Finance
The Worst Financial Advice People Keep Repeating Despite Being Wrong
Talking about finances can be stressful, but it’s even more stressful if you’re not sure what advice is good and what advice might put you in a worse position than you started in.
Recently, a Reddit user who goes by market_vision1 asked, “What is the worst financial advice people still repeat?” I took out a little pen and paper while I was reading through these, like, “Lemme write that down. And that. Oh! And that, too!” I’m curious what you think, though. Are all of these things we should avoid financially?
1. “One of the more damaging ideas out there is ‘Oh, you’re young, don’t worry about money, just go have fun and worry about it when you are older.’ Of course, the number one regret I hear from clients nearing retirement is that they wish they had just started saving when they were younger.”
—u/hems86
2. “The ‘tax bracket’ myth should be illegal. My uncle turned down a $10K raise because he thought he’d ‘lose money.’ He literally paid $10,000 to avoid $2,200 in taxes. That’s not a tax strategy. That’s a $7,800 donation to the Dumba— Fund, and he’s the chair.”
—u/Serious_Cress5040
Related: “31 Things Only Super Wealthy People Can Buy That You Probably Don’t Even Know Exist”
3. “People living outside of their means and not realizing it. They say things like, ‘You deserve X, don’t settle for less.’ Most of the people I see who are broke are not 100% victims of the system. The majority of people waste their money on dumb stuff that they can’t afford. They’ll tell me they’ve cut out all unnecessary spending, but when I look at their actual expenses, I see otherwise. Spending $800 a month on DoorDash, financing a new car with a $900 monthly payment, going on international vacations, spending 70% of their income on rent in a fancier apartment when there are options for cheaper living.”
—u/hems86
4. “I’m a financial planner, and some of the worst advice I’ve ever heard is ‘Don’t pay off your credit cards in full. Carrying a balance on your credit card builds your credit; paying it off every month hurts your score.’ People say this to me all the time when I ask why they carry a balance on their card with 25% interest when they have more than enough to pay it off.”
—u/hems86
5. “It’s not so much advice as it is a financial choice. I know people who are taking out 96-month loans on cars they never should’ve considered in the first place, just because they can make the car note when it’s stretched over eight years. They never considered the interest on the loan plus the rate cars depreciate and are befuddled when they can’t afford to trade it in.”
—u/Dangerous-Limit2887
6. “People like to say, ‘Follow your passion. Money will follow.’ No. Follow money. It helps pay for your passions.”
—u/Emerald_see
“Not to mention, turning your passion into a career quickly kills the passion.”
—u/snubda
7. “People like to say, ‘The stock market is a scam where billionaires steal from regular people, so avoid it.’ This leads to so many people being much worse off than they need to be. I’ve seen too many IRAs and 401(k)s where the money was never invested and just earned minor interest for 30 years. It hurts when I see someone who put away $108K over 30 years and only ended up with $171K in the end. It hurts more when I show them that if they had just invested in the S&P 500 index that whole time, they would have ended up with $592K or even more money.”
—u/hems86
8. “There’s an idea now that not going to college is smarter for your finances, even though every metric shows that college pays off. Everyone fails to realize that even though college may no longer guarantee you a job, it guarantees you won’t get a job against someone who has a degree. I’ve noticed a pattern in the types of people who say don’t go to college though. They either didn’t go themselves and somehow got lucky with the way their opportunities unfolded, or they’re in a very niche field or specialized trade that nobody else around them knows how to do.”
—u/Scarlette_Cello24
9. “‘Buy the warranty.’ The warranty company employs a team of actuaries that use detailed statistical analysis (with proprietary data) to set prices so that they can make a healthy profit from selling warranties. In other words, if the warranty company is proving that they take in way more than they pay out, what are the odds that you will benefit more than you pay out? It’s identical to Vegas slot machines. Warranties are programmed to take in way more than they pay out. And like slot machines, someone will defend this idea with a ‘thank god I had a warranty’ situation, the same way your Aunt Jen always talks big about her casino wins.”
—u/Bubbafett33
Related: “Doctors Are Confessing The Wildest Patient Complaints They’ve Ever Received”
10. “I have heard people say the dumbest sh— about working overtime my entire career. ‘Don’t work too many hours or you make less money.’ I genuinely don’t know how this gets spread so quickly when it’s so easily disproven.”
