Venting

This week, the stock market is officially off 50% from it's high earlier this year.

Give me a second to rant: I couldn't have cared less about the stock market until this little adventure began. I only put money in it because of the 50-cent-on-the-dollar offer from my employer if I participated in the 401(k) plan. Frankly, I've always mis-trusted the stock market as a baby-boomer fad, and, like most of their schemes from Vietnam to leisure suits, nothing good can come of it.*

Now, unfortunately, I follow CNBC religiously, as well as The Motley Fool, and any number of other financial websites, wondering how long it will be before I can access the pittance investments that will fund The Dream. For the record, I resent the time I'm wasting following all this crap when I would have been perfectly happy to put my retirement/future cabin funds in a safe 2% COD. And to think I would have been laughing all the way to the bank! (To make a withdrawal.)

I know...no, wait - I hope it will all come back, but dollars to donuts (which are probably worth more) it won't go up nearly as fast as it all fell apart. Of course, I could bet the farm and pull it all out now, but the talking heads are all saying that everything will turn around at the end of 2009.

I feel like Basil Fawlty after he beat his Morris 1100 with a tree branch: [Shaking fist at the sky] "Thank you god!!! Thank you so bloody much!!!"


Rant mode off. I wish I could say I felt better, but I don't.

*I hereby specifically exempt any schemes by my next-door neighbors and, of course, my father.