We listen to TV, radio shows, and podcasts mentioning it. We read websites, blogs, and newspapers discussing it. We talk to our colleagues, friends, and family about it too. We are living through it, and we will survive past it. All we need to do is calm down and forget about it.
Yes, I said “forget about it”. Stop listening, talking and thinking about it because we got better things to do.
There are approximately one billion things the US dollar affects. Some are negative but some are positive for us. How can anyone gather all the factors and say it’s good or bad? All we end up doing is hearing, reading and seeing one thing and be optimistic, then be pessimistic the next.
Most importantly, there is not a thing we can do about it. We can buy foreign currency, buy gold, and buy foreign stocks but we will still be worried because all our assets and income is in US Dollar.
The reality is that this situation is here to stay for months if not years. Learn to deal with it and not complain about it. If things cost more, buy less. We are born adaptable and flexible. We can and will get through this so just forget about it and definitely stop worrying about it.
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{ read the comments below or add one }
Adaptable and Flexible – you wrote MY motto. And Life is a matter of Attitude.
I don’t have TV, and I can be selective in my internet news, so all the doom and gloom doesn’t get to me…. as a result, I am happy, content, and doing fine financially.
And if the bottom completely falls out, well then I’ll still be fine. I can get along on about $300/month if I have to, altho I would be deferring things like property taxes and repairs, if needed.
When the upturn begins, the smart people will be there waiting for it and poised to take advantage of it…and it WILL turn back up…This stuff goes in cycles and sooner or later what’s heading down will go back up. Just be in a position to hang on and ride it out 🙂
My biggest problem right now is those darned cabbage moths that keep eating my broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. That’s more of a concern to me than the financial cycling going on now.
Living Off Dividends: Yeah I think so. It’s sort of the like real estate market in that there was bad news, it has come down but it will probably take a long time to recover so now is probably not the time to be long the dollar (or real estate)
Jenwae: It’s great that your sister is able to take advantage of this early. Maybe next time this cycle happens, I will spot it early and take advantage 🙂
Thanks for the encouragement. I will do my best to keep the articles coming. Hopefully some of them will be good 😀
Living Off Dividend is right. If you take the passive approach, it can only take you that far in life.
If you can pay a little attention to what is going on, you can spot an opportunity and take advantage. That is called “luck”, being prepared to jump in when opportunities pop.
My sister used to hold some US dollars. She changed it to some foreign-denominated currencies last year because we realize that US dollars are going to lose value for some time to come. Had she not done so, her holdings is worth a lot less now. On hindsight, had we changed it 2 years ago, it would have been better. But in many cases, being late is better than doing nothing.
Keep up your good articles, Ning.
thats very true.
however, I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom of the dollar. there may be some short-term strength, but i think we have more suffering in store.
Living Off Dividends: It’s great if you can spot the trend early. However, most people who try to do something are always the people who are late. The timing now I would say is like people buying real estate when it was 2004-2005 because everyone else have made so much money. Sure they could’ve sold in 2006 and still made a ton of money but those who hung on is now in deep trouble.
ignoring it is definitely not the answer.
instead of trying to find a reason, people just ignore things they don’t understand. which is why they are unable to profit from market trends and changes in the economy.
2 years ago I started buying gold, silver, commodity stocks and canroys. I also bought some foreign currency ETFs and moved my 401k investments in foreign stocks. As a result my 401k is up 20% this year. Definitely better than igonring the weakening dollar.
NewsDoggy: Yes definitely. We get so tensed about our money sometimes even though we can’t do a thing about it.
Shadox: You are definitely right about our purchasing power diminishing. There are certainly a billion ways we can hedge against the the falling dollar but after the dollar losing that much value, isn’t it too late? It’s almost like the people buying real estate during the 2005 and 2006 trying to profit and getting REALLY burned now.
There is a way to protect yourself. You can do so by diverisifying into assets denominated in foreign currency. If you do that correctly you will no longer have to worry about exchange rate fluctuations, since a decline in the Dollar will be offset by a rise on the foreign currency denominated assets, and vice versa.
The fact that you pay for most of your expenses in Dollars is not protection enough, given that much of what we buy is imported, and as the Dollar declines the price of imports will increase.
Well I wasn’t worried about it until now. Just kidding.
This is exactly what I’ve been telling people. The more they worry the more consumer confidence goes down and the less of those dollars they spend which makes it worst.
Everyone just needs to relax. 🙂
I edited your entry since it looked like spam 🙂
Thanks for the article.
It’s not all bad news…
The Upshot of the Dollar’s Fall
-Raj
PersonallyFinanced.com