I'm Going to Pick On the Financial Diet

So I have money problems. And I have spent the last 7 years doing the same thing I always do when I have a problem I can't seem to wrap my head around. Go to the internet for advice. And there is no shortage of places to go to for financial advice on the internet.

After spending years trying to figure out ways to reorganize how I spend money the only conclusion I can make is that I simply need to make more money. No amount of cost-shaving or budgeting is really going to change that.

Yet that's most of the (not obviously a scam) financial advice on the internet.

For simple shorthand, I'm going to use the Financial Diet. They give good advice... if you already have enough money to do the things you need to do and live comfortably. But what if you don't?

I don't blame the Financial Diet for that. They do what they do well. It's just that I don't see a lot of places giving the other type of advice. Realistic advice like how to get a job in your field after college, or how to avoid multilevel marketing scams, or how to gauge whether or not you are getting paid too much or too little for your work, or how to figure out if you can survive on your salary with the cost of living in your city, or how to accurately gauge the value of potential purchases.

This, by the way, is why I love John Oliver. He is the only person I really see in the mainstream even close to giving this type of advice short of actual journalists.

And then I think about why.

Giving that type of advice requires a little bit of cynicism. A little bit of acknowledgement that yes to a certain extent the system and the individuals who profit from it are out to keep you down and bilk you for everything you're worth and the remedy is to make it your chief goal in life to become smart enough so you can cut 'em off at the pass and even then the odds aren't good.

That requires a certain type of worldview or at least a certain amount of openness to it.  And that worldview does not sell well.

Regardless more and more I'm getting the feeling that the places I've been looking aren't the places to get the advice I really need.

...So I'm getting more cynical as I get older.