A personal finance expert says you don’t need to be on Wall Street to understand your finances

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Ric Edelman is the CEO of Edelman Financial Services, one of the nation’s leading financial advising firms, and author of the new book “The Truth About Your Future: The Money Guide You Need Now, Later, and Much Later.” Here Edelman explains why the world of money is not nearly as complicated as people want you to believe. Following is a transcript of the video.

You need to learn how money works.

It’s really sad that most kids come out of college completely illiterate when it comes to personal finance. You go through K through 12 not a single class on money. Your parents never told you anything about money. Most kids don’t go to any college classes on money, and when you get into the workplace your employer is not going to teach you anything about money either.

So where do people learn about money? Through experience. And experience as we know is a very expensive teacher. So much better to learn about money as you’re engaging in education. Here’s the good news: the world of money is not nearly as complicated as everybody wants you to believe it is. The people who are trying to convince you that money is complicated that it’s too difficult for you to understand are the people who are trying to sell you stuff. 

But in fact the subject of money is remarkably simple. It is really easy to understand how money works. A bank account, a checking account, a stock, a bond, a mutual fund, your 401(k) at work. This stuff is not rocket science. It’s just that the institution, the Wall Street machine they want you to think it is to intimidate you, to scare you, to make you dependent on them so that they can make a ton of money charging you massive fees and commissions selling you products you frankly don’t need and are not in your best interests. So, all it takes is a very basic, fundamental level of education.

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