Illness has befallen me...

10/15/2008

Lord, have mercy!  I am sicker than a dog eating rotten meat; ready to heave my cookies; spew my non-meat eater lunch all over the world.  This is the worse feeling I have ever had; greater than any pain I have had to endure.  What have I done to deserve this?

Yesterday at a quiet time I succumbed to it.  I could not stand it a moment longer, though I wish I had, and I recklessly accessed my 401K.  Damn, me!!!

Words cannot be found to express the horror of it.  My poor 401K is now a 133.66K-, and that is an undisputed fact.  The balance shocked me to the core.  Without putting myself to more pain I guesstimated the loss – more shock and awe!  It appears with a quick, mental calculation the loss from just one-year ago is nearly two-thirds of my meager savings.  A rough calculation, mainly because I couldn’t let it go, is that every cent I have put into the 401K prior to 2002 is gone, vanished, kaput, out of here.

Know what?  I really don’t care.  Well, maybe a little.  It was just money on paper anyway.  While I am a little put off by the loss, I certainly am not sick about it, though I do feel a little headachy.  Perhaps reality will set in should the stock market not rebound, but in the long run it wasn’t money I ever saw or had my grubby, not-so-little hands on.  It was all on paper – it went up, it went down.

As my eventual retirement approaches (please, Lord, not too soon?), I may have to reassess my needs and my budget, but for now there isn’t much I can do but sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.  Oh what ride it is!!! 

And that is all I have to say about that…