Retirement and Financial Security

With the economic turmoil last week there is a great deal of uncertainity about the future. Here is a quote in the Boulder Daily Camera from a reader who was commenting on a story about the plunging stock market, "My new plan is to start saving aluminum in my backyard one beer can at a time! With the price of metals going up daily and stocks going down this is the only fail-safe retirement plan I can think of."

I used to have a lot of confidence in my ability to manage my retirement plan, but I lost most of my retirement two years ago through making a risky high-yield investment with other friends in what turned out to be a "pyramid scheme." So now that the rest of America is seeing their retirement plans quickly losing value because of risky financial schemes by the leading investment bank officers, I can see my loss in a different perspective. In an AP report on Tuesday, October 7 it stated, "Congress' top budget analyst estimated that Americans' retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in 15 months." The "criminals" whether the pyramid scheme bosses or the bosses of these investment banks have stolen our financial security and robbed us of our confidence in the future.

As I have gone to the Lord in prayer to ask for justice, He has caused me to ask forgiveness for my own misplaced confidence. He alone is to be my confidence, He alone is my security, and I must respond in faith to His will for my life. I have been encouraged as I have meditated on the Psalms, particularly Psalm 31, 32 and 33. "No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save."

Once I regain my hope in the Lord, "collecting aluminum cans in my backyard might just be the best retirement plan for now." It certainly can't be worse than trusting in the idiot money managers who have lost $2,000,000,000,000 in 15 months or than trusting in myself when I foolishly invested in a risky scheme!