I don't think I can watch the stock market anymore...

... it's starting to depress me. Now I don't have a ton of money in the market, I actually don't have a ton of money at all but that's beside the point. I see stocks like Microsoft and Apple drop to 52 week lows and at face it looks bad. But really, these companies are worth more than the market is saying, right? At least that's the way I understand it and I don't understand much.

So what does it mean that everything is crashing down in price, and food prices are rising and gas prices are falling and banks are failing and our illustrious presidential candidates are saying the economy is bad but they can fix it? That last part is a crock of s**t. What our illustrious leaders should be saying is, don't panic. Panic is what can make a weak economy go boom. We don't want that. 

That's the problem with personal finances too. I find that if I lose a few bucks (okay more like 30%) in the stock market, I start to panic and start thinking about whether I can afford to buy a bag of chips for lunch or maybe I should just skip lunch all week to save money. It's a natural reaction to panic and I have to catch myself from jumping into panic mode.

Just today, we were talking about what would happen if I lost a client or two, and I joked about selling the house and moving into an apartment. But to be honest, that would probably end up costing more. I didn't buy too much house ten years ago and though it's lost value in the housing crisis, it had gone up enough prior that it still is "sellable" at over 50% more than I purchased it for. Besides, I'd go nuts if I had to lose my laundry room.

Markets run in cycles, the whole economic world does. What I need to do is just chill and continue to invest as I did before ($100/mo. into Sharebuilder). By doing so, I am taking advantage of the highs and lows of the stocks I buy. Dollar-cost averaging is what I believe it is called.

So my advice to you: don't panic. It will run its course and in no time, another industry bubble will continue to balloon until it too busts and we end up back here again. But hopefully, we'll be a little bit better off then than we are now.