Roller Coaster
Although I have worked for a salary my entire adult life, and inherited a modest stock portfolio from my mother, I have never been able to get myself to really focus on money. Not that I don't like money, or wish, like every red blooded American that I had more, it's just that I don't understand money beyond the basic issue of whether I have enough to live my life.
As a parish pastor I used to panic at having to chair meetings having to do with church finances, particularly the meetings at which we discussed investments. All the serious conversation about the relative merits of equities versus fixed income instruments would take place around the table and, try as I would, my mind would wander into irrelevancies like the problems I was having with my backhand or the argument my wife and I had that morning.
Since I retired I have taken a greater interest in the stock market, largely because I became convinced my ability to stay solvent until I die depends on it. But I quickly found myself flopping madly between boredom and terror. And I invented a game in which I counted the Mercedes on my walk home from my writing station, deciding the number would correspond to the fortunes of the market. Problem was I started to believe my own game, sort of like the kid who really is afraid if he steps on a crack he's going to break his mother's back.
So I have given it a rest. Sort of. I remember our neighbor in Vermont, Tracey the dairy farmer, saying in his best year he cleared $20K and in his worst year he made nothing. And the two years seem pretty much the same as he looks back.
I think being poor, so poor you have to worry about food and shelter, must be horrible. I have always felt we ought to figure out a way to have a national program that subsidizes the income of those who fall below a certain level. It is an outrage that, in a nation as rich as ours, anyone should go without the basics.
I suspect it is also a burden, a very different one, to be filthy rich. I know, we all think we'd like to try bearing that burden. I doubt we'd like it for long.
After hitting lows for the year yesterday, the financial markets had their biggest gain in three years today. Must be somebody's law.
Money is right up there with sex as a powerful matter that we have yet to figure out.
As a parish pastor I used to panic at having to chair meetings having to do with church finances, particularly the meetings at which we discussed investments. All the serious conversation about the relative merits of equities versus fixed income instruments would take place around the table and, try as I would, my mind would wander into irrelevancies like the problems I was having with my backhand or the argument my wife and I had that morning.
Since I retired I have taken a greater interest in the stock market, largely because I became convinced my ability to stay solvent until I die depends on it. But I quickly found myself flopping madly between boredom and terror. And I invented a game in which I counted the Mercedes on my walk home from my writing station, deciding the number would correspond to the fortunes of the market. Problem was I started to believe my own game, sort of like the kid who really is afraid if he steps on a crack he's going to break his mother's back.
So I have given it a rest. Sort of. I remember our neighbor in Vermont, Tracey the dairy farmer, saying in his best year he cleared $20K and in his worst year he made nothing. And the two years seem pretty much the same as he looks back.
I think being poor, so poor you have to worry about food and shelter, must be horrible. I have always felt we ought to figure out a way to have a national program that subsidizes the income of those who fall below a certain level. It is an outrage that, in a nation as rich as ours, anyone should go without the basics.
I suspect it is also a burden, a very different one, to be filthy rich. I know, we all think we'd like to try bearing that burden. I doubt we'd like it for long.
After hitting lows for the year yesterday, the financial markets had their biggest gain in three years today. Must be somebody's law.
Money is right up there with sex as a powerful matter that we have yet to figure out.
posted by Blayney at 2:12 PM
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