Easy... ever expanding credit.


Maxprop wrote:
Not in my case. I have no credit debt beyond my home.


Means nothing. People take cash-out refi's all the time, to
pay for accumulated debt or to splurge on a home
entertainment system. I saw a poster the other day
advertising a bank offer of 125% on your home's appraised value.



Another explanation is that you aren't including investment returns in
your "current income" (which indeed they shouldn't be under many
circumstances).


Just because I'm not including my investment proceeds in my income does not
imply that my income is not substantial.

?

What did I say, exactly? Anything that implied what your
investment income is (or is not)?


... And I guess I should have stated
that we could draw our current combined family income without touching the
principle. The reason we can do that is quite simple: the principle is
also substantial. Don't always attempt to find the red herring in every
situation. Nothing fishy here--just sound investments. Not bad for a
"neocon," eh?


Congratulations.

Did you choose to be a neo-conservative so that you could be
the sole voice of fiscal reason in the group?




... Obviously the larger the nest egg the
better, but to fallaciously inflate life expectancies in order to sell
something is bogus.


Agreed, but obviously it's not working. The U.S. has a negative savings
rate and there's little or no sign it's going up from here.


I heard that the day after I posted that.

It's been in the fiscal news for years that the U.S. savings
rate is dropping from low to nothing. Few if any of the
pundits thought it would actually go negative, or stay that
way for this long.

... Not good news for the government,
who undoubtedly will be supporting a substantial percentage of the
population on down the road.


Why should they? Just because the gov't has taken up the
task of driving the middle class into poverty, and
extinguishing the U.S.'s economic base, doesn't mean that
they're going to take any responsibility for the consequences.

Actually, it's somewhat unfair to say "the gov't" is doing
this, since it's really the fault of the politicians
currently in charge; who are not only executing
short-sighted & selfish policies but also replacing
functioning departments with patronage dependent partisan
lackeys.



OTOH why not retire on credit cards? You can always shuffle your balance
from one card to the next. This modern world of finance is a freeloader's
dream scenario.


I've no doubt someone (other than yourself) has thought of that as a
retirement plan.


It seems to be the basic plan for national fiscal policy.

DSK