Brit Brit, the financial guru

This story, from Yahoo! Personal Finance, discusses how Britney can be a lesson to us all. Well, at least financially her maladies translate into valuable lessons about personal finance, savings and retirement.

The article points out

Assuming she could scrape by on 70% to 80% of her pre-retirement income in retirement - or about $590,000 a month in today's dollars - Ms. Spears would have to accumulate a nest egg of just over $300 million by age 65.

Sound daunting? Nah. All she has to do is keep working and put away 8% or so of her monthly $737,000 income until she retires and she'll hit that goal.

8% ain't that bad. And just think--if your employer matches, that's twice the amount. Obviously Britney has no one employer to match any funds, but her failure to save should be a lesson to us all.

A 25-yr old making $30,000 a year, for instance, and putting away the same 8% of his pay into a 401(k) plan annually for the rest of his career is virtually guaranteed a comfortable retirement by time he hits his 60s.

A comfortable retirement? Sounds nice. Hell, a retirement at all sounds good at this point.

The lesson: When it comes to saving for retirement, sometimes you can Gimme More and have your cake too.

(Doesn't she look smart in the picture above?)

...but my purchase money won't be well-spent

In addition to the fears that my Blackout CD purchase will fuel certain addictive items (coke, alcohol, prescription pain killers, child abuse, Starbucks), I now know that none of it is being saved.

And normally I wouldn't care, but you and I both know that this woman's children are going to need years of detailed therapy. And that shit ain't cheap.

She needs to take a JA credit and spending class, as Moxie would say.