Save, Save, Save

Sameer Puri D.D.S.

14 years ago

A recent headline on Yahoo Finance said that equities, aka stocks, are becoming fashionable again. In 2008, after the market crashed and went down to 6,500 or so, every single person in the investment community said that this time it's different. The market is never coming back. Our financial future is ruined forever and this country will never recover.

Well, it's the job of the news media to sensationalize the news and make it seem that every event that happens is the end of the world. The Great Recession, as it came to be known, was going to forever change the way we save and invest in this country. And not only that - for the vast majority of Americans, retirement would be forever delayed.

Let's put the events of the Great Recession into perspective. If we were to look at the events of the past few years, they certainly seem catastrophic by any measure. The market loses 50 percent of its value; unemployment tops 10 percent, foreclosures at an all-time high. So yes, things were bad. But compared to other events of the past century, maybe the past two years were not as bad as we thought they were.

World War I was certainly a larger event this country endured. As was World War II, the Vietnam War and possibly the Korean War. How about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? For those of you old enough to remember, what about the gas lines of the '70s, and smaller, more recent events like the dot-com bust of 2002 and the real estate meltdown of the '90s.

All of these events had tremendous impact on this country. After all of these events, the experts claimed that this time it's different. That this time, things would forever change the way this country invested, saved and retired.

Well, it's been the same every single time. After each disaster, the market has bounced back, and bounced back strong - returning double digits after crashing hard. The lesson to be learned? Stay invested; keep saving, because it's always the same. Those who don't panic and try to time the market come out smelling like a rose. Those that panic and try to buy low and sell high, usually end up buying high and selling low.

Invest in your practice, invest in your savings and remember, this time is no better or worse than all those times in the past 100 years. We survived and persevered then, and we shall do so now.

Good luck.