Today, I received the following message from Allyson Schwartz in my email inbox:

 

Dear Friend,

How can you find out if you are saving enough to meet your savings goals? What tips should you give your children now so that they grow up using money responsibly? Are there simple steps to take to increase the amount of money you are able to save?

To find out the answers to these questions, and many more, sign up today to attend one of my upcoming Savings Workshops. During June I will host four savings workshops in Montgomery County and Philadelphia.

At these free workshops experts from Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Delaware Valley will offer advice on managing your money wisely, including offering tips on how to develop a savings goal and a plan to achieve that goal.

In Congress, I am working to make it easier for all Americans to save, including supporting plans such as automatic IRAs, which help to increase the number of Americans who save for retirement.

Please feel free to share this information with family, friends, and neighbors. For more information or to register for one of the workshops constituents should contact either my Philadelphia District Office at 215-335-3355 or my Montgomery County Office at 215-517-6572.

Sincerely,

 

To which I replied via her electronic messaging interface:

Ms. Schwartz,

You've got to be kidding me. Of all the issues tearing at the very fabric of this nation: our criminal president, 150,000 troops being slowly bled to death in Iraq, that damnable bankruptcy bill, suspension of habeaus corpus and the Fourth Amendment, 43 million people without any health insurance, $3 gasoline, SEPTA starving, and on and on, the one you pick to write to me about is my personal savings rate? Please!

IRA's are only helpful if you have a job that pays enough to save anything. Why not remove the Social Security cap, create a new higher contribution bracket and raise the benefit to a livable level? I should, I suppose, instead hand my retirement savings to some mutual fund manager to invest in oil or telecommunications or some risky venture so I can watch my savings blow away in the wind of a stock market crash. Don't laugh, this very scenario played out for millions of people during that last crash of 2000. IRA's and 401(K)'s saw half their value disappear in days. Most of those people are just now recovering from that financial beating.

You really need to get your head out of the sand and start addressing the real issues that face this country. Poverty, social and economic inequality, dangerous foreign policy, education and healthcare.

Most sincerely,

Kevin Shaw
Wyndmoor, PA