Your choice!

An old friend of mine I met in a parenting group when our babies (now 30-something adults) were little is a financial adviser. I've heard her say that if you have a clientele of poor people, you'll be poor, and I am sure that is correct.

However, there is a REAL NEED for poor people to read financial advice aimed at them. The advice would be different for someone living on $15K per year vs. someone living on about twice that, but honestly, nobody is writing advice for these people. That's because they can't pay for a financial adviser.

My friend did my taxes for a reduce rate for a couple of years and I was shocked at what she could do for me. After that she turned me over to someone else; I get it; she made nothing on me. But it opened my eyes to the kinds of loopholes you can get if you can hire someone really good.

I've had to figure out everything for myself but I don't know what I don't know. I always enjoy a feature I see in the WSJ where they take a person's entire financial situation and clarify it. I'd love to see that done for a handful of anonymous people living somewhere around 200 percent of the poverty line. The actual poverty line is useless, IMO. You're poor way above the poverty line. You can't live at the poverty line unless you're bunked with a relative or something like that.