Good Morning America, it’s Friday one more time, and as summer slips away I can’t help but think that the winter of 2008-2009 will memorable for all the wrong reasons. The government jobs report came in worse than expected with 85,000 additional Americans losing their employment. This marks the eighth straight month of there staggering loses.

I’m amazed that some economists continue to say that the U.S. is not in recession and perhaps we will avoid a recession altogether. I have an announcement for all of those no-recession folks, “Earth to economists, that brown bottle that you have been sipping is not medicine.”

The normal winter slowdown will continue to add to job loses, as will the much higher costs of everyday living; thank you Mr. Bernanke. We are in fact in, and have been in, recession. But some people just don’t get it and that’s because they still have a job or a trust fund.

I hear the stock market pundits pleading for investors and saying such things as “When we are in a Bear Market, people don’t need a good excuse to sell.” Let me translate that into English, “We need more sheep to shear down here on Wall Street and they’re not cooperating.”

How healthy has the stock market been? Had you invested in the general market 10 years ago, adjusted for inflation, you would be a loser today. Sounds like a deal to me. When the market gurus say, “Invest for the long term,” what they really mean is, “Invest in my long term.”

For the average person, the stock market is a rigged gambling game. In the game of craps, the term “betting the come” means betting on a winner on the next roll. There is a guy at the craps table called the “croupier” who has a crooked stick. When you don’t win (which is mostly) he reaches out with the crooked stick and rakes in your money.

In the stock market, there are lots of guys and girls at the table with colorful names such as trader’s, brokers, fund mangers, portfolio managers and so on who have crooked hands. Whether the stocks come up winners or losers, they reach in with their crooked hands and rake off some of your money. This is where the saying came from, “I can’t win for losing.”

Now let’s play pretend and say that ten years ago, during the same time that the stock market was stealing…okay, losing your money, that you had been foolish enough to invest in yourself. In some foolhardy delusional moment you had determined that you would pay down your home by putting your former “investment money” into accelerated home payments.

Did I hear someone say, “What? If I had put my investment money into my house, I wouldn’t have a tax write-off or a retirement income. Are you some kind of nut job?”

I have been accused of being a little close to the line, but nuts? Nah. First of all, until such time that the tax rate reaches 101%, interest paid out constitutes some level of lose. In other words, you have to pay 100% of the interest to get part of it back. Bad, bad trade.

Secondly, putting money down on your own home is a guaranteed return. Every dollar that you pay on principal is a dollar that you are not paying interest against. Had you put both the house payment and your investment money into your home for ten years, it would have been paid for, lock, stock and barrel.

Today, you would have the equivalent of your total house payment as discretionary income. Had you put your money in the stock market at the same time, you would have actually lost money and your broker could have paid his or her house off. Who are you working for anyway? Invest in yourself.

In my book, I chronicle the real fact (with all the numbers) that smart choices on a home and auto can allow a person to retire on those savings alone! Seem impossible? If you have not read my book, I offer it to my blog readers at a discount. Just e-mail your address to me by clicking the “the book” button at the top of this site.

What if you don’t like the book? Well, I’ll send your money back of course. I didn’t write the book to make money, I wrote the book to try and help you to live simple and live well.