I have been running my own small parking management company in New England for the past ten years. Parking management means staffing garages and valet services, collecting and reporting revenue and expenses for the facility owners, etc. It is a 40 +/- employee operation.

My experience in this sort of business has given me a window on small business issues including taxation and the often burdensome reporting requirements. But I have also become better aware of the daily challenges faced by my hourly wage workers (childcare, healthcare, high incidence of drug abuse, etc.). I have also learned that some people who drive fancy cars really do think they are above us poor parking attendants and others (including some very successful real estate developers) take the time to treat front line workers like human beings. There are good people and complete jerks in every social class.

I began investing in the market in 2003. I do my own investing, basing my decisions on my own research and experiences. I have discovered that while investing takes time and effort and some degree of caution, it is not that difficult. Like managing money in any aspect of life it takes an honest assessment free of wishful thinking and a knowledge of ones own limitations. I have not gotten rich by investing, but I have been able to achieve far better yields than a savings account or money market.

The lack of financial literacy in this country (which I see first hand in many of my employees and read about on sites such as this) is a major concern of mine. I think the common ignorance of how money works (on both the large banking scale and on a family level) is causing major harm to our economy. I think this ignorance is cynically exploited by some companies (predatory lenders, shark-rate credit card companies) and used to prop up a pitifully over extended financial system in this country. Any political change which confronts the problems we face in these times will need to involve basic financial education, I think.

For my next business (or volunteer) project, I am contemplating doing something related to financial literacy education. We don't need to all be financial wizards to understand how to manage (or avoid) debt, but most folks can't handle basic money problems (and indeed make them worse by injecting emotion into the issue). We don't let folks drive cars who haven't shown they have basic skills, yet millions of people with bank accounts and credit cards don't know (and were never taught) the basic rules of the financial road. Whether that is part of a social plan or just some gross systemic oversight I will leave to the imagination of the reader.