What a year

How to avoid fish breath. Don't forget to brush. You know what a dentist costs right now!


This is definitely one year I'd like to forget. I will say that I was smart enought to see the economic storm coming in late 07 and prepared accordingly paying off loans and the mortgage by September of last year. And while all the speculators were all smug trying to renovate and flip more houses, I was busy stashing cash. So I should be good for at least food, electricity and the like for a couple of months and hopfully until things turn around later in 09. But let me give you a little advice. Even when things turn around next summer it won't be a time to go out and splurge. If you're smart you will take that opportunity to get out from under the debt you racked up over the last few years and start saving for the next shoe to drop. Trust me I can see it coming. End of 09 will be bad as will part of 10.

What am I seeing right now? With jobs evaporating and those with jobs getting their hours cut back. I'm seeing kids move back home and people doubling up on their living arangements to help pay the rent/mortgage. A check of neighbors and I find that a lot of them are working only one or two days a week if at all. And this is only the start as I see it. I was at the unemployment office to listen to the rah rah speech by sombody who should have retired years ago. Gee can I have her job? She's been out of it for so long the movie Clueless comes to mind. There were the waves of unemployed that went through her office. First the real estate people then the mortgage bankers and brokers, construction workers were then followed by banking people. I'd expect aerospace to be coming sometime next year as airlines start cutting orders.

Here's a good one. Local city and county governments are having to borrow money from the Feds so that they can pay to demolish abandoned homes. That image from the Grapes of Wrath comes to mind. You know the one. The guy desperate for work gets hired by the bank to bulldoze houses.

I hear billionares are now becoming millionares. All I can say is AHHHHHH poor babys. Now they'll have to drink the domestic wine instead of imported.
I'm starting to get the real feel for where the economy is going just by listening to the financial gurus on the financial networks. Listen to what they say and expect just the reverse. They've taken their lead from our Chimp in Chief and you know that reality is just the reverse of what he says. They're touting stocks for the new year so you know that is not the place to put spare cash or retirement.

So I'd like to say Happy New Year to all but that would be a lie. It's not going to be a happy anything and worse is coming.