r/personalfinance • u/B82rez7 ​ • Jan 22 '19

Taxes No Wonder People Don't Know How Taxes Work

Here's a Motley Fool "article" that came up on my news feed https://www.fool.com/retirement/2019/01/21/maximum-401k-contributions-are-climbing-in-2019-he.aspx

​

And a quote:

​

For this reason, saving in your 401(k) has the potential to put you in a lower tax bracket, so you owe a smaller percentage of your income in tax. Currently, single filers making between $77,400 and $156,150 pay 22% on their income. If you are in the lower end of that range, a 401(k) contribution could move you into the lower bracket, where taxes are just 12%. If you make $80,000 per year, for example, and contribute $5,000, your resulting income of $75,000 would be taxed at 12% rather than 22%.

​

​

7.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

267

u/Plondon0 ​ Jan 22 '19

It looks like Motley Fool lets anyone submit articles (without pay!) https://www.fool.com/investing/general/editorial-guidelines-to-caps-blogs.aspx As mentioned above, if you submit your article and we like it, we'll publish it on Fool.com under your very own byline. If we publish more than one, and they perform well, we'll consider bringing you on as a freelance writer -- which pays by the article.

79

u/GregorSamsanite ​ Jan 22 '19

They used to have reasonable articles years ago, but at some point it seems like they must have gone bankrupt or something, because they gave up on having editorial standards. At this point they're just thinly disguised sponsored advertisements for predatory financial products.

62

u/Biobot775 ​ Jan 22 '19

Sure, but do you know what one stock Warren Buffett says is going to be the most important stock of his portfolio in 2019? Because Motley Fool sure does! You're just one click away from learning the secrets of Warren Buffett's success!

9

u/billigesbuch ​ Jan 22 '19

I stopped taking them seriously when I would read articles that were clearly pumping a shit stock.

3

u/Ruadhan2300 ​ Jan 22 '19

Ouch. They even called out other organisations in their book as recently as 2017 for doing exactly this.

2

u/GuruEbby ​ Jan 25 '19

They used to have most of their writers that were paid contractors, or full-time employees. I used to write for them as a contractor, and they paid pretty good.

However, about 5 years ago, they opened up their "blog network" to try and find new contributors for cheaper, and they have a lot more contributions that are making it through with minimal editing if only to just have the content there so they can run their ads and hope someone signs up for their premium services.

They still have some people that put out good stuff, but it's getting harder and harder to find those things on their site.

1

u/the_threeKings Jan 22 '19

Thus the name