The New Abnormal

I have now heard a phrase several times in the past few weeks that struck a major chord with me.

As I hear Governor Jerry Brown of California comment on the Camp Fire, he calls it the New Abnormal.

I have been extremely busy of late, as always, but who isn’t?  I do work quite a few nights staffing various municipal meetings.  When you think of a government worker, if you are not one yourself, you may think of a unionized worker with great benefits and many days off who will not work a minute before or after normal work hours.

Well, I’m not one of those.

First off, I am an “at will” employee, appointed to my position by the Powers that Be or, in my case, the Powers that Were.  There is not one member of our community’s Board that remains from spring of 2005 when I was appointed.  Both the man who hired me and was my boss for a dozen years retired recently and his boss retired a year before that.

But I’m still there and working even harder than ever, due to having been transferred to a hard-driving Millennial boss in summer of ’17.

None of this is neither here nor there, but I wanted to provide my excuse for not posting for a while.  Between working many hours including two night meetings two weeks ago, striving to do my fair share of cooking and cleaning the past few weeks, trying to cull my massive hoard of books while hustling a few extra bucks on eBay instead of writing posts, and celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday with my family twice over the past four days, I have not commented on many things that I would have liked to.

The massive fire that continues to rage through California evokes the very thought that I said to my wife while watching a news report about it when it started several weeks ago.

“There’s always a huge fire in California.”

I would have written that had I a blog a few years ago, if I had a news column in print a few decades ago, and one could certainly write it again in 2020 or 2025, as it is a safe assumption that there will be huge fires in California during those years, as well.

Of course, the President blames it on the opposition party’s handling of the Forest Service, which is also becoming the New Abnormal.

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I can no longer keep track of which mass shooting is in the news.

This topic has been written about extensively, but here I repeat that mass shootings are now the New Abnormal.

Although I am only still asleep once or twice per year when my alarm goes off at seven, I lay in bed waiting for it to go off one or two days per week before moving.  My better half is typically downstairs having coffee and getting our daughter off to school at that time.

The first thing that I heard when the alarm went off on October 28th was about the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, where a gunman walked in and blasted anyone that he could, killing eleven people and injuring many more.

It has been documented as the deadliest attack on Jews in this country's history.

I went to work as if it was a normal day, sat through a pointless staff meeting where the shooting was not mentioned, and then proceeded through my day of meetings, reports, emails, phone calls and messages about the economic development of my community.

I guess that the slaughter of Jews can be counted as part of the New Abnormal.

Same with a gunman killing a dozen people at a country music bar in California, five people mowed down in Bakersfield or the latest one around where I live, a mere four dead including the shooter at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

Or more than fifty killed last year in a mass shooting in Las Vegas.

According to a Business Insider article, the music bar shooting was the 307th mass shooting in 2018, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings in the US.

To put this into perspective, we were 312 days into the year at the time of the music bar shooting, meaning the US has had nearly as many mass shootings as days in 2018.  Americans are more likely to die from gun violence than many leading causes of death combined, with some 11,000 people in the US killed in firearm assaults each year.

I wonder where and when the major mass shooting will be this coming December.  If for some odd reason there is not one next month, you can be certain that the one in January of 2019 will be horrible.

I am not glad at all to write that these mass shootings are the New Abnormal.  

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I routinely lose a thousand or more in a day as I go about my normal life.

I guess that, technically, I am not really losing anything since I have not sold at a loss.  At least not willingly.  I was “forced” to take a $7,000 or so haircut by Capital One and E-Trade, but that is a story for another day that may never come.  It was very un-mensch-like the way I lost all that money, but lose it I did.

I’m talking about the 600, 700 and 800 point drops in the Dow that occur so often now that it is the New Abnormal.

I do not like to check my accounts on or after those days, when I inevitably see that my family and I have lost several grand while going about our normal business.

I’m not an idiot and actually think of myself as somewhat smarter than average.  Definitely more well-read and informed than average considering that I read for several hours per day, every day.

Thus, I know well that the stock market does not remain steady and predictable and always moving higher.  I am now past my Prime Age and turned forty-eight a few days prior to Thanksgiving.  I began investing at the age of twenty-four, half my lifetime ago, and suffered massive losses to my investments in both 2001 and the Recession of 2008.  I believe that there is another Recession looming in the near future, perhaps as early as next year, and I know that it will be a doozie. 

Still, I was not prepared to lose $1,500 from my son’s college account, $2,500 from my daughter’s, and an amount between those from my IRA in the past few weeks.

I have not sold anything from my IRA or our daughter’s 529 accounts, thus have not really “lost” money.  I have sold shares of our son’s 529 account to pay the bulk of our $3,000 monthly payment to his college.

I should not complain.

I did not so much “lose” money on his college account as much as selling some shares at a smaller gain than I would have had I sold shares prior to the Dow dropping several times.  We are still well ahead considering the amount that I invested on his behalf versus how much those investments have turned into.

Still, it hurts to see the amount in the account reduced by $1,500 before I cashed out $2,400 worth of shares.  The same amount that I will be cashing out around the first of December to pay next month’s bill.

I expect more of those days throughout the end of this year and even more in the coming years, as I have the feeling that 500+ point swing days on the Dow will become the New Abnormal for the stock market.

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How this pertains to money is simple and straightforward.

I have thought to myself a few times lately how greedy and self-centered it seems for me and the millions of other personal finance bloggers and legit writers to write about the topic as natural and man-made disasters ravage large swaths of land, deranged maniacs shoot up synagogues, concert venues, classrooms and wherever the f**k they please and the market tanks.

Then it dawned on me.

Part of investing, Paying Yourself First, taking care of your family and planning for your and your family's future is to continue doing it through thick and thin.  Through ups and downs.  After you hear about mass shootings, huge fires and then lose thousands in your investments are all great times to continue with your plan and stay the course.

If you and I are so lucky as to survive all the ups and downs and dangers of modern life, we are still going to need money when the inevitable rainy day comes or you reach your golden years.  Or your early retirement years.

Whatever the case may be, in the future you will still be...you.

You will still require money.  U.S. currency if you are in the U.S. and, even if you are not, U.S. currency should still prove favorable against foreign currency in years to come.

If everything becomes cryptocurrency, you and I will need to shift accordingly.  But we'll still need to save something for the future.

I am saddened to think of the hurricanes, wild fires, earthquakes and other things that will cause people to lose their homes and perhaps even their lives in the future.  Just as I lament those lives that will be lost in both senseless mass shootings and equally senseless shootings of one or two people.  I fear massive losses in the market and the next Recession.  

I also fear the Recession following the next one, whether that one be in ten, fifteen or twenty more years.  I will likely remain invested in the market at that time, too, perhaps at much higher levels than I am today.  Hopefully at higher levels, as I learn to convert my skills, such as critical thinking and writing, into income.  

Speaking of generating additional income, I may just flesh this out a bit and write a book called The New Abnormal with a subtitle like "How to Remain Invested in Today's Uncertain World" or "The Case for Staying the Course No Matter What Happens in the World."

It may come out as a crappy "throw away" eBook that I crank out next month with this post as the intro and about five to ten heavily edited posts throwing in phrases about "The New Abnormal" and all the shit going on in the world thrown in.  Crappy it may be, but it will certainly sell a few copies.

One thing that I know for sure.

This will be an easy post to reuse over the years as disasters, mass shootings and market plunges continue.  

The New Abnormal is what we should come to expect.