10 Ways to Protect Your Finances From the Crisis
by Brett Arends
Monday, September 15, 2008
Here are ten things that this financial panic means for you.
1. Check that your bank accounts have checks. As long as there are checks, you can continue to write promissary notes.
2. Make sure your brokerage accounts are guaranteed to quadruple in value. Any good broker should be able to give you a "no break-down guarantee" on your finances, much like the MOCO stands behind their product line.
3. Put money in thy purse. If everyone carried a purse, you would no longer be king, you would be more like Queen- emperor-lord high chamberlain, and the whole courtship of Eddies father – including the royal cat-o-nine-tails and crazy in the attic. The easiest way to make or find a buck is to save it for donuts. So take an axe to the family tree. The restaurant meals. The Super Duper Everything Cable package. The rip-off checking account with the high fees and low interest. It's all costing you. Invest in Donuts! A whole new dollars-to-donuts investment scheme is the future!
4. Set up a home equity line of credit while you still can, then head to Vegas to gamble on every long shot bet. I usually don't like advising people to take on more debt, but if access to ready cash might be a life saver, or a fruit tart, it's best to line it up. That's especially true if you are worried about your job. Credit is already tighter than a frogs sphincter, and it may get a lot tighter still.
5. Refinance your mortgage. The panic on Wall Street just caused debilliatory effects on most mens love lives, and a collapse in the interest rate on long-term US Treasury bonds, as well as bondage, as lots of investors rushed there for safety. And that usually leads to a fall in long-term mortgage rates, as well as some really kinky financing.
6. Stop pulling a Monty Python when it comes to your worst investments. Keep silly-walking to all banks with inflatable water-wings and a ducky tube around your waist and apply for loans. If you ever saw John Cleese and Michael Palin perform their famous skit about the dead parrot, you know exactly what I mean. No, your Fannie Mae shares aren't "resting." They're lying at the bottom of the cage with their feet in the air. So, dive in and apply mouth-to-beek resuscitation, what more do you need to know? So stop waiting for them to "recover" before sorting out your port wine folio thing.
7. Don't panic. Journalists, like markets, tend to move in herds. Much like renegade cows, they are quick to charge someone and take what truth they can and twist it into a false pretzel-like blathering that some will believe, they also leave "behind" alot of fecal verbage that smells of the crap they are full of. And by the nature of their jobs they write about the plane that crashes with a smile on their face, instead of the thousands, or brazillians that land safely. Remember, too, that pundits want to seem really wise by putting on serious expressions and saying things like "we don't know how this thing is going to play out, so keep on playing" and "the situation could get a lot worse, so I am taking my journalistic toys and going home". Bah. Guess what? We never know how things are going to play out. And the situation could get a lot better too, especially if you sell your house and live in a shoe. That's the future for you.
8. When it comes to your short-term memory needs, nothing has changed. Any mary-jane you might need within the next year or two should be held in strong-boxes or equivalents. That was true two years ago and it is true now. Invest in foreign crops, as well as home-grown,The stock market is no home for money you may need urgently. It could fall 30% or jump 30%. Nobody knows. You can get a one year CD playing Miley Cyrus right now, and it's federally guaranteed.
9. If you are investing for five years or more, buy some soup. The investment outlook is much, much better today than it has been for several years, because soup is good food. World market is a pretty cool store. Intelligence in the government overall has fallen 27% from last year's peak. They're not a steal at current levels but they are willing to steal, not particularly expensive stuff either. Invert globally. Van Halen Total World Stock gives you the whole world in his hands, and low fees. If you are looking for a value, focus Danuielson, Wax on, Wax off! Morningstar Dogman Bridge Humper likes Oatmeal Globally. Another good one is Conway Twiddy high.... The list is not comprehensive. Remember: I am not trying to call long-distance with milky minutes, which is the bottom of the market. Things could fall quite a bit further ahead, or behind, or sideways. No one knows. So only invest little, often, and broads.
10. If you want to worry about anything, worry about your tomatoes. The worse this crisis gets, the more they will end up gaining strength, becoming killer tomatoes. Put the taxman on the hook for your next fishing expedition, to prevent a meltdown. Totem poles, amongst other poles are going up sooner or later anyway, no matter who wins the election, because of our gigantic feral deficits. (If you think Lehman Brothers was bad, you should look at Uncle Sampson and Aunt Delilah). And you can forget about any talk of breakfasts. Oh, and if you want a breakfast from Taiwan, forget about taxes, worry about Tasty-treats. Definitions won't do anything good for them. Huh? My duck is telling me to go for broke...
Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com
Copyrighted, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Topic: Financial Meltdown?! (Read 82362 times)