I have to say, I’m not terribly saavy when it comes to finances. One of my first bosses once told me that you should hold on to stock as long as you can. Boy was that bad advice.
I’m thinking now about the crash of 2001. I remember D., how she’d accumulated thousands of shares of company stock. She was going to sell them off when she retired and go to her hometown in Georgia, create a foundation, build a school, give back. Then the stock went from $140-something a share to $17 a share. When it hit $13, she thought of selling. Then it hit $10 and her stockbroker called, panicked. He said it was going to drop to zero. She sold it every last bit of it, thousands and thousands of shares. The point at which she sold happened to be the lowest it reached before slowly climbing back up.
Sell high, buy low. That’s what they say. Some people, people like me, aren’t built for stock markets. We don’t have a good sense of where the high point is. Some people are built for other markets, slapping the skin of a melon to tell if its ripe, or knowing how to contrast colors, or being able to predict whether the baby in your belly is a boy or a girl. Odd that I should be the one in our family to be the money person. It’s not a role I relish.
I wonder what Dad thinks about the financial crisis. I wonder if it’s going to affect him much. I think we all lost money, although one could argue the money never really was ours to lose, just money on paper, back in 2001. That’s the thing about stocks and equity. It’s all paper money. Like those dollars you get in Monopoly, orange-yellow for the $20 bill, baby blue for $5, yellow for $1.
Honestly, I can still see and smell all of that game, remember which properties cost the most and which were good buys. Park Avenue and Broadway were on the side of the board you never wanted to land on. I always went for infrastructure—Reading Railroad and Water Works. Those seemed solid and cheap, I think it only cost $75 to buy most of them.
I’m trying to remember now, what little doodad did I pick for my Monopoly self? Was it the Scottish terrier? Or was there a big high heel shoe, a woman’s shoe? For some reason that rings a bell. I liked things that had denseness to them, none of those hollow ones. I would never had gone for the thimble or the top hat. I liked weight, something I could feel in my hand.
Where I go in times of financial crisis? Certainly not to my stockbroker. I won’t call him for a while, assuming he still has his job. I don’t want to know the damage, and I’m certainly not going to sell low like D. I’ll wait for the value to grow again, if it grows again. It did after 2001. Call me in ten years and once it grows, I’ll probably take it all out. Never do stocks again. They’re too light-weight, like the thimble in Monopoly, not enough meat on their bones. If I could invest in dirt, I would, and I suppose that’s what land and buildings are all about, although those don’t seem like a good risk at this point either.
When I’m in personal crisis, I go inward. I’m thinking now of each night when I go to bed, how I tuck my hands into the waistband of my pajama bottoms. I go to warmth, pull my arms in tight so they touch the rest of my body. Some day when I’m old I will be folded in and tiny, all of me caving in towards my heart. That’s the place I go to. To my heart, to where I can protect it.
If it’s a family crisis, I go to my parents. I go to my siblings, the place where I feel the most comfortable. The place I grew up. But if the crisis is my very own, I deal with it on my own. It’s just how I am.
-related to post WRITING TOPIC – WHERE DO YOU GO IN TIMES OF CRISIS?
This is beautifully written, yb.
Wow, I can agree with the fact that I too am terrible with finances. It took me forever to understand the use of credit cards, debit cards, how to take out student loans for school, etc.. While I love math, finances is soooo out of my league. Even talking about the subject makes me queasy and headache-y.
I really like the way you describe stock markets and investments in general:
“They’re too light-weight, like the thimble in Monopoly, not enough meat on their bones. If I could invest in dirt, I would, and I suppose that’s what land and buildings are all about, although those don’t seem like a good risk at this point either.”
If anything, I think most people would rather invest in land than stock markets because there are lots of things people could do with land.
“Some day when I’m old I will be folded in and tiny, all of me caving in towards my heart.”
That quote reminds me of an origami heart. I love that sentence. I guess in some ways I do that too. I fold myself in, and I’m sure there are lots of shelves of folds inside my turtle shell for me to hide things I wish not to share with others.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. :)
Dear yb, I’ve written a poem borrowing the favorite line I talked about previously (#1). I thought I’d share this poem with you as it ran along the same lines when I was thinking about old age.
http://alotus-poetry.livejournal.com/25729.html
Enjoy!
lotus, I just read your poem (link on#2), How to Become the Elements. It’s wonderful. I really like how the bones and ivory weave throughout. And it’s so great that you are participating with the folks over on readwritepoem. Thank you for sharing your poetry.
Where do I go in times of crisis? I am currently taking a Mind, Body, Spirit class. It has no academic value yet the school allowed it to be taken for 2 credits. I am also applying it towards my major. I feel like a few yrs earlier, that would never be allowed. There seems to be a new emphasis on mental health at universities. It’s great.
Anyways. in times of crisis, unlike you, I feel I go outward. It is necessary for me to reveal every feeling to multiple people before I feel any better. Maybe its a generational thing. Increasing methods of communication have increased the communication in times of crisis. My friend recently told me about a new book which describes the end of the world as a time where all communication (telephone, internet, text, etc) break down. Scary thought.
Nice piece.
Hi little beak. Seems like a positive development, this emphasis on mental health. I think it would be good as pre-Med for student as future doctor, both in terms of self and patient.
It is necessary for me to reveal every feeling to multiple people before I feel any better. Maybe its a generational thing.
Yeah, I think it could be generational. Young people today are so “out there”—My Space, Facebook, texting, etc. It could also be age. When I was younger, I relied a lot on my best friends to think things through with me. I talked it out more then, too.
One other thing, related to students in the current financial crisis, there was one excellent question in last night’s presidential debate by a student (presumably from Belmont University, where the debate was held, in Nashville, TN) re: how the crisis will affect young people. The question revealed such an honesty about how young people have this belief that they will get education, go out and make a good living, and how that belief has really been shaken up. What is out there for them?
Well, I don’t have answers, but the question hit home just how much this particular “crash” has changed all the assumptions that we’ve come to rely on and that your generation has put a lot of hope into.