You just lost 7% of your retirement

The market lost over $1 trillion dollars today as a result of the bailout vote fiasco. If you are one of the 62 million Americans who have retirement monies invested in a 401k, for example, you just lost 7% of the total money you had for your retirement. Let me walk you through what that means

- If you had $10,000 in your retirement account this morning, you just lost $700 of it.
- If you had $100,000 this morning, you just lost $7,000 of it.
- And if you had $1,000,000 this morning, you just lost $70,000 of it.

As Charlie Gibson on ABC noted, losing 7% on the market in a year would be a huge story.

What happened today was real. ABC's financial consultant noted the following tonight: "I don't care if you're a big corporation, a small business, an individual trying to send your kid to college, or buy a car or buy a house, it is virtually impossible to get a loan in this country." As a nation, we no longer have loans, for practically anything. I realize people aren't thrilled about the bailout plan - and as someone who didn't buy a house in the past few years because I wasn't willing to gamble with a risky loan, I'm not pleased about bailing out morons who did gamble, and lost - but giving up 7% of your retirement seems like one hell of a bad way to stick it to Wall Street.