>>So be sure you invest in IRA?s, 401K?s, Life Insurance, Bonds and Savings Accounts. It has great value but perhaps not to you!
>
>Where they heck did you pull that from? All I said is Mr. Kreps should not expect the same rate 15 years later due to inflation and his increased age. Who gets something for nothing in this world?
>
>FYI, I am trying to save what I can for retirement.

So did the employees of Enron. Now, even WalMart greeting positions have employment lines.

>But, if I'm comfortable in retirement, it's because I don't live beyond my means and I don't need materials things.
>The only thing that really matters to me is Love and Knowledge!

What you should hope for is that you CAN live within your means, not that you don't live beyond your means. You can never live beyond your means for very long before creditors catch up with you. Love and Knowledge are nice, even when you are hungry. But, if the basics take more than your income provides, you cannot live within your means, and all the Knowledge in the world won't help if you don't have the means to implement it. If that were not so then there would not be '3rd world' nations, slums, homeless and the poor. There are benefits to having an income that exceeds your cost of living and gives you disposable income. There are benefits to living in an environment that allows you to utilize your knowledge to make an income that is above the average. If you were a programmer living in Clarks, Nebraska, you would not be able to utilize your skills without the ability to do so remotely. Without a reliable infrastructure even that would not be possible. That's why HB1 has been a boon to Indian programmers and a bane to American programmers.

Back to my original point: I am 62. Retirement is only a few years away. My life insurance rates jumped 5 fold merely because I crossed age 61, even though my life expectancy increased! If I cannot find economically affordable life insurance (not some policy that takes a big chunk out of my monthly income and makes living within my means impossible) then my wife will be left in a harder position were I to suddenly die. One investment account dropped from $135,000 to $70,000 during this last market fallout. Do you think Dick Lay enjoys his SIX multi-million dollar mansions? Poor guy, I heard he had to sell a couple. Do you think his employees, whom he was encouraging to buy more Enron stock as he was dumping his shares, deserve their newly acquired poverity, their loss of employment during a market in which few jobs of equal quality are available, their loss of retirement income, and for many the loss of their homes?

Like I said, boy are you in for a rude awakening.