And I note up front that I’m purely an amateur at most things financial, especially the stock market.\u00a0 I “got into” the stock market with mutual funds in January 1997.\u00a0 I used the “big” raise when I got promoted from first lieutenant to captain to fully fund my IRA and take some “play money” to the market.\u00a0 Until last fall, I was doing OK — as was nearly everyone else who was doing something similar.<\/p>\n
The difference for me is I have about twenty years until I need to try to pry anything out of those mutual funds, so as long as they stay solvent, I should do fine.\u00a0 I’m going to be brash and say I saw this coming back in around 1999.\u00a0 Any number of books could have foretold what has happened, but I read The Bear Book:\u00a0 Survive and Profit in Ferocious Markets<\/em> by John Rothchild.\u00a0 In essence, I learned I needed to get out of debt and stay that way, because the next bear market would be brutal.<\/p>\n Beginning in Summer, 1996, I was trapped in NYC and besides rent and outrageous car insurance, I didn’t need to spend money, so I committed to getting out of debt. I was proud to leave NYC debt-free in 1999, and I’m pleased to say I’ve been able to avoid debt since then.\u00a0 For those of you endeavoring to do the same thing, stay committed.\u00a0 It’s worth every sacrifice you make to get your debt paid off and live on cash afterward.\u00a0 It’s incredibly freeing, and you can <\/em>do it.<\/p>\n I’m looking at the graph of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from it’s inception.\u00a0 The last time the market dipped to the level it’s at right now, it took two years to recover.\u00a0 I’m going to speculate it will take four years to recover from this latest plunge.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it fell twice as far to get to the point it’s at right now, so I believe it will take twice as long to recover.<\/p>\n I hope it recovers quicker, but with what I’m seeing happen in Washington, I fear it may take far longer.\u00a0 I’m seeing a dearth of people, corporations, and politicians willing and able to accept responsibility for their actions, and I see nobody holding them accountable.\u00a0 I don’t believe the incoming administration is really going to release every individual from their financial woes, no matter how many people speculate it will be so.\u00a0 Once those people realize the Promised Land has not been delivered, I’m sure they will feel betrayed.\u00a0 Cries of “Tax the Rich” may sound great until you realize that “they” think you’re<\/em> “Rich.”\u00a0 “Tax Big Business” sounds great until Big Business has to lay people off to pay their taxes, or worse, they take their production facilities off-shore.\u00a0 Then people don’t have a job to be able to pay taxes.\u00a0\u00a0 Or buy food.\u00a0 Or pay for\u00a0 housing.\u00a0 And all that bailout money?\u00a0 It was never really there — vapor cash.\u00a0 See, we haven’t paid the taxes to produce it yet, because money Congress appropriates comes from taxes paid by hard working Americans.\u00a0 There is no Free Lunch.\u00a0 It may not be you, but somebody pays.<\/p>\n The more you expect your government to provide for you, the more they have to take from you to be able to provide it.\u00a0 This is a very slippery slope we’re descending toward Socialism, and I’m very concerned the nation\u00a0 won’t find its way away from that raging river ready to snatch us away.<\/p>\n But, like in September 2001 when I was pleased to see this country and the rest of the world come together during tough times, I hope we still have it in us to come together again, make the tough calls, double down, knuckle under, and all those terms that mean we dig in our heels and fight back.\u00a0 If we can find it within ourselves to do what needs to be done, we’ll be fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And I note up front that I’m purely an amateur at most things financial, especially the stock market.\u00a0 I “got into” the stock market with mutual funds in January 1997.\u00a0 I used the “big” raise when I got promoted from first lieutenant to captain to fully fund my IRA and …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-not-silly-stuff","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}