Friday, December 12, 2008

Renewed shame?

I ripped the subhead from Noonan today just because it kinda resonated with my most recent post below. As I read further I found this paragraph in today's column:


There's something else going on, a new or renewed sense of national shame. Or communal responsibility. Or a sense of reckoning. Whatever it is it's a reaction to the excesses of the O's [obscene numbers of zeroes in the dollar figures being tossed around today], a reaction against the ways of those who caused the mess on Wall Street and Main Street. It is a reassertion that there actually are rules, and that it is embarrassing to break them in a way so colorfully damaging and destructive to everyone else.


VDH has been on this for weeks now. If anything good can come out of all this financial mess is a reminder to live within our means. Personally, corporately, governmentally.


How many of us have that six-twelve month cash cushion put away for that rainy day that we were taught to have?

4 comments:

love johnson said...

we do

love johnson said...

We also have no credit card debt. We've played by the rules and been financially responsible, but no one is helping me out. Our 401k has lost almost 3/4 of it's value because of the freaking greed of Wall St AND folks who bought houses they knew they couldn't afford, even if they had jobs.

Stephanie said...

On the subhead, the Internet may not make us more literate or deep, but it sure has made it possible for me to provide clients with advice based on high quality information and lots of it, and to do this much faster than we could pre-Internet.

We're pretty good about keeping 6 months cash on hand. We are both small business owners, so both of us have wildly fluctuating cash flows; when we both have clients not paying, we dip into the cash stash. I guess that's a rainy day, or at least a misty one.

My claim to financial responsibility is that we have a good share of equity in our house and in K's duplex, even at the discounted prices.

I'm also angry at having to pay a dime for bailouts. As I've posted about before, though, the amount of the bad mortgages is tiny in comparison to the bailout amounts; the bailouts are paying for those damned derivatives.

3/4 of value?! Ouch. Mine is down about 45% and I thought that was painful; and I thought I was fairly aggressively invested.

love johnson said...

My figures were in error. Our Roth is down 53% - our traditional is down 35%.