Genetics helps; it’s not dispositive:

“Yes, smarter people make more than someone with an average IQ. But they pretty much end up with the same amount of money.

By Karen Aho

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.

“If I were a person with low intelligence, I shouldn’t believe that I’m handicapped in any way, shape or form in achieving wealth,” said the study’s author, Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resource Research. “Conversely, if I’m sort of high intelligence, I shouldn’t believe I have any kind of special advantage.

“I don’t care what your IQ is — you can do well.”

More at MSN Money.

Comment:

And you don’t need to earn a lot, to keep a lot or become an financially independent. I know people with $200,000 incomes who are broke or worse. Can’t say I feel too sorry, unless they were sick. And I know people who make under $25,000 who own their own homes, have stock investments, no debt and live reasonably well. Some of this is up to individual self-discipline and the ability to make sensible choices.

That said, it doesn’t help when the financial and professional classes (bankers, accountants, CPA’s, lawyers) abandon professional ethics and set out to snooker people…