Don't Lose Hope

There's a lot of bad news these days. In fact, it's down right depressing... unless you keep perspective.

What we are experiencing is an adjustment. Nobody is actually calling this an economic adjustment, but that is what this is. We have ridden out an overinflated market that for the past decade has caused housing prices, salaries, and the stock market to soar. But, none of this was real. It was all on paper. And, it was not a good thing.

Perspective is something that gets better with age. Being over the 50 mark, my perspective is that the overinflated, bloated, fat economy couldn't last. Young people were having a heck of a time getting started because they were unable to catch-up with the inflated prices of homes, cars, and lifestyles. That's what caused them to over expend their credit cards and get mortgages they really couldn't afford. Now they are paying the price.

When I started out, you could actually live on a starting salary, and you could save a few dollars here and there for the down payment on your first house. My first place - a one bedroom condo - cost me $14,300 in 1978. I sold it seven years later for a $10,000 profit and put that against our down payment for our first single family home. It wasn't easy, but I made it a priority to save. SAVE - that word seems to have disappeared from our national vocabulary. And, here we are today, in debt to the Chinese.

But, don't lose hope. There is a way out of this situation. It's that four letter word SAVE. Stop eating out, stop buying stuff you don't really need, and start putting away a couple hundred dollars each month. If everyone in America did this, we'd reclaim our ability to make economically sound decisions. When you spend your real dollars (ones you can touch and see in your bank account), you are much more careful about the financial decisions you make.

Our government should take a lesson in fiscal responsibility too. It's really Simple, Simple.