What's a Serf to Do?

Total serfdom is coming, and it won't look pretty. We Americans have been pampered for much too long. We cannot understand what it is like to live in the "real" world -- the one that covers the other 90% of the world. The crash will come and a lot of people will bitch about it. Blame will be thrown everywhere.

So, what is a serf like me to do? My wife and I have 401k retirement accounts. These are supposed to be our golden parachutes when we get to the point in our lives that we cannot work anymore. However, during last week's financial turmoil, we lost nearly $100k. Do you know how long it takes to save money like that? We spend 20 years working at decent jobs, trusting the wizards of Wall Street to handle our hard-earned cash. We hope and pray that we can make money by giving some up.

Now we have a $700 billion bailout, payable on demand by all hard-working American serfs. Senators voted for Wall Street. The serfs got screwed.

All the expert commentary on this points to one inevitable end: a horrid financial crash. This means that ALL of our 410k savings will blow away like dust in the wind. So, what the heck does the American serf do to retain some kind of cushion against the depression to come?

My wife and I talked about this. We make more money than most middle-class serfs, but we would lose everything we now have if we lost our jobs. Planning is essential.

Perhaps we could remove all of the money we have left in our 401k accounts, take the insane tax hit, and buy up gold. At the very least, we could use the gold for essentials. It's extreme, but it might be a very good move. After all, we lost more in one day than we would have if we dumped the accounts.

Another idea we tossed around was to move to another country. Just about any country would enable us to survive, but we aren't bilingual and it would be nice if we could communicate with the locals. That limits our choices. Great Britain was considered, then discarded. My wife really dislikes the cold.

Australia? There isn't much else. We know a couple of people who live there -- people we used to work with.

On the other hand, we could probably do well in France, Spain, Italy, or Malta, as long as there was an American or English-speaking community.

The one very bad thing about moving for a serf family is the effort and expense involved. Also, we would essentially give up personal visits to family. Once we become citizens of another country, we would be placed on all sorts of nefarious government lists.

I suppose we could weather the storm. We might lose the house and most of our belongings before the next depression ends, but at least we'll be in the good ol' U.S. of A. Safe from all sorts of mean terrorist thugs that hate is for our freedoms. Yeah, like the freedom to watch our elected representatives construct laws that will completely f**k us over.