It’s been a while since I’ve done a more rant-y piece and even longer since I’ve posted something in my “Not Experts” category.
Today’s post will catch us up in both of these areas.
One thing I enjoy about early retirement is the amount of learning I get to do. I’ve always been curious and it seems like my life has been one long, constant effort (in a good way) to learn something new.
Retirement allows me time to focus on learning as much as I want.
Most of my learning is through reading (books and blogs) and listening to a ton of podcasts. My reading is generally online blog posts while the books and podcasts are listened to while I take my daily walks (when my wife is not with me, of course).
In my online reading, I read a wide variety — both blogs as well as mainstream money articles written by “professional” journalists.
After having done so for many years, it’s clear to me that I prefer pieces from bloggers BY FAR over those by journalists.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but here are the top three…
1. Journalists are experts at writing. Bloggers know more about money.
Have you ever looked into the background of who’s writing a post? With bloggers, it’s part of the deal. You learn about a person you identify with and follow them as they blog about their life, finances, etc. Along the way more and more is revealed about them as a person which makes the story even better IMO.
On the other hand, most readers don’t know much about the journalists who write the posts they read. In fact, the writer isn’t really noticed that much in a mainstream article. We simply see it as a post by MarketWatch, CNBC, and the like.
But I’m not the average reader and I often look at who has written an article and what their background is.
Here’s a sample of a common journalist bio from a large money-oriented website. I have changed the details to protect the innocent, but the essence of the description remains a great example which is quite common:
Joe Smith is a veteran digital and television journalist who writes articles for Website.com.
He is a graduate of the prestigious Highbrow University school of journalism where he received his BA in English and his MA in journalism.
Prior to joining Website.com, he spent years reporting the news for a variety of broadcast stations and earned an Emmy award for breaking news coverage.
Here’s what this is really saying:
- Joe is a professional journalist. He knows how to report and how to write. Writing is his expertise.
- Any subject he covers (in this case money) is not his expertise.
And you can tell he’s not an expert by what he writes. More on that in a minute.
Basically, Joe is an expert at creating the illusion of competence, getting enough of the facts so he doesn’t sound like a total noob, but not really adding much value to anyone past Money 101.
Personally, I’d rather know what Joe understands about money as well as some sort of measure of how well he’s done financially. Otherwise, why should I listen to his thoughts on the subject?
For instance, I’d be much more impressed with a bio like this:
Joe Smith is a veteran digital and television journalist who writes articles for Website.com.
He is a graduate of the prestigious Highbrow University school of journalism where he received his BA in English and his MA in journalism.
After graduation, Joe began studying personal finance and applied his learning into creating a $2 million portfolio by age 40. He later semi-retired at 45, but writes these days highlighting his experience to help others discover how they can achieve financial success.
In this case, I want to hear what Joe has to say. Why? Because he’s actually studied the topic and applied his learnings successfully. He’s talking from experience and accomplished something financially. I can probably learn something good from him.
You know who has a bio similar to the second one? Bloggers.
Replace the English/journalism degrees with any number of other fields and you have your basic, well-respected blogger.
Someone who loves the topic of personal finance.
Someone who has studied the topic of personal finance.
Someone who has actually applied these principles and is usually way ahead of the pack financially for their age.
These people know much more about the real-life money issues we all face and their writing reflects that. They know it because they are living it. And they are accomplished in one way or another when it comes to money management.
Of course there are a lot of bloggers who don’t know much about growing wealth — they are making it up (aka “discovering”) as they go. There are a couple of ways to handle these bloggers.
First, you could simply not read their stuff. This is mostly my option, but I still pay attention somewhat as every now and then they will hit on a new topic the rest of us old-school people would never even think about.
Second, they say that a teacher is simply someone who is a bit ahead of the student. So while the newer/inexperienced bloggers aren’t ahead of me financially, they are ahead of many, and those people can read and implement along with the bloggers. They kind of grow up financially together.
2. Journalists often miss the mark big-time. Bloggers don’t as much.
This is related to point #1, but more focused on the way journalists expose the fact that they don’t know a lot about money.
In fact, I could write a book on how journalists demonstrate their lack of money knowledge.
A few common illustrations:
- They often use “income” when discussing “wealth.” They don’t realize the terms do not mean the same thing and that they aren’t even correlated. And yet they use them interchangeably. Example, “Jim is wealthy because he makes $125,000 a year.” Ugh.
