The 5 Interesting Things I Learnt from Speaking to Personal Finance Internet Personality – Nate O’Br

1. Are Men Truly More Interested in Investing, Whereas Women Are More Interested in Saving?

So Nate raised an interesting point: based on his video analytics, he had a higher percentage of men watching his investing content, whereas women took a larger percentage when it cames to topics such as tips for saving money. Now, this was intriguing to me, and I wanted to find out if this was the case within the Seedly community.

Shortly after the insights from this video, I thought it would be worth taking a poll within the Seedly community, just so to see if the data mirrored what he was seeing with his individual video analytics. Here are the results (big thanks to 100 people who responded!)

This means that out of a total of 162 votes, close to 60% of you guys agreed with the fact that men talk more about investments, and women talk more about savings. Of course, that is not to generalize, as these sample might not be representative of the wider population. I definitely do know female peers who are great investors, and they do openly discuss investment ideas.

In terms of US research, a 2015 study by BMO Harris revealed that on average, men saved nearly twice as much for their emergency funds compared to the average woman. A 2015 BlackRock survey reported by CNBC also indicated that American female retirees had an average of $81,300 in retirement savings, while their male counterparts had $118,400. An earlier 2013 study by TurboTax showed that across lifespans, men save more than three times as much compared to women. However, a 2017 study by Fidelity found that women save a slightly larger percentage of their income than men do, both in workplace retirement accounts and in outside accounts. This means that even though they might save more, their average income makes it difficult for them to save more than men on an absolute basis.

2. Being Cheap and Being Frugal Are Two Different Things

Image credit: https://giphy.com/gifs/LMB3W502pI760

Important thing when it comes to saving money: There is a big and important difference between being cheap and being frugal. Consider the following:

• Frugal is being characterized maximizing the most value for money. Let’s say if you are looking to buy a pair of reliable walking shoes, you might be looking at a well-made pair, but you are able to wait for discount season to come around to purchase it at a lower price.

• Cheap is getting something at a low price, no matter what the value is. Taking the shoe example again, you could buy some really cheap but poorly made shoes (and likely suffer podiatry issues in the future). In some instances, it could also mean not wanting to pay for anything.

One other point to note is that while you can be frugal with yourself, don’t be cheap with others. This is extremely important as we think about the fact that cherishing important human relationships is a key factor when it comes to life satisfaction.

3. An Instant Pot Could Be a Good Investment If You Cook at Home

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Now, this is a supped up pressure cooker that offers 7 functions in one device. Most Chinese families would be familiar of the pressure cooker, especially since it is often used in cooking doubled boiled soups.

Firstly, knowing how to cook nutritious and delicious meals for yourself is an important life skill. All things equal, it is cheaper to cook your own meals compared to eating out (as you are saving on paying additional things such as service charge and ambience).

Secondly, pressure cookers can cook food in 1/3 less time than other cooking methods. There is much to be said also about one pot meals, which really saves the hassle and water of cleaning up afterwards. The Instant Pot is fully insulated, thus requiring less energy and in fact stops adding heat when the necessary cooking temperature is reached. In addition, it uses less water and also cooks faster than the slow cooker.

4. Much to Our Detriment, Nate Could Be Planning to Stop Personally Creating Youtube Videos Once He Hits 1M Subscribers

Nuff said.

5. Time is Our Greatest Asset

This is an obvious insight, but time and time again we do tend to forget this.

This is why this quote from Fight Club always resonates with me:

Indeed, time is our greatest asset, but also often one that we are the most wasteful of.

Figure out your priorities in life, and work towards building towards those goals everyday. Stop putting off that exercise regime til the next day. Read books instead of binge watching on Netflix, especially for drama series that you’ve already seen reruns of. Pick up the phone to say hello to that someone that you might be thinking of. Visit your grandparents and parents, and spend those precious moments with them, instead of hanging out in the mall when you have nothing essential to buy. Whatever you want to do, do it now instead of keeping it for later.

Comment below on what other insights you got from the video, and til the next post!