Money Geeks

How bad are you?

It might surprise you to hear that I am not a hardcore money geek. In fact, I feel a bit inadequate sometimes when talking to real money geeks.

Take a look at the Money Geek Scale (TM) below and see where you fall:

0 Financial Disaster
Has trouble paying bills each month. No savings.

1 Normal Person
Doesn't really think about money beyond getting paid and paying bills.

2 Financially Stable
Some savings. Insurance. No problem paying bills. Wonders about investing.

3 Financially Competent
Knows how much they spend and save each month. Has savings and investments but might not fully understand them.

4 Financially Informed (geek)
Reads financial blogs. Knows about tax-advantaged vehicles. Has a financial plan and knows about alternative approaches.

5 Financial Expert (uber geek)
Does their own taxes, reads company financial statements.

In the scale above I would say I am probably at level 4. I'm too lazy to do my own taxes and exhaustively research investing opportunities.

Like I talked about in my post about 'enough', I don't think I need to do more than I am doing. I don't need to beat the market or become fantastically wealthy. I just need to keep doing what I am doing, and my family will be fine. In some ways, I have already won.
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I think it is worth getting to level 3 or 4 in the scale for almost everyone. The danger with level 3 is that it is easy for people to take advantage of you. The drawback for level 4 is that a lot of people find personal finance extremely boring ;)

How about you? Where are you on the scale?

This post first ran on RetireJapan in April 2016