- They take information at face value with no perspective. I have read a gazillion articles that highlight this new study or that new study. The journalist basically takes the talking points fed to them by the research entity and regurgitates the findings with a few tips thrown in. Because they don’t understand broader money issues, facts, etc., they end up with misleading or incorrect conclusions at worst and worthless ones at best. In short, they don’t know what they don’t know — and it shows.
- Their experience with money is so limited, they often miss the basics. To compensate they often parrot financial rules-of-thumb that aren’t exactly correct (and sometimes contradictory to what they’re writing about). But since they don’t know any better, they go with what appears to be correct.
One example of this last point is this article. The post is about “The No. 1 question Americans ask most about retirement” and “some of the best — and most controversial — answers to it.”
So what’s the number one question about retirement? It’s this:
How much do I need to retire?
What are the “best” answers? Well, they offer a few for us to choose from:
- Suze Orman says the magic number is $5 million or more.
- Fidelity notes that by age 50 you should have six times your starting salary saved and by 67 10 times.
- Financial author and planner David Bach says this philosophy is a good starting point, but adds that “you might need to be saving more than that” and “you definitely don’t need to be saving less.”
This (and other findings) lead the author to make this conclusion:
And while much of the advice on how much to save for retirement is debatable, there are a few rules that nearly everyone agrees on: start early and make regular contributions, set up automatic enrollment and auto-escalation of your retirement plan, cut expenses and bump up your contributions when you get a raise.
Ok, that’s not bad advice about what to do, but it doesn’t really answer the question of how much someone needs to retire?
More often than not journalists will give some sort of rule-of-thumb like “80% of salary” as what you’ll need for retirement.
Is it just me or is there an easy answer to this that the mainstream media is missing?
If someone asks me “how much do I need to retire?”, I ask them what seems to be a logical step #1: “How much annual spending will you do in retirement?”
Once we have the answer to that, we can evaluate their assets and income opportunities to see how they might provide for their needs. If they are lacking the proper funds, we can then offer suggestions for how to accumulate what they need. This is the process I highlight in my free e-series Creating a Great Retirement.
On the other hand, you rarely see bloggers write something so far off topic that it’s laughable. Why is this? Again, it’s because they know the subject and are living it out. They are thinking about money and writing about it regularly (which helps them get even better).
Again, bloggers are not perfect, but in the end they miss the mark much less frequently and by not as much as journalists.
3. Bloggers are better writers than journalists.
Haha! I bet you didn’t expect to see this one listed!
First of all, let me say that most journalists are very good technical writers. They know how to structure a sentence, rarely misspell anything, and are experts at punctuation.
That said, their writing is often as lifeless as a vampire’s soul.
This is because they have studied writing from a perspective that worships the AP style and places zero emphasis on reader enjoyment. This is why it’s common to read a piece that is technically “brilliant” but is dry as toast in the desert. There is absolutely no heart in their writing and, as we’ve discussed above, little head either.
On the other hand, bloggers are often passionate about their topics and this comes through in their writing. They also share their personal stories, including the ups and downs, that give the message more life and make it infinitely more interesting. Journalists only have room for a quote here and there from someone they talked to for five minutes to get the two sentences they needed that fit into their story.
Sure, sometimes bloggers’ writing isn’t as polished. Sometimes words are not spelled correctly. Sometimes they use punctuation incorrectly. Sometimes sentence structure is wonky.
To me, that’s part of the charm (as long as it’s not so bad that a third grader would cringe). These are posts written by people who are working with money in real life instances. They are sharing their thoughts and dreams. They are sharing their wins and losses. So if there’s a comma missing here and an incorrect word there, that’s more than offset by the heart, story, and real-life practicality.
It makes for much more interesting reading for sure.
This even spills over into what topics are covered. Journalists often write about “safe” topics that are pretty basic and mainline. My guess is that they write more for Google than they do for people.
Bloggers often come up with topics that appear to come from left field when you read the title, but when you get into the post you can see that it’s quite insightful and something a journalist would never have come up with.
Here are a few examples from my site:
- Retirement Years are Like Reverse Dog Years
- If You Want What I Have You Have to Do What I’ve Done
- It’s the Spending, Stupid
Now I’m not saying I’m a great writer by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’d say I’m an “ok” writer. My strength lies in the fact that I can write a lot (four posts per week) about (mostly) interesting topics. No one is going to give me an award for how great my writing is.
That said, the posts above are ones that you would probably never see from a journalist because:
They require first-hand experience with the topic being written about (retirement, commitment/success, and spending versus earning). Most journalists simply do not have the background to write something like this.
