Monday, January 26, 2009

You know, I'm sympathetic to those folks who were led astray by ruthless investment hucksters, truly I am. The truth is that pretty much everyone I know of who has an IRA has been hard-hit by the downward caprices of the stock market, so the economic mess has been the sinking tide which lowers all boats. Ideally, most of those folks are young enough that if they continue to invest apace in their IRA, this can be a big building time for the portfolio of someone with at least 10 years to go before they need to tap those funds for living expenses[so long as no one hits the reset button].

But someone who lost millions? Jeepers. Doesn't everyone on earth know to diversify, and particularly people with that amount of dosh lying about? So the untold story is so-and-so lost millions, but what are their other holdings? Someone barely making ends meet supporting a family on $25K loses their job and they've got real problems. Someone losing millions in a stock scam is probably not going to have the electricity cut off at their ski lodge in Banff. I'm guessing the person who lost those millions will not be queuing up for a job washing the streets they used to own. After all- they are richer, smarter and better than pretty much everyone else, and what's the point of having all those advantages if they are not insulated from consequences in life?

But, heigh ho! There's good news: there are lots of ways to turn it around and find the gleaming pot of gold at the end of the tunnel. Here's an article on MSN.com about how to turn your capital losses into a silver lining. It's called Get your Madoff deduction here! I'm not kidding about the title. Yet more evidence that if you lose on a real, skin-of-your-teeth level, you're pretty much ood-scray, but if you lose big-- well, that's everyone else's problem, including the skin-of-their-teeth folk.

from the video teaser on the article:
You can deduct almost anything, if you know the rules. Even body parts.


Thank goodness there's real help for the folks who really rate. *snerk*

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I don't feel sorry for the people that made bad investments on scams or even if they wound up failing (like stock in Washington Mutual) -- it's a risk to anyone. I do feel bad for the people that were depending on cashing out their 401ks in the next few years for retirement and now many of them have to work longer. It's just a lesson learned to me on how much to try to diversify things.