I was talking to my sister the other day and she told me that my dad is out 30K because of the last slump in the stock market. My dad doesn’t have a lot, he’s retired and on a fixed income. He really couldn’t afford to lose that money. That means at least a year’s worth of living expense for him. Do you think he deserves a bailout?
My retirement fund is barely worth anything to speak of right now. I was kind of hoping we’d have more time to fund it after we take care of the girls’ college fund first. But with the way everything has been sliding down lately, my balance hasn’t been looking good. It’s on a downward slope too. I think I should get a bailout. But are we going to get it? Highly unlikely.
Of course, the big banks who probably did worse than we did as far as making financial decisions, they got bailed out. That would have been OK if we knew that the bailout is going towards getting the rest of us out of the hole too. But no, we’ve been hearing about how their executives got their usual fat, end of the year bonuses. It doesn’t seem fair. I’d like to know who the genius was that orchestrated a bailout with no accountability. Because now that the banks have our taxpayer earned money, they are not very forthcoming about how they are putting it to use.
Regular, hard working people are getting the end of the year pink slips instead of bonuses unlike the Wall Street folks with investment banker jobs. They’re safe, thanks to all those workers holding the pink slip. It doesn’t seem fair.
I’m just saying…
December 27th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I liked this post. The average person is the one that should be getting bailed out, if any.
I do however have a problem with everyone whining and complaining about loosing their $$$ when they trusted a flawed system.
I have never based my future or retirement on any 401K. It was based on the stock market! If you know anything about the stock market the system is flawed. This has happened several times before. Its fun. I day trade here and there but its just a hobby. I wouldn’t bet my future of it.
And that’s what people did. That’s what a lot of my family did. My uncle had 80K several months ago and now he has 9K. Feel for him but that’s his fault.
We are all shuffled into this system where we go to school, make good grades, go to college, get in debt, get a “career,” eventually get married (some do this part several times), have kids, put money into our 401Ks, work till your in your 60s, and IF you have good health you will have approx 15-20 years of living on your investments you made for 40 years. Great life. Its a conveyor belt of conformity and now we are all seeing how totally dumb that is.
I for one am happy all this is happening. When the economy is bad things are cheap and can get some deals on property. YES!!!!!
Did you think it was going to go up forever.