Congratulations! You're in fine company!
Now that you've all had your 5,000-calorie Thanksgiving dinners, sliced off more turkey meat for late-night sammitches, and the carcass is simmering away for the turkey soup that you'll be eating at least once a week until Christmas, it's now time to turn our attention to more serious matters.
This was the cover of last week's Economist. The article does not paint a rosy picture (to say the least) of the near future for America's economy. I read words such as: recession, grim, pessimistic, gloomy, housing-busts, $4 per gallon gas by next summer, tricky road ahead...It's a little bit concerning, isn't it?
Yes, I have to admit that I'm slightly concerned.
But am I worried?
Nope!
Ya wanna know why?
No?
Too bad, 'cause I'm gonna tell ya anyway!
I learned from the experience of the early 2000s, and I decided that I'm not going to live through the worry of falling, or even the potential of falling, markets again. Yup, that's right! I called my stockbroker-friend the day before Thanksgiving and told him to transfer all the assets of the mutual funds in my retirement account to their corresponding money market accounts. You see, this way I won't have to worry about this stuff during the holidays. I'll be sipping my café au lait with my pinkie held high in the air on Christmas morning in Paris knowing that our retirement money is earning 4% interest in a money market account instead of potentially dropping like a lead weight. Next week, I'll have a "conference call" (Mrs. TBF loves it when I call it that) with our main financial adviser back in Chicago who handles the bulk of our investments; these are much more diversified, and I'm not too worried about them.
Maybe I'll be wrong and the market will go up 10% over the next couple of months. Who knows? But...I don't think I'm going to be wrong about this one. We're just going to wait this one out, try to predict when it's bottoming out, and then jump right back into the wonderful, crazy world of personal investing in the 2000s.
Enjoy that turkey soup!
3 comments:
I did something similar in early 2000, lightening my equity positions to some extent. Unfortunately, I could have done more.
You've got me thinking. I'll need to dust off my S&P 500 prediction model.
When was the last time you got an ROAR? Check my blog. More info there :)
I would only worry if we were older and didn't have time to recover from a crash. Still, it's concerning. Can't wait until Jan. '09 when a Democrat takes office.
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