Putting a personal face on the economy
Mar. 15th, 2009 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fitzwI can't speak for other people (or at least, I _shouldn't_ speak for other people), but I can speak for us.
We don't have very much in the way of actual investments (as opposed to money in savings accounts or CDs), and when we saw how the economy was looking, we stopped adding more money to those investments (the surrender charge was too high to simply take back our money).
We're actually rather fortunate that we didn't have much money in investments; as it was, what money we did have has lost value by more than 40% over the past year.
I know a couple who lost about 25% of their investments over the past year, but a significantly higher total loss than we had. They could have lost more, but they've been moving their money out of the at-risk investments into safer vehicles. Sure, lower yield, but at least not a net loss. They're retired, and this is their retirement savings, which they draw on on a regular basis, without an income that can offset the loss.
We've been putting some of our liquid assets into hard goods. In other words, buying equipment and supplies (such as the purchase of a wood stove last year), things that we are expecting to need in the future anyway, and will be useful now. That way if we lose more money, we'll still have some of the things that we were going to need.
Oh, and books. We still need our books. ;-)
We don't have very much in the way of actual investments (as opposed to money in savings accounts or CDs), and when we saw how the economy was looking, we stopped adding more money to those investments (the surrender charge was too high to simply take back our money).
We're actually rather fortunate that we didn't have much money in investments; as it was, what money we did have has lost value by more than 40% over the past year.
I know a couple who lost about 25% of their investments over the past year, but a significantly higher total loss than we had. They could have lost more, but they've been moving their money out of the at-risk investments into safer vehicles. Sure, lower yield, but at least not a net loss. They're retired, and this is their retirement savings, which they draw on on a regular basis, without an income that can offset the loss.
We've been putting some of our liquid assets into hard goods. In other words, buying equipment and supplies (such as the purchase of a wood stove last year), things that we are expecting to need in the future anyway, and will be useful now. That way if we lose more money, we'll still have some of the things that we were going to need.
Oh, and books. We still need our books. ;-)
