We Need To Take Control Of Our Finances

Wall Street and major banks have now been bailed out with our money; other major institutions have been swallowed up by other banks and yet they still want to tell us how to manage our money when they can’t manage their own.  Meanwhile, the smaller and medium sized independent investment and financial planning firms have been left scratching their heads concerning their own survival while trying to re-focus our attention on other parts of our financial plan that “should be reviewed”.  No wonder recent surveys show investors with a few thousand dollars invested to those with multiple millions invested who are leaving their financial advisors in droves.  Who needs to pay all those extra fees to lose lots of money?

It was just too easy for the financial service industry to make the gullible public believe that financial and investment planning was too complicated to understand and therefore we had to rely on “professional” help.  Yet research conducted in 2007 indicates that fewer than 3% of adult individuals and families have a professionally written comprehensive financial plan.  Well, we’ve all seen and experienced how tragically deficient that “professional” help has been in the last year 2008 and perhaps this is the impetus for more people to get that desperately needed financial education to learn how to do their own financial planning and manage their investments.

Families and individuals at every economic level deserve an alternative to the traditional sources of financial and investment planning through big Wall Street firms, other investment brokerage firms, fee only financial planners, and insurance professionals.  Whether you are rich or poor, or somewhere in between, a new paradigm in financial planning focusing on a first class financial education is needed to instill the confidence in people that financial planning is not rocket science or that complicated. Rather, it’s a lot of common sense! Such a financial education can teach anyone how to do their own “due diligence” which is the investigation and evaluation of investment managers best suited to their risk tolerances and needs.  

Whatever level of practical every day financial education someone needs, this internet age is more than capable of providing an online financial planning software package that could produce a comprehensive objective in-depth analysis of one’s finances based totally on their individual situation free of any hidden agenda or conflicts of interest by Wall Street and financial planning firms to steer people to products where they make the most money.  Once armed with this financial education, people will be free to go directly to the needed financial specialist for implementation of their desired objective with no middlemen in between.

Since America is drowning in debt and most Americans are spending $1.05 for every $1.00 of income and two to three months away from bankruptcy, such an online financial planning software package should also concentrate on a  debt freedom component  to help anyone to pay off all debt, including the home mortgage, as quickly as possible.  As debt is the number one problem facing most Americans today, this feature alone could save billons in unnecessary interest expense. When there is no product bias or agenda in a first class financial education, people are then free to learn about and obtain objective financial and investment strategies to help them overcome obstacles and put them on the road to reach their future financial goals. Wow, wouldn’t it be nice to tell Wall Street to take a much needed hike as their integrity is in shambles and filled with so many conflicts of interest, middlemen, and unnecessary extra fees.

Through a practical everyday use of their financial education, people would not have to trust others to determine the fate of their financial future.  Rather, personal accountability and responsibility would restore a new found sense of self-reliance and personal pride for people to finally take control of their own financial destiny.