn why would you pay them to manage microinvestments? Why not just move 10 percent of each of your paycheck into a savings account for free?

Also read the fine print.  Acorn used to charge $50 to transfer your money to your bank account.  So months of savings were done just to pay them.

May 14, 2020 17:16:51 GMT c said:

As for Acorn why would you pay them to manage microinvestments? Why not just move 10 percent of each of your paycheck into a savings account for free?

Also read the fine print.  Acorn used to charge $50 to transfer your money to your bank account.  So months of savings were done just to pay them.

The headline of the video just amused me. Maybe he plays CS:Go :suspic:


Seemed like a cool idea to put some “change” away without noticing it too much similar to a money box & I could be missing something but I don’t think there’s a $50 fee in Australia from what I can find.

May have dropped it since their competitors did not have it. Just really look into fees though as there is usually a catch for these companies. They are not making millions by simply doing you a service storing your cash.

Digital age Ponzi scheme

Doing my best not to click that Ramsey video so my feed isn't overtaken with all those garbage videos.

CREDIT BAD. PAY FOR HOUSE IN CASH.

May 14, 2020 21:41:49 GMT @ness said:

Doing my best not to click that Ramsey video so my feed isn't overtaken with all those garbage videos.

CREDIT BAD. PAY FOR HOUSE IN CASH.

Issa JPG

Guy at work complaining he can’t get approved for a 50k car loan at the moment as if hospitality/tourism isn’t on a tight rope currently.

He lives practically the same distance to work that I do..and I can see the club from my window. But a cheap Toyota and call it a day.