The Cosmopolitan Blog

Ok, i’m no financial expert. Seriously. I fell asleep in finance class in college. BUT i will say this. I have stocks and i understand enough to sort of kind of know what i’m doing. And, like the rest of the investors in the world, it’s REALLY scary to see the stocks plumet. I actually have stocks (small numbers, no need to try and figure out how to rob me, you’d be disappointed) in 2 different markets, the DOW and the Tokyo Stock Exchange. And trust me, seriously, you need some serious stomach to watch your stock price plumet. One of my stocks has reached 1/2 the price i bought it at, the other is so close to 0 it makes you want to puke. And these are not volatile companies, any more solid and they’d be government stocks (haha, i see the irony in this now…).

But if you’re smart, and if you’re in your mid-30s like me (the age part, not the smart part), you technically don’t have to worry. You hold on tight and ride it through, it’s a fact, there’s peaks and valleys in finance, and you just wait it out. Just as sure as they fell, they will rise again. And you know what, i have time, i’m not a trader, i can hold on to these stocks for a long time, i know i made a wise choice, and i KNOW they will bounce back. (no it’s not faith, it’s ecconomics, that’s the class i WAS awake for, lol).

But you know what scares me? It’s those people who are maybe 1-2 years away from retirement. This money was supposed to be part of their financial livelyhood. And now, while they can stick it out for a little while, no one can say HOW LONG it will take for the stocks just to get back to what they were, let alone make you money again! And that’s horrible. I can imagine the millions of smart wise investors, who spent their whole life educating themselves, finding strong solid ways to invest in their family’s future, and UGH, now this.

For those who can afford to wait, I promise you, we’ll be ok, just hang in there. For those who were counting on this money today or tomorrow, I am so very sorry, this is bad, it’s very bad. Hang in there. I pray for you.

…On a lighter note, Ali Velshi of CNN said it’s ok, it’s gonna get better from here, and he had proof of this… and you know that if Ali Velshi says it, then it’s gotta be true!