That's my rejoinder to the many media columnists and talk-show hosts who are always advising us on matters of personal finance.

Like Brutus, they are all honorable men and women, but they labor under the handicap of too little information about whom they advise.  For example: "You don't need a broker," one of them says, "You don't need a financial planner", another says, "You can do just as well on your own," they say.  All this with so little information about you scares us.

Some of you investors might do as well as if you were using a financial planner, or other advisors.  You will be among the exceptions, however.  You will be the sophisticated ones willing to pay close attention to what might be good advice from your favorite financial guru of the media.

You will be the students of investments, the natural analysts, perhaps, knowledgeable enough to sift out the advice that applies to you and leave the rest.  But would any of these experts really have advised you the same way had they known more facts about you and your finances?  Can you really trust advice based on a one-page or two-minute description of an always-complicated money question?  We know some of that advice has been bad and how can we tell which media expert is right . . . and for which decade?

Did you have a chance to tell them about your tax situation?  Or the debts that you have already incurred?  What about the tenuous job situation?  Do they know your wife is three months along?  How seldom do these things get discussed?

Did he or she ask about how you stand with long-term health care?  And what about disability income?  Will you have any left if you put all your money on some "investment of the month" and become disabled?  Should that money really be going into insurance?  Or reducing the mortgage on your house?  Or used as a cash reserve?

Oh, the media talk-show expert didn't ask about those things?  I didn't think so.  Any good financial planner would, of course!  And then ask you another fifty or sixty questions before giving any advice.

We can't blame those experts, can we?  They do the best they can with the little information they have.  Actually, their best is often pretty good.  Considering.

Any media expert is dangerous, though, because he or she is talking to thousands, while only listening to dozens.  When one says to a caller, "You can do just as well on your own," perhaps he or she means that a particular caller can.  And with the few dozen they talk to, they are obviously giving good advice, occasionally.

However, what about the thousands who think he's talking to them?  He might not know about them, but we do here at the NCFE.  Let me tell you who they are:

They are the young couple, baby-boomers, with two children.  They are 60-year-old couples and 75-year-old couples.  Some younger listeners are changing jobs and some are out of work.  A number of them are little old ladies on a pension.  Some have gotten a little windfall.  Among them are the soon-to-be retired, soon-to-be divorced and maybe the soon-to-be laid off.  Some, no, a lot, are maxed-out on not one or two, but three or more credit cards.

Only a few of the thousands of eager readers and listeners have any money to invest.  Many of you will some day have money to invest.  Too many others of you will go on spending more than you make and more than a few of you will declare bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, some of you will remember that expert's advice given to one caller, "You can do just as well on your own."  You might think it applies to you and perhaps say "No" to a financial planner who might have helped you get control of your spending, even helped you cut up some of your credit cards.  You will go without the much more knowledgeable advice based on those fifty or more questions he or she asked which that media expert never had a chance to ask.

Many of you will invest "On Your Own" and make foolish investments or buy the wrong kind of insurance for your situation.  Some will fall prey to hot-shot salespeople who won't sell you the things that could mean a better future, but will sell you things you don't need.  Others of you will buy financial products from people only pretending to be financial planners.  Things that no good financial advisor of any kind would advise. Only the cons and the pretenders.

Where will the experts be when these things happen? Unfortunately, you, the listener or the reader, will be on your own!  And individuals, on their own, even with the best of intentions, don't have the financial self-discipline to save, insure, invest and plan adequately on their own.  They mean to, but seldom get around to it.

Too many of them end up dependent on Social Security and Medicare!