"When you don’t consider this question, then the hardest financial skill becomes this: getting the goalpost to stop moving. As Housel says, if expectations constantly rise with results, you run the risk of pushing the goalpost out faster and further than your accelerating ambitions can reach. This will not bring you contentment and satisfaction."
"...despite massive money creation, mismanagement of Fed debt, and arguable abuses of the dollar, it is still in place for years ahead."
Money topics are so commonly related to misunderstanding and conflict in relationships that it's usually a key factor in divorce. Our understanding of money is distorted by myths, stories we're told, stories we tell ourselves. Most of us are not equipped with the tools to properly and diligently manage our financial affairs. And this can lead to great distress. Internal and external conflict. Anxiety, Fear, Doubt, Uncertainty. Yet when properly managed with a set of learned and practiced skills, it can be force of freedom. Fortunately we all have the ability to learn, to change, to progress. And even more encouraging is that if you have little ones, like me, there's a chance to set them up early for better success with their resources.
A massive move happened from 2019 to 2022, according to official data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, via their FRED data system. When we look at all of the cash deposits held by individuals in the US., we see something extraordinary. Knowing that it happened is one thing. Explaining it is another.
The 14 years from 2008-2022 was an era of Fed-fueled cheap money, cheap labor, and cheap goods (the latter two coming primarily from the offshoring to China. We bought their goods, and in turn they bought our debt (US Treasuries). It was by this process (although slightly more complicated with the Eurodollar system) that we were able to "offshore" inflation. That era is over.
