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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (55952)	3/15/2006 1:03:10 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

If you recall, there was a time when the yen was substantially stronger than it is now. In Japan, this war ravaged generation is now leaving the scene. I think of that guy that just ran Livedoor into the ground over in that region. This seems like a troubling trend to me - 17.4 to 10.3 to 1.5 - that is going the wrong way eh? Message 22260146 Median net worth rose just 1.5%, to $93,100, between 2001 and 2004, versus a pop of 10.3% in the previous three years and a 17.4% increase in the three years before that. Meanwhile, mortgage debt increased significantly on account of the continued housing boom of recent years. (Home prices surged almost 27% during the period, and the ranks of homeowners rose to 69.1% of the population. Overall household debt jumped a whopping 33.9% to a median value of $55,300. Not surprisingly, the portion of household income devoted to paying off debts rose to 14.4% from 12.9%. Do you get the picture? Many Americans are not doing as well as they may appear. Yes, perhaps they've bought a house, but it's come at a high cost, and overall incomes aren't rising quickly enough to make living with the debt any easier. Credit card debt is always a problem, and those not tackling it are falling deeper and deeper into a hole that's tough to dig out of. (Let us help you if you're debt-ridden.) It's also worrisome when you think about many Americans' retirements. The median net worth stands at $93,100. Let's say that $93,100 is your personal nest egg, and all of it is in the stock market, growing at the historic average annual rate of 10%. In 25 years, you'll have $1 million! That sounds good, but in 25 years it may only have the buying power of $350,000, thanks to inflation -- hardly enough on which to base a comfy retirement. Worse still, most of us hardly have our entire net worth in stocks. Much of it is likely equity in our homes. That kind of investment tends to grow between 5% and 6%, on average, annually. (Learn more in "Prepare for a Gruesome Retirement.")