—u/JT3468
11. “Whole life insurance is a scam. It combines life insurance and investing, but does both poorly. It’s wildly expensive, and most people would be better off getting a much cheaper term-life policy and investing the savings.”
—u/jhwkr542
12. “The biggest roadblock I’ve met with young clients is that a lot of them cannot grasp the concept of saving; or to put it bluntly, they get way too into the whole ‘boring=bad’ mindset. It sucks because the best financial advice they need to hear is ‘boring.’ I’ve met so many clients who have the capacity to save, yet they blow a lot of their overflow on trips to foreign countries and music festivals, and then they come back and complain about living paycheck to paycheck.”
—u/Turnbob73
13. “A lot of people don’t understand the loan they signed. I had a flatmate who wanted to buy a car on finance. He came home and asked me to take a look at the contract and asked if he should sign it. It was fine until I got to the interest rate: 55% over three years. I told him it was a rip-off. I worked out the total he would end up paying for the car, told him not to do it, and to keep looking for a better rate. The next day, the car was parked in the driveway. Back then, he could have almost bought a house with a similar payment. 🤯”
—u/ralphiooo0
Related: “17 Luxury Items The Rich Buy That Most People Don’t Know About”
14. “It’s not exactly bad ‘advice,’ but I think people are overly pessimistic about their personal financial situations. A lot of people who have never tried an actual budgeting method look at budgeting like, ‘What’s the point? I don’t make a lot of money anyway.’ And then they continue spending their money as they always do. The truth is, if you really break down your fixed costs and your income, and look back at how much you spend eating out or spending a few dollars here and there, you might be surprised by how much you actually have to work with. I’m not saying that you should become a slave to a budget, but if you truly pull apart your spending, you might see that you’ve spent $20 a week on gas station snacks that could be saved and put towards a nicer dinner on the weekend or something. Or, even better, you might see that you have more spending in something else that you could cut back on and put into an investment.”
—u/0wlBear916
15. “Gambling is not the way to take care of your finances, even though it’s becoming more and more prevalent in our culture. Buying a couple of lottery tickets every week is not that much of a problem, but betting on sports and prediction markets daily, that can really ruin you.”
—u/JackFisherBooks
16. “Getting multiple credit cards to earn points. It can work if you have great self-control, but 90 percent of people just rack up debt, and the points become irrelevant.”
—u/ryzesaturn
17. “‘Cut up all your credit cards.’ Unless you are truly addicted to spending, this is a bad idea. Keeping a credit card open and active is one of the best things you can do for your credit score. If you’re disciplined and pay it off every month, you can build up some good rewards pretty quickly.”
—u/_-Cleon-_
18. “The belief that buying is always better than renting is just not true. Not even accounting for different lifestyle preferences, one should always do the math for their local market.”
—u/snowjisus
19. “Honestly, the belief that your insurance, however good, will pay if something bad happens. These companies pay lawyers to avoid paying you.”
—u/anonanon232341
20. “In law school, I had someone tell me to take out the max amount of student loans and use it for vacation and just pay it back later. 😑”
—u/Fancy-Trip-3206
21. “Buying a home or a condo as an ‘investment property’ to rent out. It’s mind-boggling to me how many people do this. It’s a huge amount of capital to tie up in a relatively high-risk asset, especially at a time when the political winds in the US are increasingly on the side of devaluing that asset.”
—u/Reasonable_View_3328
22. “Cosigning a loan. For anyone. Ever. DON’T DO IT!”
—u/mudd2577
Related: “Rich People’s Former Staff Share Stories That Will Make Your Jaw Drop”
23. “‘Open an LLC so you can write everything off on your taxes.’ Not only are you only allowed to write off expenses caused by the business (most of which you wouldn’t pay if you weren’t in business), the IRS doesn’t even recognize that LLCs exist.”
—u/Akem0417
24. “Honestly, one of the things that can really set you back financially is getting pregnant before you’re financially ready.”
—u/Aphrodisiatic922
25. “Spending multiple months’ salary on a ring. It’s just not worth it!”
—u/Stienhardt
26. “When people say to ‘invest’ in crypto. There are so many better ways to actually invest your money.”
—u/EpiZirco
27. And finally, “The very worst thing you can do for your finances is quitting your career job without a new job lined up.”
—u/squirrel-phone
What’s the worst financial advice you’ve ever received? Tell me in the comments, or use the anonymous form below. Your response may be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed article!
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
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