Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 04, 2016

Take comfort in the knowledge that your losses are being contributed to past victims of the economic realities of the collective funding colander bucket.

Hey Caulfield, here’s a hint on the quality of that app….It was free.

and let’s not forget the yearly maintenance fee the institution levels on the account. those are usually higher than any interest gained when saving small to moderate balances..

Most of the time someone would tell me they can’t save 5% of their income, we would be able to find someone who was living just fine on 95% of that income. It was food for thought. And some people realize that if they’re living within their means, that means they can start saving their next raise. They may not improve their current standard of living, but they can maintain it while saving for the future by not spending their next raise..As far as 2008 — savers did OK, investors have done OK, it was the active traders who suffered. Our portfolio is based on our risk assessment (which has changed over the years), but we simply stay the course as the market swings up and down. We took a hit in 2008, but we’re still better off today (by a significant amount) than we would have been if we’d pulled everything out of stocks and bonds at the end of 2007 and kept it in CDs since then.

Have to hold onto your bluechip stocks through their ups and downs or you’ll go crazy.

Yep — being scared to hold on when the market drops, just like being too greedy to sell when the market is strong, is the perfect way to “buy high and sell low.” Set an allocation, pay little attention to the market, and rebalance periodically — transferring money from the strong performers to the weaker performers. It forces you to have investment discipline. Save in banks, CDs, and money markets money you’ll need in the next couple of years; put money you won’t need for five or more years in a risk-tolerance based portfolio of stocks and bonds. Over a few decades, you stand a high chance of doing OK.