We found someone who wasn’t intimidated by our guest post guidelines. Nelson Smith, who blogs over at Financial Uproar. He’s one of the very few personal finance bloggers who can actually write. And he’s hilarious. And we agree with almost all of what he has to say. If you like this post, then he’d love for you to come check out his blog.

Few people notice how roomy it is on the right side of the curve.

I’m friends with a married couple, even though I’m single. Yeah, it’s a little weird.

This married couple is just like so many others. They’re both gainfully employed, combined they probably make close to $90k per year. They have reasonable housing costs and reasonable vehicle costs too, since they’re both smart enough to drive fully-paid-for used cars. They don’t spend excessive money on wants. They probably go out a little more than they should, but that’s fairly common for young people. Hell, I go out more often than I should, and I’m probably the third cheapest bastard on the whole internet.

On the surface, they don’t seem to be in bad financial shape. There’s no obvious place where they overspend. Yet, like so many others, they struggle to make ends meet every month. Are they morons? Well… yes. But they’ve got numbers on their side.

If this couple complains to me about their finances one more time, I’ll strangle their puppy. They easily make enough to pay for bills and to save for a rainy day. This shouldn’t be that hard. Why are they struggling so much? Here’s a snapshot of some of the excess in their lives:

– an alarm system ($40 per month)
– unlimited long distance ($20 per month)
– movie rental subscriptions ($25 per month)
– overdraft charges ($40 per month)
– new shoes from some website ($40 per month)
– a dog (>$50 per month)

Chances are, you’re practically blinded with outrage right now. What morons! Who gets a perpetual liability (that’s the dog) when they can barely afford to make ends meet? Who needs new shoes every month? They literally go to work and leave the house unlocked, yet pay for an alarm system. There’s hundreds of dollars more that they could cut from their budget tomorrow if they were serious about cutting. It doesn’t take a financial genius to figure out they’re wasting money. Why don’t they just do it?

Because they don’t care.

Most people sit in kind of a financial purgatory. They don’t get themselves in too much trouble, yet they never bother to get ahead. Every month they essentially break even. Because they have no financial sense, they pat themselves on the back for not getting any further in the hole. They slowly make progress on their student loans or credit cards, even eventually paying them off. Once they do, they decide they can now afford another payment, so they buy a new car. They rinse and repeat until sweet, sweet death saves them from their never-ending avalanche of payments.

Okay, not really. But they don’t get wealthy, that’s for sure.

As the writers here at Control Your Cash advocate tirelessly, the key to wealth is quite simple. Buy assets. Sell liabilities. Keep doing these things until you become wealthy. I guarantee if my friends read that golden rule, they’d understand it. Yet they have just about zero hope of ever implementing it. They’re just not PFers.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a PFer is a personal finance geek. PFers check their bank balances more than once a week. PFers constantly look for ways to trim the excess from their budgets. PFers spend more time on their budgets than their sex lives. PFers… well, you get the idea.

Most of the people who’ll ever regularly read this blog are PFers. Some just stumbled here looking for really snarky posts on the lottery or something. Most of us are people trying to move in one direction- toward wealth. And since we hang around each other so much, we often forget just how different we are than most other people.

What I’m going to propose just might shock and appall you, but that’s kind of what I do. After all, my blog is called Financial Uproar. It isn’t called Sunshine Flowers Puppy Personal Finance Hug Hour. I try to tell it like it is, just like the fine folks here at Control Your Cash. And that’s why we’ll be friends forever. Well, that and our friendship bracelets. You did get my friendship bracelet, right Greg? (Ed. note: No.)

What was I talking about again? Right. Here’s what you should do about your friends’ bad financial habits – absolutely nothing. You should give no advice. You should avoid bringing up money topics. They’ll complain about how their financial life sucks, but you should offer no advice past the most simple of concepts. Do not get involved in their finances one bit. And for the love of God, never lend them a dime.

No matter what the accomplishment, the impetus for change has to come from within. If your friends are going to improve their finances, they have to do it. No amount of prodding or helping on your part will get them to change. They have to get to whatever their breaking point is. Your help won’t do squat, as much as you think it might.

Most people will never reach that point. They’ll have a mortgage payment for most of their adult lives. They’ll cash out equity from their house to take vacations and buy cars and pay for their kids’ weddings, because they’re morons. They’ll think they’re doing well because they’ll compare themselves to the masses instead of comparing themselves to the wealthy. 

Chances are that if they’re not already on the path of wealth, they’ll never become any higher than middle-class. No matter how much you want to help, it’ll ultimately fall on deaf ears. You can’t help somebody who doesn’t want to help themselves. Or, more accurately, you can’t help someone who doesn’t think they have a problem.

**This article is featured in the Yakezie Carnival -Newbie Edition**

**This article is featured in the Totally Money Carnival #32-A Flood of Great Articles**