Money is the #1 cause of divorce in America.

Most of us are in debt.

Most of us have inadequate savings, or no savings at all.

So whats up with all this?

I can’t speak for anyone but myself at this point in my inquiry, but in my case its simple I just never thought much about it.

When I tried to talk to my friend Joe about his Student Loan debt, his response to me was “I just don’t care about money.”

This would have been my response as well.

Then my marriage started having problems because of my “uncaring” approach to money.

My internet friend “That Writer Chick” sent me an email stating that basically the whole system is corrupt, there is no way out of debt, and luckily Ron Paul is here to fight the good fight.

I can’t stand Ron Paul, but that is another story.

“That Writer Chick” also said that I need to break free from my dependence on mainstream media.

That may be true.

But “That Writer Chick” suggests that instead of the mainstream media I go to the likes of Ron Paul and his friends for my information.

I don’t like Ron Paul, but I can give an explanation of why I think that my sources are useful.

I will be the first to admit that the mainstream media is beholden to advertising revenue, and as a result has a tendency to tailor their material to increasing ratings. Another way to put it, is that the news is dumbed down so that more dummies will watch commercials.

But is the best alternative to find someone who is merely opposed to the
mainstream?

Since I find Ron Paul’s continued existence to be an insult , I will not talk about this funny little man.

Instead I will talk about someone else who’s position is defined by his opposition, Jello Biafra: the former singer of the punk band “The Dead Kennedys.”

I love Jello, I love the Dead Kennedy’s and I tend to read and listen to anything Jello puts out.

For the record, by comparison Jello makes Ron Paul look like a raving conformist.

I emphasize, I love Jello Biafra, and he would probably think that my defense of money, and my belief that money can be managed to serve you is fucked up.

But I have to take everything Jello says with a grain of salt. This is because Jello is forwarding his own agenda, which is hard-core proto-anarchist politics. So when Jello talks about recombinant crops as “frankenfood” I don’t go in my kitchen and throw away any thing I have which might have been genetically engineered.

The only real alternative to the mainstream media is an information source which has stringent standards, based on the scientific method. And in addition is subjected to peer review, which is when all the collegues of the author try to shit all over his/her work and prevent it from going to publication.

For money, this is academic economics journals.
This shit is really hard to read. Academic economics journals are a lot harder to comprehend than YouTube videos of Ron Paul, or my personal favorite Jello Biafra.

I am working on that stuff too.

What I have managed to learn from the journals I use to temper my more mainstream sources, which currently include:

Credit Card Nation by: Robert D. Manning

Financial Peace by: Dave Ramsey

Debt Control by: Chris J. Richards

…and a LOT of money podcasts.

I have 4 more money books that I plan on reading this month, but I just started getting fired up about learning about money this month.
I just wanted to address the reliability of what I’m talking about. My friend “That Writer Chick” might have you believe that I just believe whatever is fed to me by the boob tube, without a critical thought in my mind.

But the truth is that the reason I’m blogging about money is because I have encouraged scientific thought in all areas of life for a couple of years now, but have failed to do so in this crucial area: money.
When someone does not have a critical, dispassionate, and disciplined approach to learning about money they are probably relying on dogma and nonsense for their ideas about money.

This is exactly what I was doing. I believed the things about money that I had picked up from various political and religious beliefs that I have had over the years, and not taken a serious dispassionate look at it.
I go buck-wild when people deny evolution because so much work has been done by biologists to confirm this fact, that it drives me crazy that people deny it. I also worry about people understanding how their anti-biotics work, which they can’t if they deny evolution.

But this is not nearly as important as money.

However, biologists don’t publish self-help books.

Money people do.

Dave Ramsey was an easy start into my inquiry, and I was suspicious from the get-go. Not because Dave Ramsey is part of the mainstream media, which he is, but because he’s a self-help author.

Self-help books tend to be scams.

I also can’t stand Dave’s tendency to inject religion into his financial advice, I think Jesus doesn’t exist and therefore has jack shit to do with my wallet. Dave says you are doomed to fail unless Jesus is a part of your financial planning.

But I am moving beyond Dave Ramsey, and was doing so from the get go.

Right now most of my sources are CPAs and Economists.