What caught my eye this week.
A year ago, we added membership to Monevator. Our Mavens and Moguls memberships are basically two tiers of special members-only content, like you see with the wildly-popular SubStack newsletters.
I won’t deny I was nervous about launching this.
Yes, I’d spent nearly two decades collecting hundreds of ‘thank you’ emails from readers – vastly more than for any other work I’ve done – and I’d turned down lots of unsolicited offers of cash, whether to support the site, or to buy my co-blogger @TA some thermal socks.
But we’d been free forever. Moreover we’d spent those years urging readers to save reflexively and to spend wisely. Not to mention we were in a wicked cost-of-living crisis. Or that we needed this new business model to work to keep the lights on at Monevator Towers.
So I wondered if we’d be writing articles exclusively for my mum to not read twice a month.
Happily I needn’t have worried.
My mum still doesn’t read our Monevator member emails. But many hundreds of you do. Nobody has to sign-up to pay for content in a tough media world where everyone is now asking for subscriptions, but loads of you guys have.
After a year in which countless more independent websites have thrown in the towel, we’re still standing.
We can’t thank you enough! Every member is ensuring the future of Monevator.
Content to please you
Happily I’ve enjoyed the content side of membership, too.
The Accumulator can nerd out even more so than usual – free from the tyranny of search engines – and Mavens has motivated him to start a new decumulation model portfolio just for members.
No small commitment given he’s been managing the original Slow & Steady for 15 years already.
Meanwhile, with Moguls I’ve been exploring some of the naughty active investing strands I originally started Monevator to pull on, before deciding to be responsible and to triple-down on highlighting passive investing into index funds as the best solution for most people.
My Moguls articles are far too long – the lengthiest over 5,000 words – and partly because of this the publishing schedule isn’t rock solid. But the feedback to my pieces, Mavens, and guest star contributions from Finumus have all been very heartening.
Frankly, a membership newsletter feels like blogging in the good old days.
There’s no thousands of daily spam comments and emails. The discussion threads are entirely positive and constructive. There are no trolls. And it’s so much nicer writing for real people happy to support you with a few quid a month than for search engines – let alone for AI training models threatening to do away with you altogether.
It’s tempting to make Monevator members-only and to switch off the free content. Life would be easier.
But then I remember why we actually wrote those 2,000-plus free articles in the first place. And also all those thank-yous from people we (or let’s face it, mostly @TA) have helped into the world of investing.
The good vibes still far outweigh the frustrations.
Besides, I know that many of you who signed-up for membership are explicitly supporting us not only for yourselves but also to help us to get the sensible investing message to as many as possible.
Which is both incredibly generous and an executive order for us to keep at it.
Any other business
A couple of quick housekeeping reminders on membership, as it’s been a while.
Firstly, if you’re having any sort of log-in problems it will almost certainly be a cookies issue or because you’re using an ad-blocker.
The membership software needs to use cookies to tell you’re logged in. And there are no ads for members browsing the site anyway.
So far in every case enabling third-party cookies, deleting stored cookies, and/or disabling the ad-blocker for Monevator has solved any log-in problems.
Secondly, there are still a couple of dozen members who are not getting member emails. Some may prefer to read us on the website. But I’m sure others would rather be getting our content in their in-box.
The solution here seems to be to make sure you’re signed-up to our free emails. Use this link to ensure you are. If you’re still having problems then please let me know via our contact form. I can then get you manually re-added to the email list. GDPR regulations mean I need your explicit permission to do so.
Remember there are dedicated Mavens and Moguls article archives.
Finally, I’m thinking of adding a Discord discussion forum for Monevator member investing chat. Do you think you would use it? I’ve resisted calls to add a forum due to the admin headaches, but it might work with members.
Okay, thanks again everyone who signed up for – and renewed – their Monevator membership. You have made all the difference!
Have a great weekend.
From Monevator
How tax can take a bite out of your returns – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Social care in later life is a black hole – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view click through to read the article. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing to sites you visit a lot.
