With Berthanomics you feel better already

I know that if you spend any part of your day listening to the news, talk shows, talk radio, or reading the papers, blogs, etc., you might be sick of hearing about the economic crisis we are in. Well, I am here to give you Bertha’s perspective on the whole mess which may or may not be correct, but I do have experience in dealing with messes—and this is the deal—whoever makes the mess cleans it up. Yeah right. But that is another column.
My theory is this: stock values are down; retirement accounts are worth less; real estate is worth less; the dollar is worth less. We heard last week that financially speaking the last seven years have been wiped out.
Well, trust the media to give you some meaningless piece of information which is designed to unnerve you. (It’s not the vampire movies that are scary these days, but the six o’clock news.)
But back to the economic situation. Yes, our money is worth less, and we have less of it, but in case you haven’t noticed, everybody’s money is worth less and they all have less of it at roughly the same percentage you do. Not only that, you have probably noticed that the price of lots of goods, gas, groceries, cars, houses, and electronics, are down and just about everything else you can get for a deal.
So if we have less money but it costs less to get things, we just might come out even anyway.
According to Berthanomics, we are all still in the same place we were before the bust. Okay, maybe seven or even twenty years before the bust. But we still buy what we used to. We just pay less for it, so having less of it is okay. Right?
There are a couple of positive things going on as well which could help to tip the scales to better than even for some people. The money in our bank accounts remains in our bank accounts. Your banker hasn’t called to say that your account now has fewer dollars in it. And most likely no one has cut back on your paycheck either, so the money you have to work with is more than before, relatively speaking. You still have x amount of dollars only now it will buy more. (Just don’t think about your stocks. or instead of thinking about how much they were worth at their peak, think about how much it cost to buy them.)
It’s like playing Monopoly with only half of the money, but making all of the properties cost half as well. You still get to collect the full amount when you pass “GO.,” and so does everyone else.
And for once, being on a fixed income is a good thing. Unless or until someone unfixes your income, advance to “GO.” And remember, Park Place only costs $175. I have to admit though that you will probably have to keep taxes at $200. They aren’t going to go down anytime soon.
As games go, I hate Monopoly; it takes too long to play, it is boring, and I never win. “I knew it,” you say, ”Bertha is not a closet financial genius, she is an idiot. She doesn’t even know how to play Monopoly, let alone understand finance.”
You may be right. I suppose you are thinking of all of the things that may never come down in price. But I don’t know anyone who thought that gasoline would ever come back down either.
The alternative to Berthanomics can look pretty dismal. You find yourself wondering whether you are going to be able to eat bugs when your food runs out, or whether you want to buy a horse in case you can’t drive your car. Thinking about going without electricity could really make you crazy.
My daughter says that if she finds herself eating bugs someday, cooked or not, then she has bigger problems than hunger anyway and starving might be a solution rather than a problem.
So when you get your next mutual funds statement, think about the Butterbean Financial Institute’s Monopoly model, or better yet, go ahead and play a game with half of the money kept in the box. (You could always put it into circulation if you decided to.) It will still be boring and you might lose, but it won’t take as long to do it, which may or may not mean something.