They require taking a stand on an issue. This is something many journalists don’t do because they either lack the knowledge/commitment to take a stand or their publications don’t want to offend anyone. So they suck the life out of their writing to make it easy for the masses to swallow.
I could list hundreds of posts like the above written by blogger after blogger — real-life posts with passion, insight, and story that make the post both informative and entertaining.
Bloggers are Not Perfect
As I’ve mentioned a couple of times above, I’m not saying bloggers are always right (either factually or in their opinions). This is why I always recommend you develop your own opinions based on broad reading before taking anyone’s advice (including mine).
But if you’re asking me who I want to read and learn from when it comes to money, the three reasons above (and a few more I haven’t included) are why I would MUCH prefer to read a blog post than one written by a journalist.
Maybe I’m a bit biased, but I’d like to think that even if I wasn’t a blogger, I’d still choose blogs over mainstream options.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. What’s your take on the issue?
As in everything human there are some very proficient in a few things, then those who specialize in one field, but like me, and the real world, those who are capable of many things but the master of none. Bloggers bring to the forefront the humanistic nature while news reporting, on any subject is merely an attention getting medium, moving swiftly from one subject to another. Both mediums have there merits in learning, in my opinion.
I think you’re dead right about this one. You’re also right about the learning opportunity during retirement or extended breaks. It always amazes me that companies don’t allow more people to take a sabbatical to recharge their creativity and commitment. I think there are a few exceptions for journalists who combine knowledge with good and clever writing skills, but they are the exception. Personally, for me, it has been improving my “risk assessment”. Now, since we are currently a single income family, it’s more imperative to preserve capital. That has allowed me to uncover some of my mistakes from years ago and FINALLY learn them. You can hide considerable losses if you’re continually adding more capital. I could have easily gone from hero to zero. When we stop learning…we’re in trouble.
I never really thought about it but you are absolutely correct. I do prefer reading a subject from a blogger because it comes across as more personal and real. With something in print from the mainstream it is almost like a presentation of facts.
It’s like reading a research article versus someone telling a story, the latter wins every time.
As you mentioned, I am more apt to pay attention to someone who actually has gone or is going through the experience rather than from a 3rd party just recounting highlights.
You have stirred my inner soul here. Many years ago I worked with some very fine, thoughtful, intelligent hardworking news reporters. I found most of them to be worthy of admiration for their dedication to their craft including their editor who had a difficult job pleasing the bosses, subscribers, public, and workers at the same time. I found them to be passionate and completely capable of writing acurrate pieces that are way better than anything ive read in a blog. Don’t misunderstand, I enjoy blogs. I just dont think true journalists deserve being lumped in with the masses of wanna bes in the world today. It is unfortunate that publications are forced to write at such a low education level for the masses. Thus many pieces are reduced to the basics since its hard to convey more complex thoughts without an expanded vocabulary or complex sentences. I would suggest that unless you have been in the trenches with news reporters, that you not discount journalists as bad writers. As for storytelling, do we know how many journalists have written novels/books? How many have been best sellers? For the record I’m an it type and have never been a good writer (tech writing doesn’t count). So, while I hate television news and would lump those people in your bucket, I disagree with the assessment having worked in the newspaper business and been privledged to see budding stories coming in on the wires, building before being published. These crafted pieces are then sliced and diced by the individual publications based on their readership and space available. As with most things, there is just more to it then we know or see on the surface.
I enjoy your blog. Keep on blogging!!!
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing.
I don’t discount them as bad writers. I think they are good writers.
What I do discount is their knowledge and experience with the topics they write about.
As with any profession (like financial planners), there are good ones, of course. But the vast majority of financial writers are very lacking these days IMO.
Really an eye opening piece for me. I have preferred blogs over magazine style articles. I’ve just never realized it until today. I’m definitely going to be paying more attention to who is writing the article/blog that I’m reading. Thank you
This is a great piece. I have worked in the financial services industry for over 25 years in a senior level capacity. I agree that many of the articles created for industry purposes can be very generic and repetitive. In contrast, I very much appreciate the articles set forth on this site, and other similar sites, which address personal financial topics with useful candor. It is most helpful to view real world situations and how folks are addressing these issues. I too have come to appreciate the approach adopted by many “FIRE bloggers” who simply tell it like it is. Much of what is presented in the mainstream media context is simply designed to steer the reader toward the use of a financial services professional. This is perfectly appropriate for many people who lack the knowledge, sophistication or time to address these important issues alone. Nonetheless, the DIY route is likely to be more cost effective and satisfying for those who choose this path and are ready to put in the time and effort.
