The economy is in pretty rough shape, and people everywhere are losing their jobs and their homes. Most personal finance experts are holding out hope that Americans will learn from their current mistakes and emerge from this recession with new and improved spending and saving habits.
And those that played it smart and went against the grain of spending more than you earn and buying more house than they could afford haven’t really felt the effects. It’s a fact of life that what goes up must come down, and what goes down will eventually come back up.
The key to surviving the financial roller coaster is to prepare for the worst even when things are going great and you can’t possible see anything going wrong. Those who were prepared barely felt a ripple the last couple of years.
Those of us lucky to have such foresight and to be employed with a company that has survived the current crisis have to feel pretty good about ourselves. After all, we resisted group thinking and passed on a lot of the temptations around us.
I learned from an old pro that I used to work with the value of saving and investing wisely. With his help I learned how to maneuver the money that I had invested in my 401K around so that I could better realize gains. Sure, my portfolio has experienced a 40% drop the last two years, but if you’re twenty years out of retirement like I am then there is no reason to worry.
As a matter of fact, I am enjoying the current market. I actually increased my contributions since I view my situation as an opportunity to buy stocks on sale that I may never realize again.
But the important thing here is that someone more experienced than myself took the time to teach me the in’s and out’s of managing my money when I was new to the game of management.
Back then I was pretty young and had never made the kind of money that was starting to roll in. Through college my attitude was to spend what I made, sometimes more. Having someone who had been there and done that helped me move away from that stage of my life.
To this day I make it a point to help my team form the same type of good decisions, new or old. Besides the young who tend to leave their money all in one company’s stock, I find a lot of older folks who still have their money in stocks even though they plan on retiring in two to five years. Imagine the shock they experienced when they are looking at that 40% loss and realize that they may have to keep working indefinitely.
Most companies don’t offer any kind of financial training, and that’s a shame. Situations like this could really stand to benefit a lot of employees, and make for some happy workers. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take what you’ve learned and share it with them. Who knows, maybe they’ll appreciate it and gain a little more respect for you since you’re helping them out!
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