Worst case planning for some of us is the normal course to anticipate. Anything besides worst case planning is therefore by default fantasy planning.
In the U.S.A. there are three kinds of people.
1) Those living normal lives
2) Those living fantasy lives
3) Those in permanent worst-case scenarios
President Obama is a good example of someone living a fantasy life, yet so is Tom Petty. Joe the Plumber lived a normal life until upgraded to fantasy status for a while as Mitt Romney's good example. It is possible to fluctuate between normal and fantasy status, and there is a category where normal lives are fantasy lives generally in comparison to worst case lives or second and third world lifestyles.
For worst case planning consider scenarios that default economically to the individualized worst-case scenario of broke and plan to a lifestyle that works in that circumstance. To optimize a worst case lifestyle in a first-world country determine what material goods would be most helpful that are obtainable with a minimum income and plan to try to get a few of those, prioritizing the order of acquisition.
Fantasy planning in a fantasy-normative lifestyle is pre-determined to success if indexed to the average social income investment structures when those structures retain value or rise in value over time, yet may occasionally crash if the index average fantasy structure crashes to a certain extent as in the Wall Street derivatives crash of 2008.
President Obama (a.k.a. Mr. Fantasy) rode to the rescue of the rich banks following President Bush's T.A.R.P. bail out making the Bush II era tax cuts permanent and giving years of zero interest loans to large banks. In the fantasy life the rich getting rich instead of concentrating wealth and making wage slaves of people beneficently trickle wealth down to the masses such that if they only apply themselves the slackers will discover the cornucopia of prosperity too. Discouraged job seekers depressed in poverty don't count for unemployment statistics as they too could eat cake if they ran out of bread with Federal Reserve issuances of zero interest loans to the federal government providing food stamps for all. Printed money actual counts as something when it has Boris Yeltsin’s signature on the greenback.
Fantasy planning is easy for the average normative-fantasy planner as everything works. If a fantasy-normative investment in a panoply of start-up micro-solar cell companies is made it will rise in the long run to dominate the energy sector. If a worst-case planner invests in the same stocks an oil conglomerate will buy up the companies and liquidate the companies rendering the investment a complete loss. The astute worst-case planner knows this secret of investing as does not make the silly roll of the dice to start with. Instead he or she buys a cross-bow to take meat to cook over a wood-fire for camping.
image credit N.A.S.A./SDO
image credit N.A.S.A./SDO
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