Ignorance was bliss

On Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, the Stock Market fell 22.6%. In the past 6 days it has fallen some 20%. Down to 8300 right this minute from 14000 a year ago. Now, I have to admit that I don't particularly remember Black Monday with any great icy feeling. The boys were 10 and 8 and I was working on my Masters in Library Science. Bill always put money into his 401k and got the company match. Life was fairly simple (as I look back). They also say this is reminiscent of the deep recession of the early 1970s. Now the only thing I remember about that is when Bill graduated from Univ. of Virginia in 1973 he did not get the number of job offers normally expected due to the recession, a fact that landed in Akron, OH, instead of some more exotic locale. Other than that we went blissfully on our way to enjoying our post-student married life. I don't recall worrying about a recession very much. I do remember that it was rather hard to save enough money for the down payment for your first house, but once you did, you always made money on real estate until 2007 or a little before if you lived in certain parts of the country. That's what took us from our first cozy 2-bedroom-$31,000 house to a couple of 4-bedroom houses and back down to our 3-bedroom retirement home valued at over $400,000 today. It will be paid for in Feb. 2009. Today it's a different story. We're retired. We retired at the ages of 60 and 62. That's early, but we were able to do it based partly on our 401k retirement accounts. Well, they are still there, though some of them have as many wrinkles as we do. Or perhaps the metaphor should be that they look much younger. Obama and McCain are coming up with ideas left and right to end the crisis, as is W (George Bush, President). Thankfully, only about 25 more days until the election. I never thought another subject would become more negative, but the stock market has done it! Today on CNN they said we needed heroes who have stuck it out with the stock market. Maybe someone told them to start talking positively to stem the panic. Whatever - I liked being called a hero.