It's certain that nearly everyone is anxious about finances right now, so the writer is not alone.

Writer, I hope this is encouraging: your husband in buying CDs gets a promise of earning a certain rate of interest for a certain period of time. You, in buying stocks, own parts of companies. There are people in those companies working to make their product or service better so their stocks will go up. You own just as many shares as before, they are just worth somewhat less on the "market" right now. But I agree with the other commentor who said that your losses are just on paper. Try to keep that in mind, and all the best to you both.

If you're under 40, I wouldn't worry about it for a second.

Cary, I loved, loved, loved your advice about dealing with the mail, esp. giving it an angry growl to let it know you're coming. Going to read that over and over again today (instead of dealing with my mail).

My husband has the full time job and 401K plan plus other investments. I am freelance and too tightfisted with money to gamble on stocks. We take risks in different ways -- and are averse to risks in different ways. At one point he asked if the money that I had just sitting around could be invested in stocks -- he was up, and proud of it. I said, howzabout you invest what you can save, and I just plain old save what I can save, and that way we won't put all our eggs in one basket. Of course, like everyone else, his investments are down for now. I don't want to know exactly how bad it is. And likely it will change over the next 30 years.

But, even as money seems to rear up like an ugly monster with all of its own power, it's not really more than a metaphor for relationship issues like control. I think it's unrealistic to think that two people in a relationship just agree on everything and march forth through time. We achieve fleeting balances, and rebalance constantly. We are appreciably different in every possible way you could compare ... and that fact keeps us committed to, rather than afraid of the process of having to find balance.

Read _A Random Walk Down Wall Street_. My Retirement funds have gone way down also. I have about 20 years until retirement. I am not panicking. I am actually putting some extra cash in a indexed fund. ($700 a week - every Wednesday). The stock market will never be lower. Like a previous poster said things will either get better or money will be meaningless in 20 years.

You should too.

I get all my life critical information from anonymous teenage Marxists bloggers

But I'm a 43 year old published centrist libertarian marketing director pulling down about $140k.

~

That reminded me of: `The New Dorky Cartoon.

Saint Bright Star 2-was robed. He got dirty sock.

He was drab. Wearing a black pot cast steel pan.

On a head was a old vegan fry pan. He a cookie.

Diploma was bought @ Santa Elf Culinary School.

Mad illustrator drawl greasy Saint Bright Star-2.

The bell he rings makes a honk sound like geese.

O bang vegan over the noggin with hotdog buns.

Poor Santa gives vegans socks stuffed with cans.

Cans of olive-oil, tuna, oysters + PopEye spinach.

You're being too hard on yourself. Lots of people who have 25 years before retirement have kept their money in their investments. Unless you have stocks in companies like GM which may not be around much longer, you may have done exactly the right thing by staying put. But you can't go through life being afraid you've made bad financial decisions. Get professional advice (the kind you pay a fee for -- not the kind that earns its compensation off of commissions -- they'll just churn your account.)

You sure bitch a lot for someone who has it so good.

Hate writing? Can't do it? Come join someone with whom you have a lot in common.

is way too pat.

The market will always go up over the long run, just diversify, don't even open the envelop for years.

You know, some of these companies we each have a tiny piece of appear not just to be down but gone or very soon GONE. Those are real holes in our investments, not just market perturbations.

Don't we need to connect ALL the columns of SALON and all the other info we have, not just look at our personal finances separately? I mean seriously, how in the world do you folks think the down slope on oil and other resource issues, what the hell do you think WATER, what do you think climate change, mean for our retirements if we are thinking of living to the 2020s, 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond? Jesus! This is SERIOUS stuff, not just debating society words we can enter or avoid at will.

Are we in for global resource wars beginning in the 20-teens? Why WOULDN'T we be in for them? Obama seems to be determined to be a Republican-realist with a great grin. He's not getting us out of this resource economy, he is not criticizing the obscene consumerist assumptions that undergird our lifestyles-- mine included. I love Obama, but every clear eyed listener-reader knows his core demagoguery is that the middle class is innocent. A real leader would be telling us the Western middle class is the most fatal thing that has ever existed on this planet.

I spent part of T-giving with the brothers-in-law with the business degrees. Not a clue. Disappointed to actual grief that their moron fraternity brother financial advisors have turned out to be idiots. The market will go up, social security won't be there-- these are the counsels of this pack of golf course jackals. Never thought for five minutes about how the pieces connect. It is both too hard of work, and too morally unbearable.

I think the markets WILL go up and down in familiar ways for about a decade-- so, dear letter writer, I guess with your twenty-five year window, you can let it ride, or not, for a while. But the real security in your old age will be in new energy technology, new agricultural practices, newly attractive more modest lifestyles, new political structures, and new structures of trust.

I'll stop. But I plead with all readers to see those retirement envelopes for what the feedback they are on the lives we are living.