tmm99
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- May 15, 2008
- Messages
- 5,221
Here is my sentiment.
Compared to when my parents were my age, I think the finance every John and Jane have to deal with nowadays is much more complicated. In the old days, you went to work, did your work, got paid, saved a little money, and got your company pension and social security after you reached your retirement. (I know I am simplifying things, but you probably didn't need a high IQ to navigate to old age as much as we do now....) I know people invested money too, but not to the extent we do now. In this modern day and age, everyone needs to know a lot about finance. They cannot just go to work, and get paid and go their married ways. They have to think about a whole lot more about where to put money (401K, Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, bond, equities, this and that) to make sure they have money in the retirement years. I see a lot of people who post here are engineer types, and some finance, some entrepreneurs. I am in the IT field myself, and I don't consider myself stupid (well, only some of the time) but this finance stuff is very complicated and these are things I have to read books on or read blogs or come to forums like this for to learn. There is so much to know and digest. It's not just investing per se, but how about healthcare? How about Social security?
The thing is (I don't mean to sound snooty at all), I don't think the majority of the forum members here are an average, median income, average intelligent groups of folks. So I get that people here can navigate through this "do it yourself" finance world definitely much better than average. But how do people who haven't graduated from high school, or don't have an average IQ supposed to navigate through all this c*rap?? I have a college degree, and this stuff is still pretty hard for me, because there are so many moving parts to consdier! I really wonder how someone with less knowledge/education deal with this. I am originally from Japan, and majority of the people there do not have to deal with all these choices we deal with in the US.
Are there free institutions who lead *regular* folks? Many of the people cannot just pick up books and figure things out...
Compared to when my parents were my age, I think the finance every John and Jane have to deal with nowadays is much more complicated. In the old days, you went to work, did your work, got paid, saved a little money, and got your company pension and social security after you reached your retirement. (I know I am simplifying things, but you probably didn't need a high IQ to navigate to old age as much as we do now....) I know people invested money too, but not to the extent we do now. In this modern day and age, everyone needs to know a lot about finance. They cannot just go to work, and get paid and go their married ways. They have to think about a whole lot more about where to put money (401K, Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, bond, equities, this and that) to make sure they have money in the retirement years. I see a lot of people who post here are engineer types, and some finance, some entrepreneurs. I am in the IT field myself, and I don't consider myself stupid (well, only some of the time) but this finance stuff is very complicated and these are things I have to read books on or read blogs or come to forums like this for to learn. There is so much to know and digest. It's not just investing per se, but how about healthcare? How about Social security?
The thing is (I don't mean to sound snooty at all), I don't think the majority of the forum members here are an average, median income, average intelligent groups of folks. So I get that people here can navigate through this "do it yourself" finance world definitely much better than average. But how do people who haven't graduated from high school, or don't have an average IQ supposed to navigate through all this c*rap?? I have a college degree, and this stuff is still pretty hard for me, because there are so many moving parts to consdier! I really wonder how someone with less knowledge/education deal with this. I am originally from Japan, and majority of the people there do not have to deal with all these choices we deal with in the US.
Are there free institutions who lead *regular* folks? Many of the people cannot just pick up books and figure things out...
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