Burying our Savings
Being a card carrying South Ender, I’m a little mistrustful of fiduciary institutions. I don’t bury my savings out back in the nettle field, but I’m not real happy keeping it in the bank’s mattress either. I hear we’re coming out of the Great Recession after, oh, 7 hard years, but what I think is the folks who had enough money to play the stock market, they’re doing fine. The Fed dropped interest rates to near zero so if you happen to want to make money with the money you already got, you pretty much had to invest in the market. If you’re like me, you just wanted to play it safe after that same market dropped 40 % back in the Dark Days of the subprime mortgage collapse.
Fool me once, shame on you … fool me twice, well, I’m not happy about my options. If inflation kicks up, that money in the bank will start to dwindle. But … I learned a hard lesson about the stock market I won’t forget real soon. So when I went into my current bank, one of those Too Big To Fail conglomerates, to deposit a check awhile back, my friendly teller looked at our account and asked if I’d care to talk to one of their investment advisors. “You might want to consider something that would make more interest than your savings and checking account,” she said.
It’s wonderful to have my bankers concerned for me, it really is. Why would I ever think they were a predatory pestilence? So what if I have friends who’ve lost their homes or are even now fighting with their banks who for years have threatened them with evictions and mortgage default? Obviously they just want me to succeed. Good people, good hearts. I said, “You mean sit with one of your brokers who would suggest stocks and bonds for me to invest in?” My teller smiled beatifically. I was tuned in. Just a few keystrokes and that money sitting safely in our no interest account would electronically transfer to the Wall Street hotshots and earn us who knows how much money compounded annually over multiple years. Capitalism, what’s not to like?
“This bank,” I said, “no offense, but you folks played fast and loose back before the Recession. Bad loans, subprime mortgages, collateralized loans, hedge fund bets against your own investors. You and the other banks and the investment firms drove the economy into the dirt. And you want me to walk over and talk to your advisor? You guys are like a casino, take a cut on every hand and you win whether the rest of us do or not. Good racket, but I’ve got to pass this time. My gambling days are about over.”
No doubt I have an asterisk by my name when their computer logs me in, one that means Willing To Stay Poor. When the Fed raises interest rates — and it will before too long — we’ll see how the stock market does when financial cowards like me can make money by saving money, not gambling it. Until then it’s a bull market all right and my friendly little bank is raking it in but not loaning much out. Maybe that’s why we bought the property next door. We didn’t bury our money there, we just bought the hole to put it in.
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Tags: how not to get rich, jack archibald, savings strategy
Somewhere, deep in the windowless middle floors of a south Manhattan highrise in the financial district, sits a young fund adviser who’s bonus will be reduced due to people like you. This summer when he sets out on the drive to his $20,000 a month summer rental in the Hamptons, he’ll make the trek in his new sports coupe without the option all of his friends have had for years.
“What Tom? That rust bucket doesn’t have voice command to lower the antenna and flip the headlights closed? 1998 called, they want their car back! Bwah haw haw…”
The shame. The shame.
I feel bad for the Toms of the Highrises, I really do. They’re just trying to live the Dream. I got some friends whose daughter just bought a hacienda in Seattle and Gomorrah, soon to be renamed Amazonia-soft, down in what was the ghetto when I lived there, what we now refer to as a ‘transitional’ neighborhood, meaning double deadbolts and a meth lab conviniently located nearby. I timidly asked what price she paid for a domicile in these skyrocketing real estate times and she said $540,000. That’s real money where I come from. I don’t want to even imagine the monthly mortgage payment or what kind of salary makes this affordable. Seattle is contemplating $10 tolls on the interstate this year, supposedly to pay for highways, but actually to keep people like me from visiting. They say all boats rise in an incoming tide, but the folks who say that have right of way over us dinghies.