I'm Still Alive

I'm still alive. I just haven't felt like writing. Like most of you, I'm caught up in life (work, family, etc.) and watching the economy.

For instance, I recently moved some of my retirement investments into hopefully more "secure" vehicles. Or put it another way, I've moved a bunch (but not all yet) of my 403 money out of stock options to things like money market and government security options. Money market vehicles, for instance, have a huge stigma attached to them by investment companies about not wanting to "break the buck" (i.e., lose money). My goal in these shifts is to at least temporarily minimize my losses. I can always reconfigure my asset allocations later to put more money back into stocks and other supposed "growth" vehicles once the economy improves. But in the meantime, I don't want to lose my retirement investments.

Not that I expect to spend this retirement later. Being I'm only 49 now, I believe all this - retirement monies, social security, etc. - will have all but disappeared by the time I might retire. Even "retirement" is a word my wife and I are realizing won't likely be an option for us, let alone for our children. I am keeping open the option for my three university-aged children to move back home. Maybe we can survive the old style way, by multi-generational families under one roof. I don't see how we can do otherwise.

We also want to work on building up further our cash-based emergency fund and in storing at least a modest amount of food. Just in case....

Sober in Dubuque.
Kevin