RiverDog wrote:Before we beat up on liberals too much, the same is true of many if not most conservatives, just that the subject is different. You will never get a wide breath of information if all you do is listen to either Fox or CNN.
Regarding building wealth, 30 some years ago, the company I worked for got bought out by another, so our former employer gave us a couple of options for our 401K's, either transfer it into our new employer's 401K, create a self directed IRA, or cash it out. I tried my best to convince our folks not to cash it out, that they would pay a 10% early withdrawal penalty plus have to declare it as income and pay tax on it, that it would likely bump them into a higher tax bracket, told them that I would help them find a financial advisor, I even had business cards for a bi-lingual one, but very few listened to me.
I was in HR when the box of envelopes with 401K distribution checks arrived and I watched the HR clerk mate the 401K checks with the employees bi weekly paycheck to be handed out the next pay period, and they were mating checks by about a 3 or 4 to one ratio. In other words, the vast majority had cashed out their 401K's. At 600-700 employees, I think I was getting a pretty fair sample of how Americans in general manage their money.
We are a country of stooges. You can't fix stupid.
The only difference between the Rs and Ds is the Rs at least listen when you tell them about how markets work. Most of the Rs I've met are just as bad with money as the Ds. They talk a tough game and at least accept that their situation is often caused by their own behavior (but not always). But when the rubber hits the road, majority of Rs I know practice the same bad money management, immediate gratification, and spend money often as the Ds I know.
My beef with the Democrats is they always seem to want to blame it on the Republican policies or the wealthy, then when you ask them how they manage their cash and they're telling you stuff like they bought a new car they couldn't afford, they don't save much, they gotta have cable television, they gotta have three phones for the family, or they gotta buy their cigarettes or they gotta take their vacation. I know you don't gotta do any of that. You should be tracking everything you spend to ensure you're spending less than you take in and have a good savings plans. You should be operating from a positive cash position just like quality companies do.
One of the most important financial lessons in this world is spend less than you make and to build up cash so you are making a profit in your regular life. If a company runs like some people run their lives, they wouldn't even exist. Regular people don't have the means to print money and run up debt like the government, so they should be very cognizant of what they take in versus what they spend. The number of people I know that track their money I can count on one hand. I was surprised to learn how many people just spend and spend and don't bother keeping careful track of their money. If the money is in the account, then they can spend it. It's crazy.
I learned how banks play games when I was young with overdraft fees. Once I saw how they process payments before deposits specifically to increase overdraft fees, I vowed that garbage wasn't going to happen to me again. I started tracking everything carefully. I think this practice is illegal now, but I'm surprised it was ever legal. That is one corporate business practice that was set up just to screw people over processing payments before deposits for overdraft fees.
It's one of the reasons I don't believe in this unregulated capitalism fixing the world. Capitalism or just markets are an amazing system for building the best possible economy, but no way you ever have unregulated capitalism. Too many scummy humans in the world to let any system run unregulated. But even with that scumbag banking practice, I learned and adapted my behavior to ensure they were not able to take advantage of me. So much of what occurs economically requires some real basic intelligence, discipline, and record keeping to ensure you can take advantage of the system. Yet we don't teach it in school like we do math, English, and history. Why don't we? A financial education is as vital to doing well in life as learning math or English. It's amazing we don't prioritize it in an increasingly complex modern economy.