Midpack
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Based on the exchange below from another thread (that I didn't want to hijack);
We have saved and invested diligently for most of our adult lives to achieve FI, but we are not yet retired. We realized there were others who were hardly saving at all which was going to bite them at some point. We also suspected many people were going way over their heads on home purchases and HELOCs and that there could be a bubble one day, to bite them at some point. What had not occurred to us --- that we along with all taxpayers could end up footing a substantial bill for so many people/companies going bankrupt and/or walking away from their homes - ie, the bailout that is now going on. It's bad enough that our equity holdings got creamed.
My question, when things return to somewhat normal (please start another thread if you want to debate "if"), are there ways to position our holdings for next time to minimize exposure to bailing out others? We're hoping there's something more creative than minimizing equities (AA) and taxes (no income).
We have saved and invested diligently for most of our adult lives to achieve FI, but we are not yet retired. We realized there were others who were hardly saving at all which was going to bite them at some point. We also suspected many people were going way over their heads on home purchases and HELOCs and that there could be a bubble one day, to bite them at some point. What had not occurred to us --- that we along with all taxpayers could end up footing a substantial bill for so many people/companies going bankrupt and/or walking away from their homes - ie, the bailout that is now going on. It's bad enough that our equity holdings got creamed.
My question, when things return to somewhat normal (please start another thread if you want to debate "if"), are there ways to position our holdings for next time to minimize exposure to bailing out others? We're hoping there's something more creative than minimizing equities (AA) and taxes (no income).
samclem said:I find this all a little hard to swallow at this point. I think today's Joe Consumer, given easy credit, will borrow more money without a second thought.
Brewer said:I agree. I think the YOY Black Friday retal sales increase strongly supports this notion. All of the stuff about US consumers permanently retrenching sounds very unlikely indeed to me.