Friends,

We've all had different educational experiences in life. One kind of education most of us have never had the good fortune to receive is financial education.. we haven't been shown answers to problems like "how do i balance a checkbook", "what's a mutual fund", "why would i want a roth vs regular IRA or 401(k)", etc. Talking about finances is one of the final taboos, and also it's not as much fun as talking about other things that start with F, like food, farting, and fairs, among others... so maybe that has something to do with it.

So, lack of education being what it is, I'd argue strongly that our generation, more than any other, needs to have more of an understanding of how to manage money than we do. Even if we had strong leadership at the helm, can you trust our government to take care of your sweet but slightly crusty senior self via social security, medicare, or any other safety net? Well, for now we have a guy that couldn't spell misunderestimated even with help from the interweb, so I'm a little bit worried and plenty motivated.

I'd like to find ways to carve out an active role in the community of Democracy's chubby cousin, capitalism. I'd like for us all to be, if not Bill Gates rich, at least somewhat independently wealthy. The kind of wealthy where you don't have to rush into a crappy job or work overtime unless you want to. I'd like to find a way for those of us with knowledge or experience in a topic to spread that knowledge among everybody. I'm not sure where people are at in their understanding or what goals we all have, so for now, rather than dealing with the pain of trying to coordinate a physical meeting of a lot of people with different interests and levels of expertise, I'd like to start with an online discussion. We can feed this discussion with questions from all of us, and go from there. I have plenty to say about the subject so I'm open to having real life events at some point too, but for now I'm just curious to get a sense of what is interesting to people who aren't me before organizing that kind of event.

So, if you have any burning questions already, please post those! Otherwise, here is a list of some broad financial topics that would make sense to know about. If you have specific questions or more interest in these, please post those as well.

I.) Credit/debt
a.) School: including student loans, possibly 529 educational savings plans too.
b.) Everyday debt/cash management: how to live paycheck to paycheck, and get paid for it... aka credit cards (rates?, rewards of cards, when to use and not use them).
c.) Buying a house, settling in.

II.) Investing: General and Retirement aka 'I have some extra money, where do i put it?'
a.) retirement investment
b.) non retirement saving/investing