Keeping some powder dry.

There's opportunities ahead.

I'm buried in an Eastern European mutual fund. I bought it when it was down 80% or so, and it's underwater from there. But it's got no place to go but up. Unless they disband it by merging with another fund, which sometimes happens.

Speaking of stocks, as I write this, this year the S&P 500 is down 19.3% from the end of last year. Including inflation this year, its purchasing power is down by 26.4%.

And bonds, who knows. Just looking at one of my bond funds that has been untouched all year (FXNAX), it is down 12.5%. And yes, that includes reinvested interest payments. With inflation, its purchasing power is down 18.0%.

In the 6 years I've had my charitable gift annuity, it has paid out the same flat dollar amount each year (as per contract), but the purchasing power of the latest payment has eroded with inflation by nearly 25% over those 6 years. So for every $4 that the initial payment was worth is now down to $3 for the latest payment. And unlike stocks, purchasing power never recovers, barring a depression that would obviously be terrible financially in other ways. So lost purchasing power is lost forever.

The same is pretty much true for bonds and other fixed income interest. Newer bonds and CDs are paying out higher than before, but the vast majority of existing holdings pay out the same as before and fall in value, and fall even more in purchasing power.

Federal government debt REDUCES in real dollars with inflation

Verizon landline was down more than 1/2 the weekend. I think it was an unannounced planned outage due to upgrades b/c it began around 4:30p Friday. They told customers they'd fix it by 8 pm tonight, and fixed it 2 days ago. But it really jumbled up the weekend. Planned on this or that, reconfigured, then reconfigured again.

This 9am Tuesday, AllyInvest is down again. Totally inaccessible. Reported down online, and on Twitter. It's a backup broker for me, but still. No access, and this is not the first time. Not recommended broker by me. It will take me a couple years to wind out of it because there are tax issues, but this is no place to invest. They seem to me to have no slack in their systems for peak periods.

So totally screwed by all this. Customers pay for these things but when they fail to deliver there is no recourse. Same with USPS offices being closed randomly during holiday times.

So no internet, no TV for half a day. Thankfully Xfinity phone service was working if phone had enough charged battery.