House price growth in rural areas outstrips towns – Guardian
CMA investigates Nationwide’s takeover of Virgin Money – FT Adviser
Leasehold reforms come into force: what they mean – Which
Troubled SIPP provider falls into administration after complaints – FT Adviser
Blackrock’s $20bn ETF is world’s largest Bitcoin fund – Bloomberg via Yahoo
LinkedIn: Gen Z favours stability and holidays over pay – Yahoo Finance
Crypto exchange Gemini returns $2.2bn after 18 month freeze – CNBC
NHS patients to access trials of personalised cancer ‘vaccines’ – NHS
UK government sells back £1.24bn in Natwest shares – AJ Bell
When life forces your hand – A Wealth of Common Sense
Products and services
NS&I quietly increases its interest rates – Telegraph via Yahoo Finance
Cheap and free things to do over half-term – Which
Open an account with low-cost platform InvestEngine via our link and get up to £50 when you invest at least £100 (T&Cs apply. Capital at risk) – InvestEngine
Travelling on Eurostar from the UK is about to become much trickier – Guardian
How credit reference agencies make you the product – Which
Pre-paid travel money cards are poor deal – This Is Money
Amex Preferred Rewards Gold credit card review – Be Clever With Your Cash
£5,000 the magic number to secure Nationwide’s £100 perk – This Is Money
Homes for sale with a kitchen garden, in pictures – Guardian
Election and money mini-special
What is the Tories’ triple-plus lock proposal for pensioners? – This Is Money
Income tax threshold squeeze to last until 2028 says Hunt – Guardian
Labour says it will push on with the British ISA… – CityAM
…but will it reinstate the pension lifetime allowance? – This Is Money
Tories: swap ‘rip-off’ degrees for apprenticeships – BBC & Guardian
Comment and opinion
Remember the calamity of the great market tsunamis – Portfolio Charts
Home or away after FIRE? – Far and Wide
Life’s potholes – Humble Dollar
The history of the UK mortgage market and house prices [Podcast] – A.L.T.I.F.
The struggle is real: Uber edition – Contessa Capital
The lesson of Loki? Trade less – Tim Harford
Considering time and quality of life – Meaningful Money
Do you need alternative assets to get rich? – Of Dollars and Data
High core inflation is why consumers are so negative – Cullen Roche
What type of life do you actually want to live? [Podcast] – Morningstar
Why are so many stars forced to work after retirement age? – Guardian
Naughty corner: Active antics
The Fed rate cut reflexivity paradox – Apollo
Is now the time to buy Japan? [Search result] – FT
The problem with concentrated funds – Behavioural Investment
Does diversity add value to asset management? – Alpha Architect
Fund manager pay depends on AuM, not performance – eFinancial Careers
Kindle book bargains
A Man for All Markets by Edward O. Thorpe – £0.99 on Kindle
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth – £0.99 on Kindle
Taxtopia by The Rebel Accountant – £0.99 on Kindle
The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
EVs are cheaper to run than petrol cars, if you charge at home – This Is Money
Can heat pumps be installed in older properties? – Guardian
UK breakthrough could slash carbon emissions from cement – BBC
Buying Baja – Hakai
Robot overlord roundup
Chatbots as a force for good – BBC
Google to refine AI-made search summaries after bizarre results – Guardian
MIT’s Daron Acemoglu is not having all this AI hype [Search result] – FT
[On the other hand…] What mom wrought – Humble Dollar
AI helping find ‘world’s loneliest plant’ a partner – BBC
Klarna says GenAI is cutting marketing costs by $70mn annually – Reuters
The next wave of AI hype will be geopolitical [Search result] – FT
AI integration and modularisation [Nerdy] – Stratechery
Off our beat
When matters as much as what – Raptitude
Trial results for new lung cancer drug are ‘off the charts’, say doctors – Guardian
Chasing Utopia, startup style – Noema
The mounting strains on global shipping [Search result] – FT
Let’s just admit it: the algorithms are broken – The Honest Broker
From the baby boom to the baby bust [Search result] – FT
What should you do with your stuff before you die? – The Walrus
And finally…
“Unlike any other form of thought, daydreaming is its own reward.”
– Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own
Like these links? Subscribe to get them every Friday. Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Interactive Investor.
Big yes from me for a members’ discord group! Thanks
Discord discussion forum sounds like a great idea. However, my personal concern with it would be being ejected from the group. Many of my individual stock choices are based on ‘alternative’ views relating to issues that I know you don’t like to see in the comments section…. would you be more lenient on a Discord group if said alternative views are directly related to stock choices ?
