Hubby and I aren't good with money. We can pay our bills, we just like to spend -- and we do. We have student loans and credit cards -- and if we live long enough we may even pay off the student loans. We also rent an apartment and have the basic stuff set up for retirement -- but, we haven't been putting in anything extra.
And until this week, that sounded pretty stupid.
But -- we aren't depending on the stock market to retire, probably because we'll never retire. We don't have a house that has lost value or for which the mortgage payment has risen so much that we can't pay it. We haven't put lots of money into our own 401K that is losing value.
We can spend a lot less, so we have room in our budget for prices to go up and we won't be hungry. Plus, we have a CostCo membership so we can buy a lifetime supply of toilet paper and goldfish crackers...
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3 comments:
I wouldn't worry too much about the market. It will rebound. Also, if your 401(k) is diversified, you should be find.
Student loan debt is actually good debt. It only become bad debt when you don't pay. Credit cards are another story. That can hurt your FICO score.
It is frustrating becuase one tries to do the right thing and here you have companies and people who got greedy and now have us to bail them out!
Well, it sucks to lose value in an investment, but conservative stuff rebounds over time - I don't think it's right to say it's good not to have much in retirement because we're in a recession now. And obviously there are benefits to a house besides losing equity. I'm just a total convert to having good joint finances and saving for the future - even if you don't retire totally, you will get less healthy and more tired and it's nice to have SOMETHING put away as a cushion so you have options.
I should be more clear, I don't think this is the right way to do things-- at all. If we'd been half as smart with our money as we've been with our academic stuff, we'd have plenty to worry about right now.
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