2013-04-02

All Fools Day at the White House


Came early this year when the President declared April as National Financial Capability Month on March 29.
I call upon all Americans to observe this month with programs and activities to improve their understanding of financial principles and practices

Obama is lecturing me on financial responsibility?  Perhaps he'll teach me how to make and adhere to a budget?

So what's next?

Is John Boehner going to teach me how to use sun block?

Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz going to teach me how to comb my hair?

This is the second year of National Financial Capability Month.  We also had  National Financial Literacy Month in 2010 & 2011.

If you do not have a life, you can read all four:

April 2, 2010-2010 National Financial Literacy Month
March 31, 2011-2011 National Financial Literacy Month
April 2, 2012-2012 National Financial Capability Month
March 29, 2013-2013 National Financial Capability Month

So here is what I learned:

The debt at the end of March when each of these proclamations were made:

Year Total Debt
2010 12,773,123,000,000
201114,270,115,000,000
201215,582,079,000,000
201316,687,289,000,000

So given we had a debt of 11,126,941 000,000 on  March 31 2009, the president called on us to become financially literate while the federal government was racking this sort of debt each year:


Year Debt Increase Debt Incr per Person *
2010 1,646,182,000,000 5487.27
2011 1,496,992,000,000 4989.97
2012 1,311,964,000,000 4373.21
2013 1,105,210,000,000 3684.03
* using a rough number of 300,000,000 people

So the federal government has increased the debt for each person in the U.S. by 18534.49.  Yep.  That's almost $20,000 even for your child sleeping in her cradle.

Here it is only 2-April.  I think my financial acumen has really grown.