Up or down?  Does it matter?

So as an old retired lady, I don’t always take the time to follow the vagaries of Wall Street.

I mean, really. I’m busy rocking my granddaughter, deadheading my marigolds, making cucumber relish.

I don’t sit around on my comfy blue leather couch watching CNN.  I mean.  I hardly ever do that.

But if I did sit there all day following the ups and downs of the markets, I would probably just yawn.

I seriously doubt that I’d be all upset.  I probably wouldn’t tear my hair and grind my teeth.  I don’t think for one minute that I’d burst into tears and try to call my broker.

Know why?

First of all, I don’t even HAVE a broker.  What is that anyway? I have some money in the stock market, because I did the easy thing a lot of years ago, and I started to put a part of my salary into a “403B”.  Which apparently is very similar to a “401K”. Except for, you know, the numbers.  And the letter.

Whatever. My 403 B is my easy peasy “put some money in here and watch it grow” fund.

I have never ever paid attention to individual stocks. Or bonds. Or hedge funds.  Or bulls. Or bears.

I just worked, cashed my checks, assumed that smart money people were handling my money.

So here I am, in the very first week of my retirement.  The stock market is apparently having a major heart attack and all of the people with actual money are having a conniption.

I, however, am not.

And here is why:

Our family motto is this: “Money. Never had it; never will.”   We understand that as long as we can afford three meals a day and a roof over our heads, all is well.  We know that we are not smart enough to decode the meaning of China’s decreasing sails of durable goods.

We are happy. We are content.

So far, that money in the 403B has been nothing more than a row of digits. It has never seem very real to us.

And that’s wonderful!

If it disappears in a puff of blue smoke in the next two weeks, we will hardly notice that our money is all gone.

As long as we have carrot soup and veggie stock in our freezer, we’ll be able to laugh at the news and ask each other, “Stock market? What on earth is that?”