Diary: Are You Better Off Than 10 Years Agp?

I looked at my journal for April 1998 when Bill Clinton was into what? I didn't read enough to find out. However, the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 9K. My furnace broke during a cold snap and a part had to be ordered, and would be expensive. The neighbor girl (12 years old) was having a hard time handling her lunch money. I was trying to teach her how, since I couldn't be "lending" her more. And already I was considering selling the house. It cost too much to have the yard mowed. So I scanned real estate news to see how much I might sell for.
Actually, I had no idea how much I would ultimately make after I sold the next year. It sold for nearly three times what we paid in 1977, but we had improved it a lot. And the first year we started making improvements the cost of plywood almost doubled. Like Jimmy Carter said, the cruelest tax of all is inflation. Cash from the sale would go to mutual funds, which had been paying well.
If I had stopped to look back five years earlier, things were not doing so well. It was the year my husband died. Stock in his estate was at rock bottom when I recorded my own lifetime averages. The first Iraq war had really done a number on the economy. But I need not mention it. Just think "It's the economy, Stupid!"
If 93 was a bummer, 03 was a disaster. This time no one waited for the war to be over before the whammy started. If I were less cynical, I could blame it on Osama bin Laden. But I choose to think of Bushonomics in spades.
At the moment I'm not hurting. After all, the president will give me my money back. Bless his soul! A quarter of it goes for increase of rent and the rest to help with Tennessee income taxes. I don't look gift horses in the mouth, but I wish the cost of groceries would level out. In general, I feel blessed to have what I have and spend a lot of time thinking about those who don't have years to learn and earn. The little neighbor girl is now married, still my friend, and she knows that jobs are scarce and will be getting scarcer. Fortunately, she took time out last summer to enhance office administrative skills, which will pay off in time.
I think about some of the folks here at the Towers and realize that I was fortunate to have spent my employed years in the North. Now, Social Security and a discreet dip into capital keeps me afloat. I live well but certainly not extravagantly. It's how things will play out in the next few years–be I lucky enough to live so long–which is the unknown quantity. I try to stay healthy. One misstep which might land me in assisted living will shatter my next egg and make me yell "Uncle!"
As of now, I'm not bitter. Well, not mostly. But I do worry about my young friends who grew up during Columbine, 9/11, and Bush's "robust" economy.