Great Money Discussions In The Least Expected Places

This afternoon I had to bring my van to get inspected and I brought it to a local mechanic that my family has been using here in Hudson since 1993. (When he opened)

He is a good mechanic, and honest guy, and I have had some good conversations with him in the past. (He used to be a Volvo Mechanic but opened his own shop...and I had a Volvo back then, but I now bring him anything from Jeeps to Honda Civics...but I digress)

So tonight when he sat down with me to get the inspection paperwork squared away, we started talking about the economy and I was surprised at all the ground we covered. Not that I didn't think he knew as much as he does, but in the more than 13 years I have known him, we have never talked about politics or money.

He is apparently a fairly liberal fellow, and I a conservative...and we actually agree on quite a few things. (which doesn't surprise me since some of my other liberal friends also have violent agreements with me too.)

Anyways, we started off by talking about some of our friends who were unemployed....the state of the economy, outsourcing, the housing bubble, the stock market melt-down in 2001, the current negative savings rate, medical outsourcing to India (which he had not heard of, but could see coming once I mentioned it).....

I admit to often being a "glass half-empty" person.....the Engineer in me is always looking for possible failure modes and looking for all possible recovery scenarios. He seems like a glass half-full guy, but he wasn't too positive about the trajectory our country is taking. (in his words, ever since Reagan)

Well, it is funny he picks that time-frame for his start of our countries woes, because it was about that time that our national savings rate began to take a nose dive from about 8%-10% to the current negative 1% savings rate. (he picked the date before I told him this statistic)

Anyways.....we sort of agreed that things would probably continue in the manner that they currently are.....in my words, like a frog sitting in a pan of water on the stove set at low...the water is getting so hot so slowly that the frog does not even notice that he is soon going to be dead from boiling water....the change is so slow he never sees it coming until it is too late.
(I think that this is what the world means when they talk about our having a "soft landing"....a soft crash landing)

We also agreed on two things.....those with money would probably fare better in the long run (so saving was important), and that slow and steady wins the race. The race for a fast buck puts you even more at risk should a downturn strike while you are exposed. (I have a brother in-law who can attest to that...and he owes so much I can't even fathom EVER being loaned that much....it absolutely shocked me!)