Useful LinkedIn Poll...

Steadyhand Investment Fund's Chris Stephenson recently concluded a poll on LinkedIn. The question:

What is your biggest challenge regarding your finances?

a) Cash Flow - Saving Vs. Spending

b) Managing Debt

c) Choosing the right product/service

d) Finding a trustworthy advisor

"Cash Flow - Saving Vs. Spending" won with 58% of the vote, although I thought it would be much higher. Regardless, I thought I would share my vote and subsequent comment on the page:

Saving Vs. Spending. Figuring out your balance goes as much as to figuring out you and who you are. What is your relationship with money? Everything else regarding personal finance can honestly be figured out. With this, Spending Vs. Saving becomes the age old question of "Who am I?" Are you that generous friend who picks up the check for dinner? Does that become your image and then you feel you always have to? Or are you that cheapskate who can only buy a birthday card on a loved one's birthday? Does saving involve sacrifice? Such a well-educated and hard working society, do we feel we deserve to sacrifice?

Or is out of the easiness of being able to take on so much debt that the blame should rest on the financial institutions or on our governments for allowing it to happen? Yes, one can legitimately make these points and pray they bail us out should we require it because how could they allow this to happen? That being said, if we can figure out ways to save, at the end of they day, we will come out on top.

Honestly, I think not only is it the greatest challenge regarding our finances but the greatest challenge for our age. As our world sees some of the biggest economic issues to erupt in a generation, it all comes down to the fact that the developed world has to save more, be less dependent on credit and spend less. And, yes, hopefully, the middle class will emerge in the emerging markets and pick up the slack...(not through racking up debt!)...