Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Read more Katy at...
LateBoomer.net
Most Recent Posts
- Hey, Christa, Come On Down!
- This Is Not Your Mother’s Christian Fiction!
- Priceless
- A Veritable Dearth Of Posts
- Ireland In June
- Diana, Come On Down!
- I Hesitate To Say You’re Doubly Lucky, But Hey. You Are.
- Write The Next Chapter!
- About The Post Directly Beneath This Post!
- Deaf. And Evidently Dumb, Too
- O.P.T.
- The Skinny
- A Mother Remembers
- Where Is Dave Barry When We Need Him?
- Overdose
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Katy Raymond’s Market Timer, Free-Of-Charge For Fallible Readers
What I’m about to share with you won’t help me a bit, but you could stand to gain tremendous amounts of money.
Here’s the deal: Doug and I both work for our own corporation, and let’s just say our contributions to our retirement accounts are sporadic and almost always consist of lump sums rather than monthly investments.
I tend to get a tad nervous when we make a good chunk of change, because that’s when we send in one of those lump-summers. You see, hard won experience has proven to me that THE DAY AFTER our wad o’ cash is placed into a good, sturdy index fund with a long and reliable track record of returning, on average, 11% a year over a gazillion years, the market will drop like a boulder.
The next day, it will drop further. And the next. Lather, rinse, repeat for weeks on end, until your arms go numb or you run out of shampoo.
So. My gift to you, which we’ll just call Katy Raymond’s Market Timer, is that I hereby commit to blogging about my intention to invest in PLENTY of time for you to take all your money off the stock-market table before disaster strikes.
In other Raymond Money News, I recently realized that the personal finance principles I THOUGHT we’d imparted to our children may have missed the mark JUST A TAD.
My daughter Carrie and her new husband Marc opened their wedding cards (checks enclosed!) at our house a few days after returning from their honeymoon. They were thrilled with the generosity of their friends and relatives, but since both of them are fiscally responsible and becoming even moreso, I wasn’t surprised when Carrie counted the considerable loot and said, “This is going to become our emergency fund.”
Emergency fund? I thought that’s what my home equity line of credit was for! Just kidding, really. Kind of.
I felt pretty proud of that girl until she turned to her husband, winked, and said, “Or it could be our emergency FUN.”
Katie--Most of my investing is imaginary as my husband likens the market to gambling. When we go, you can come looking for the buried coffee cans in our yard. :)
Posted by Terri on 08/21 at 04:18 PMTerri--Mmmm....so your money smells good, too! I’d like to go geocaching at your place! (And yes, I just learned what that term meant about a month ago....) Hope you have a good semester teaching those crazy writing students!!
Posted by katy on 08/21 at 04:45 PMHaha, that is so Carrie! I have been tempted to use ours for vacays but we ended up using it on my car when it died on me. We still haven’t gotten it all built back up which stinks but thank goodness we had it when we needed it!
Posted by Lynnell Hayes on 08/22 at 11:09 AMI am glad that I have a good retirement that will keep a roof over my head and food on the table. I don’t ask for more, but I have some stocks that have done well and some that have not. I will check in before I buy more :)
Posted by Maria on 08/24 at 09:36 PMLynnell--I am proud of you guys for hanging on to some $$! It’s hard to do when you’re newlyweds (or ever...) but you will not be sorry. Tell Andy hi, and it was so nice to see you and your Mom at C’s wedding!
Maria--Self-employment is oh-so-great in many ways, but preparing for retirement is NOT one of the ways. We’re doing OK, but not as great as if one of us had had a company plan all these years. Still, for your own sake and Bob’s, please do check in with me before further investing. Those Homes for the Befuddled can be awfully expensive. You may need every dime!!! ;)
Posted by katy on 08/25 at 06:34 AMCarrie, You go, girl! You only live once, and emergency FUN is sometimes what life is all about! :)
Posted by Bridget on 08/28 at 05:12 AMThere should be an emergency fund AND an emergency fun fund. Ours is labeled Vacation when we actually put money in it. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me to store all this money for when your older and don’t have as much energy and kids, grandkids, etc. instead of living life to the fullest while your young. Sometiems (at least for your own sanity and overall well-being you do just need to get away.
Posted by Lynnell Hayes on 08/28 at 08:03 AM
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