Bobert,

That post did nothing but state your obvious ignorance of any economic gains that can be achieved by simply investing your money into programs that are not currently being done with the current monies.

You've got to get past this fixation of Enron and other single, highly volatile stocks and start looking at the big picture. Have you ever ever heard of mutual funds? These are a group of bonds and stocks that work together for the entire membership of the grouped monies. Now, if you had your choice of putting your money into bonds or stocks, which would you choose? By your posts, I would say that you would probably want to put all of your money into bonds. When I say bonds, I mean a fund that's made up of savings and government bonds, treasury notes and other similar vehicles. And that's ok. That's why they're there. It's called the preservation of capital.

Now look at the stocks. Just whose stocks are we talking about? There are funds that have stocks from domestic based companies. There are other funds that have stocks from foreign based companies. You can choose funds that are all healthcare related or technology related. But what are you actually buying? Individual stocks? NO!
You are buying shares of the fund itself that is made up of these hundreds or thousands or millions of stocks. You're actually putting your money back into companies whose products you use everyday. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, GE, Microsoft, Gas companies, oil companies, sports franchises, Proctor & Gamble, Dell, Magnavox, Sony, Wal-Mart, General Mills and other like companies. You're causing your portfolio to grow because you actually own pieces of the companies whose products you've either used or directly affects your day to day life.

But, you ask, what happens when the market takes a plunge? That's when it gets better. Have you ever heard of dollar cost averaging? That basically means that by putting money into your fund in regular intervals that you are going to benefit the most whenever the market is down because your money buys more shares if they're at a lower price. Who doesn't look for bargains? Now when the market comes back up then your whole portfolio will be valued much higher than if you were just to put in $10,000 and let it set for 25 years without adding anything to it.

Well, Hubby, what happens if the market totally crashes and all the companies go broke?

Then we'll all be standing in the soup lines because the green paper in you wallet won't be good for anything except blowing your nose in.

So are there risks? Sure there are. But if you consistently keep your eyes on it and as you get closer to retirement, start moving more and more of your shares from stocks to bonds then you will actually preserve what you have and stay away from the more volatile side.

Sound like too much trouble? It really shouldn't be because once you've seen it at work and have a thorough understanding of the way the system works then it should be something that everybody looks at and says, "Man, I wish I would have understood how this worked thirty years ago. I'd be a millionaire right now." But if it still sounds like too much work, then let the government decide what's best for you. You'll get your measley 1.5-2.5% rate of return on your SS contributions and I'm sure that you'll be happy.

Just make sure that you watch the mail closely and don't lose your medicare card that your neighbor is helping pay the cost for. I'm sure he doesn't want to see his money go to waste either.


Hubby