Wall Street Journal columnist James Stewart has a great piece this week, about how fleeting good fortune can be, and how important it is to manage your money responsibly. I really recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s a few highlights (emphasis added):

Our culture often glorifies financial success, but it is an illusion to think that, just because you’ve made money, you’re set for life. Highly paid and visible sports stars and entertainers seem especially prone to dramatic financial setbacks (perhaps because their money problems are more likely to end up in the news). But surely everyone knows someone who has suffered similar misfortunes.

There are tried and true ways to avoid such a fate, starting with the simple maxim to live within your means. Yet most, if not all, of the Madoff victims no doubt thought they were. Their mistake was assuming they could trust someone else to manage all their money for them. Mr. Madoff is fortunately an extreme exception. Yet the financial crisis has unmasked a plethora of examples of firms putting their interests above their clients, some of it criminal, most of it not.

The vast number of financial advisers and money managers rightly pride themselves on their integrity and devotion to clients’ interests, and render valuable services to their clients. Almost everyone can benefit from such a relationship. But no one should abdicate all responsibility for investing and monitoring their hard-earned savings. Simple diversification would have prevented any of Mr. Madoff’s victims from losing everything. The basics of personal finance aren’t all that complicated. Why isn’t such a course offered, at least as an elective, at every high school in the U.S.?

Until we address the fact that tens of millions of Americans lack the basic financial literacy they need to manage their own money, the Bernie Madoffs of the world are going to keep stealing it from them. Read the whole column here.