The Simple Truth of the Mortgage vs. Invest Debate
So many of you readers ask me if it’s smart to pay down a mortgage early. Or is investing the better option? I’ll put my own twist on the answer today.
So many of you readers ask me if it’s smart to pay down a mortgage early. Or is investing the better option? I’ll put my own twist on the answer today.
What benefits do rich people have that they don’t understand is a privilege? After polling the internet, here are the top-voted privileges of an affluent person. 1. Not Worrying About Bills “I’ve been very, very poor and now comfortable. I think rich people will never understand not having to worry about bills until it happens … Read more
Commenting on a recent article, Carmine Red asked an excellent question:
How do you evaluate the financial advice you get from other sources? Specifically, how do you decide if some piece of advice is for you, or if you should discard some adjacent advice. Is there an amount of pick-and-choose?
GRS definitely doesnât seem like a dogmatic 100% one-way-of-doing things site, so Iâd love to hear about the critical thinking you employ, and that Iâm sure we can all use a little of since weâre getting bombarded by financial âdo this!â or âdonât do thisâ instructions from so many different dimensions.
Carmine is right: GRS is not dogmatic. From the start, my top admonition has been “do what works for you”. By this I mean that you should test financial advice to see if it works for you and your situation. There’s little (if any) advice that applies to 100% of people in 100% of cases. Life is messy. Money is messy.
So, how can you decide whom to trust? How can you evaluate a piece of financial advice to decide whether it has merit? And if the financial advice does have merit, how can you tell if it’s right for yor life?
Today, let’s take a deep dive into this question. Let’s explore how to evaluate all of the financial advice you get — from the internet, from television, and in real life.
Before I answer Carmine’s question directly, I want to approach it obliquely. If you find this section boring, please skip to the next one. I won’t hold it against you!
In 1940, Mortimer J. Adler published How to Read a Book, which contained 400 pages of advice on doing something that most people would argue needs no instruction. In 1967, he revised the book and turned it into a little masterpiece.
In the revised edition, Adler argues that there are four levels of reading:
What has this to do with evaluating financial advice? Well, I think similar principles apply. When you receive a piece of financial advice from somebody, or you read a recommendation online, there are four levels of evaluation.
Here at Get Rich Slowly, one of my primary aims is to “evaluate synoptically”. I don’t want this site to be one-dimensional. When I write my articles, I try my best to draw from a variety of disciplines and sources. I look for differing opinions. Does that mean I stray from strict personal finance sometimes? Yes, absolutely. But it makes the writing more interesting for me and, I hope, for you.
Okay, that’s some semi-helpful, high-level philosophical stuff about evaluating financial advice. Now let’s look at how to put this into practice. How do you actually analyze financial advice to decide whether it’s good or not?
I think it helps to ask four questions.
Commenting on a recent article, Carmine Red asked an excellent question:
How do you evaluate the financial advice you get from other sources? Specifically, how do you decide if some piece of advice is for you, or if you should discard some adjacent advice. Is there an amount of pick-and-choose?
GRS definitely doesnât seem like a dogmatic 100% one-way-of-doing things site, so Iâd love to hear about the critical thinking you employ, and that Iâm sure we can all use a little of since weâre getting bombarded by financial âdo this!â or âdonât do thisâ instructions from so many different dimensions.
Carmine is right: GRS is not dogmatic. From the start, my top admonition has been “do what works for you”. By this I mean that you should test financial advice to see if it works for you and your situation. There’s little (if any) advice that applies to 100% of people in 100% of cases. Life is messy. Money is messy.
So, how can you decide whom to trust? How can you evaluate a piece of financial advice to decide whether it has merit? And if the financial advice does have merit, how can you tell if it’s right for yor life?
Today, let’s take a deep dive into this question. Let’s explore how to evaluate all of the financial advice you get — from the internet, from television, and in real life.
Before I answer Carmine’s question directly, I want to approach it obliquely. If you find this section boring, please skip to the next one. I won’t hold it against you!
In 1940, Mortimer J. Adler published How to Read a Book, which contained 400 pages of advice on doing something that most people would argue needs no instruction. In 1967, he revised the book and turned it into a little masterpiece.
In the revised edition, Adler argues that there are four levels of reading:
What has this to do with evaluating financial advice? Well, I think similar principles apply. When you receive a piece of financial advice from somebody, or you read a recommendation online, there are four levels of evaluation.
Here at Get Rich Slowly, one of my primary aims is to “evaluate synoptically”. I don’t want this site to be one-dimensional. When I write my articles, I try my best to draw from a variety of disciplines and sources. I look for differing opinions. Does that mean I stray from strict personal finance sometimes? Yes, absolutely. But it makes the writing more interesting for me and, I hope, for you.
Okay, that’s some semi-helpful, high-level philosophical stuff about evaluating financial advice. Now let’s look at how to put this into practice. How do you actually analyze financial advice to decide whether it’s good or not?
I think it helps to ask four questions.