I’m sure you did your research. I will not disagree. That said, experience taught me not to put too much stock in data.

We can’t solve problems, until we identify the problem correctly — and I don’t think you’ve done that. As the old saying goes, we can’t cure a dis-ease by treating symptoms.

I took note of two things. One, you used the words “we and our” suggesting you were a two-income household. To use data correctly, you need to put it into context. To that end, I recommend you read “The Two Income Trap” by Elizabeth and Amelia Warren. In a nutshell, maintaining the same standard of living supported by one income prior to the ’90s, required two incomes after 1990.

Two, you speak as though you were born with an understanding of money. You weren’t. Unfortunately, by the late 1980s, financial literacy had been removed from the public-school curriculum. As a result, American high schools have been graduating “financially illiterate” students for that last 30 years. That is the reason, so many Americans were tricked into sub-prime and other bad loans that led to the housing market crash in 2007.

Again, I am disputing your conclusions, not your data. The 5–10% of people without access to basic appliances, often lack heating. Water rates are skyrocketing as well. Expecting these people to put money in a cookie jar every week, so they can invest in the stock market someday is absurd.

I doubt you came from poverty or experienced homelessness. If so, data cannot educate you. Simply put, you lack the basic math and money skills necessary to address poverty. Instead, you make yourself feel good by comparing yourself to the poor. If the poor were as smart and good and sacrificial as you are, they would not be poor — right? Baloney. People are poor because their society is poor — poor in brains, poor in talent and desperately poor in moral fortitude.

Nonetheless, I think you are correct — 100% right. For 30 years, I’ve taught civic courses in financial literacy and political literacy for at-risk students and young adults. A lousy one-hour class changes lives. You can’t imagine the excitement, the sense of personal power and the raw determination a little literacy in these two arenas inspires. Without fail, I’m asked every time, why didn’t they teach us this in school? I leave the answer to that question to you.