Like the idea of a members’ forum although in the Monevator spirit would likely be a passive participant! Rather doubt the community has much to learn from my somewhat entry-level strategies, although love reading everyone’s thoughts and wisdom – particularly in these turbulent times and as decumulation beckons.
I have lurked on your brilliant site for years, and you good people have helped me so much on my investment journey. Subscribing was a no-brainer for me. I do believe in the wider benefit of a site like this continuing to thrive, even though I’ve probably learned most of what I needed from it by now. Consider it my thank you. Pay fairly for good work I say!
May I stray O/T? I hate pensions. That is to say, I hate the sheer complexity they present, with some rules almost impossible to find out. From the Times (slightly edited):
‘Robins retired before April 2016 so she gets the old state pension …
her state pension was cut because of a quirk in the hugely complicated way that state pension benefits are calculated. Robins had worked throughout her life and was entitled to the full state pension. However, after her husband died, a deduction that had applied to his state pension was transferred to hers.
“The big issue for me [Robins] was the principle. The documentation never warns you that this could happen.” … ‘
I thought I’d done as much homework on the State Pension as a layman reasonably could but I’d never come across any reference to this. Having rules that you effectively keep secret seems rotten behaviour to me.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dwp-court-case-widow-pension-uk-lily-russell-jones-k6wbvlpxh
A fantastically British thankyou message.
Smart! Just like a chap 🙂
https://youtu.be/fiRPBCiJg2c?si=Y4Tqi8zcBvy67k4z
I have to say I enjoy the lengthy articles! Please keep them coming (where you feel you need the words). I’ve never used Discord, but I do think a members forum would be great. I find the comments section hard to use, eg it’s not easy to return back to a discussion, and it’s hard to know where to ask a question.
I love the long Maven and Mogul pieces. 5,000 or 7,000 words – or even 10,000 in future 😉 – the more the merrier. It would be ideal, in a perfect world, to get these pieces around (or about) weekend time each month as, in the working week, it can be harder to find both the time and the headspace to absorb properly and to comment.
BTW, any more thoughts @TI and @TA about maybe introducing an entry level ‘Monevator Massive’ tier (of say around £10 p.a. or £1 p.c.m.) enabling (alongside Mavens and Moguls) comments on articles, and in order to remove the growing spam bot problem? Life is just too short to spend your waking hours having to wade through and delete thousands of marketing emails and auto spam comments every week pushing protein supplements and worse. A nominal fee will kill the issue dead. AI’s only going to make the spam issue exponentially worse, and soon.
@Andy @2 more years @SLG — Noted, cheers! (And nice video 😉 )
@Algernond — Well you’d be welcome to comment judiciously there, as here, but yes I would moderate. ‘Alternative views’ that I have moderated in Monevator comments before regular include conspiracy theories, blatant racism, and pure anti-vaxxer stuff, the latter of which is now killing children in the West. So yes, I’d moderate that on any forum too, and you’re right I would eject repeat ‘offenders’. Life is too short and there are unfortunately plenty of alternate views for people to discuss anti-scientific facts nowadays and to be comforted by being told they’re right not wrong, so such posters could continue such discussion elsewhere. I would rather this site dwindle to an island of one rather than it contribute to the general death of reason we’re seeing. Cheers!
@Herodutus — Cheers, v kind, and you’re looking great for your two millennia 😉
@Dearieme — Indeed, so complex that I don’t really understand what your complaint is… 😉 But yes, did you see the nonsense incoming about people caught in the change in the State Pension age? Really silly.
@Boffinboy — Thanks, I love writing the long ones too, the trouble is (a) they take several days to write (half of which is subbing) and (b) worse, I procrastinate because it’s daunting to get going. But we’ll see if I can get a bit more loosened up / limber. 😉
@Delta Hedge — Thanks for the kind words. Re: the Massive concept, perhaps I’d introduce it if we did bring in Discord too, so they could get that too. My concerns are (a) confusing people with too many options (b) new investors not being able to ask relevant questions, and us generally biasing too much towards experts as a result and (c) very occasionally non-regular readers (as well as regulars of course) have added excellent insights in the comments that have advanced all our knowledge (particular industry insiders) and those would basically be lost.
So on balance I’m continuing to struggle on.
But you’re right, AI is going to make ‘open comments’ not viable soon as it will be pretty much impossible to tell who is legit and who isn’t, except via following all / any links, which would be even more time consuming.
