Would a recession hurt most seniors?
Important-
The basic idea of this section is to help seniors understand some of the risks, both current and future, that they are facing. This is not intended to be a comment about either major political party. The goal is to provide unbiased information so that each senior can make up their own mind about major life altering issues. We will generally refer to the average senior as having a modicum of retirement/savings; however, we are well aware that there are many seniors who survive from one day to the next only because they receive Social Security payments and help from Medicare.
Are we heading for a recession and why should you care?
A future recession is inevitable. The important questions are when it will happen and how bad will it be? Every economy in the world goes through cycles. Sometimes things are good for a long time and then sometimes they are bad for a long time. There is no one person who can forecast with any degree of certainty any of those movements.
Why should you care? If you are relying on your investment/retirement funds to provide your family with a reasonable standard of living you need to be aware of what might happen. If the markets go down then your wealth will go down on paper. If you sell at a loss because of the drop you will have permanently lost that money. It takes a lot to just back to even depending on how much you loose.
View this chart that shows how the numbers work, click link to view the chart and more at Biz News.
If you have a lot of your money in CD and the markets go down then typically interest rates will also drop. That is not happening currently when the stock market adjusts as it did recently. The markets have inherent risks that most of us seniors don’t truly understand. That is another reason that every family needs to have a plan for dealing with their money.
Listed below are a few websites that might be of interest to seniors:
SeniorJournal.com
SeniorCitizenJournal.com
AMAC.com
AARP.org
SeniorLiving.com
Assisted-Living-Directory.com
ConsumerReports.org
RetirementLiveMatters.com