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Someone famous once said: "It's not how much you have that counts. It's how much you have LEFT". In other words, it is irrelevant how high your 401k or investments went in a big speculative bubble; all that will matter is what you have left at the end when you need it (retirement, unemployment, etc.).
Stocks might come back or maybe they won't. The world is changed. The old rules may (or may not) apply. Because "stocks came back" in the 80s and 90s, and because they came back after the tech crash of the early 2000s is NOT proof they will come back again. Any investment is a gamble -- even your husband's CDs. If there are truly massive bank failures, we may find that our FDIC insurance is worthless. (However, contrary to a former poster, your money is currently insured to $250,000 at each institution, not $10,000.)
I'd imagine that kind of wholesale economic collapse would render any idea of "how much retirement savings you have" to be pretty silly -- you'd be better off investing in a shotgun, pencillin and MREs (meals ready to eat).
Reading between the lines, what I sense is that the LW isn't even so upset about her losses as she is about the PERCEIVED lessening of her value and importance, her socio-economic standing vs. that of her husband. In other words (contrary to the fears of some posters), I do not believe she is remotely afraid of being "beaten", but afraid her husband will go "nyah, nyah, nyah" at her.
The other sad underlying suspicion is that if the shoe was on the other foot -- if her 401k was high as a kite, and his CDs were paying 2% interest -- she'd be "nyah nyah nyahing" HIM. What I sense in their marriage that is very disheartening is that they are not true partners but COMPETITORS...and that's a very sandy, unstable foundation for a marriage.
May I suggest, LW, that instead of COMPETING with your husband, that you consider how wonderful it is that his conservative strategy has balanced out your more risk-taking one, and that his CDs mean you still have a pretty decent nest egg? Isn't that WONDERFUL? If you were both risk-takers, you might be wiped out now. Why can't you see that HIS MONEY is YOUR MONEY, just as YOUR LOSSES are HIS LOSSES, because you are LIFE PARTNERS and in this TOGETHER????
*****
Nonetheless, I find the posts here awfully amusing -- the defensiveness, the reliance on tired strategies (invest for the long haul!) and parroted beliefs (the market MUST come back, it just MUST, it always DOES). The funniest of all are the rich pampered intellectuals who like to brood about the coming apocalyse -- as if it will go on all around them, proving out their belief systems, but not affect their video games, internet access and navel-gazing. As if it will be like living a real world version of a dystopian novel, in which THEY are the hero/heroine.
The future isn't knowable, predictable or "gameable". The future has laughed at people smarter and richer than you, and turned their dreams and strategies upside down. I used to have a bumper sticker that said "Make God Laugh Today... Tell Him Your Plans."
You can save and earn all the money in the world, and be sitting pretty, and then get cancer and die young. I actually know people to whom this happened. In that case, the best returns on your investments will mean exactly NOTHING.
Look at and learn from our friend, Brightstar. He earns $140,000 a year (up from $108K last year, an astonishing salary increase, so among other things, he works for the greatest company in the world), which is about 3.5 times the annual income of the average American. He has a $750K home, plus other property. Beautiful women throw themselves at him. Yet he's the bitterest, angriest, most unhappy human being it has ever been my sorry privilege to hear from -- the money isn't enough (could never BE enough) to buy all his inflated dreams and his huge ego, the women are not "hawt enough" so he ends up alone (dreaming of fertility procedures that will let men get pregnant, LOL).
Brighty, has it ever occured to your Great Brain that you could live easily on $40K (like the rest of us) and save $100K (or pay your poor parents back, ASAP) and in about 2 years, you'd be in a very sweet position? You could turn your hyper-inflated McMansion with the "six ft. square marble kitchen island" back to the bank, since you really could never afford it in the first place. You could try treating women like human beings, and maybe you'd even get married and have kids....
But noooooo....no, it's more satisfying and fun to squee endlessly on the internet about how "bad you have it".
As long as MBAs who earn six figure salaries are whinging, I guess we don't really have that bad an economy. So I will sleep soundly tonight!
