The Grasshopper and the Ant

When I looked at the money market rate on some of my retirement investments at 1.98% I think of the childhood fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant. While my wife and I (the Ants) were busting our humps to store corn (money) for the winter (retirement) for all those years the Grasshoppers (sub prime borrowers, credit card addicts, etc) sang and danced through the good times (borrowed every penny they could from home equity, credit cards, etc. to party and splurge) without a care. Come vacation with us, get rid of that old boat and buy new, let's drink and party said our Grasshopper friends while we stuck to our guns as good Ants that we could have any toy that we wanted as long as we had the corn to pay cash up front.

With the Federal Reserve giving money away to the banks to keep the cheap credit flowing I guess I'm lucky to get 1.98% from the banks on Money Market accounts. I'm all for following the example in the fable and let the damn Grasshoppers starve when the snow comes and leave my damn corn alone and let it grow. For some reason Grasshoppers just aren't smart enough to know that winter (layoffs, illness, mortgage problems, accidents)
will come. In nature they get what they deserve, they starve to death.

http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/grasshopper/mstory.htm