Why don't most people prepare for their future financially?

like for retirement, etc. Sometimes people remind me of the grasshopper in the fable the ant and the grasshopper, they just live for the moment and don't think of the future.

You can't count on the government because social security isn't enough to survive on in old age. The only person that you can count on 100% is you. Those of you who say that you live for the moment are fools and I'm sure you will regret it one day.

I think that for most people, we just don't know what to do, how to do it, or why to do it. How can you spend 16+ years in school and not be taught how to take care of yourself? What use is calculus if you don't know the value of compounding? Many professionals have doctorates and Masters and are just completely clueless in that one aspect of your life. School does very little to prepare you for the 'real world'. Look how complicated mortgages are. I had never heard of an ARM until it was on the news. I had only heard of the 30yr-fixed.

Once you get out of school you are just so busy starting out with no money and huge college loans, I think you just kinda back-peddle for awhile. Many people don't come from families that can teach them how to manage their money, so it takes you longer to figure it out. If your family was always poor, you had no money to manage, much less save. Also, alot of people don't discuss money. They regard it as private. In that way kids fail to learn much from their family.

Except that in the real world the government forces the ant to pay for the grasshopper's retirement anyway. So why should he bother?

Some people do not make enough money to save for the future. When you are barely getting by how can you put money aside?

B/c if you are living from paycheck to paycheck you don't ahve the financial resources to do so. And if you get food stamps or any other such thing and you get over $2000 in savings you will lose your benefits.

I'm one of those "grasshoppers" who lives for the moment. I couldn't live any other way. As far as the future, what happens, happens.

Those shoes are on sale, have to vacation. buy house we can't afford, eat out all the time.

Immediate gratification...........I worked the last 40 years as a thermo engineer......I saved 25% of everything I made.......now I am millionare and not at care in the world.....60 and loveing it.........

I'm 21 and because I want top be prepared I'm affiliated in a Network marketing Company. I reccomend people to read Robert Kiyosaki, I think he is the best on teaching about money and prepearing yourselves for the future.
here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPcHwvCJ...

I want to have the know how of doing things and also to have something that can make my money work for me and not the way aroung :D

Javier A. Goya
www.website.ws/vichog

because people who "can't save for..." are morons, and will always be poor. It is more important to them to lease a BMW or drive an expensive SUV and complain about gas rather than building wealth.