Hitting the reset button…

America appears to be hitting the reset button big-time. Home values are being reset, stock prices are being reset, the very landscape of our financial markets is being reset. The big question which is still up in the air is “reset to what?”

Will we reset to the values and price that we had right after the 9-11 crisis or are we gong further back in time? The Dow closes below 10,000 today. Where are we headed? Will it fall below the 9,000 level? Will home values fall into the 1990’s or 1980’s levels? Where will we land?

Those are certainly troubling questions and thinking about the potential answer is even more troubling. I watched much of my retirement nest egg disappear in the bust following the Internet bubble. It took 5 years to climb back to near where it was before that event. Now in just days all of that gain is gone again and we start over; maybe this time from an even worse level – it hasn’t stopped falling yet.

When I was much younger and working at a good high paying job, I guess I wasn’t as concerned about such events, After all there was always time to earn it back and I was years and years away from needing it anyway. Now that I’m trying to live off at least a part of it (trying to earn a living at real estate has a way of doing that to you these days), it is of great concern to me. I don’t have the time to keep hitting the reset button and waiting out yet another financial crisis.

So it is with great trepidation that I watch the news of the market falling a couple hundred points last week and over 500 points today. Each of those points likely represents another bill that I’ll have trouble paying or a vacation trip that my wife and I can’t take. It’s already meant that I’ve got to patch up the old car again and try to see if it can go another 50-100,000 miles and I’m hoping that the roof can last an extra few years.

It was during the Lyndon Johnson administration that the term Misery Index was first used to describe how bad things were for the citizenry of the country. That index combined unemployment with inflation to rate the misery level of the country. Well drag that puppy back out, because this is getting pretty miserable; only now we'll have to have it measure a combination of loss of value in our stock portfolios and home values - the loss of our net worth. For many negative numbers will have to be used.

Of course both political parties will be trying to lay claim to being the ones that can change things and make it better. Getting rid of George Bush and his policies will already make it somewhat better (like pulling an impacted tooth); but, we’ll still have the infection of this financial mess to cure before we really recover.

So, let’s get on with the elections and hit the reset button and hope, just hope, that where we end up doesn’t leave us with another 5-10 year fight to get back to where we were just a year or two ago. I’m told that adversity and struggle build character, but I think I’m a character enough without any more of this – enough already!