It's 2am and I can't sleep because I slept for 2 hours when I got home from work. I went to the gym and watched 24 today. I'll write about that later.
I think the worst thing in an economy like this is the feeling of not moving forward. It feels like I'm going to work to make less money, this happens when your self employed, and then the money I'm making I'm losing in stock positions. Obviously you can say well why are you being a jackass and keeping your money in stocks. Fair point but when the market makes a turn I'm not prepared to be on the sidelines. So this feeling is making me reconsider how I'm living life.
What really blows my mind about this time period though is that I'm not being completely irresponsible with my loot. No doubt about it I've blown cash in ridiculous ways (siri, ac, sportsbetting, the list goes on). However, the couple of "smart" moves I decided to make have completely backfired. I open up a Roth IRA 2 years ago. I contribute 4,000 AFTER TAX dollars. The portfolio lost 4,000 dollar last year. This was done by a financial adviser who I obviously trusted way too much.
I just don't know how much more of this people can take. I am debt free and single with no responsibilities and I feel effected by this to the point that I'm just scratching my head wondering where it will all end. What about the people who have kids and mortgages and have gotten laid off? And to top it off we have a president who believes it's a good idea to further tax the affluent and give to the needy. Let's just think about this for a second. The person who is running a business successfully, hiring employees and the basic life blood of our economy is getting their taxes hiked while some lady is giving birth to here 7th child so that she can collect more in welfare. I'm aware that increased taxes are spread out among various projects so no need to point this out.
You want to make more money in this time period so that you can give it to the gov't who will use it inappropriately. The gov't gives money to banks to "bail them out" and what do they do with it? They hire musicians for lavish parties and top notch hotel suites. The gov't doesn't even know where the money is going. We have all these stimulus's which is going to raise inflation and destroy the dollar. People who make bad decisions are getting bailed out (AIG, GM, C) but what's it all for?
What is happening reminds of me of the book Atlas Shrugged. Atlas is a greek mythology character who "supports the heavens." In the novel "Atlas" is referred to the people who run the world. Basically the smartest, most determined people who get things done the most efficiently. What happens is that the "gov't" (probably can use a better word) intervenes with the Atlas's of the world. They claim monopolies and implement rules that want to see everyone succeed rather than just the best. The Atlas's fight back and leave society forming their own. This is a pretty brief and I read the book about a year ago so my ideas may be off a bit but it relates to what we are going through.
The gov't is becoming a bigger engine and we are seeing capitalism disintegrate. The wealthy will continue to get squeezed until they can't take it any more and they will do something about it. You can only squeeze them so far before they do something. I just hope we can get out of this year without something drastic happening.
I'm trying to figure out how to be smart enough to make money using my money. If you were smart enough to short the Dow at 14,000 or short anything for that matter you would be sitting here much wealthier. So here we are again. Do I reset the tables and try again with a different approach. Start using covered calls or put everything I own into GOLD because I think the dollar will be worthless? I don't know the answers only that it's frustrating because I believe that there is money to be made.
A final thought to this ridiculously long rant which I'm fairly certain no one will read. I can take my money out of equities and keep everything in cash and earn .3%, and then you won't have to read about me complaining about how much money i've lose or how bad stuff sucks. But, who wants to save for all their life and never spend a dime so that one day they can say "wow look how much money I have, too bad I never got the chance to have fun and spend it."
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