Wednesday, April 6, 2016

We Are Doomed

April 5, 2016
How Do You Know When You’ve Made It Financially?

Millennials are also the most competitive about reaching those milestones, with 45 percent saying that it’s important to them to feel like they’ve “made it” before their friends.

With friends like that, who needs enemies? Seriously.

Hurray! One of my friends just had a heart attack! Thanks to our expensive health care system, that should set him back decades!

Yay! Another friend just died in a horrible car accident! He's totally out of the running now!

Unfortunately, one of my friends is doing quite well. That's why I'm setting him up on a blind date with a very attractive "gifted" astrologer with an expensive gambling addiction and a s%^tload of debt! Welcome to the pain train, friend! Woohoo!!

In all seriousness, very few people will ever truly know that they've "made it" financially, unless we assume that our future American economy can be extrapolated from the distant past American economy. Some, like Jeremy Siegel, seem to think it can. I'm not nearly so confident.

Further, if you have to ask how you know you've made it, then you haven't made it. That's just an opinion, of course.

3 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

I wonder if those who "know" they have "made it" financially have factored in the current -0.38% yield of the 5-year inflation protected treasury and its implications in long-term retirement planning.

Will yields continue to fall over the long run? If so, has anyone who "knows" bothered to factor in how seriously negative real interest rates can compound money over time?

Hint: It's not pretty. Sigh.

dearieme said...

-0.38%? Hmph: on this side of the water I've just renewed one that pays +0.015%. I don't suppose for a minute that anyone can measure inflation to an accuracy of 0.015%.

Stagflationary Mark said...

Yay! Positive real yields! How do you contain your euphoria? ;)