Interesting rant – I like rants! They tend to come from the soul, and therefore present an honest, passion-infused POV. This post is a great inspiration for me – just what I need to get me to the keyboard and just start banging out my blog!
(FWIW, I go for a walk around my neighborhood several times a week. Never thought of walking and listening to anything, music or p’cast. How can you focus on two things at once?)
I can’t tell if you’re serious or pulling my leg…you can walk and do something else, right?
Of course I *can*. The question is, why would I want to? If I wanted a mindless workout I’d go to the gym and engage with the various machines they have there. To me a walk is special space I like to keep uncluttered, free from external distraction.
As much as I enjoy a walk with my wife, I find that on those occasions that we’re both feeling talkative the time spent walking flies by, and as we approach the end I realize I have no recollection of the route we took, or what we saw along the way.
(I know – different strokes…).
Ok, I see what you mean.
For me…
When I walk with my wife, we chat about what’s going on, our life, plans, etc.
When I walk alone, I’m bored by the scenery usually as I have 4-5 standard routes I take. I prefer to keep interested by listening to music, a book, or podcast. That way I can exercise my mind and my body at the same time.
I have to agree with Newsy worth above after spending two very hard, stress-filled years in small-town community journalism. The comment I always received was my writing had personality. I am VERY GLAD to be out but I tried my hardest to stay until I realized it wasn’t going to work. Yes, editors rework everything and we were always told how readers could typically read no greater than a fifth-grade level. I get what you’re saying and mostly agree with you. Your website is one of my favorites, so I would disagree that you’re not a good writer. I would say you are. But some of us gave years of our life to the profession only to be told we weren’t good enough and not wanted. Yet I still have sources messaging me telling me how much they miss me. Bosses don’t want someone who is passionate about their work. The guys I worked with were only there for a paycheck and guess who’s still there? Them. Please know some of us journalists really cared. But unfortunately, it didn’t matter to those making the decisions. Had to put this out there since I went through a really dark four months after resigning that position and telling none of my sources in trying my best to leave with integrity. I still miss what I did there but learned a really hard lesson at the same time that I needed.
“They take information at face value with no perspective. I have read a gazillion articles that highlight this new study or that new study. The journalist basically takes the talking points fed to them by the research entity and regurgitates the findings with a few tips thrown in.” Exactly the same thing I felt about numerous articles that were published around research on alcoholic drinks like Beer, Wine etc are good for your health. I understood that these researches are a publicity vehicles for inviting new customers into the alcoholic drinks habit. So immediately I have stopped drinking and went back to my older way of staying “teetotaler’.
ESI is right on the money (pun intended) with this post. I read lots of articles about finance, and one’s about retirement are mostly comical.
A few great headlines I’ve seen recently:
1. How Much It Costs to Retire in Each State. (this type of article is just plain stupid).
2. How to Retire for $25K/yr in Costa Rica. (really, no matter how luxurious I want to live? That’s amazing!)
3. Here’s How Much You Need to Have Saved at Each Age to Afford Retirement. (again, this proves ESI’s point. This type of “journalism is misleading a best and dangerous at worst.)
What are some of the financial headlines that make you laugh?
Care to share the name of worthwhile financial/investment podcasts to occupy my time while walking?
I actually have a post on my favorite podcasts coming up in a week or two… 😉
Honestly at least the people who read blogs at least somewhat know to not take things at face value but when someone less knowledgable reads an article by a “respected” website they might not even question the information they get and thus not know as much as they should. Sure the advice is good for a start but when they truly need more they will learn to look past those puff pieces
I take good content from wherever I can find it. Sometimes it is from bloggers and sometimes it’s from journalists. There’s also plenty of garbage from both. Ignore the garbage wherever the source.
I’d argue the top offender in the realm of thin journalistic carpetbagging is . . . Bankrate! Close that department down, already. Their clearinghouse of rates and company contacts remains pretty solid; I still use that. The mindless recession threats and generalized fear-mongering? Really unnecessary . . . I call them out constantly, and the chorus is often against them, as it should be. How Kiplinger’s became such trendy crap is a wonder; Orman used to hawk that, and Bankrate I believe, as go-to sources for newbies. Severe disappointment in both when I took a serious look.