Attack of the PF bloggers

I don't consider myself a PF blogger but on a post from a reader of this blog has some very valid points about the limitations of personal finance advise from blogs.

Here is an excerpt. Most bloggers I read seem to have hundreds of thousands saved, are earning many times over the national average, and seems to have few obstacles to financial success. My feeling is, how hard is it to succeed under those conditions?

what bothers me the most about some pf blogs... is the self righteous, inflexible, and what I consider to be unrealistic attitude some bloggers bring to the table of “If you don’t succeed, or if you say you can’t do some thing, it is because you are a) lazy b)don’t really want it bad enough c) want others to pick up the slack for you, etc. and certainly not because real life circumstances exist that make certain achievements impossible under certain conditions.”

I want to read about those who for whatever reasons don’t have super-high salaries, have life circumstances that make saving and earning and getting out of and staying out of debt difficult, and yet are finding ways to make changes. That is where advice useful to me will be found….

These are extremely valid points. Everyone's situation is different, and everyone has a different attitude toward money. I sure as hell wished I made $70K a year. It is more like $25K a year.

My attitude toward money is that I like to collect it. Some people collect baseball cards, music, or DVDs. I collect stocks, bonds, and cash. If you want money to buy all the fancy things in life, I will pass not judgement on to you. But if you expect me to pay for your tax breaks because you have children and they need an education, but you spent all your money on that vacation to Maui, then go cry somewhere else. Don't take what I worked hard for at the barrel of a gun.

My response to the idea that if you don' succeed you are lazy or whatever, is that there are no guarantees to success in life. The spot where you start has no bearing of where you will end. Statistically someone born of wealth is more likely to be wealthy, just as a child who has a parent in prison is more likely to land in prison. I don't feel this has to be the way. I knew a lot of rich kids when I was younger and later in life they were asking for death. The reason I think this happens is that these people who grow up do not know any better. The rich don't know how to be poor (good for them) and the poor don't know how to get rich.

I make my salary from teaching, and what you see while you teach is not lazy people but people who are either destitute in the knowledge of their own abilities or do not know how to do things that could possibly lead to success. I hear a lot of "I can't do this." To me that means "I won't learn this."

So what I am trying to say is that while success isn't a guarantee from all the knowledge you may learn in life, at least you tried. My definition of happiness is having no regrets on my death bed. Knowing I have done all that I can do and learned all that I had the power to learn is good enough.