Money Matters

I've come to realize that I know zilch about investing. Nada. I know that you can do the stock market thing, IRAs, Roth-IRAs, money market accounts, bonds, savings accounts and other such things, but ultimately I only really understand savings accounts.

Now that I'm out of my "every penny goes to school expenses" rut, I suppose I should start saving and/or investing.

How the heck do I go about doing that? I've Googled it a fair amount, but the advice varies wildly.

EDIT: I feel like I've posted about this before, but obviously I did a poor job following up on it. Can anyone recommend any companies that are good for this sort of thing? WellsFargo? ING? The Bank of Awesome?

No sympathy for the rich ...

This article from a self-proclaimed CEO wife bemoaning her financial predicament disgusts me:

“We traditionally celebrate with about 30 friends … [N]ot hosting a birthday dinner would have spurred rumors that we were broke…”

Those are some good friends you have there. Anything less than 30 people at a party thrown in a multistar restaurant would be a disgrace? When did spending an intimate evening at home with your wife and kids become gauche?

“We still live in relative luxury, we can afford almost everything we need, and we aren’t facing the prospect of losing our home or having to turn to our families to support us.”

You can afford almost everything you *need*? I think you mean you can afford nearly everything you *want*. There’s a big difference. Choosing between food and your heart medication is vastly different from choosing between Bergdorf Goodman’s and the Gap.

“Meanwhile, retirement is like a rainbow, a beautiful mirage that we’ll probably never reach. To some people, these may seem like luxury problems, but to us they are painful.”

Boo fricking hoo. Virtually all of the older folks I know are still working because they HAVE to. Because retirement can be unaffordable even to the most frugal of hard workers. If your idea of retirement didn’t include the Bahamas and biweekly spa treatments, you could have retired a long time ago.

“The good news is that Americans have short attention spans.”

Not this one.