I spent most of my life as a saver, some would have called me a penny pincher. I drove cars to the end of their life while I saw my neighbors buy a new one every three years or so. As a result, I accumulated enough wealth along with a pension from thirty years in the corporate world to not have to worry about my retirement years. That is until things got totally out of kilter. By kilter I mean when interest rates on savings and CDs went to zero almost a decade ago. I now have all this cash and everyone seems to think that I should just hand it over to them with no quid pro quo. That just doesn’t seem right to me. That isn’t the way capitalism is supposed to work. 

Now I admit that the 15% inflation interest rates in the 1970s were insane but things are even more so now.  I bought my first house in 1984 at the age of thirty-eight.  It came with a 10+% interest loan and required a 20% down payment. These days people are complaining because home buying rates might go above 3% and they might be required to have more than the usual 2% of the price up front!  How did we get here where all us senior are being gouged? It’s called the Federal Reserve.

For some reason, the “Feds” think that the 1% who owns more than half the wealth won’t let loose of their money unless we give them more in the form of a no-interest loan. If we seniors just hand our hard earned savings over to them then they might put in a little of their own along with it as long as they make a hefty profit.  The rich get richer is not an oxymoron, it is a fact of life as far as the Federal Reserve are concerned.  It’s their modus operandi.

One of the first things I did as a young saver was to buy a monthly savings bond. It started out as a $100 bond but quickly grew to a $500 one. I now have twenty years worth in my savings vault and it makes up about 10% of my non-stock portfolio. Right now it pays about 90% of the interest I get from all my non-stock investments and that is ridiculous!

There are some, but by no means a majority of the younger generations, who say that we baby-boomer robbed them of their rightful prosperity and left them with our debt. To that, I say “don’t be ridiculous”. I earned my money the hard way, it wasn’t given to me as so many seem to expect nowadays. So many want all the tax breaks and government services but don’t want to contribute anything towards the upkeep of government agencies.

Hopefully, interest rates will at least double this year. Then maybe I can start earning a little on all my hard-earned savings. I’m just tired of them trying to fund a 0% interest rate on the backs of us seniors… Throw us some scraps from the interest rate tables please.