A High IQ is No Financial Guarantee

Ha! Haven't I told you that successful investing isn't about gathering a lot of information? It's about correctly acting on the relatively small amount of information that's truly helpful. Given the right structure (such as the one SMI provides), "it's so easy even a caveman could do it." Now along comes Karen Aho writing on a study from Ohio State that adds some empirical evidence to the mix:

You don't have to be a genius to manage your money. That's the take from a new study of intelligence and wealth, which looked at thousands of baby boomers and found that those with average and low IQs were just as good at saving money as those with high IQs. At the same time, smart people were just about as likely to run into credit problems... The research does a good job of proving that the basics of money management are fairly simple, attainable by anyone with a minimum level of intelligence...

So, class, what's the key to investing success if it's not IQ? That's right, it's . . . self-discipline.

Read Aho's article for interesting stats on how IQ related to income, wealth, and credit management.

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