Oh and I wish it was all protein powder spam. Try completely illegal sex stuff (I don’t want to attract it by typing it here, but suffice it to say it’s the odious worst kind), thousands of spammy links in one message, Russian bots, and much more. 🙁
The FT’s Japan market piece (linked to in the Weekend reads above) has an “even a stopped clock keeps the right time twice a day” feel to it.
Japan’s been consistently highlighted for an equity renaissance from at least 2004-7 onwards, when Merryn Somerset-Webb at Moneyweek first began writing about the opportunity presented for investors in the land of the rising sun:
2004 The Spectator:
https://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/16th-october-2004/51/lost-in-translation-no-more
2007 Moneyweek:
https://moneyweek.com/7464/why-now-is-the-time-to-buy-into-japan
I’ve looked into Japan and the deep value looks to be in the nano caps.
By comparison with the US mega cap tech giants, some of the valuations of Japanese nano caps are ridiculously low, verging on the unreal – one firm’s market cap at a third of the value of its buildings; consistently profitable businesses at around 6 times earnings.
No analysis covering. No funds investing and no rival firms buying up, probably because these tiny companies are just too small to move the dial at all.
Obviously, there’s also no clear and/or imminent catalyst to unlock and realise the gap between price and fundamentals (outside of some aspirations by politicians and the Tokyo Stock Exchange to get all listed companies trading at no less than their net tangible book value).
The bigger Japanese companies are much less obviously cheap. For comparison, South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI Index trades at just 1.0x book － way below Nikkei 225’s 2.1x book and the MSCI All Country World Index’s 3.0x book.
Even Small Cap and Value funds investing in Japan have much higher typical company valuations (using earnings and book values) than the almost totally neglected deep value nano caps – which are often very boring, straight forward, family run but durably and stably profitable (albeit not normally growing) enterprises.
I’ve found just one online enthusiast whose unearthed 40 odd Grahamite net nets amongst the Japanese nano caps, but the TSE rules require a minimum purchase size of 100 shares per company and these companies by and large don’t go in for share splits to make their stock more affordable.
Either Japanese nano caps are an alluring but dangerous and enduring value trap (akin to the long losing ‘widowmaker’ trade of shorting Japanese Government Bonds); or they’re amongst the objectively cheapest income generating assets in the world right now.
Yes please to the discussion forum idea, would be great
A membexit from the union of all readers of monevator to a stand alone forum would not be something I’d be voting for. We are stronger together TI. : )
I’m not sure I take much out of the subscription service versus what I used to from the free site, but I’m more than happy to support such excellent content (even when I disagree with it!) It would be a shame not to have Comments, but I would understand if they were switched off. Never mind the bots, it’s the carping criticism from “real” people that must be even harder to deal with! I subscribe to quite a few websites and podcasts now and am almost frightened to total up the monthly cost, an expense that I just didn’t have ten years ago. Something’s clearly changed in media land but I’m conscious that I’m slowly building my own content bubble which Monevator helps to balance out. Keep up the good work!
@Jim McG: You write:
Yes, it’s now very hard to (a) appear in Google search results and (b) make money, unless you spend a lot of time, focus, and direct your content towards (a) and change your business model towards (b)
Which is why you have survivors like Rolling Stone doing the 50 best sunshades for your garden this summer and other spurious nonsense.
It’s been a bloodbath but most people don’t notice it because they are clicking around Instagram and TikTok and in the UK especially we have the BBC and Guardian still, without a paywall.
In the US you have to subscribe to the New York Times really, most of everything else is trashed, and even I think the NYT comes with unfortunate biases.
I’m also very happy to pay my FT premium sub, plus a handful of newsletters, streamers, whatnot. It does add up.
Thanks very much! It makes us carry on, would have put the site into archive mode if we hadn’t had members sign-up over the past year.
Very nearly all the blogs I used to visit for Weekend Reading no longer post. Most of the big indies are now either gone or they are full of nonsense. There’s a few left that have never really suited my tastes for whatever reason (as perhaps I don’t them!) But it’s all been reflected in more FT and Guardian links and ever fewer blogs.
A lot of people are on YouTube (and younger on TikTok) of course, so I’m not counting that shift. But that is riddled with its own issues too.
p.s. Just to add that one might think the problem is solved because the media sites are visited “if they write good content, like this thing I read via a Facebook link last week.”
