Fear and Goading - IS it OK to be selfish during the recession?
HfLB convened a roundtable of people from Grace (a CPA, a small business owner, an MD, and a staffing specialist) to talk about the recession and generosity.
The following is an excerpt from the conversation led by Jeff Jensen, senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.
Jeff Jensen: I’m going to start with a different question. Are you scared? I know a lot of people are scared. I was just telling Eric today that when we decided to do our financial paperwork for the first time in a couple months, we realized we didn’t have an account statement for our 401K and what it did last year. Where did it go, where did it go? We had no idea. And I started building a 401K ten years ago. And we had to call the bank and ask what the state of our 401K was. And we found out that we lost 25% of our retirement just this last year alone. I got scared. Are you guys scared about what is happening right now?
Ken Brown: A little bit. And extending that, it took a similar process to find that. I’ve had a couple of financial advisors and counselors with a Christian perspective in our life for a long time and the thing that they pointed out to me that was different than the previous recession where even if you had a conservative balance, whatever term you want to put on the retirement plan, whereas before, even if the DOW was going into the tank, and that percentage went down, some other piece of that diversified retirement plan was doing a little bit better, like in real estate, might have been foreign stocks or something. This time everything is heading south at the same time. Learning that did kind of shake me because I confess I did pat myself on the back, did everything the way the advisors say and you feel kind of protected. So I guess now, its feeling unprotected, in that retirement area.
Sue Hampton: My business as an accountant has been increasing a little because of what Jeff just said, everybody is looking at their stuff and saying maybe we need to evaluate and figure where they are at. There are people that are very scared, and with their jobs especially. The stock market, if you look long-term, it will recover eventually so you just think long-term with it. If you retire you are not going to use everything today, your retirement will last 25 years and will hopefully recover over time, if you don’t need the money necessarily. That’s the hope there. With the jobs, though, that’s a different picture. And everyone’s clamping down and not buying so it’s kind of a spiral. And that’s where the scary stuff comes, it is there.
Kim Gros: There is definitely fear. I work in staffing, so I do recruiting and we’ve lost 4 branches in CA within the last 4 months and we’d get a call in the morning and the branch will be closed that night. And I’m very self-motivated, and the idea that I’m not even able to carry a position knowing I can do it well is very scary for me. I meet with 15 people a week on average, now I meet with 20-30 people a week. They will not stop calling.