Well, the recent situation with the stockmarket has made me grateful that I decided to live off my savings last year – last summer I drew down my equities positions substantially, and, in a move that was pure luck, parked a chunk of what was left in gold (thinking in terms of risk-reduction since I was looking ahead to such a huge drop in income). This turns out to have been exactly the right time to do that. The rest is in cash, and with the start of January, I also liquidated all of Jeffrey's trust fund and transferred the cash to him for his 21st birthday.
The net result is that the recent massive downturn of the stockmarkets worldwide has hit me far less than it would have last year at this time. I still have unpleasant positions in things like Oracle, Starbucks, Microsoft, Nissan… not to mention the ugly scene involving my money in index funds based markets in Japan, India, Russia and Chile, where the dollar isn't depreciating fast enough to make the losses in those markets look any less painful. But… it's all paper losses, and the positions are all quite modest.
I certainly will not make claim to any great foresight – it was pure luck – but on paper, my drawdown over the last 6 months looks like the work of an investing genius. I'm feeling very self-satisfied about it. And, not only that, but just by virtue of the fact that I'm spending my U.S. cash while I save my Korean salary means that I've been in effect transferring my cash reserves from dollars (sinking) into Korean won (stable) – although the caveat there is that in the last month or two the won and dollar have been eerily in sync, unlike any other major world currencies, which are all generally appreciating against the dollar.
Of course, there's going to be some overhead in moving this Korean cash back into the U.S. at the end of my stay here – but lately , having reached the halfway mark of my contract – I've been considering whether I intend to stay another year or move on to something else. On the one hand, I'm frustrated with my failure to have found any good friends here, and disappointed with the limits on time off with which to travel. On the other hand, I've really enjoyed the teaching (despite the various moments of annoyance) and I still feel a desire to get more inside the language and culture, which is of course a very slow project, even slower because of my bouts with lack-of-motivation.