I guess it doesn't bother me terribly, though I don't read much in the way of finance articles anymore. Only so many ways to rehash the same information in "new, fresh, hip, relevant" ways, when the fundamentals simply haven't changed. And you see that on the MMM front page, he's covered the details from just about every cross sectional way you can slice them.
Earn more. Spend less. Think about how you spend. Save. Invest. Do crap for yourself. Don't spend obscene amounts of money on things "just because it's done." Don't buy a new luxury car to consume a raise. Etc. You can write on it, but it runs out of room in a pretty good hurry.
And I'll argue that specifics are both not useful, and probably harmful. Anyone who claims to be telling you the exact future, especially on financial matters, is not to be trusted. General trends? Useful paths? Certainly, those are helpful. But "If you do X, Y, and Z, then A, B, and C will be guaranteed in the future!" is far, far too strong a claim to make, IMO.
I've written things delving into the financial realm (thinking about what defines "enough," repair of computers/phones/tech, etc), but I don't get terribly specific for a few reasons:
- What works for me isn't guaranteed to work for anyone else, and unless you live really close to me, shop the same way, etc, my numbers won't be your numbers. The concepts may very well apply, but the details will differ, and if you can't work out the details for your situation from generals, well... m'kay, not really my problem.
- I don't care to be that specific, because our income details are between me, my wife, and the IRS. Nothing good comes of posting exactly financial details on the internet, as far as I'm concerned.
- I'm not going to hold someone's hand on their finances unless they specifically ask.
1.) The use of the word "Income". For those of us still working, there is a big difference between GROSS Income and NET Income. Yet, in articles the word Income is often used with no explanation of what the author means. Depending on how a reader chooses to interpret the use of this word, the advice could be way off, or even dangerous to decision making. I wish the authors would be clear which of these (Gross or Net) they mean when writing.
What sort of things does the difference matter for? I can't come up with any general financial concepts off the top of my head where even a 20-30% difference between "net" and "gross" really matters, given where one should aim to be in terms of "spend X percentage of your income on this..." sort of things. I'll put this in the case of "If you're making early decisions in the transition from consumer sukka to FIRE wizard," it doesn't matter, and if you're later on that path, you can do the math yourself to decide which is the right one. Higher income, lower income, W-2, 1099, area cost of living... all of this needs to be factored into a lot, so someone else's exact details won't match for you.
2.) Millionaires. This word often gets used to describe people who MAKE a million dollars and those who HAVE a million dollars. All of us here certainly know the difference and would only consider someone who has a million dollars to be considered a Millionaire. Heck, I have even read articles where the author will go back and forth in the same article using this word for both definitions (conflating the two) - seeming to not understand the difference.
That one, yeah. That's just sloppy.
I did do a "retirement readiness" quiz that was sponsored by the life insurance company that my employer uses, and unsurprisingly it told me to buy more life insurance.
Amazing! I've done some "retirement financial path" quizzes by companies interested in selling me "financial management services," and their conclusion was that, at a minimum, I'll need about 2x my current salary in retirement (we won't discuss the difference between what we actually spend and their calculations), and, well, gosh, they'd be just so happy to help advise me to get there, if I'd only pay their tiny little montly management fees and a itsy bitsy percentage of gains. How could I lose?
But they don't have a nearly full picture of our current financial state, so I just ignore that sort of stuff and keep on doing that which has been working for us.
I'll suggest that the vast majority of people on this forum, after some time thinking through things, would be better financial advisors than a lot of the "professionals," based on conversations I've had with some of them. The concept of "Spending radically less than you make and trying to design your life so that you don't need a ton of money to do that which you enjoy doing" is utterly foreign to people who are more interested in selling you dreams of luxury cars and golf in retirement, which, conveniently, means more money for them to "manage" and "charge management fees on."
For sport, try explaining the basics of FIRE to the next professional financial advisor you come across, and see what they say. They'll be baffled and have nothing of value to add.
Vagueness around numbers (and other things) pisses me off, which is why I make sure to be really specific when I write about personal finance. People are like "And then I started cooking at home and saved so much money!". That is NOT useful to anyone. What were you spending before versus after, how many people is that feeding, and is there any hidden stuff pushing the numbers down, like free food from work, or someone subsidizing your food in other ways? Where did you shop, what did you buy, what did you make? Real information that a person can do something with is what is actually useful to people learning about financial topics, not vague bullshit.
How do someone else's numbers really help you beyond "What they've done and how they're doing it"?
It's the "We make $200k a year but we're not rich" attitude.
I've known people making twice that who weren't rich, because they spent every penny that came in and then some. High income, certainly, but rich? That's really up to the person involved. Though, yes, I do recognize that a lot of "personal finance bloggers" have a lot of resouces to throw at optimizing certain problems.
