My dad taught me to save.
One of his lessons when I was very young was that he would point out a guy that drove a new Mercedes that he knew was in financial trouble and then he pointed out a fisherman that he knew was a saver and drove a beat up old pick up truck.
The point he made was that it didn’t mean anything if you made $125K per year but spent $130K per year. The guy that made $50K but saved $15K was ahead.
That’s why I feel like all of this stimulus and crazy low interest rates is so counter-intuitive to everything my dad taught me.
The incentive to save is gone because banks can’t offer you a decent rate of return because the government just keeps printing money.
They have tried to do away with the business cycle of boom and bust by rewarding companies that make shitty business decisions by bailing them out instead of letting them fail and letting the responsible company that kept a strong balance sheet to buy them at auction prices, and they do the same thing for people that are irresponsible with home purchases.
They place the blame on the lenders. At what point is someone that is signing a mortgage responsible?
I feel like both parties have completely sold out our future and the answer is always to print more money to bail us out.
The reason that people are supposed to invest in stocks is because you expect growth and to be able to participate in profits in the form of dividends but these companies hardly even pretend to pay out decent dividends because investors (myself included) have allowed the upper management of these public companies to pay themselves exorbitant salaries and pass on hardly anything at all back to the small investor.
Can you believe that people were upset that they couldn’t invest in the GM stock offering?
Who the fuck in their right mind wants to invest in a shitty company that makes shitty cars who has already proved that it can’t manage itself and can’t compete worldwide because of the ridiculous amount of money it has to pay it’s union workers and pensions? and yet people are tripping over themselves to throw money at this company????
So all the talking heads on tv say that they want the American consumer to spend-spend- spend, and I’m scratching my head saying why wouldn’t they want people to save- save-save, and possibly be able to take care of themselves when they get older and retire at a reasonable age?
How the hell is anyone supposed to ever retire if they are teaching every generation that it is Un-American to save money?
WHEN DID LOGIC GET TURNED ON IT’S HEAD??????
Am I a crazy person? Is there something I’m missing???
was dad wrong???
God help us all.
end rant
Good Morning Gloucester 