The trouble with this is you probably read 1-2 such links from all but the biggest sites in a year, and in many cases maybe in your lifetime. It’s not sustainable traffic.
Compare to an old-style magazine which maybe had a couple of must read features/reviews/guides but then a lot of okay-reads that effectively padded things out, were interesting enough, had adverts next to them etc.
Or the same with an old-school website you clicked around, which very few people do anymore unless they find a site they love (which gratifyingly we still get reports of people doing with Monevator).
Another knock-on is to try to get those 1-2 clicks a year, a lot of media has turned to creating viral/polarised clickbait or similar. Which is why you see the rise and fall of Buzzfeed etc, the increasingly polarisation of the big brands, and two million articles about “this hidden village just outside London that’s as pretty as the Cotswolds but half the price” on what used to be respectable local media newspapers etc.
Good BBC article on how the new Google algorithm is changing everything – https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240524-how-googles-new-algorithm-will-shape-your-internet
@Eamonn — Thanks, that’s a good summary yes. We lost about 1/3 of our traffic in a week in Summer 2022, and the ad rates halved too for some reason.
Well-written and fun articles about why you should use an index fund that had been bringing in thousands of new readers a month for a decade were knocked out of the search results by bland pages of guff from banks, at best.
For a while we tried to fight back with SEO ourselves but I feared it was destroying the essence of this site, so we’ve taken it on the chin and, while not writing with zero awareness of search engines, we’re not really trying to create SEO copy or anything like that.
Hence why membership is so great. We can 100% focus on writing for humans who we know like to read us already. 🙂
I’d vote against a Discord please – I worry it will dilute the comment threads which are part of the draw for me! I find I have lots of discord/slack/whatsapp et al to keep up with and don’t fancy another one, personally.
I would be a fan of a discord group, and I’d happily assist in moderating it if you wanted (I perform this role for a bunch of other discords).
Horrifying to read the BBC piece linked to by @Eamonn #16 on the adverse effects of Google search algorithm changes to real people with real businesses and real staff to support.
Any company, like Google, with a 90% market ‘share’, is a textbook example of monopoly capitalism IMO, and in need of very hands on and firm regulation in each jurisdiction that it operates in – including by the competition/anti-trust authorities.
Riffing off of last week’s Weekend reading AI theme, these algorithms modify user behaviour to make their responses more predictable both to increase their ad. click through and “engagement” (God how I hate that word) with content. It’s like the ants ‘farming’ the aphids. As the saying goes, if you don’t pay for the product, then you are the product.
The easiest way the Google search algos can optimise for predicability and click through is to increase the polarisation/’extremity’ of the content they show and to create a filter bubble so you only see what confirms the biases the algo thinks you have. In financial content fear sells. So more fear = more clicks. Hence the endless, tedious search results with click bait ‘how to protect yourself against the Fed’, or ‘the Fed’s about to crash the market, what you MUST do now’ blah blah. It’s become like an exaggerated version of CNBC at its most overbearing – a constant drum beat of over active, hyper vigilance. But the signal to noise ratio of Google search results is just terrible now, even if you look beyond the first screen or two of blatant ads and sponsored links. They’re not aiming for some version of truth or usefulness, just predictability, click through and engagement (even if engagement means rage and frustration).
And FB/Meta, Insta, Tick Tok and the rest of that ilk are the same, if not worse.
Tbh I had no idea what Discord actually was until I looked it up today (although I had vaguely assumed it was something like WhatsApp). I see Tencent has a 38% stake in Discord, and this has led to controversy over their alleged links to the Chinese state.
I wonder whether Discord would really add anything over the existing comment facility; especially as the comments are ‘native’ to MV ‘the site’ in a way that maybe separate Discord channels would be less so.
Neutral to a Discord channel. A few blogs I follow have done it over the years – it floats the boat for many but not me. I’m an owner / pseudo owner of a few channels at work myself (different purpose, not attached to a blog) and and I find that worthwhile channels all take a good amount of nurturing and pruning energy to get the right tone. Re Q&A, there are surprisingly few questions that don’t already have some form of an answer that can be called up using the site search function (although I also know most humans prefer to ask than to trawl). A channel does help to build the feeling of community – it depends on your objective.
Learnt (and shuddered) lots from the BBC article from @Eamonn McGuinness and @The Investor’s comments. Thanks!
