Liquidity Is Essential to Life
I’m old. Really old. Eighty years old. This is not as glamorous as it might sound. My health has been a real problem. Modern American medicine is absolutely lacking in compassion for us old people. My wife and I spend much of our time and money visiting doctors to get help. The main goal of the doctors and the hospitals and the insurance giants seems to be to deny us coverage.
But the main lesson of old age — there are others as well — is to follow the advice of Dr. Johnson. He said that the three necessaries of adversity are an “old dog, an old wife, and ready money…”
I will talk ad nauseam about the first two. But I, as an expert in finance, urgently caution you not to neglect the third. Many of us, as we arrive at the ultimate adversity, old age, find ourselves short of ready money. I humbly emphasize the “ready” part about money. Many of us have lovely old homes we bought long ago. They have risen dramatically in value. But when we have bills coming in, we need actual cash money. You can sell your real estate. You can probably refinance it. But those are slow processes. The state and the mortgage lenders will NOT be patient. If you want money suddenly, your friends and family will not help, or if they do, they will shame you so much that you would prefer fleeing the jurisdiction or planet earth.
YOU MUST ARRANGE YOUR ASSETS SUCH THAT YOU HAVE TONS OF THEM THAT CAN BE LIQUID IMMEDIATELY. Cash, stocks, bonds, all these can save your life from yourself. I did well on investing generally. But I, even now, I crave liquidity beyond anything except my wife’s company.
Look to it, old friends.
Daily Nightmares
Every night, or almost every night, my goddess wife and I watch documentaries about Hitler and the Third Reich. Obviously, a huge part of that horror story of human evil and depravity is about the Holocaust and the cruel murder of millions of Jews because of the worst racism imaginable. In October 2023, there was another horror of a Holocaust on the Israeli border.
Israel has been trying to protect itself and its Jews by shutting down the terror, murder group, Hamas. It has been engaged in a war against the well-dug-in murderers of Hamas. Israel has been forced to use heavy weapons when engaged in this struggle. But despite this truth and the truth that Hamas is still using rockets to attack Israelis, and disregarding the “peace” deal that Mr. Trump fought to achieve.
But the utter horror of horrors is that “the world” is blaming Israel for seeking to protect itself. Major nation after nation is condemning Israel for seeking a peaceful world around it. Major nations like Canada and the U.K. and France have turned on the tiny nation of Israel. The likely future mayor of New York City has said he will arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu if that brave warrior for peace dares to visit New York to speak to the U.N.
A well-known African-American podcaster has flown the Nazi Swastika and flourished a portrait of Hitler to protestors wanting him to tone down his praise of Der Führer. That man is freer to move around the world than is Netanyahu, whose life has been all about freedom and equal rights.
God help us.
READ MORE from Ben Stein:
Return to Gunskirchen Lager and Col. Denman
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