Final question for you, Dan. Let's go from these huge macroeconomic trends and what's going on to the person listening today. What should the listener who is hearing the Christian Real View today be doing financially right now, and what should they do going forward, Lord willing, when things return to more of a normalcy in this country?
Well, the first thing they have to do is remember this is a global, but certainly an American health crisis. This is not a bad economy. They can thank God that we had the economy we had before this happened, or we'd be in big trouble. We came at this at a very strong place in our economy.
That has helped us a lot. Understand that the suffering that they're going to go through, as all of us will, is going to be temporary. It is not going to be long-lasting.
There is going to be recovery. Please don't get overly enthusiastic about their 401k, because we've had a few days of upticks. Don't do that. That's a mistake. There's still lots more room on the downside to go yet.
Be patient and be calm. If you contribute to a 401k or an IRA, the biggest mistake you could make is to stop those contributions. If you've got 10 years or more before you retire, you need to continue those contributions. You need to celebrate that you can buy in to those things that you're contributing to at a cheaper price, because you're getting more shares. The accumulation of the shares is what's going to be a huge benefit to you someday.
The downside is you could lose some you could lose some hours, you could lose some jobs, and that is very unfortunate. The upside to it, I hope, will be that there will be lessons learned. I am doubtful of that, because there weren't any lessons learned in 2008. But for the average Joe to understand how important savings is, you know today now, you understand it. But to maintain that understanding for the years to come, whether you have a lot or little, you need to save and don't be discouraged because you can only save a little. You understand today, if you didn't before, how important it is to be out of debt.
You understood that in 2008 as well. But you understand that again, we need corporate America to understand it, and we need the average hourly wage earner to understand that. We've got to fight and work.
It's forever. As long as you are earning money, it's a constant battle to stay out of debt. We've got to focus again on what we need, not what we want. And be patient through all of this. And I pray that you will learn lessons and change the way you do things.
Little changes for the better. Staying out of debt, starting to save. And I want to stress that savings is not investing. Savings is in a bank earning no interest, but you can get to it anytime you want it. That's savings. Investing is not that, because when you need to fix the transmission on your car, you're going to have to sell something at a loss maybe to get the money.
To get the money. That's not savings. It's investing. It's a long term. So we've got to have savings, because without savings we can't stay out of debt. Without savings, we can't get through these storms like we're about to have, maybe with a lot of people's jobs.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-03-23 01:48:28 / 2024-03-23 01:50:19 / 2
