Shocker! IRA Advisors Suck (and why you're better off investing in your own financial education)

I came across this NYT article today, and I was pretty disappointed (but not in the least surprised) at this factoid:

"On average, a typical working family in the anteroom of retirement — headed by somebody 55 to 64 years old — has only about $104,000 in retirement savings, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances."

Now that's a stone cold bummer.

What a waste. But you might be wasting even more by blindly following the advice of someone whose interests are anything but aligned with you. (Image Credit)

The rest of the article is not about how little Americans have saved up for retirement, but rather the policies that help or inhibit their efforts to save better. One of the big pieces of that puzzle was about how personal investment "advisors" (or advisers; I don't discriminate) don't always act in their clients' best interests. In particular, this reminded me of my earliest memories dealing with finance and investing. So what better way to kick off my inaugural blog post than share my story about how I got started with finance?