Stock Market meltdown, planning for the future.

I have been writing about the banks in trouble. I wrote my first article "Is your money safe?" On Monday, Wall Street had a huge market crash of over 500 points. This hasn't happened since the Stock Market Crashed on 9-11. This should be a wake up call that our economy is in trouble. One of the major losses was AIG. AIG has been one of the leading companies for retirement funds. They are going to be bailed out. What does this mean for you and me? This means that ultimately we will be paying for this through our taxes. Why should we have to pay for this? It is not our fault. Between bad investments and bad judgments of other parties that work for these companies that lose your money, they should be held accountable. A loss of this scale the Federal Government has decided to step in to bail out all of these companies that have made bad investment choices. We as tax payers do not have a choice. If your wondering where the Government gets this kind of money, it usually comes from one of two sources, they raise taxes to pay for it or it comes out of social security. At this point my Dad is at retirement age, his retirement has already been lost by bad investment choices of others, he cannot live on social security when it has already been cut. More and more senior citizens these days are looking for work just to make ends meet. The cost of living has forced many people out of retirement.

Today you can’t count on the Stock Market as a reliable way to invest your money. This is why it is so important to plan for the future. Many American’s live from pay check to pay check, it’s hard to put any money away. Saving money and having a reserve supply of food storage that will feed your entire family for a year, can be done. Looking at your budget you can cut back things you don’t really need and put away that money you would normally spend and use it towards a savings plan. You can cook more and go out less, stay in and rent movies instead of going to the theater. To save for food storage it’s not as hard as it seems. When you go the grocery store, you can buy one extra item a month to add to your food storage. When you need to use items from your food storage before it expires, replace it with the same item that is newer. Eventually you have enough items saved up for your family to live on for an entire year. It is very important now more than ever to stick to a monthly budget and set limits for yourself. This is one of the keys to becoming financially independent.