tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26277603.post-38308387793871043802007-05-28T10:09:00.000-05:002007-05-28T10:09:00.000-05:002007-05-28T10:09:00.000-05:00Great post. I'm fascinated by the extent to which my friends and I talk about the intimate details of just about anything except money - politics and religion included! <BR/><BR/>And yet, it matters: in my experience, the habits that determine (1) your level of formal education, and (2) your personal financial status are the overwhelming factors that keep people entrenched in whatever social class they were born into.<BR/><BR/>I work in a job where I receive a taxable salary but have no 401(k) or other traditional retirement programs offered through my workplace. For several years, I ignored the whole issue, since, well, noone mentioned doing otherwise. Then one day, I made a model of how much I had to save at what points in my life to ever retire securely, and freaked out. I did an informal survey of friends at my workplace, asking what they were doing about retirement. I got everything from "ah, excellent question: well, I of course max out my Roth IRA every year, and then after that I..." to "retirement? You mean other people around here are secretly saving for retirement already? Why didn't anyone TELL me?!"<BR/><BR/>And honestly, that's sort of how I felt, too. I had no idea some of my closest friends had well-planned ongoing retirement savings systems. I thought we were all doing the same thing. But in the end, who had retirement plans broke down along the class lines of our parents - and was projecting to put us in very different positions in the future despite the similarity of our current positions.<BR/> <BR/>Since that experience, I've forced myself to discuss money more publicly despite my discomfort with the issue. I've been practicing ways to bring it up in non-personal contexts - eg, "I read this blog post the other day about __" instead of "I just put __ in my Roth!" <BR/><BR/>I am also a big, big fan of both blogs like this one and sites like www.wesabe.com, which I think help to break down this barrier, as well.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com