LOW INTEREST RATES FORCE PEOPLE ON FIXED INCOME TO MOVE TO INDIA IN ORDER TO LIVE ABOVE POVERTY LINE; GOVERNMENT AT WORK AGAIN

I remember the times when articles advising people about retirement plans would be using models of a 5%-7% or more interest rate as the growth we expected our money to grow at while in a savings account. Does anybody even remember those rates?

Just yesterday when I signed into my bank's on line account information, I received a full screen pop-up advertisement advertising a CD at 1.01%, and offering me a 10% BONUS of .10 of 1% if I took a 2 year term and locked in that rate! Imagine that, I could get a whopper of a rate of 1.11% for the next two years and I could lock in that rate right now!

Well we all remember that a sucker is born every minute, and it is truly so as demonstrated by this pop-up ad attempting to lure in the suckers.

Imagine that if you are hoping to build a savings cushion for trying times in the future or a retirement nest egg to live on, and you had $50,000 in that fund, the bank was offering to pay you about $555 a year for that privilege.

In the past that same bank would be offering you $2,500-$3,500 a year, thus providing somewhat of an ability to at least buy food?

The theory behind a cash cushion was to be able to have the principal preserved and that the interest would be used to 'live on" while the principal generated the interest amount and was not touched. Can a person live on $555 a year? That is $1.52 a day to live on...can anyone do that and actually live?

Let's see what can be done on $1.52 a day in a typical city in the USA.

You can buy a McDonald's $1 meal ( plus tax), the same at the other Chins, since they all have a $1 meal special which consists of ONE ITEM a small item off their menu. But you can not get that item and a drink, since the smallest drink is also $1.

I checked and the calorie count of that single meal would still be less than half of the daily recommended count for a person per day, so basically a person would be undernourished and practically starving and dead before long.

The US government defines poverty as earning less that $11,161 annually and less than $21,750 annually for a family of 4 people. So obviously, $555 a year qualifies as poverty, way below the poverty level attempting to live in the USA at this income level is impossible, period.

But, there are options for Americans who want to live on $555 a year, in fact, if one was to move to INDIA, poverty there is defined as less than $12 a month, or $144 a year! So in INDIA, with $555 one can live above the poverty level...unfortunately it would cost $1,000 to get there to begin with. Again however, if one was to eat at a McDonald's in India, there would not be any items on the $1 menu to buy.

I am not sure what one would eat at $12 a month or for that matter where one would live, as I saw on a HOME SHOW people looking for a home or condo in INDIA for $200,000, with other going for $400,000 or more.

So thanks to our government policies of low interest rates, those on fixed income are going to have to move to INDIA to live above the poverty line.

Great policies indeed.