MONEY matters

With the stock market sinking daily, it’s hard for many investors to stomach the thought of putting money back into the market. That’s totally understandable. As a short-term strategy, many people are keeping their cash in money market accounts or short term savings accounts. If that helps you sleep at night, then that’s what you need to do. But eventually, things will stabilize, markets will go back up, and you’ll need to start planning for your prime years. With average life expectancy at 90, earning less than 2% on your investments over the long term is a riskier strategy than you might imagine.

Most people, even with the best of intentions, usually spend pretty close to what they were spending prior to retirement. Many of my clients that have officially stopped working for money actually are surprised to discover that they are spending more than when they were working full-time. This is why planning for the prime years of your life, formerly known as the golden years, (prime just sounds better), is so essential to future financial security.

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to be on KGO radio in San Francisco for an hour with Joanne Greene, as part of the book tour for Your Money or Your Life, of which I was a contributor to. The topic du jour of course was money. We discussed money and spirituality as well as your relationship with money and then moved to discussing the current economic meltdown. That’s when things got interesting.

As soon as we started talking about the stimulus plan, specifically the mortgage proposal President Obama spoke about last week , that’s when I heard the anger so many people are feeling right now come roaring out of the gate. With right wing talk radio fanning the flames of anger and stoking the fear so many people feel, we’re going backwards, not forwards in solving the serious problems our country is facing. Joanne’s show is progressive and she is one smart cookie. Yet even with her listeners that I sense tend to be more moderate and left of center, the vibe of anger and blaming other people for getting us into this mess was present.