Plecebo

Wait it out, in the long run it will likely benefit you.

That is what A post over at Get Rich Slowly is claiming and the reasoning seems to apply. Statistically at least the market will rebound from this lull/recession/depression/retirement evisceration.

If you are younger (20's or 30's) now is a great time to throw some money into the stock market. If you are a bit older, your risks are hopefully shifted to protect you from these types of troubles (bonds/cd's/etc).

About the only people who should not be throwing money at the stock market at this point are those with a lot of debt, or people who believe the financial system is on the verge of collapse, in which case what are you doing reading this? Shouldn't you be off preparing for the anarchy/lawlessness that is yet to come?

A while back I was looking into buying a condo/townhome in/around the Seattle area. There is appeal in setting up shop in an interesting neighborhood. The problem was two fold, I had a credit issue (college was tough, and it is repairing) and the cost of living in Seattle is so darn expensive. According to this article over at Seattle Bubble renting is in fact cheaper then buying in the long run (contrary to everything you usually hear). The trouble comes in actually socking the savings away. That's always been my trouble...save save sa... oh look at that shiny new widget.

That is my struggle.

A pretty great presentation from L. Lessig again.

Seattle Bubble, A Seattle real estate and financial news blog has up a comparison of the current market sittuation and the crashes in the market of old.
http://seattlebubble.com/blog/2008/10/24/comparing-past-market-crashes/

Particularly cool was this chart:
Click for a full version of the image

Mint.com is a really cool way to track your spending. I have been using it for a few months now and it makes tracking what I spend across MANY bank accounts really easy. They just released it from beta today and the investment tracking feature looks really flippin cool.

Check out Mint if you want one place to track your spending. It's free!