Summary: Getting the right financial advice is important and the truth is that average financial advice is really for average people.are so many financial media outlets present and they are more than willing to throwout generic financial advice. Additionally, there are countless bloggers that offer up what we might refer to as "boiler plate" financial advice. You know the sort of thing I'm talking about: make maximum contributions to your 401k, contribute to a Roth IRA, spend less than you make (that's pretty good advice actually), don't run up excessive consumer debt via credit cards, use qualified plan contributions to reduce your taxable income and the list goes on. Now, not all of this financial advice is bad. It's just no-risk type of advice for anyone that wants to discuss issues surrounding personal finance. Who Needs this Sort of Financial Advice? As anyone who's ever taken a high school writing and/or composition class learns, it's crucial that you understand the psyche of the person you are writing for. So, who are these people offering up this super plain and vanilla financial advice trying to reach. Who's the target? The target for most of the super generic financial advice floating around out there today is the vast swath of people who are right in the middle. You must always remember that financial media is much like other media outlets in that the sole purpose for their existence is to sell advertising. And companies that spend big bucks on advertising pay "by the eyeball". Most brands want to see huge numbers of subscribers, readers, unique page visits or listeners. Ads are sold based on the number of impressions--that's the way it is now and has always been. The financial press is targeting the middle 70% (figuratively) with this sort of financial advice that's been carbon copied everywhere for the last 20+ years. Brandon: Hello and welcome. This is the financial procast. It is Thursday May 22nd, 2014. This is episode 110. I am Brandon Roberts. Brantley: And I'm Brantley Whitley. Brandon: I just realized that May is almost over. Brantley: Is that a bad thing? Brandon: It’s bad when winter seems to have lasted until at least the middle of May. Brantley: You didn’t have much of a spring because it went straight to 80, right? Brandon: You got it. I’ll tell you want though. The trees and flowers, it did not take much to get those guys to bloom. In one day in the 80s, and it’s like poof! Brantley: That started here about two months ago. Brandon: I'm aware there were many places in the united states that have much better weather that had bloomed trees long ago. Brantley: I did see some places in the Midwest were having snow just a couple days ago or something like that. Brandon: That storm system is going to bring plenty of rain my way. Brantley: Just what you needed. Perfect for someone who has a gravel driveway. It’s mostly mud and holes. Brandon: We could get some really big fans and try to blow it back down into San Diego where they need rain. Brantley: There you go. Take that southern California. Brandon: We’re trying. Brantley: Really big fans. That’s always a great plan. What are we going to complain about today? Brandon: We’re not complaining about anything today. Brantley: Awesome. Brandon: We’re simply asking a question. Brantley: What's the question? Brandon: Here's something that I have long wondered. There's a multitude of financial press media outlets out there. There are a lot of them. We don’t even need to name them. They are very willing to throw out generic financial advice to everybody who’s willing to listen. There's a lot of people who have things like little personal finance blogs and they write a lot about generic financial advice to people and it always follows the same line of thought; max out your 401k, contribute to an IRA.
