Are You Worried About the Economy??
December 27th, 2008 by admin
It only takes about 30 seconds of watching the news to really get yourself freaked out about the economy. Gas prices, the housing market, a shortage of rice and the “recession” we are in seems overwhelming!
May I suggest you TURN OFF THE NEWS!! It is the media’s job to get good ratings and dramatic and fearful news sells. Sad but true.
Yes, you are feeling the hit at the pump, your investments may be currently losing and your house may not sell, but did you know that we are NOT in a recession. Our growth has slowed and our economy is sluggish. By definition, a recession is when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (which is the statistic used to measure the economy) growth is negative for 2 consecutive quarters or more. Did you know we haven’t
had even 1 negative growth quarter?
The 3rd quarter of 2007 had a GDP of +4.9% and the 4th quarter was +0.6%. The BEA will release the numbers for the 1st quarter of 2008 in a couple of days. Yes, things are slowing and a recession could be in the future, but we are not in one now. In fact, most forecasting projects a slow but continued positive growth.
By the way, how scared do you need to be even if we were in a recession if you had no debt? What if you also had an emergency fund of 3 – 6 months of expenses set aside? Then you would maybe be frustrated about gas prices, but not fearful or stressed out. You don’t have to make very much to survive if you don’t have any debt and payments!
What if you aren’t at a place where you are debt free and have an emergency fund? Use the sluggish economy as a motivator to get there quickly! Don’t let the news or friends and family get you down. There are jobs out there and you have abilities. You may have to be more creative and work harder (and turn off the TV), but you can do it! Your tax stimulus check should be coming soon. Use that to get your debt snowball going or put that into savings if you are out of debt (besides your mortgage).
Contact River Valley Coaching today for a FREE 30 minute consultation to discuss you financial future.
Call: 715-483-9037 TODAY!
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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 27th, 2008 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Financial, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
