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Comment by avasylev | Hacker News Reader

Mr money mustache

After living in US for a year or two, was very interesting to discover alternative view on "typical" lifestyle. While I don't agree with all his recommendation, I did buy cheap small car :)

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there are also some subreddits on frugal life, early retirement, management of your finances. While there is a lot of advertisment and untested theory in there as well, I have to agree that it helps a lot to gain some money skills.

The one I can recommend the most is learning to write down and track your finances manually (i.e., without Mint). I'm a lazy bum, so I stop doing it after a few months every time I start, but when you hit a strain of bad luck that drains all your savings you will be happy as hell to have these skills navigate you through the storm. I'd say without these skills I would be insolvent right now, which is worse in my country than the US, afaik.

While there are much good advise in those subreddit, much of the content is also extremely US-centric. That's fine of cause, that's where many of the users are, but some of the advise aren't really applicable in some other countries, and some is just plain bad advice in you're not in the US. The whole renting vs. buying of instance, Reddit users almost always recommend renting your home, but that just throwing money away in some countries.

Yes, I have the same problem. And it's really a pity that there is no local content in the same quality in my country. I also bought some native books, but they don't think strategically about money. It's just "grandma's advice" put on paper.

Rent vs. buy is a great example of how useless broad unqualified advice is. Whether to buy or rent varies from district to district within the same city, as well as from city to city, and also state to state inside the US, never mind different countries.

It also varies from individual to individual; their savings, their finances, where they are in their career.

Therefore don't learn the conclusions, learn the decision making steps and information gathering tips. Then apply them yourself and see what it yields for your context.

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