Something beyond the basics

Here I go again...

I’m always interested in magazine or internet articles that promise to give new and can’t-live-without information about everyday living topics – maximizing your credit rating, protecting yourself from identity theft, losing weight, eating less fat, planning for retirement… I’m an information junkie and can’t resist looking for the ‘latest and best.’

And I’m always disappointed. You’d have to be brain dead or living in a cave to not know, at this point, that you need to pay your bills on time in order to have good credit. Can’t they come up with better advice than that? Anyone who doesn’t yet understand what happens when you max out a credit card and only pay the minimum payment deserves what they get (and probably isn’t reading an article about it anyway.) I’m tired of reading the same generic ‘retirement’ article about how it’s never too late to start saving and you’ll probably need more than you think. Good grief! I don’t need that – I need to know where to save it, and how much is enough. More specifics please! Eat less, exercise more? How helpful is that, actually? Guard your passwords and PINs. Don’t give out your SS#. Don’t eat fast food all the time. Is there nothing new under this sun?

I do realize that the kind of information I’m hoping for can’t be found in our “dummy down to the masses” media sources who seem to honestly think those masses are stupid. But wouldn’t it be nice if there was a ‘delve deeper’ source in there somewhere? Wouldn’t it be lovely to see a ‘level II, III, IV and V’ attached to those articles? Couldn’t they just understand that we aren’t ALL stupid? (Or at least, that we don’t want to be.)

Instead of giving us an opportunity to ‘vote’ for the next person to get kicked off ‘Survivor’ or express our opinion on a poll about ‘should Katie Couric get a new hairdo for her new job?’ maybe they’d get more of us interested in the news if there was actually some ‘news’ involved.