Short and Sweet
Economic insecurity is becoming the new hallmark of old age

In the United States,” writes Katherine S. Newman and Rebecca Hayes Jacobs for The Nation, “economic security in old age was seen, for a long time, as both a social issue and a national obligation. From the birth of Social Security to the end of the 20th century, the common assumption has been that we have a shared responsibility to secure a decent retirement for our citizens. Yet that notion is weakening rapidly. Instead, we have started to hear echoes of the mantra of self-reliance that characterized welfare ‘reform’ in the 1990s: You alone are in charge of your retirement; if you wind up in poverty in your old age, you have only your own inability to plan, save, and invest to blame.”

Dow Jones Industrial Average
(1925-1955)
line chart showing the stock market's performance 1925-1955
Chart courtesy of MacroTrends.net • • • Click to enlarge

Some compare today’s stock market psychology to the period just before 2008. Others compare it to the 1920s when everything was hunky-dory until suddenly it wasn’t – perhaps a more apt comparison. Too many are “all-in” with respect to stocks in their Individual Retirement Accounts hoping to accumulate as much capital as possible without regard to the potential downside. As the chart above amply illustrates, the stock market did not recover from the losses accumulated between 1929 and 1933 until the mid-1950s, almost 25-years later – a fragment of stock market history lost to time.

Some will rely on the fact that stocks recovered nicely once the Fed launched the 2009 bailout. We should keep in mind though that many prominent Wall Street analysts have warned that the Fed no longer has the firepower it did then. The financial markets and economy are much more vulnerable as a result – all of which brings us back to the notions of self-reliance and taking personal responsibility for our retirement plans. If you find yourself among the group that thinks hedging a stock market downturn to be in your best interest, we can help you effectively structure a gold and silver diversification as part of your retirement plan to hedge that possibility.

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