Mail Call

 Saturday afternoon I brought in the mail. Not a lot to see, just some last minute electioneering on the part of the candidates running for Mayor in Oakland. And a statement from one of my retirement accounts. Sometimes I feel a bit of solace in a world that seems ready at any minute to sever ties with Social Security. As a teacher, I live in a world that is essentially free from all this fearful speculation. I have a state pension to count on in addition to those previously mentioned retirement accounts. A 403(b) and a 401K left over from my stint as a warehouse manager. And a supplemental savings of one sort or another created at the behest of financial minds much more focused than my own. 

And here's the deal: Just about all of these metaphorical jars into which I have stuffed money for that day which will see me walking away from my day to day wage slave existence and live off the clever advice of those previously mentioned folks with the financial cleverness gene is based on the notion that money will continue to make more money. As I have mentioned here  with some regularity, I'm not much of a gambling man. And yet, here I am with a large chunk of my life savings sitting in a series of slots dedicated to the speculation that stocks and bonds will, over time, be "safe."

The statement that I opened this past Saturday afternoon suggested just the opposite. Over the past month, the balance of my account had dropped nearly one third of its value. Suddenly, the trade wars and overall nonsensical economic policies of the Second Trumpreich took a very sizeable chunk of my future and disappeared it. That ladder I had been climbing to financial independence got kicked out from under me. 

It should be noted here that I am not one of those day traders or one who seeks out risky investments with potential monstrous rewards. When it comes to finances, I'm the tortoise who will be more than happy to have the money he put away at the end of the slow and steady race. The tortoise who does not expect to be relieved of thousands of dollars because some convicted felon decided to show off how his diploma from the Wharton School isn't worth the crayon with which it was signed. This is a guy who is completely used to losing vast sums of money. It is the "Art" in his deal. 

I am not comfortable with it. As mentioned here even more frequently than my disdain for gambling I am not a young man anymore. Creating another big stack of chips to turn into survival funds for my ironically named "golden years" seems like it just got a lot more difficult. I understand that the former game show host was bragging about how he made his billionaire buddies a ton of cash by pausing his tariff barrage for ninety days. Once again, I was left on the outside, looking in while my losses were those fat cats' gain. The rich get richer. Me? I get back to work.