I have many friends, and for that I count myself blessed, but we generally avoid talking about personal finance (with some exceptions).  Why is that?  Maybe we’re used to thinking of that as taboo, maybe we’re too embarrassed or maybe we just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

1. Financial Planning -  I don’t talk to most of my friends about financial planning.  The concept of discussing the future is absolutely frightening for some people due to their debt level.  I don’t know that my friends have that same mindset but many of them don’t appear to have a plan for more than their busy schedules so that there are no collisions.  I could be wrong, but I’d love for them to have a plan so that they might have a financially sound lifestyle.
2. Risk Assessment - I have relatives, friends and acquaintances that are unaware of the risks they’re taking.  The older you get the higher the risk is for higher risk investments.  The chance for recovery on the time line of life gets reduced just by the fact that the higher yielding investments often come with higher risk of turning into money losing investments.  I want my friends to learn what is safest for them to be able to do.
3. Stuff Verses Experience - I’ve just turned thirty and many of my friends that are my age are still in the acquisition stage of life.  Stuff creates clutter, stuff doesn’t fulfill, and stuff doesn’t deliver memories except in the sense of looking at the clutter remembering when you didn’t have to organize, move or get rid of it.  I want my friends and family to be able to enjoy life and its experiences regardless of the total volume of toys, TVs or trash they’ve acquired.
4. Debt Elimination - Along with financial planning I want them to be able to have zero debt.  This morning I made a major payoff on one of my credit cards.  I should be able to do a balance transfer from another card and get rid of one.  I want my friends, young and old, to recognize that credit cards are not free money, they don’t bring security, and they don’t extend your lifestyle without cutting out from your lifestyle next month or next year.
5. Retirement Preparation - There are few things quite as disheartening as watching people you know flounder in a see of financial mediocrity and see them face an uncertain future.  In the United States our ‘Social Security’ program is hardly secure.  Our congress has been foolish and spent the money on other things and I’m certainly not convinced that it will be there in a few years.  I want my friends to be able to live lives that are full and have the opportunity to leave an inheritance for their grandchildren.

I think I’m done pussyfooting my way around finances with my friends.  As I evaluate the list above none of those topics have to involve me talking about my income or them talking about their income.  None of those topics require me to know more about their actual financial situation than I do now for me to carefully and tactfully bring them up.  I love my friends and family and want them to have a financial future they can be excited about, have rest about, and know the potential freedom of their goals.  I’m most definitely feeling confident that my discussion of these things can be done with genuine friends and that we’ll both walk away from the conversation having learned a thing or two.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 5:13 am and is filed under General, Lesson Learned, Taboo & Money (religion, sex, and politics). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. No tag for this post.