"The $22,000 Couch!"

Richard Crenian Blogs
December 9th-08

“A $22,000 Couch!”

USA today had an article by Callum MacLeod this past week, titled ‘Elite Chinese urged to buy, buy, buy!”
A new shopping area is being designed in Beijing to have rich Chinese and foreigners head down to buy items like Bugatti cars and $22,000 designer couches.
The Chinese had long been thrifty according to this article and now they are being encouraged to buy and spend. There, average householders put away 28% of their incomes, according to the Mckinsey firm, compared to nearly zero in recent years in the USA.
Let me see, the US is in trouble, and the Chinese are being urged to go down that route?
Wow! I am no economist, but I know that this is wrong.
How do you manage to spend your way out of the slowdown, and then hope and pray that everything will be fine?
I told my partner Howard, (who is lounging around in Tucson, soaking up the sun and the golf courses) what I read and my thoughts on this and Howard, being wise and older (64), he laughed and said, “Why wouldn’t you invest in yourself and for yourself, because when the money is gone on that $22,000 couch it is not like you will get it back! Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know!” (See, I told you he was older!!)
That’s the point isn’t it? Invest, properly, like cash flow producing income like Howard so you too can sit on the golf course or in the sun. At least the investment pays, instead of sitting on that couch you can’t do anything with. Call Howard; ask him when he is coming back to work? He’s having too much fun! When you call him at 403-630-4544, and he’s on the course ask him what he’s doing answering the phone instead of golfing!!

Richard Crenian