BAILOUT: Yes or No?

[Koga No Goshi]

You're not... The planets must be in alignment because aside from computer games that's another thing we have in common.

Me too. I got raped by the 18% interest rates using a credit card here and there in college, and getting in trouble. (I was not out buying luxury dinners and electronics with it, I was buying stuff like books and little daily things when I didn't have time to take the bus to the bank for cash.) Since then I live off-debt, my one credit card gets zeroed every month.

I'm one of those rare Gen-X'ers who buys most of their food at the supermarket and cooks it at home.

This part is off topic Spino but this made me really curious. I know this depends a lot on where you live, and everything. But for me, I never found myself, at least for one person, saving any significant amount of money grocery shopping as opposed to eating out. Especially when you take waste/loss/food going back before you eat it into account. I mean, if you go to some bulk membership place, yeah, you save money, but a single person usually can't store or eat all that before it's bad. I tried the buy and cook as a single person, and I just never saw any real savings. I mean you go and spend $7-9 for enough chicken for two meals, (or $20~ for a bigger bag I barely had freezer room for and would get frostbitten halfway through). Now, when money was tight I did live on mac & cheese, pancake mix (creative applications) and top ramen. You can live very cheaply that way, practically like a day laborer. But, you get black circles under your eyes and you're tired and hungry all the time. (I was totally broke my last five or six months of college, as soon as paycheck would come in, it would be gone for necessities.)

I've squirreled away so much cash over the last 20 years that my mattress looks like it's about to give birth to a bank... Interesting that with the looming financial collapse my friends (who live paycheck to paycheck) who previously chastized me for my cheapness have toned down the sermons about 'not being able to take it with you' or 'living in the moment'.

Another way you and I are alike. I have been teased and made fun of for years, called "Scrooge McDuck", because I always cash about half my paycheck and keep it out of the bank. That does mean, that I have an obscene amount of cash money hidden. People made fun, and made fun, and made fun. And now they're not anymore, in fact, now they're saying financial "planners" are telling people to keep about 25% of their money in cash, take it out of CD's, stocks, investments, and keep some on hand in case your bank is locked down for a week while the Feds take it over. No one's making fun of me anymore. :) But I've always had Cassandra syndrome, I haven't trusted the U.S. financial systems in years and I've been saying that I don't see how it can possibly stay stable the way it's running, and everyone called me an alarmist and ignored me for years.