Honey, How Do I Look?

Honey, How Do I Look?

It’s Saturday evening and I’ve got a date with my wife. It’s time to get ready and what happens next remains a mystery to most men. The artful expression of a female brush painting her face is only exceeded by the millions of color and stylish variations she orchestrates with her clothing.

Not to belittle the importance of accessorizing, but when she completes the process of adorning her mortal temple, the inevitable and greatly feared question flows from her lips like silk from a spindle: “How do I look?”

Ladies! Are you aware that one out of five men are technically colorblind and the majority of the remaining four couldn’t match colors and styles if the only way we could watch the World Series depended on it?

Therefore, I find it most interesting that women, after years of empirical evidence to the contrary, continue to baffle all reason and logic by asking such an important question to an unqualified entity who usually looks at you with eyes that rarely see clothing.

The idea of asking the ‘unqualified’ for help seems to be part of our national pastime. How have politicians made things better? How about financial planners or economists? How has throwing more money at anything the government touches produced better results?

In his acceptance speech as the first Nobel Prize winning economist, F.A. Hayek said:

“Economist are at this moment called upon to say to how extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation, which, it must be admitted, has been brought about”…by economists. “As a profession we have made a mess of things.”

Ironic isn’t it. The very people who promulgated the mortgage meltdown, the huge national debt, and failed social programs by the hundreds are re-elected every year to solve the problems that they created.

Political job security is the art of screwing up the country so badly that you’re the only one who can articulate what happened. So you get re-elected and mess it up some more.

The author Joshua Cooper Ramo in his recently released book “The Age of the Unthinkable” said, “And if you insert ‘foreign policy experts’ or ‘financial gurus’ for ‘economists’ in Hayek’s remarks, well, you have a sad, disturbing summary of the state of our world at the moment.”

During talks with the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, Henry Kissinger (Harvard Business Professor and National Security Advisor) commented that the university models of political theory are largely useless in reality.

Confidence in financial experts, economists, and politicians has proven empirically to be misplaced. So where do we turn for help?

Keep in mind I’m not playing the role of a troll. A troll is a critic that doesn’t create or solve. A couch potato who lives in an echo chamber, ignored by everyone except fellow critics.

I’m not qualified to mess up in the field of economics, politics, or financial planning, but I do have an opinion on how to improve your home life and your relationship with money.

Therefore, I offer my view of the financial solution to everyday Americans. To my knowledge, none of these areas are being taught or promoted by our experts.

1. Master your spending
2. Master your savings
3. Master your communication skills

Short, simple, and sweet. Empirically proven to work every time with no risk to your principle (moral and/or financial.)