How much do you listen/read/get information from experts?

[bclover]

This is more of a vent, so mods feel free to delete if it doesn't have any redeeming value....

So I haven't retired yet but I'd like to next year, I'll be 55. One aspect that I find frustrating is how everyone says how "easy" investing seems to be. Now I'm a scientist so maybe my brain is wired differently because I'm not finding it easy at all.
LOL, which is why I do appreciate you guys...

Anyhoo, here is one of my frustrations. conflicting stories every other day.

I've been trying to get a handle on my post retirement budget and reading up on taxes.

Got an article today from the Motley fool that says retirees often over state their tax bill and owe less than they thought.
two email later I got another email that says "retirees always underestimate their tax burden".

lol, so which is it? am I under or over estimating my bill

Am I the only one that gets frustrated at this or do you just carry on and try to weed out the best information for your particle situation?

 

[frayne]

Unfortunately one size does not fit all and so called experts are a dime a dozen. Read, digest and do the math and then do what is best for you. As far as investing, Bogle and Bernstein are about the only guys I count as experts.

When it comes to taxes, if you know your income it's pretty easy to calculate and determine your tax liability and then plan accordingly.

Just my two cents and YMMV.

 

[travelover]

Why guess? Do a sample tax return in Taxcaster and see the real numbers.

 

[REWahoo]

There are experts and then there are "experts". I consider the bunch at the Motley Fool to be aptly named.

Seriously, the first thing I do when reading a financial article is consider the source of the information and what that individual or institution may have to gain if you buy into their advice. Way too often those in the financial industry want you to keep buying/selling something to boost their fees/commissions. Those experts are salesmen in disguise.

Others are simply click bait, trying to get views on their page, sell a book or meet a deadline for publishing articles they have to write to stay employed.

 

[marko]

I wish there was a website that tallied the predictions of 'experts'.

There's always these guys on TV saying that bonds/equities/taxes/commodities/currencies will go going up/down drastically.

You never hear about whether they were right/wrong!!!

Of course, sometimes they'll come back six months later and say "see: I told you so" but the ones who are wrong never get questioned as to "what happened?"

 

[MichaelB]

There are experts and then there are "experts". I consider the bunch at the Motley Fool to be aptly named.

Seriously, the first thing I do when reading a financial article is consider the source of the information and what that individual or institution may have to gain if you buy into their advice. Way too often those in the financial industry want you to keep buying/selling something to boost their fees/commissions. Those experts are salesmen in disguise.

Others are simply click bait, trying to get views on their page, sell a book or meet a deadline for publishing articles they have to write to stay employed.

+1

So I haven't retired yet but I'd like to next year, I'll be 55. One aspect that I find frustrating is how everyone says how "easy" investing seems to be. Now I'm a scientist so maybe my brain is wired differently because I'm not finding it easy at all.
./.
Am I the only one that gets frustrated at this or do you just carry on and try to weed out the best information for your particle situation?

One of the lessons I learned the hard way is even when an author is an "expert" or established authority in the field, that does not mean the advice being given is helpful to me. It may be just the opposite.

I find the most helpful authors / experts are the ones that I read and follow over long periods of time and who's approach to investing and financial management coincide with my own. The least helpful are those who I read for the first time making very specific pronouncements or giving very precise advice.

 

[REWahoo]

I wish there was a website that tallied the predictions of 'experts'.

It needs updating, but here is one: Stock Market Guru Grades - CXO Advisory

 

[Car-Guy]

I've always wonder why so many financial experts are still working for a living?

 

[vince]

I've gotten the most sound, unbiased advice on the markets and investing from AAII.

 

[easysurfer]

I think "experts" are like "breaking news" on TV. There's so many that the term gets watered down.

An example of how investing may be frustrating is you want an answer to a right asset allocation for, say a 50 year old. Well, there isn't one. Instead, asset allocation is a subjective thing. One person may say, I'm a big risk taker, the other my not. Or, have the right allocation so you can sleep at night. If you search for an exact percentage among the experts, you won't find one. In other words, the best expert to your investing is yourself.

