Hope and Faith not Greed and Speed

This is gonna be a whole 'nother blog today, but it's about keeping the faith and never losing touch with hope.  This is so fundamental about running a household, raising children and just generally "Keeping on Keeping on" that I'm thinking that it's worth the cyber space I'm using.

Today, my stock portfolio reached the highest point I was at when all this economic nastiness began.  This was over two years ago, and for a lot of the time, I've been sitting on pins and needles, praying that recovery was at hand.

Today, November 4th, 2010, I can truly say I've hit recovery.

But what is recovery?  John and I were never honestly hit with this recession.   Trust me, we've been hit in the past, and were this time as well, but our only suffering this time was "on paper" and not real.  We still had our pensions and John was able to so some consulting work in the energy field (so to speak).   So we had our downs, but it was something that didn't interfere with our day-to-day lives.  I wish  I could say the same about friends and family.

I have sisters who are out of work, bosom buddies who are out of work, partners of bosom buddies who are out of work, husbands of sisters who are out of work, the list goes on.  In addition, I have family whose jobs were negatively impacted by the recession: they didn't lose their jobs or benefits, but the economy impacted how much they made.

I'm not a Gates or a Getty or an oil baron in the Middle East.  I'm a middle class housewife who turned a little bit of money into a little bit more money.  And I did it by not losing faith and building on hope.

When my stocks plunged, I dug in my feet and chose to wait it out.  We were lucky, the money I played with was disposable - we didn't need it for our regular living expenses.  And I had bought decent stock, no real losers, just sensible stuff that would follow the overall economic picture.  My prudence was ultimately rewarded, but it took time.  Things might not have been so good had I needed extra cash.

I got my "financial advice" from my father-in-law who also made money by investing money in our economy.  He only had two salient bits of advice, and for me it worked out.  "Don't be greedy" and "Don't be in a hurry" was my mantra for years.  It was good advice.

If motherhood teaches us anything, it teaches us to eschew greed and wait things out.  Kids aren't calmly raised because mom and dad lost faith at the first sign of trouble.  Nobody got rich selling stock in a panic when the market dipped.  People lose money when they sell in panic.  And, although we lived without my income for 12 years, we ended up ok financially because we learned early on in our lives that money wasn't everything.  Family was everything.


So,  I'm hoping that this recovery catches up with all of us.  It did with me today, so I'm hoping the same karma flows your way as well.  I have ultimate plans for the money I've made by investing - it will involve grandkids and education.  So there goes the greed.  And I don't have grandkids, yet, so there goes the hurry!

It's good to have a plan and to visualize the future.