Good and really cheap advice

 
Please save me from all the financial experts shoveling good advice on me for the new year, especially as the bar keeps getting set lower and lower for whatever constitutes “good” advice. As I read the papers and the blogs and the news sites so far, here’s the gist of it:

• Don’t spend money on things you can’t afford.
• Invest for the future.
• It’s better to pay a low interest rate than to pay a high rate. (Now they tell me!!)
• Be employed. (Bonus points if you have a job with a salary, health care and a pension, along with a pet unicorn.)

 
The list goes on, but you get the idea. It’s all the kind of stuff you knew when you were in high school and, if you haven’t paid attention until now, there’s no reason to expect that the click of a calendar is going to change things.
 
No, what we need is new advice, advice for the life we live today and the world as we (wish we didn’t) know it. To get you started, here are a few suggestions to make you more financially successful:

• By the time you hear about a hot new investment, it will no longer be hot or new. The people who got in on the ground floor have a smart exit strategy: dumping it on you.
• No great investment idea ever arrived by e-mail. If the investment is that solid, it’s going to the guy who can write one $10 million check, not to ten million guys with a dollar each.
• Speaking of which, it’s too late to buy gold. The next hot commodity will be Pontiac sedans. As Will Rogers said about land, they ain’t making any more of them.
• After you have a couple Pontiacs in your garage, start filling the trunks with plastic straws. The black market for these things is booming.
• Forget staycations as a way to save money. The next big vacation trend will be weekends in a bed and breakfast—except that you have to be the host.
• Scrapbooking is out. Quilts made from plastic bags and recycled newspapers are in.
• Hot new job: iPhone lost-and-found clerk. The hourly wage is low, but the tips are great and the blackmail opportunities are even greater.

• Hot new retirement destination: Whatever small town your grandparents came from in 1897.
• If you have enough extra junk that you had to rent a remote storage facility, it’s time to learn how to sell on eBay.
• Don't expect to make much money on eBay, because pretty much everyone you know is trying to empty their storage facility, too.
• If the remote storage facility is heated, consider whether you can downsize just a bit further and live there.

 
Following this advice will guarantee you a prosperous New Year, a comfortable retirement and, quite possibly, immortality. Let’s see you get that from one of those name-brand experts.

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