Comment by jmsuth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmsuth | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree, what you described is really just scratching the surface. Personal finance can become massively complicated, especially when you hit inflection points in your life like having a child, trying to buy a home, or nearing retirement. It is "boring and unsophisticated" math at the end of the day, but there are so many variables that it quickly becomes difficult to comprehend for most people.

People "don't know what they don't know" when it comes to financial health, especially surrounding things like proper insurance coverage and tax optimization. Software that can keep an eye on your finances and alert you to anything that seems off, or better yet, perform the necessary actions to keep you in good financial health, would be a huge help to these people.

Maybe. But to be honest that comes across as trying to sell some software. Ultimately, anyone can become a millionaire following some really boring advice.

1) Six months' of expenses in cash/money market. 2) Max out 401k if possible. 3) Anything left after that, buy index fund that tracks the S&P 500 and let it ride the market over the long term.

Literally all you need to do. Sure, there's room for some budgeting software or credit card alerting and things like that. But the market is not so complex to understand that you can't understand it yourself. I'd say within a weekend of study the average person can understand the basics.

True, those are all good things to do, but that's all about growing your money for retirement. It completely misses the side of protecting that money you work so hard to grow. Financial health is about more than building up savings, it's about building up resilience. You can gamble on not being one of the millions of people that become disabled / die and can no longer work each year to support their family, or you can play a little defense and wise up on what the adequate insurance levels are, create a will / trust, etc. These are the things people don't currently understand. They understand if they save more money they will have more money.

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