Well said!

Jeremy over at Generation X Finance wrote a brilliant blog post about how the media is reporting on the economy. The focus of his post is all of the sob stories currently in the media about people in their upper fifties or sixties who's retirement savings is heavily invested in stocks. They have now lost huge chunks of their retirement savings in the stock market troubles this year and fear they can never retire.

Instead of taking the opportunity to educate the public about how to allocate funds as your life cycle progresses, the media just says "how sad" and wants us all to feel bad. Many people are hearing this and interpreting it as a reason to stay out of the stock market. However, most media outlets are not taking this grand opportunity to tell the rest of the story.

These sad stories should say Grandma/Grandpa lost 50% of their retirement savings having invested 100% of the retirement in the stock market. However, if they had slowly pulled their money out of stocks and into bonds over the past 20 years like they should have this would have been avoided and they could have gained modest returns this year.

Same story for all the parents who had their child's college fund in stocks when their kids leave for college in the fall or, worse, are already in college. If you need that money soon why risk it?

Don't fear the market but know how to use it before you invest. Know when to change your investing game plan.