The recent discourse in personal finance has moved to, among other things, towards instituting programs to increase financial literacy or renewed demands for the government to create new retirement programs to assist the financially vulnerable. While an honest dialogue about traditionally a taboo topic is a move in the right direction, are we not missing the point?

The dialogue presumes a top-down approach to the issue at hand is the right approach.  The conventional thinking is that the schools need to teach us about money and the government should offer new pension plans. But, is not the same top-down approach, ceding our finance responsibilities to those who supposedly “know better”, what lead to hyper government deficits (check out the debt clock), lack of regulatory supervision over bankers and a poorly designed social security system in the United States?

Why would we presume, given past history, that a continued top-down approach to money would lead to a different result? As a wise person once wrote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Ultimately, financial independence is taken and not given by others. If you are a big fan of the book The Millionaire Next Door, as I am, what the authors noticed is that financially independent individuals spend more time on their own personal finances than those who are not. No school or government mandates that financially independent people spend their free time balancing their books. They are self-motivated to do it themselves through a bottom up approach (as in I’ll pull myself up from the bottom up).

Just some food for thought this weekend. Enjoy the weekend.

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