No pension; no losses; no satisfaction; no blue sky
Cats: Uncategorized|These are very strange times indeed.
I’ve spent most of the last twenty years worrying because I had no pension or investments or economic certainty. I wasn’t defying conventional wisdom by refusing to contribute to my future. I just never had enough left over at the end of the cycle.
My partner and I invested everything we have in an innovation business that we founded in the early 90s.
We’ve spent the last twenty years living and dying by market forces. We’ve never enjoyed the fruits of a bull market because we are small and whatever cream we’ve managed to generate has always gone back into the business. (Our personal cream was air miles points which gave us some nice trips.)
The risk, looming bankruptcy, crazy business travel and the personal isolation wears you down. But the thing that has haunted me more than anything was the prospect of having nothing put away for the future. (Visions of old lady with 23 cats in one-bedroom apartment that smells of kitty litter.)
I hear people say they’ve had 2 or 5 or 10 years wiped off their investments.
I’m not sure how to compare myself to that situation. I still have no pension or investments but the business I now partially own still holds promise. That would be my pension. But there’s no guarantee and no pension plan.
The present market storms and credit crunch worry me. I may not have lost on investments but I need credit to continue. And I have family and friends who are worried for their futures right now too.
Being in business makes you hyper sensitive to risk and uncertainty. When I saw this thing starting to happen last year – it was there, on the back of the business pages, predictions of doom – I expressed concern. This was met with laughter and sneers.
I sincerely hope that those people are still laughing and sneering, and that they know something I don’t. I want to be proved wrong.
But right now, I’m still scared.
I may not have experienced pension or investment losses, but my business needs credit to survive, and clients. That is my future. And right now, it doesn’t look so good.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Having been a resident of the pink ghetto for my whole ‘career’ I don’t have much saved up either. Interestingly, with more talk of recession, Rowbear’s computery business is picking up like stink!
Don’t worry about your future, you can always sell your kids or a kidney…
October 8th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
You would get TONS of cash for those kids,,,they are fab! (the kidney would probably fetch a few $$ too but I suggest you not put your liver on e-bay…..)
Nanc
October 8th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
My career and financial situation seems to be very similar to yours, GT. I keep telling myself not to lose sleep over it since my worrying is unlikely to reverse a worldwide financial meltdown. At times like this I’m almost glad to be poor so I don’t have to torture myself with thoughts of all I’ve lost.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Hello,
Sorry this is not a comment about this posting but I’ve been trying to track you down. I found and really like your posting about Yummy Mummies dated 2006, and would like to quote it at the beginning of my novel “Nearly Yummy Mummy in Paris”, due to be published this year (attributed to your blog, of course). Would you be OK with this?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Espanya, I have considered that, in fact, I’ve threatened to put them both on eBay … the kids not the kidneys
Nanc, no my liver’s no good anymore
Lori, yes, there is comfort in the no-gain, no-loss mentality, although I take no comfort. The only difference now is that a lot more people now feel some of the worry.
October 10th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Hopefully the price of bourbon won’t skyrocket!
October 10th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Maybe all of us who have no pension can live together in our old age in a nice squat somewhere. I can make a pretty mean soup with crap in the freezer.
October 13th, 2008 at 11:57 am
YAM, we can but hope!
Barbara, yes, perhaps we should get a Mongolian yurt.