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The Biggest Mistake of Personal Finance Bloggers is to Focus on the Small Stuff

By: Curtis Ophoven

9/2/2009 - 6 Comments

A recent article by a leading personal finance blogger addressing the need to focus on the small stuff to reduce financial stress has inspired me to take a deeper look at that idea.

I don’t mean to say the personal finance bloggers don’t help a lot of people by focusing on the small stuff or that they don’t drive a lot of website traffic from focusing on the small stuff, but they are failing to create true economic change. 

I have bigger goals then these. I want to help save the nation from complete economic collapse.

Focusing on the small stuff, like budgeting, paying off debts, living a frugal life are all essential and necessary for every one of us to build a foundation of saving and production, with which a sound economy is built upon.  

But financial stress cannot be eliminated without true economic change in the way the economic goes through boom-bust cycles. Therefore personal finance is really about both the small stuff and the big stuff

For example; your 401k retirement and personal savings are very important to your personal finances, yet they are primarily controlled by the big picture. Without an understanding of the big picture, there is no way to control your savings or secure your retirement.  

Eliminating Financial Stress

Despite the rhetoric of popular bad economists like Ben Bernanke and Allan Greenspan, boom-bust cycles are predictable and preventable

Focusing on the small stuff, by getting your financial house in order is only the first step in economic recovery.  This can be seen as consumers have started to reduce spending and increase savings.  The second step is to face the fact that government spending is out of control and has become a national liability to the freedom, liberty and justice of our great nation.

The only way to truly eliminated financial stress from the economy is to realize that we have been duped into a phony economy build on over-consumption and a government run on the dollar.  Once the majority realizes the source of the problem, then and only then, can we tackle real solutions to end this madness.

The Source of Economic Instability

The source of economic instability is failed government policy, by juicing the economy with more and more printed money. This is the source of the problem and until we mobilize a revolution to take back the nation and vote out the bad economist, we will continue to suffer financial stress.

Almost all personal finance bloggers make the same mistake, by trying to focus on the small stuff without looking at the source of economic troubles.  Perhaps there are good reasons for this and I suspect it is because they themselves don’t understand the true source of the economic instability. 

Without sound money, we will never have a sound economy. We will just keep going from one bubble to the next while the blind economist continue to lead us over unseen cliffs.

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Reader Comments

Comment 1
j Says: on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 9:30:01 PM

If you want to better understand the economics of global $ today, you better understand its history, at least the past 300 years as this article briefly traces:

http://moneytalks.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2111:will-gold-reach-5000&catid=48:daily-updates&Itemid=88
"We can see the peak in 1873 from which there was a serious and steep major Depression that was known at the time as the "Secondary Postwar Depression." The recovery was attributed to a return to sound money known as the Gold Resumption Prosperity. The US had abandoned the gold standard during the civil war. There was no paper money printed by the Federal government until this period. All money was always coin after the hyper-inflation experienced under the Continental Congress.

The paper money issued between 1789 and 1861, was all private notes issued by banks. When they went bust, these became collector items and are known as the "Broken Bank Notes" of the period. This is part of the huge battle between Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States.

The Civil War cost the United States dearly both in lives lost and in the amount of money. The major Gold Rush in California in 1849 had led to the images of the United States had its roads paved in gold. Gold became so common, inflation in the West ran at least 5 times greater than on the East Coast.

This is followed by the railroad boom that was the internet of the day for it gave birth to catalogue business such as Sears & Robuck. Now there was a greater market .for goods nationwide. However, it was the silver discovery that now destroyed the economy..."


Comment 2
j Says: on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 9:32:51 PM

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldForecaster/1251749280.php
Gold has been conviscated before & will probably be conviscated again.


Comment 3
Curt Says: on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 10:20:46 PM

@j - Anything is possible. The government could also make it illegal to own foreign stocks. But I think there are just to many ways in which money can be transfered out of dollars for them to stop.

Confiscating gold will not stop the dollar crisis. The world of finance is a digital world that was not even possible a century ago.

The bigger problem is not that we dump dollars for gold, but that foreigner investors dump the dollar.

Most dollars are used outside of the US. Foreign investors are a much bigger risk to sink the dollar. The government will be forced to spend time and military might trying to stop foreigners from dumping dollars, like China, India, OPEC, Brazil and Russia.

You can also purchase gold mining stocks instead of actual gold coins, but I think is would be wise to put at least some of your wealth in gold and silver coins.


Comment 4
k Says: on Thursday, September 03, 2009 8:58:09 PM

http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page33?oid=88452&sn=Detail
"China is pushing the idea of buying gold and silver for investment purposes to the general population in the way that Western television sells soap powder.
If 1.3 billion Chinese citizens start buying gold and silver, even in tiny quantities, imagine what that will do to the market!
The report notes that China's Central Television, the main state-owned television company, has run a news programme letting the public know how easy it is to buy precious metals as an investment.
On silver investment the announcer is quoted as saying " China has introduced its first ever investment opportunity for silver bullion.
The bars are available in 500g, 1kg, 2kg and 5kg with a purity of 99.9%. Figures show that gold was fifty times more expensive than silver in 2007, but now that figure has reached over seventy times. Analysts say that silver has been undervalued in recent years. They add that the metal is the right investment for individual investors and could be a good way to cash in."
If the Chinese are indeed beginning to buy gold and silver as the quoted report suggests then this has to be a strong signal that prices are going to rise, and perhaps rise dramatically, in the relatively near future.
We await comment from other China watchers for confirmation of the gold and silver buying spree, but with global gold production at best flat and probably in decline, even a small increase in Chinese buying could have a substantial impact on gold and silver prices."


Comment 5
Adam Says: on Monday, September 07, 2009 8:11:51 PM

http://applianceguru.com/
Save $ by fixing your own appliances. This how to site helped me to fix my oven by replacing a simple part that would have cost me $100 to have an applaince repair person do. Saving $ is a small thing but if all Americans saved money it would be a big thing economically.


Comment 6
bathroom furniture Says: on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:24:39 AM

Personal finance is the application of the principles of finance to the monetary decisions of an individual or family unit. It addresses the ways in which individuals or families obtain, budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events. Components of personal finance might include checking and savings accounts, credit cards and consumer loans, investments in the stock market, retirement plans, social security benefits, insurance policies, and income tax management.

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