Who Said It?
A bit of optimism, never hurts:
“It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”
Author after the jump
A bit of optimism, never hurts:
“It’s never too late to be who you might have been.”
Author after the jump
Official retail gasoline prices say that in 1965 a gallon of gas cost $0.31 in the U.S.
Pre-1965 American quarter contains 0.18oz of silver. Today 0.18oz of silver is worth about $3.50, and 31 cents of the same silver-backed coins has 0.217oz of silver. At current spot price it’s about US $3.93 or the the average cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. right now.
So in terms of silver the cost of a gallon of gas has remained constant. It’s the fiat money numbers that are going up. As more bank failures and additional money injections are expected, I think silver and gold will continue to increase in dollar price. I’m converting a portion of our savings into gold and silver to store value, not to make money.
It makes me so mad to think that I worked all these years and saved – all for nothing. This is my other nightmare, and while all of us should be horrified by inflation, I have personal experience with it which makes it all that more painful to watch. In fact, I along with about 150 million other people had lived through a period of hyperinflation. Really really don’t want to experience anything remotely close to that.
At present rate of inflation in North America (as U.S. CPI index went up 1.1% last month, that’s 13% annualized), your money’s worth will be halved in about 5.5 years.
Inflation is my other financial nightmare as I mentioned and I’ll talk about it more. Theme of the week will be inflation.
Last night I had a nightmare: the banks sent out notices for everyone to pony up the balance of the mortgage. (I swear, I’m not making it up, I even woke up an hour early from worry.)
Apparently, the banks can really do it and in fact they had done it in the 80′s, though selectively. I never read that fine print of our mortgage, but I hear that this clause is there.
Anyway, so this happens, and obviously most people can’t pay what they owe, so they start listing their properties for sale and there’s a glut of properties and prices are dropping. How many people can really pay for real estate in cash? Very few. So the prices are dropping, and it’s pretty much impossible to sell the place and pay the bank so the only thing we can do is leave.
That scared the hell out of me because recently I started thinking of our condo ‘equity’ as part of our net worth. Not for lines of credit or whatever, just it’s nice to think that should we sell the place we’ll have an X amount of money in our pocket. If the above scenario plays out, the only money we’ll realistically have is the money in the bank.
It’s probably an unlikely scenario in Canada … at the moment (knock on wood), but always keep in mind that this is a fragile system, as we’re observing the U.S. real estate market.
This would be an easy way to completely decimate the middle class, by the way.
Moral of the story – having cash is nice, the more the better.
But I have another – waking – nightmare related to hoarding cash. Will tell all about it in part 2.
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