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January 5, 2009

Resolve to avoid bad comics and bad debt

A new year, and we should all be resolving to be better people this time around — thinner, kinder, more successful people who don’t smoke.

I resolved only one thing this year, and I’ve already accomplished it.

I took Alley Oop off the comics page.

Fans of the strip, you can blame me personally, but I swear that comic doesn’t make any sense, and a part of me died inside every time I had to read it. Today, please enjoy Dilbert in its place.

But, moving on.

There are many things we, as a country, should resolve to do in 2009 — for starters, we should be better planners.

The year 2008 ended in a downward economic spiral, and a lot of it was because of factors we little people had no control over — deregulation in banking, greed on Wall Street and Detroit designers who thought the Dodge Magnum and Cadillac Escalade EXT were good ideas.

Of course, there were also the people who maxed out their credit cards and bought homes they could barely afford on adjustable rate mortgages.

It wasn’t just “corporate greed” that caused this country’s problems, it was financial ignorance.

I know many smart people who are terrible with money.

My father always told me to try and keep enough money in the bank to live off of for three months. I don’t think I ever heard any advice to that effect in school. He also told me to save at least 10 percent of my paychecks, invest in bonds (debatable, but it’s served his IRA well lately), pay off my credit cards in full at the end of every month and buy a car during year-end clearances, when dealers are motivated because of next year’s taxes on unsold product.

I’m grateful for the education I got at home. But if a child comes from a family that never worked toward savings and never owned a home, he will likely be duped into poor financial decisions as an adult — especially when corporations and credit companies are preying on that person’s weakness.

America would be much better off if financial planning were a regular part of public education. Instead of being able to rattle off 50 state capitals, I’d feel better about the future of our nation if graduating seniors learned how to set up a 401K and protect their credit scores.

(And yes, I realize they probably can’t name the state capitals, either.)

But public education don’t seem to teach enough practical skills.

Teaching children how to gather information (especially in the age of bogus Internet information, as mentioned in the story on Page 5) is even more vital than getting them to recite facts and remember arcane bits of history.

Of course, many working families aren’t able to put three month’s of living expenses in the bank, even if they tried. But let’s at least make sure they are trying. Knowledge about savings, investment and retirement is a first step to making sure at least some of the problems that plagued us in 2008 don’t continue to haunt us in 2009.

We are a nation that does not encourage savings. When the government gives you a stimulus check, they don’t tell you to save, they tell you to spend — your country needs you to buy that flat-screen!

We have a government that does not want you to think about the future, at least, not past election terms. What will happen when the state’s antiquated pension policies fail? How are we going to continue to pay into Social Security and Medicare? Who’s going to fund this bailout?

On those issues, maybe financial ignorance is bliss...

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