Reply #30: yeah but if you started saving at age 20 and put away $3,000 a year

[hfojvt]

then you'd have a much larger nest egg. And if you put away $8,000 a year it would be much larger.

I am not hating anybody here, just saying that government programs shouldn't primarily be helping people who are better off than most other people.

Second there's losses and there are losses. If your $10,000 grew to $40,000 in the boom 1990s and then fell to $15,000 in the bust Bush years, some are crying now "my account lost 38% of its value. I lost $25,000". Apparently because they forgot the second half of "buy low, sell high". Not that I can talk, because when I sell a stock it is almost guaranteed to double in price in the next year. There's nothing that quite diminishes a $500 gain than the fact that you could have made $2,000. :banghead:

I currently have 500 shares of Freddie Mac because I trusted Chris Dodd who said the company was sound. Right now I am out $400 or so, but until I sell, I have not lost a dime. If Freddie Mac sells for $10 a share 5 years from now I will have made a very hefty gain. So why bail me out now? A market recovery will do that. A bailout would just encourage more sales.

Plus, I did the math and only came up with $5400 by the time you reached age 18.