The Financial System is Broken (Rant): Ian has a bone to pick with the U.S. financial system. When the default output of the system isn’t a successful, financially independent future, what can you do? While Ian doesn’t usually rant, sometimes talking about the broken financial system candidly is a must.
TRANSCRIPT:
What’s up Internet? My name’s Ian Bloom. Welcome to Nerd Finance. I’m your resident financial life planner and huge nerd. In today’s episode, we are going to be talking about something that’s been really bothering me recently, which is the increasing complexity of the financial system, and frankly, the lack of resources to fight it. So bear with me.
Now, I don’t usually make rant type videos on this channel because frankly, I don’t know who I would be serving with them. I’m not trying to talk to my colleagues here who can share in the knowledge and pain, and I would rather make something that’s uplifting and inspiring for folks, but I do want to talk about something that’s been really bothering me recently, which is the lack of educational resources out there that are complete and accurate, for individuals to learn about the complexities of the financial system.
Now, it’s incredibly hard to create these sorts of resources. The financial system is complex, between taxes, and investing, and savings, and all of these sorts of mechanisms that you have to pull on these levers, you have to get it exactly right to have the financial outcome that you want. Well, frankly, it’s difficult, but it does bother me that the default setting for our generation is not a financially successful output. You see, there used to be a world in which you would work for a company for 20 or 30 years, you would retire with a pension, and life would be relatively easy from there. You would have a consistent income, you would maybe have some savings that you could use to supplement that income when something cool or challenging happened that needed extra money, and life would be good.
Well, in today’s world, it’s pretty much a fend for yourself system, which is good for some people, you know, the Jeff Bezos’ of the world, the people who have been very good and industrious at fending for themselves. But, if you aren’t educated in the way the financial system works, it leaves you behind pretty quickly. It just bothers me when the default system for individuals is not success, frankly. Our society deserves a little bit more default success.
So I just needed to talk about this and put my thoughts out there in the world. There are a couple of things that I think we could do to change that. First, make sure to cast your vote in 2020. Whoever you want to vote for, whatever cause you believe in, it’s frankly very important that the legislation that comes in the next eight, or nine, or ten administrations promotes a more unified country and a simpler financial system.
The second thing is I think you can educate yourself a lot. While I do complain about the lack of resources out there, #FinTwit, or Financial Twitter, has tons of very intelligent people, just having an open discourse about finance every day. So if you’re interested in those sorts of resources, seek those people out. People like myself and my colleagues, Isaiah Collin and Dwight, who have the Financial Foursight podcast, people like Doug Bonaparth and Dr. Daniel Crosby, all of these people are on there talking about behavioral finance, financial planning, and many more topics that might be relevant to you.
And then finally, this is pretty shameless, but if you are interested in a resource that’s fairly inexpensive and will teach you the basics of finance, you can check out my audiobook or my ebook. I just think CFP®s, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERs, should be people who are talking a lot more about money to the public, and frankly, the people that go on TV are not CFP®s, so it bothers me a little bit.
Anyway, I hope this video was helpful and interesting to you, and I hope it wasn’t just me rambling for five minutes about all the things that are wrong in the world. If you liked it, like, comment, subscribe, and if you’re interested in learning more about anything financial related, you can feel free to check out my website, where I have tons more of these videos and you can also look at the services and resources that I have there for you. Thanks so much. Have a wonderful day.
