Quote:
Welcome to the world of ultra-low interest rates, where profligacy is richly rewarded and saving is, well, for suckers. Those who’ve opted to be austere with their personal finances have found themselves on the losing end as governments and central bankers have worked to get people to borrow and spend in the wake of the global recession. I especially like this part...
Quote:
He’s convinced Canada’s housing market is a bubble that will eventually burst, and when it does, policy-makers will rush to people’s rescue. “My fear is that most people in Canada are now debtors and not savers, and so governments will enact policies to help them because they make up most of the population,” he says. “Savers may get screwed on the way down, too.”
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In my early, poverty-stricken 20's, when two nickels to rub together would have been a step up in the world, I was looking for a place to live in Grande Prairie and visited this older, retired military guy. He was a balding chap wearing a stained, sleeveless, white undershirt and pants held up by crossed suspenders while the tiny basement apartment he was renting smelled of grease and sweat . . . . . and he was trying to sub-let a tiny bedroom in this tiny basement apartment he didn't even own to get some extra money to survive.
And I knew right then and there in that moment I would never, never, ever in a million years be in that guy's position at his age.
That guy and his placement in that scene has been motivating me ever since. Scared the crap out of me.
That's why I save.
The person quoted in the article is a fairly myopic, short-term thinker and probably deserves his fate. Cycles come and go, time marches on, good times will return and so will bad times at some point. You have to march through all that in a consistent manner.
Cowperson