Happy new year everyone! Did you have fun? I hope you did, because if you are like most people, the next couple of months will be spent trying to balance your finances against the traditional Christmas overspending.
Dr. Seuss was right, Christmas doesn’t come from a store. However that doesn’t stop people from wanting nice things and being seduced by the trappings of easy finance and Christmas bonuses for the fortunate ones. The result is a slow recoil back to fiscal responsibility as millions of people stand up and as one declare “I spent how much!?”
Because of this, this is the perfect time for any number of finance gurus to release their latest tome proclaiming that this time they not only have the solution to your financial woes, but they can help you hack your way into fortune, financial stability, and book deals. All of this and more if you just get the book/online course/seminar. Oddly enough none of them seem to have the actual trick they used: write a self-help book and get people to buy it.
If you need any actual answers for your financial woes, they have been the same as they have been since we’ve had a financial system. More money has to come in that goes out. Put some of what’s left in savings and if there’s more, put it on something that will make money for you. Avoid debt as much as you can. Stop caring about keeping up with the Joneses. Don’t compare someone’s feature presentation to your behind the scenes.
Sensible advice. Practical. Reasonable. Boring. Requires effort. Nowhere near as interesting as the latest retread of “I RETIRED AT 29 AND HERE’S HOW!” (Their parents gave them five million dollars, a house, and a car). And because of that all of us keep looking for the miracle advice that will ensure that we can lounge by the pool humming We’re in the money.
Alas, it wouldn’t keep happening if it didn’t work, so people keep making them so other people can follow whatever crackpot theory they come next. Though it must be said, some of the financial self-help book out there do give you actual useful advice. It’s sometimes buried in a colossal layer of nonsense, but it’s there if you’re willing to do some digging.
So, where does that leave us? Where in the middle of a collapsing economy where the everything shortage has been summarily replaced with the price increase of everything? As ever, it leaves us drowning in things we cannot control and which stresses us right out of the things we can control. So, the only thing to do is to tread carefully and try to be smart. Try not to make a hole for ourselves and work to very slowly and carefully get out of one if we’re already in it. And in the midst of all of this, a reminder about the worst personal finance advice.
The worst advice is most of it.
