Scruffy The Legend

I see the lead news story on my Yahoo home page this morning says “retire with over $1 million even if you have’nt started saving yet”. It goes on to say that if you put away only $100 per month and earn 10% on the investment and save for 20 years –

Wait a second! If I could have earned 10% on my investments over 20 years, I would be rich. You can’t earn more than a few measily percent over the real long term – Safely!!. Ask those people who invested with Madoff if I am right or not.

I find that I can’t even out earn inflation – particularly real inflation. What is real inflation? The amount your cost of living goes up every year – probably something like 8%. How is this possible when the CPI is more like 2- 3% per yr over the past several years. The CPI, like every number you hear, whether from the government or not – is a total lie. Ask yourself how much your property taxes, fuel costs, food costs, have gone up per year lately. Sure the cost of a refigerator (and other similar items) has probably only gone up 2% – but how often do you buy one of these?

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention – OK maybe I am wrong and you can save $ 1 millon over the next 20 years. Do you know what 1 million will be worth after 20 years of 8% inflation? Its already not enough to retire on (unless you have a cost of living indexed pension as well). In fact if you have a pension indexed to cost of living, you are golden – I wish I could be one of you.

Ok, I’ll try to make my next post more relevant to Charlie and Ruby. Someday, however,you will probably hear more form me on numbers that are lies – like all study results reportred to you on the news or in pharma company ads – yes – each and every number a lie (or at least very misleading) – trust me.

Administrator