Personal Finance Clichés

Filed in archive General on June 16, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Andrew Johnson

I read a lot of personal finance books and online columns, etc., and sometimes it amazes me what gets put out there as expertise. I'm not saying there is a lot of bad advice, just that some of these "experts" should be quoted as "Professor of the Obvious."

Here's why I'm saying this. I caught this headline today:

Financial tips for new college graduates
ON THE MONEY - Spend less than you earn, experts advise.

Call me crazy, but I'm hoping that after 4 (or maybe 5 or 6) years of college, most graduating students don't need a frigging expert to tell them that spending less than they earn is a smart financial move. Doesn't mean they'll follow that advice, but if they choose to live in a way that puts them behind the 8 ball, it's a choice, not a lack of financial expertise.

Every once in a while I hear these stories of 22-year-olds who got themselves in massive credit card debt and they get quoted saying "I really didn't understand how the cards worked. Someone should really educate us more on this stuff." And I think to myself, "You liar. You knew how it worked. You just chose to buy stuff with your credit card in the ridiculous hope that somehow it would all work itself out, never once having a plan as to how you were going to eventually pay for all this stuff you couldn't afford."

It's often not about education, but about resisting temptation.

In that spirit, here are a few other financial headlines I expect to see soon:

Don't play the lottery
Odds are against you, experts advise

Invest your money
Hiding money under mattresses hurts ROI, experts advise

Don't buy a home you can't afford
Failure to pay mortgage could lead to foreclosure, experts advise

Financial basics are basic - you don't need an advanced degree to understand them. Use your head for the basic stuff; don't wait for a book or a newspaper article or an "expert" to tell you to do what you already know is right.

That's how people got stuck in this whole mortgage mess - they believed in a fairy-tale world where everything works out and risk doesn't exist, and so they took out mortgages they knew full well they could not afford under ordinary circumstances.

Wishful thinking will not make it so.