Talk to Chuck, But Listen to Larry

"Listen to Larry" is a bit presumptuous. It suggests I know what I'm talking about and others don't. I don't feel that way. I chose the title despite my concerns about sounding presumptuous in order to convey an alternative sound bite to "Talk to Chuck."

I haven't talked to Chuck and can't speak about his advice or his company's products. But my general view and that of what I sense is the vast majority of economists is that the financial industry and financial "experts" are selling large quantities of financial products of highly dubious value.

So "Talk to Chuck, but Listen to Larry" is an admonition that economists view things very differently than other so called financial professionals.

Full disclosure: I do have a personal financial planning program, called ESPlanner, that I market via my company (www.esplanner.com). But at www.esplanner.com/basic there is a simplified, on-line version that you can run for free.

The software embeds economics' consumption-smoothing approach to financial planning. It internally determines and suggests how much to spend, save, and insure each year to have a smooth living standard through time without borrowing.

Its suggestions are generally at complete odds with those of conventional financial planning programs. Again, "Listen to Larry" is really meant to say "Listen to Economics." Economics and economists have a lot of powerful advice that can improve your personal financial life in four ways -- by smoothing your living standard, safely raising your living standard, protecting your living standard, and pricing your living standard (determining how life-style decisions will affect your living standard).

Much of this advice can be obtained for free by running ESPlannerBASIC or by going to www.esplanner.com and clicking Learn More and then checking out the case studies. Also, you can buy Spend 'Til the End -- co-authored by myself and personal financial columnist -- Scott Burns. The book's just out in paperback.