As that old saying goes, “The best plans of mice and men can go wrong.” Such is the case for the vast majority of people who found that the rules of the “Retirement Planning Game” seem to change constantly.
As an example: The huge price inflation for all of those things that keep us healthy and alive have rose higher than a kite in a hurricane, while, at the same time, interest rates have remained the same or decreased during the last few years. So much so that if your retirement nest egg is earning a fixed amount of interest from a bank or some other financial institution you lost a whole lot of purchasing power, due to the fact that the rate of inflation exceeds the amount of interest received from your savings.
During times of sever economic inflation it is wise to make every attempt to retain the purchasing power of your accumulated wealth. The purchase of tangible personal property and the purchase of Real Estate are excellent investments if the prices of such property are depressed because of the quantity of such items that are available for sale. You see, sever inflation can also cause an economic recession or depression if people change their spending habits or become financially distressed.
To make matters worse, you did not receive a raise of pay from your job that will allow you to pay for such huge increases of the prices for all of things that keep you healthy and alive, causing you to decrease the amount of money that you save each month for your retirement.
If you are like most people, the value of your home has decreased about 30 percent or more, due to the collapse of the housing market and your home might be worth less than what you paid for it those many years ago. You become so upset that you have visions of shooting every politician in the Government of the United States of America for allowing the super rich to suck the wealth out of as many people as they can. If you remember, a gallon of gasoline cost 30 cents back in 1968. The price of gasoline per gallon these days is about $3.80.
Politics and business do not mix and now all of those owners and those controllers of those huge multinational corporations want to turn the entire United States of America into a “Ghost Town” by outsourcing jobs to foreigners within foreign countries. The terrible depression within the City of Detroit, Michigan is no better example of what can happen to every city within the United States of America.
It is too bad for We People of the United States of America that it seems that most, if not all, of our elected politicians have become nothing more than “Yes People” for special interests and the richest people on Earth. Five years ago who would believe that more than 14 million people would lose their job and the country that they reside in would be on the verge of going bankrupt.
That’s 14 million people who will not be paying Federal income taxes until such time that they become employed again. The financial strength of a country is the sum total of the financial strength of each person within that country. It is too bad for you that your plans for a comfortable retirement might be gone forever. You can lose your job or your business and then what will you do?
You can die on the street, homeless with nothing to eat, as many people did during the “Great Depression of 1929.” You could become politically active and force our elected politicians to put an end to job outsourcing and the extortion being committed by the richest people on Earth. Such acts are nothing more than crimes against the people of the United States of America and those responsible for those crimes must be punished.
The point here is that you are not at the mercy of others if you, as a part of the majority, can take positive action to assure that you are able to retire in comfort and fully enjoy that last years of your life. When making an attempt to increase or retain the value of your accumulated wealth you should invest that wealth into those things that will provide the greatest return in the short term, as well as in the long term. Invest in low risk opportunities that can be purchased today at bargain prices because sooner or later those items can be sold for a whole lot more than you paid for them or what your accumulated wealth will earn during the same period of time within a bank or some such financial institution.