Seth Godin has a great post on his blog this week about emergencies..
He says…
It’s amazing that people have so much time to fret about today’s emergency but almost no time at all to avoid tomorrow’s.
With all the things that have happened in the last year from the economic crisis, housing bust, rising unemployment, to the rise and fall of commodities, you would have thought that there would have been strong voices out there to help us avoid the problems.
Yet the voices of reason were few and far between over the last few years. There were a handful that hit the nail on the head, but most of the voices were as surprised as anyone when the housing bubble burst, the economy tumbled, and prices fell.
It’s funny to look back now. The picture is very clear and the writing was certainly on the wall. Those lines of people waiting to buy new houses at very inflated prices in 2005 are now gone. Our once low unemployment rate has almost doubled in the last 12 months. Our current 2 dollar a gallon gasoline was almost 5 dollars a gallon just 8 months ago.
Things change… and tomorrows emergencies will certainly be different than today’s.
Seth makes an interesting point…
Move your emergency back in time and you’ll be amazed at how far your money goes.
Here in America, where our government is printing trillions of dollars to get us out of our current mess, our next emergencies will almost certainly be..
1. Hyperinflation (Remember the late 70’s) where prices go up every month
2. Commodities becoming scarce and certainly more expensive ($10 a gallon gas)
3. Taxes going up to pay for it all
Some of these sound a little far fetched now, but I don’t think it will be too long before our current emergency is but a distant memory and these new problems are front and center. In fact, here in California our sales taxes are going up 1% the beginning of April.
Better buy that big item now…
