dave559 wrote:
MSE is a great website (with an enormous reach) and a useful forum, but as it doesn't really deal with investing, we are very lucky that TLF does fill that niche. However, it is perhaps very much a niche: it is only in the past few years myself that I have had a sufficient salary to be able to start investing (and previously I was also very worried at the potential for losses, when it is perhaps more the case that you need to choose your risk level carefully, and that over the longer term you are (fingers crossed) much more likely to have made gains overall, even if there may have been some downs and ups along the way).
Another thing for older members of the forum to perhaps consider is that for the segment of the population aged from late-40s or younger, there has been the burden of ever-increasing student loans, quite possibly not enough well paying jobs to go around, and also massively increasing housing price and even rental costs, meaning that possibly a much smaller proportion of the younger population actually has the means to be able to start investing (or save for a home deposit) nowadays? Those of you who were lucky enough not to have had to deal with those issues (and I am aware of the difficulties of the interest rate issues of the 70s and 80s, although I understand that then at least it was easier to start, and then stay on, a professional level career, than it is nowadays?) perhaps might not be fully aware of the full range of obstacles that stand in the way of most younger people who may want to start investing, or even just saving more than a few pounds at the end of the month.
Which is why there are also non-investing Boards such as
Dealing With Debt
viewforum.php?f=10Bank Account Savings ...
viewforum.php?f=11Living Below Your Means
viewforum.php?f=14Mortgages
viewforum.php?f=18Credit Cards and Loans
viewforum.php?f=24Your Tomorrow Starts Today
viewforum.php?f=50as well as a host of others. I would think these would overlap, and appeal, to the segment of the population you are referring to.
It's fitting with the topic of the thread that these seem to be underutilised or undiscovered.
I don't use the "new post" functionality. I assume many do, and it's useful to them, but isn't that part of the problem here? With little use of the lesser visited Boards they aren't seen in "new posts" and therefore stay unused.