Alice, we’ve been doing the silver/gold thing as well, on the side, over time. We don’t have much yet, but, it never will be worth less than what we put into it. We also have the basic set-aside investments and so far have only lost 3k. We stopped the bleeding but, we are watching because, we hope to snap up some good stocks once the election is over (maybe). If not, we haven’t had our clocks cleaned.
We see how heavily we are indoctrinated to invest and invest and invest. Well, guess who gets all that money,,,not the investor. The best we can hope for is to make a profit of some sort but then we have to share it if it’s in stocks/financials. We are learning to save more, buy more precious stuff and lower our profile in credit and stocks. It’s actually harder than it sounds because our culture is so entrenched in the notion that the financial “experts” are the ones to trust with our money. That is not always true and some are learning that very painful lesson the hard way.
Hubby never had the stomach for the stock market so we decided to follow another route.
They only thing we are worried about and watching is his “Defined Contributions Fund”. So far we haven’t lost any of the principal.
As far has his pension goes, he has been talking to people in the know and it seems that we are ok there too.
My heart goes out to many regular folks who trusted these Wall St. bums.