 

[Nemo2]

am I under or over estimating my bill

Or are you under or over estimating the 'experts'?

 

[MichaelB]

Here's an interesting blog link from TBP on the same subject Market Forecasters Are Like Blind Squirrels… | The Big Picture

 

[Independent]

I read the experts daily. The ones I read post here: www.early-retirement.org

 

[ChicagoGal]

There are experts and then there are "experts". I consider the bunch at the Motley Fool to be aptly named.

Seriously, the first thing I do when reading a financial article is consider the source of the information and what that individual or institution may have to gain if you buy into their advice. Way too often those in the financial industry want you to keep buying/selling something to boost their fees/commissions. Those experts are salesmen in disguise.

Others are simply click bait, trying to get views on their page, sell a book or meet a deadline for publishing articles they have to write to stay employed.

+1

I try to read a lot, consider the perspective or bias of the person writing, consider the facts that they're including as the basis for their opinion (and the facts that they're excluding) and then see if I feel the need to modify my current position. I do the same with what passes for "news" these days, which is more often someone's spin on a situation than actual news.

 

[Bestwifeever]

So much crap content on the Internet--it is pretty easy to find any prolific writers contradicting themselves in a previous piece of writing just because they are on deadline and cranking out the words with little regard to past arguments made on a topic. Especially when livelihood depends on clcks, as noted above.

I like to find the source of the data in an article that intrigues me and then look at that vs a writer's (often overwritten and perhaps self-serving) analysis of same, especially financial matters, and go from there. Our individual life experiences and current situations are more important to our decisions than the opinions of a "guru," even if those opinions happen to align with our decision on that particular day.

 

[mrfeh]

Why guess? Do a sample tax return in Taxcaster and see the real numbers.

+1

Ignore the "experts". For the most part, they are just writing click bait.

Educate yourself. Get help from folks that aren't looking to enrich themselves. This site and bogleheads.org are good resources.

 

[Ready]

My experience with financial experts, especially ones who make market predictions, is that they are correct about 50% of the time. So you can either listen to them, or just flip a coin. Either way should result in about the same probability of the information being correct.

 

[Nemo2]

From the outlet that terms itself "Canada's National Newspaper" this morning:

Before the bell: Stocks rise, oil may be nearing a bottom

The Toronto Stock Exchange, down 113 (.77%) points at time of posting, hasn't been in positive territory at all today....however, the link is still up, and to add the proverbial insult to injury, anyone who wishes to access this 'story' has to pay a premium.

 

[bclover]

LOL.
Thanks everyone. I can count on you guys to definitely lower my stress level. One of the problems I have that I'm scared witless that I'll make some horrible mistake and regret retiring. which leads to me to click on every email and link known to man.

stepping down off my ledge

 

[REWahoo]

One of the problems I have that I'm scared witless that I'll make some horrible mistake and regret retiring. which leads to me to click on every email and link known to man.

I think I recognize your problem.

What you are doing is a serious threat to your emotional and financial well being. Stop reading that crap. Seriously. Do your homework, pick an asset allocation using low-cost funds and stick with it.

If you do slip and see/hear a "The Sky is Falling!" financial tabloid headline, consider posting your concerns on this forum before you do something you might regret...

 

[AllDone]

I've received some amazingly bad investment advice from "experts" over the years, most of which I've ignored, but I have made some big mistakes on my own anyway. Fortunately, it all worked out, thanks to a surprising turn of good luck, high income and not much taste for material goods.

You can easily and accurately estimate your state and federal taxes. Then you just need to pull a year's worth of bank and credit card statements and look at your real spending -- not much fun, but it's better than any estimator you could use.

 

[Sue J]

Got an article today from the Motley fool that says retirees often over state their tax bill and owe less than they thought.

two email later I got another email that says "retirees always underestimate their tax burden".



lol, so which is it? am I under or over estimating my bill



Am I the only one that gets frustrated at this or do you just carry on and try to weed out the best information for your particle situation?

Where is the article that features the retirees who estimated their tax bill within $100 of the correct amount and went on with their lives?


Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum

 

[LOL!]

