Twenty years ago today, I had a nervous breakdown. I was crying into the telephone to my mother. It's not too complicated a story, actually. I had invested 65,000 dollars in mutual funds a month or so before, and they were in the process of losing 15,000 dollars of that value. Mom, having great experience in the "nervous breakdown" field, talked me through that afternoon. The hardest part was trying not to sell my funds when they were "falling uncontrollably." I knew, in my head, that this couldn't destroy the whole US capitalist system, but the media was comparing it to the '29 crash, and wondering if we were going into another Great Depression. I was only 25, but my mother was born in the mid 20's, and wasn't afraid at all of the "crash" in '87, and she was right. She had money invested as well, from our inheritance.
The point of this story is "don't get too emotionally twisted over money." It's one of the biggest challenges a person can face, and I say that from experience.
