To me, your FinancialEyeQ is how you see the financial aspects of the world...that includes your financial responsibilities, financial investments, income, expenses, opportunity costs and much, much more. How do you look at all these things? For example, when a market takes a dive (stocks, real estate, etc.) do you see trouble and get scared or do you see opportunities to buy discounted assets? What is happening in France is really alarming and concerning because it indicates a major problem with their FinancialEyeQ. Lost or confused yet? Let me explain.
The protests from last week are because the government, which is nearing socialism, raised the retirement age from 60 to 62 years young for government and public sector jobs. [Teachers were one such group that was affected.] Why would they increase the retirement age you ask? Because they simply cannot afford to pay the pensions and benefits of all the workers in the system. Sound like another European country on the Mediterranean that was in the news recently for their financial woes? And the unions' response? Increase taxes on everyone in France to pay for the retirement of a select few. Great idea.
The bigger problem here is the misunderstanding that the government is supposed to take care of you from the cradle to the grave. The citizens of Greece, France and many other countries are under the false impression that they deserve pensions, a good retirement, health care, etc. They need not work for it...they DESERVE it! What's next...a free Mercedes for everyone?? They have an incredibly low FinancialEyeQ because they are not taking responsibility for their own future financial situation.
The government's job is to govern; to protect its citizens from each other and from foreigners, not to provide retirement benefits that guarantee your full salary for the rest of your life, as crazy as that sounds. This specific issue alone is crippling the budgets of many governments, on the local, state and federal level, all over the world. The faster we all realize that this idea simply does not work, the faster we can fix at least one aspect of the many broken governments around the globe.
So forget what the government is doing for you and ask yourself...
- How strong is my FinancialEyeQ?
- Do I want to rely on dysfunctional governments to (hopefully) provide for me during my retirement or do I want to take control of that myself?
- Does my financial scorecard look the way it should?
- How can I improve and take control of my financial future?
Start seeing things in a different way by increasing your FinancialEyeQ.
For more information on how you can begin to take control of your finances and increase your FinancialEyeQ, contact me at Cheyne@EastCoastEquities.com.
-CMS
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