Americans are all too familiar with the usual spiel on financial security hocked by pundits: Buy securities! Buy real estate! One of the immediate effects of the Great Recession is that these conventional ports of financial refuge were suddenly not so safe. Certainly, diversification mitigates risk in fluctuating markets , but few could predict the kind of across-the-board financial upheaval the recession unleashed. Lower-risk investments, mutual funds and pensions all took a hit. Most worryingly perhaps, is that even the supposedly secure real estate market has taken a severe beating. Instead of providing families with a steady increase in equity, many who hold real estate right now are simply holding more debt.
While markets have begun to recover, it is still not altogether clear that the stock market or real estate will return to being infallible income-builders to the same extent they have been in the past. But perhaps a new understanding of financial security is emerging. The Wall Street Journal recently reported (Read More....)
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