How the Fed hurts retirees

David Both, 65
Raleigh, N.C.

Keeping interest rates low encourages investment in other things, like stocks -- and I understand that's part of the objective.

Before the recession, my wife and I had about a quarter of our funds in a money market account that earned around 3.25% in interest each year.

Our original intent was to build up that savings, but when the economy started changing, our interest rate fell to around 0.25%.

I started shifting money to stocks. Now we keep only 8% in savings. It's not a lot of money, but it's enough that if we had an emergency, we could use it immediately. We'll also use part of it to pay for our 25th anniversary trip to Tuscany this fall.

Investing in stocks gets capital to businesses, and that could put people back to work. From my standpoint, that's a worthy goal. If you put people back to work, that helps the entire economy.

NEXT: Taking on more risk