Issue time
10:18 am , by
CTreit
Category:
personal finance
Politics and Personal Finance
September 3rd, 2010Politics does not matter at all when it comes down to your immediate personal finances. Setting up a budget, paying off debt, saving money for retirement and other financial goals – all these tasks are our own responsibility, and it doesn’t much matter what politicians do in Washington or anywhere else. Sure, the tax code and other laws and edicts based on political decisions influence details of the way we handle some of our responsibilities, but they do not make the activities themselves happen. For example, the current tax code gives us an incentive to put our retirement savings into a 401k or into an IRA rather than into a regular brokerage account, but saving for retirement itself is still our responsibility. And I don’t need to tell you that there are a lot of folks out there under-prepared for retirement.
Politics do matter in the long run, though. Some politicians are more inclined to support the interests of corporations, others support the interests of labor unions, and others still favor yet another group or cause. Politicians’ support for various things is just one input that flows into the democratic process. This process affects all of us in one way or another. And that is exactly why it is important that every one of us participates in this democratic process.
Things are not quite that simple with politics though, since politics is not just about dollars and cents; it is also about “values” and about beliefs. That’s okay. In a perfect democracy everybody adds his and her two cents – pun intended – whether these two cents concern money, values, beliefs, or anything else. Not only should we celebrate this great system in which we live, but we should also take our responsibility seriously by participating in the democratic process as fully as we can. And we should be equally responsible about our personal finances.
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I agree with you, sometimes I get the feeling that people want the government to come in and save them from themselves. Especially when people have been fiscally irresponsible by not using a budget, or racking up credit card bills with no hope of ever paying them off.