does this forum need another sticky

Mistermeaner

To hopefully help all those who type different versions of the same questions again and again.

Probably best typed by bowl head.

Something along lines of;

Clear bad debts
Emergency fund, cash see links
Saving vs investing, time scales
Trading is not investing
Risk vs reward
Pension, tax benefits
S+s isa tax benefits
Platforms, fees link to monevator and snowman
Funds vs shares
Diversification, geographical sector etc
Asset classes
Dividends
Price movements, timescales, in for the long haul, pound cost averaging
Active vs passive, Tim hale

How about if bowl head writes it, we critique it, he tweaks it, it gets made a sticky then each person who reads and thanks it (including regulars) donates £5 to cancer research?

kangoora

Souunds a really good idea, I'd also add

Current account vs. ISA
Best current accounts
How to switch money to mèet minimum commitments
You don't need to close your old account

I'd not want to volunteer anyone for it though, would be a pretty big job

redux

It sounds like quite a bit of work to ask one or two people to do.

Even then, some people search first for previous threads on their subject, some don't.

Mistermeaner

redux wrote: »

It sounds like quite a bit of work to ask one or two people to do.

Even then, some people search first for previous threads on their subject, some don't.

I only suggested one person do it

Just a thought was all as the same answers to the sane questions get generically repeated, it's only once someone has grasped the basics that the questions become specific and meaningful

How many "I have 100k to invest" questions are there which lead to a host of 'we need more info' answers

atush

they tokk away most of the stickies and lumped them together, not sure they would allow a new one now.

kangoora

Yes, a list of 'important' info would be useful also in the case of 'I have £xxxk to invest' questions.

AndyT678

ggb1979 wrote: »

How about if bowl head writes it?

I am often in awe of the effort, knowledge and experience that goes into an average bowlhead post but I have noticed that some of them are a touch lengthy.

There are a lot of subjects listed and whilst I'm sure that our bowlhead could give a thorough explanation of all of them I'm not sure that the resulting super post would be the most engaging thing to confront a new user with.

Still we have yet to hear whether there's any desire to do it from the horse's mouth anyway.

bowlhead99

kangoora wrote: »

Souunds a really good idea, I'd also add

Current account vs. ISA
Best current accounts
How to switch money to mèet minimum commitments
You don't need to close your old account

I think those 4 are probably all covered by the articles on the main site. There is not a lot of point having a forum sticky that regurgitates main site content and has to be rewritten all the time to keep it current.

If you read /banking/compare-best-bank-accounts you get told about the various features of the best bank accounts.

If you read /savings/savings-accounts-best-interest you get told about the best savings accounts including current accounts used as bank accounts with a table of the top providers and a separate link to /savings/savings-loophole ; the '5% loophole' where you cycle money through multiple accounts to maximise returns with an even more detailed table of the top providers, links to their sites and links to the compare-best-bank-accounts page above which has more detail on many of them.

When people pop up with their inane questions that are already covered by a hundred threads, we already have the choice to ignore them, to refer them to existing threads, or to refer them to the main site article. To have another choice to refer them to the sticky which then refers them to the main site article just seems to be a waste of time.

I know some people think the editorial content on the main site leaves something to be desired but it strikes some sort of balance between brevity and detail and external links, and that same compromise is going to have to be made for anything put into a sticky and anyone reading it and critiquing will have their own individual views. No point reinventing the wheel imho.

ggb1979 wrote: »

Something along lines of;
[etc]

There are some regularly updated 'best cash ISA' or 'S&S ISA provider' threads which could be benefit from being on a sticky, I agree the current threads linked in the existing 'sticky' are not exactly comprehensive.

The investment stuff is perhaps a different matter because the main site is not an investment site or blog (unlike e.g. Monevator or diyinvestoruk or fool or others) and will not go very far into any topics, if at all. Good info comes up on individual threads all the time in response to individual questions and sometimes that gets repetitive so I can see why some standing information is needed if this is to be an investments forum even while the main site is necessarily not an investment site.

However, each of those sections suggested can take 100 posts to get through in discussion without necessarily a 'right' answer emerging at the end, and there would typically be a debate about what the salient points actually were. I suppose a 'sticky' thread could contain links to five or six threads where the subject has been discussed in the last five years, and note which post numbers on those threads explain the points well, but the definitive 'best' posts would still be up for argument and even if individual posts are linked, the entire threads would need reading to get the context.

The high level overview is easy and may spark some ideas in someone's mind but without referencing a lot of other threads for the fine detail which actually makes quite a difference to an individual (which would be painful for a beginner to follow and plough through when they just want a quick answer to avoid them starting a repetitive thread about it), each topic needs to be written from scratch and take a lot of words.

I did a post about Rebalancing and it was about 3000 words. So if you do that for every useful topic area you can get to 60,000 words quite easily which is enough for a textbook or a novel and would still not be able to cover every area to the extent that every person wanted. Generically, people are lazy and want spoonfed quick answers, - perhaps they would go and buy a textbook or read articles on investment sites or search the posts on forums, if they want to go the long route.

ggb1979 wrote: »

How many "I have 100k to invest" questions are there which lead to a host of 'we need more info' answers

You would still get almost as many of those questions - the types of people who demand suitable solutions for their circumstance without even outlining their circumstances, are not the types of people who research by reading stuff, they feel they are researching by asking stuff. And the other forum members would still feel compelled to try to give comprehensive answers even if information exists on a sticky, particularly given the information provided on a sticky could not be completely comprehensive.

redux wrote: »

Even then, some people search first for previous threads on their subject, some don't.

Exactly. If you search the forum you do get some pretty decent answers to a lot of the questions. Sure, if you search by user=bowlhead99 you'll only get 300 threads at a time out of about 3000 that exist but you can change that by playing with date ranges and search terms, and if you go long enough you'll find everything I've written and everything other people (from IFAs to enthusiastic amateurs) have written.

So, you can certainly find out 'tax benefits of S&S ISAs' or pensions or VCTs by searching this forum. I think the pension forum still has an S&S ISA vs Pension thread, certainly the question comes up here and there quite often. The fact that it comes up quite often means that you can get fresh perspectives on it from lots of different people by reading plenty of threads.

A basic one-size-fits-all (or one-click fits all), doesn't comprehensively answer the questions that everyone really has, or go into the minutiae of detail that people may need, and as they say 'a little knowledge is dangerous'. Of course, a little knowledge can also be incredibly useful but I can see why MSE as a consumer site doesn't attempt to be an investment site.

I just started writing a couple of quick throwaway answers to the first couple of 'topics' on the list to demonstrate how easy it is to put a couple of common-sense sentences together which would give a little bit of insight but how it would just invite more questions. In doing so, a couple of words turned into a couple of sentences which turned into a couple of paragraphs and I figured it's just not going to happen. So, I respectfully decline the invitation

This sort of thing is the kind of problem which could be solved with some sort of 'wiki' to act as a point of reference, but the site is not set up for collaborative hivemind stuff and unlikely to change any time. If you fancy writing it, or collating the very best links you can find all in one spot, go ahead - or maybe start your own blog

Radiantsoul

Perhaps there is a gap in the market for a real beginners "how to" guide to investing. Hale is pretty dry, and monevator is topical rather than a specific how to guide.

But this is a pretty chaotic kind of a site, with no real focus on investing. I am not sure I would want it to change.