My cousin is a welder. I’ve seen some of his work and trust me, he’s quite talented. He’s a genuine hands-on kind of guy. He has a high-school education, and makes roughly 20 bucks an hour (if you’ve seen how fast and consistent he works, you’d understand how cheap that is). He does collect overtime pay, which is fairly consistent. He doesn’t know terms like “cash flow,” “hedging,” or “diversity,” but fundamentally understands them (better than most that do know the terms).

This all came about over beers this weekend. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting taken for a ride. He just started his ROTH IRA this year, and was buying into mutual funds with a front end load of 5%. He was fairly certain that the projections he was shown were on the optimistic side. By his figuring, the front load of the mutual funds was going to cost him a year of appreciation for the service of having someone else make the financial decisions. He could accept that, but wanted to make sure that he was going to be ready for retirement. I asked a lot of questions about his day-to-day and one-time expenses.

He’s selected some growth funds and some international funds. His adviser helped him determine the mix. He’s going to max out this year, and start his traditional IRA in February. He’ll have his house paid off by then. Oh, and he has more than his annual take-home pay in savings.

My cousin is 23 years old. This guy knows more about financial responsibility than any elected or appointed official. My cousin is Main Street. Try to convince me that anything the government has done this year will benefit him.