Can Social Media Be Used to Do Something Boring?

Social media thrives on frequent update but it seems to work in more passive areas such as genealogy. These take longer to build up, but they are slow information magnets that can produce great resources.

Sites start small with blogs, tagging, messaging. As the content grows the viewers and contributors grow.

Hi Carl - started reading Behavior Gap about a month ago, and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite sites.

Could you describe in more detail what you mean by 'investing correctly starts with a financial plan'? Do you mean planning how much to invest, how much to save for short-term, etc? Or do you mean financial plan in terms of planning what asset allocation to use? I have heard you mention this 'financial plan' several times now, and was hoping you could expand on this, as it seems to be the starting point for everything you discuss. Thanks.

Eric- Thanks for the kind words! I have received a number of requests to talk about the planning process, and how to do it correctly, so I will. Part of the problem is that it is a one of those things that appear to be very simple, but once you understand what goes on behind the scenes in terms of assumptions that you have to make it can become overwhelming for people.

I will address it in a post or video soon. Please continue to provide me feedback if there are topics you would like covered or clarified.

Carl

I don't think the problem with social media is the boring/vivid dichotomy.

It's that currently, social media tools encourage a constant, quicksilver stream of interaction,
and frequent updates, whereas a sound financial plan comes fundamentally from the opposite behaviour: more up-front thinking, and infrequent updates.

A better tool for this is not social interaction (which I think just encourages people to look at their investments > amygdala hijacking > very sad consequences), but a very current set of reference materials for the up-front research, and then some wacky way of making it really hard to look at your investments frequently. :)

So the question is, can we using the powerful tools of social interaction to
encourage people to do nothing, if doing nothing it the right thing to do?

So, sort of like....

Mon. 10:05a. Don't look! Stay on track....
Tues. 7:04p. Great job of not doing anything! Keep it up.
Wed. 1:25p. I still haven't looked at my portfolio. How about you?

etc. ?

:)

Interesting question. My initial answer is no. Social media tools flourish on real-time events and feedback. One might compare it to instant gratification of buying new things. For example, think how Twitter users feel when a tweet is quickly re-tweeted by hundreds of users just minutes after posting the original message.

You mentioned Bogleheads. Are they different than the Vanguard Diehards?

I believe Vanguard Diehards and Bogleheads are the same thing. I only
brought them up because it is a group that seems to have been able to use
the wisdom of crowds to encourages "good" investment behavior.
Anyone familiar with the Vanguard Diehards feel free to chime in.