Now It's Personal

It's everywhere you look: doom and gloom emanating from Wall Street, the global economies in a free fall, the mortgage crisis, the cost of living and healthcare and fuel out of control. I can barely look at the news each day to see what will happen next. It's distressing.

While I've watched the events of the previous two weeks with anxiety, I haven't had the courage to look at my own investments. I know it's cowardly, but I'm certain the results will be so horrendous as to render me incapacitated.

Yesterday, Fang started to look at our financial portfolio online. As expected our mutual funds and bonds had eroded. We had spoken with our financial advisor a few weeks prior when the news about Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG broke. He assured us our investments were not tied up in any of these holdings. And indeed, the erosion was not horrendous. These are long term investments anyway, Fang reminded me, so it should bounce back in the long term. My mind eased, I returned to my mundane housework. Suddenly I heard Fang mutter, "Oh, fuck."

I froze. "What? What?!!" I yelled at him.

"Your 401K took a big hit," he said.

"Like what?" my voice was taking on a high pitch of panic. "$20,000? $30,000? Please don't tell me it's $50,000?"

He paused and said slowly, "It's lost $110,000 since January."

What..The...FUCK?! Seriously? You could have peeled me off the kitchen floor. That's 23% of my total 401K that I have been squirreling money into since the late 1980s. And now a portion of it is gone, disappeared like a fart in the wind. I was inconsolable.

On later reflection, I suppose it was inevitable. Everyone is feeling the impact of this shit economy and in the back of my mind, I knew my investments would get dinged as well. I don't expect to access my 401K for another 15 years and some part of it should rebound eventually. The hardest pill to swallow is the knowledge that money that I earned and scrupulously saved is now gone. When I think what I could buy for that amount of money, I am sickened.

That represents 2,245 blowouts. That's 4,783 spa pedicures. That's 11 Birkin bags!! That would buy me a trio of classic Corvettes. 1,375 pairs of Louboutin shoes. 20% down on a dreamhouse farmhouse in southern Vermont. Sweet Jesus, I could buy 146 CLASSIC Chanel suits for that! Four bathroom remodels. I could go on. I am ill, ill with the thought of it.

I take solace in the fact that I'm not alone. The entire country is feeling this pain.