Ever since making financial planning a career, I’ve developed this habit of listening carefully when people discuss how they save money. One of my observations has been that many people don’t save enough money to warrant any real concern about good investment practices.

I read a statistic in the Journal of Financial Planning last month which stated that 19% of today’s workers know with accuracy when they’ll be eligible for social security benefits.* This statistic is of particular concern to me after similar findings in a recent study I conducted to determine just how much (or how little) people ages 18-30 really know about social security.

I’m writing this post because of an e-mail response I got from my friend JLP over at allthingsfinancialblog.com. First, let me point out that JLP runs an excellent blog- one of my favorites. I sent him an e-mail recently because he has a section on his site which links to others financial planners, specifically those who write blogs.

Social Security is a federal program which provides retirement and disability income to workers through the collection of Social Security taxes. Every worker in the United States is responsible for paying these taxes during their working years and entitled to receiving benefit checks when they are eligible for retirement.

Americans tend to have mixed feelings about credit cards. They appreciate having easy access to funds, but largely resent the tendency created by credit cards to overspend. Credit Card issuers pollute the problem by pushing the use of credit on consumers and tangling a web of fees and interest charges along the way.