I subscribed largely as a thank you as I wouldn’t want to see this site go away. I would be a yes for a members’ forum as while a lot can get covered in topics there are sometimes other things I’d like to raise. Such as, at the moment, how does one protect against further pension tinkering (and various scenarios of such) by an incoming government without a sense of future rules.
I don’t see why that need preclude comments on articles remaining but I think we all recognise that they are somewhat limited after a few days.
Just adding a further suggestion for future Kindle bargains (if the price holds) – this dropped to 99p over the weekend, seems like a decent fit for this audience:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08LK7KP6D
The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Javier Blas & Jack Farchy)
Not read it yet but 2600+ reviews rating it 4.6 made it seem worth chucking in my library.
[Nod to ereaderiq site which you can set alerts up on, free to use, donate if you value the service – I just give them my kindle wishlist and wait for them to tell me when they drop below a certain price]
I’d probably look at a Discord channel/forum from time to time, but not sure I’d have the time or inclination to post frequently. It might be a useful addition, provided that you have the time to run it.
Fear I’m too old for Discord! And possibly not time/capacity to engage with another forum. Feels like the comments on the Long Features is enough?
Sorry to hear about the Algorithm change – interesting BBC article. I mean, the genie’s out of the bottle – it’s really hard to know what to think. The Net will never be the same as e.g. the early 00s when there wasn’t so much content, so it was easier to find stuff.
And, yes, many of the best blogs evolve – initially it was a way for people who didn’t have a way into the industry (because they were shy/not connected etc.) to show their talent. I remember it first with music/mp3 blogs. Then food/restaurant blogs etc. etc.. And the best ones got decent gigs out of it and moved on.
Finance blogs were a harder sell than music & food, generally. I never expected Morgan Housel to become such a big deal, and very happy for Kyla Scanlon’s book to be out – she has grafted, and deserves it.
Bottom line being… it’s a bit of a mystery to me why you guys aren’t up there with the big people, but I suppose various factors (US is bigger market, and a simple message of sticking to Passive investing is a harder sell).
But thanks for the great content. I appreciate it!
@Delta Hedge — Re: Japan, I think it’s pretty hard not to agree that something has happened there over the past few years with the regulatory changes and pressures, and the partial re-rating of large cap stocks. As to where it goes, who knows. I agree smaller looks better from here, but I’m only really familiar with the Baillie Gifford Japanese trusts and they are all very growth orientated. My finger has hovered over having a dabble for a year or so… never seems a big rush. The weak yen is attractive from our POV too.
@AOL @Memberexit @Kript @SimonB @reddot @BBBobbins @Claus — Thanks for thoughts re: Discord (and those who emailed me, too). Will ponder. I’m a bit concerned about predictions of it sucking in a lot of time, because that would be highly sub-optimal. Had more been thinking of it is a way for members to have smart and somewhat self-selected conversations among themselves. Will ponder some more.
@rmy3000 — Cheers, that one comes up every few months, I have featured it in the Kindle links a couple of times before 🙂
@tom_grlla — Thanks for the generous words. I don’t think anonymity helps us at all, to be honest. Yes there’s a few big anonymous writers in this space, but they are usually much more – um – excitement focused than we are… 😉 We used to get invited on the BBC and all sorts in the early days of the blog when championing passive/index funds was still pretty novel, so we missed a window there too. I wouldn’t put myself in the same category as Morgan Housel! (Though interestingly I would put him in my LinkedIn contacts, where indeed he does reside). He’s always been brilliant, but the breakout success of The Psychology of Money is a once a decade thing for finance books! Very happy for him, though linking to his articles long ago stopped feeling like sharing a secret…
If you do a forum please don’t use Discourse. Mensa use Discourse for their new “community” and it’s awful. Mr Money Mustache uses SMF (Simple Machines Forum) and that’s pretty good and straightforward to navigate.
I’m in quite a lot of Discord servers and I find most are an unstructured sprawling mess. Since each channel within the server is just free chat, it ends up as people talking across each other about a whole range of things. Often there’s an overwhelming quantity of messages and a lot of casual chatter. If you do set one up, please put in some strong conventions about structure, such as using threads. (I’m very much not an expert on the features here.)
Lots of the comments and commenters here are a great – a lot of value below the line!
I wouldn’t use a Discord group and, per another comment above, fear that it would dilute the comments here and I would end up unsubscribing altogether as a result.