The Retirement Bubble

One of the things that makes commentary here so difficult for me some days is the global context. I am watching the old 20th century world crumble around us (or on top of us) as we wake up to the reality of the 21st century. Some of us wake up to it slowly, but many are rudely shocked out of their daydreams.

Americans and a number of other nationalities have had to deal with a collapse in their real estate markets and, along with that, a global financial crisis. That is bad enough in itself, but now we sit and watch Europe as it goes through its own crisis that has very negative global implications. The current crisis center is Greece, but this new financial crisis threatens the whole Euro zone and, just as with the American real estate bubble collapse, it also threatens all of us. If you are not really aware of what is going on, John Mauldin presents a straight-forward and non-hysterical overview in his latest newsletter, republished at BusinessInsider.com. And this is just one more of a long list of current and potential crises that fill our news sites.

I have been following the political, social, and economic news for decades. It has been critical to my analysis and my personal choice of careers and general direction in life, as well as essential to my professional career. For a very long time, I had to depend on a variety of both general and specialized magazines, newspapers, and newsletters for my information. A friend once commented on the huge pile of magazines I always had in my living room and anywhere else I could find space. I sat down then and wrote up a list of all the magazine subscriptions I had at the time and they totaled 26. And that didn’t take newspapers and newsletters into account.

The advent of the Internet greatly reduced the pile of paper in my house! Now, I could follow even more publications than before. And it was certainly a lot cheaper and offered a much wider variety of resources. It also provided me with more opportunities to offer my own perspective and led to my first major publications in 1999, my first Barron’s article and a paper requested by the London Stock Exchange for an Internet-based investor’s conference. On or off the Internet, I have continued this intensive study for more than four decades now and it is as normal for me as coffee in the morning.

Long ago, I discovered that if my analysis was to be of any real use, I had to put emotion aside while doing it. Emotion may have its place in my reactions to the results of an analysis, but cannot have any place in the analysis itself. That is easier said than done, but it is a necessity if I am to avoid distorting my analysis. I have learned through decades of painful experience both how difficult it is and how necessary it is.

But it is much harder today than ever before. For the very first time in my life, I find myself depressed with an activity that is so utterly normal for me. The wave after wave of negative news and negative attitudes sometimes seems as if it will drown me. It is not just the news. Keep in mind that this blog and my Retirement Wave and Middle Age websites provide me with plenty of emails from individuals facing serious challenges in their lives as a result of all this negative news.

I am toughened to this from past experience (the decade of the 70’s was no “cake walk”) and usually can handle negative news and attitudes without much difficulty. If I am feeling challenged by it all now, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for someone who has not had the opportunities I have had. That is why I can say with all honesty how impressed I am with the many people I meet who have never had to deal on a daily basis for years with such a wave of negative news, much less been expected to analyze it for publication, but who are bearing up and dealing with it as well as they are. As far as I am concerned, their reaction is far more impressive than mine.

So what to do in times like this? After all that talk above, here are a few simple rules that I recommend you consider, if you haven’t already.

 The past is past, over, done with, through, finished. It is not coming back. Look forward to something new, not backward to something old. As Robertson Davies, a Canadian novelist, wrote in 1960, “The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.” There is no such return. Don’t make that mistake.

 The world is without clear direction or leadership at this point. Yes, there are many leaders, but no real global leadership. You have to be your own leader.

 You can hope, as I do, but there is no reason to expect that things will get better in this regard any time soon. So accept that and be delightfully surprised if it turns out to be untrue.

 If you have a future plan developed in the past that seems to be further from reality every month, put it aside and start all over again from the beginning. Start from where you are today, not from where you were five or ten years ago. Is it painful to give up all that time and effort you put in for years? You bet it is. It is just as painful for me, but we are all left with a decision. Take the pain now or take it later, and pain put off is usually far greater than pain felt today. I do not like it one bit, but I know have to do it and I am doing it, right along with you.

 I have said it before and I will say it again, do not think of it as failure, think of it as liberation from failure. To continue on a path that is easy because it is familiar, but is less and less realistic, is not seeking success, it is settling for failure. You can come back to it at a later date if it once again makes sense, but while it doesn’t, let it go.

 Don’t get too focused on money alone, important though it is. Too many people think money alone provides “strength”. It can, but not necessarily when circumstances are as unsettled and disturbing as they are now. Your greatest strengths lie within you, not your wallet or your brokerage account. And best of all, no one can take them away from you, as they can your money.

With that last comment in mind, let me leave you with the words of another man. I do not care what your feelings are on the subject of human evolution. Whatever they are, you are welcome to them. But Charles Darwin left us with words that are very useful in times like this. I read these words at least once a week, sometimes more often, and I have done so for many years. They help me keep my mind on what is really important, so let me share them with you.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

I do not want this blog to turn into a blog on the global context, but I cannot ignore it either as I know that this context weighs heavily on us as individuals, whether we like it or not. This is something I just felt I had to say. That is a core value to blogging. But next time, I really do plan to focus on something small and outside the general context, but more specific and hopefully useful too.
———————

Did you enjoy this post? If so, click here to subscribe to updates to The Retirement Bubble by e-mail. If you prefer an RSS feed, click on the RSS symbol on the upper-right of this page. If you would like to share this with a friend, just click on “share this post” below.