Wheezing Retirement

I am to meet with my financial planner this afternoon. After watching the stock market take another dive today, I wish I'd met with him sooner. What can I do? Down, down, down it goes and I am left with a minimum-wage job and dwindling savings.

Would I go back and do it differently? Would I go back and say, "I think I want to stay teaching even though it might be killing me because the salary is much better?"

I don't think so, but it's hard to be strong and firm in this resolve when my retirement skids downhill.

I like what a man on the radio said this morning. I'm not sure who I was listening to, but it made sense. It went something like this: You've got crooks at the bottom of this scandal and crooks at the top. Those at the bottom are the homeowners who, for reasons still unclear, signed onto loans they were neither qualified for nor could afford. On the top, you've got the de-regulated CEOs of banks and mortgage companies who fed credit to the credit unworthy and walked away with millions and billions of dollars. The solution is to now give those on the top a bailout, but in fact, we should give the bailout to the crooks on the bottom. Trickle down doesn't work. Let's try trickle up and see what happens. Do an FDR, in other words. Buy out all the mortgages, give out 30 year 5% fixed rate mortgages to everyone and see if that stimulates the economy.

It reminds me of Whoopi Goldberg who years ago said, "If this is the trickle down theory I'd rather be pissed on!"

But no one listens to me and meanwhile my retirement is high-diving into an empty pool.

I wonder what my financial planner will advise? Will he show me that chart that all financial planners show with the bar graph that goes up and up and up since 1929 with only slight dips and say, "Really, it's a correction, a painful one, but still a correction"? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand the bar graph. I get it, that over time, you make money. But that doesn't ease the pain of watching the stocks he's invested for me go down, down, and more down.

Meanwhile, Ann stayed home sick today only after I guilted her into it.

Ann: I really need to go today.

Me: So last week you were really angry at C, your co-worker, because she came into work all coughing and sneezing and you even blamed her for your existing condition. And now you're going to go into work sounding just like her and think everyone's going to be touched by your commitment and dedication?

Ann: (silence)

Me: So just call in sick. Take care of yourself and in the process, you won't get anyone else sick.

She did just that. Now she's on the couch reading "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" and blowing her nose every few minutes and sputtering out a cough now and then.

There is nothing to do -- about her cold or my retirement investments -- except wait.

And so I wait.