I'm a scientist as well. I learned to never believe what anyone said (especially scientists) without looking at the data myself and making up my own mind. In short, I don't believe anything I read at first.

To see how crocked up things are, here is something I read yesterday: An egg contains 6.29 grams of protein. That's stated as fact on several web sites. (Just google the phrase "6.29 grams of protein eggs".) Clearly, someone wrote something and it got repeated over and over. The reality is that probably an average egg has on average about 6 grams of protein and not precisely 6.29 grams of protein.

So take everything you read and learn with the proverbial shaker of salt. As a scientist you should not expect anything to be true until proven with the data. You should be asking "Where's the data? What were the positive controls? What were the negative controls?"

If you are scared witless that you might make some horrible mistake, that has less to do with science and your readings than it does with your personality. Clearly, you have been making mistakes all your life. So what?

Finally, I suggest read Dan Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". It is write-up of his life work as behavioral economist and has quite a bit of fun with experts.

 

[RunningBum]

+1

Ignore the "experts". For the most part, they are just writing click bait.

Educate yourself. Get help from folks that aren't looking to enrich themselves. This site and bogleheads.org are good resources.

That's decent advice, to an extent. I never take advice from here without verifying it for myself. Many people here are good about including the source of where they got info, so I go to the source and judge for myself whether the source is factual and/or useful, which often means going beyond that source. Often this sources are "expert advice" that has passed a sniff test and posted here. This forum does a good job in general of separating good advice from questionable.

Just for example, there's a large contingent here that believes in index investing and staying invested with an asset allocation plan. I'm one of them, but I wasn't always. I got swayed to that camp in large part because of posts here, but before I made any changes, I examined expense ratios on my own, looked at the various studies of managed vs. indexed funds, and measured my own mix of individual stocks and managed funds vs. return of indexed funds, and saw I wasn't able to beat the index. If I had been beating the index, I'd be sticking to my former way. Whatever your strategy is, I think it's important to stick to your plan. Not "no matter what", because you can and should regularly reevaluate if there's a better way, but not because an article or a poster said to do it differently.

Partial Roth conversions in ER was another good tip I got here. But I did further reading, and ran spreadsheets for my own case to convince myself it was a good idea, and to see how much to convert each year. Where did that idea come from originally? Maybe some smart person here figured it out, or maybe it came from "expert advice" somewhere and was shared here.

For any tax issues, I'll always go to the IRS site itself, and use Fairmark.com to help understand the tax laws. I'll read advice here, and I may have even asked questions here myself a couple of times, but I'd rather go directly to the source than get someone's interpretations that may be wrong.

The examples in the OP were funny in that the same site gave such conflicting information, but I find that most generalized statements like that are nearly useless. What do I care whether the typical retiree under or over estimates taxes? About the only thing I'll look for in such an article is what specific mistakes people commonly make, to see if I make the same mistake, if I even bother to read it.

 

[Which Roger]

This is more of a vent, so mods feel free to delete if it doesn't have any redeeming value....

So I haven't retired yet but I'd like to next year, I'll be 55. One aspect that I find frustrating is how everyone says how "easy" investing seems to be. Now I'm a scientist so maybe my brain is wired differently because I'm not finding it easy at all.
LOL, which is why I do appreciate you guys...

Anyhoo, here is one of my frustrations. conflicting stories every other day.

I've been trying to get a handle on my post retirement budget and reading up on taxes.

Got an article today from the Motley fool that says retirees often over state their tax bill and owe less than they thought.
two email later I got another email that says "retirees always underestimate their tax burden".

lol, so which is it? am I under or over estimating my bill

Am I the only one that gets frustrated at this or do you just carry on and try to weed out the best information for your particle situation?

Many say that investing is easy (and I agree, but learning that it's easy is not necessarily easy), but this refers mainly to the accumulation phase.

What you're referring to is the spending phase - estimating and minimizing taxes during retirement, balancing the (sometimes conflicting) goals of maximizing your expected income/net worth versus maximizing your chances of not dying broke, etc. This is far from simple, and I haven't heard many claim that it is. And there's no one-size-fits-all approach, since everyone has a unique financial situation and goals.