How's YOUR 41K doing? (sic)

[ddeclue]

By Michael Mandel <http://www.businessweek.com/bios/Michael_Mandel.html>

During the darkest 10 years of the Great Depression, from September 1929
to September 1939, the stock market dropped roughly 50%, adjusted for
inflation. With today's drop in the stock market, the U.S. has now
matched that unfortunate milestone. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock
index
<http://investing.businessweek.com/research/markets/detail/marketdetail.asp?marketCode=US%3BSPX>,

adjusted for inflation, is now down about 50% over the past 10 years
from Feb. 17, 1999 to Feb. 17, 2009.

[tk2kewl]

1. so wouldnt that be a 200.5k then?

[ddeclue]

3. poetic license...

:)

[tk2kewl]

4. and just me cracking wise

:thumbsup:

[Blue_In_AK]

2. Well, we actually have IRs (sic) , and thank goodness

we've took them out of the stock market a while ago and have them just sitting in cash. We're not making any money, but at least we stopped hemorrhaging.

[mamameow]

17. cheney's lead

when i read that dickie put his money into euros, i moved mined into euro markets and then moved into ira. the bleeding stopped. i a couple of months i am moving the ira into a house and just pay the income tax on the ira. if this is not right, somebody tell me.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. actually, mine is now a 4.01 K...and I am afraid to look at it!

[MercutioATC]

6. Mine has been is U.S. Treasuries since January, 2007.

...about 10 months early, but this wasn't hard to see coming. It's not even keeping up with inflation now, but at least I have a 4% gain rather than a 45%+ loss...

[backwoodsbob]

7. same here.

Got my forth quarter statement last week.

Big whopping .9% gain but hey better than a loss

[littlebit]

12. Exactly

I did the same with my IRA in april of 07. It's always better to gain a little than lose a lot.

[DeschutesRiver]

14. Moved to Treasuries in August 2007

started with only Ts. Then mixed in some CDs, and now am going back to strictly Ts. We are probably around a 3-4% or so gain as well and consider ourselves fortunate for that this time around.

We lost so much in the former tech wreck that it took us the whole raging bull market to just gain back most of what we lost. When I saw the writing on the wall this time, I told dh that we are getting old enough that we need to start sitting on the sidelines for these drops. Didn't have the moxie to take a chance on losing a ton again - thank goodness for that.

Not keeping up with inflation; but neither am I looking at retirement balance wiped clean like many others. I will at least have someone left to re-invest sometime in the future when or if things settle down.

[MercutioATC]

15. You timed it perfectly.

I lost out on the run up to 14k, but I also missed the drop. You got out VERY close to the high.

I'm envious :)

[DeschutesRiver]

16. If it makes you feel better, it was more a lucky break than brilliance, lol...

That summer when I finally "got" how many of my friends and acquaintances had managed to have such apparent prosperity with so little visible real means of support for the kind of spending they were doing, it took my breath away. Did a crash course in current economics/finance, realized we had a chance of not being old people eating cat food in 10 years if I acted fast, and plugged my ears to the sound of my dh's dragging feet (he is very happy now, and we are now both immersing ourselves in a more extended course on economics - not a subject you can learn overnight for sure).

We'd known in a vague way for awhile that something was wrong, and had already made major lifestyle changes in the past couple of years or so, but not realized the depth of it until the epiphany moment - were a whisker away from repeating the tech error x10, which makes me shudder to think about that still. I celebrate your good fortune with this too - life hands out enough hard knocks as it is, glad we've both avoided this one for the time being!

[Phx_Dem]

8. Pretty shitty.

[spinbaby]

9. So now would be the time to buy?

:shrug:

[uponit7771]

11. Looks like it, google "gold prices" and they were down today also...When people move out of gold

...and treasuries they move into the market...usually.

CPI sucked though

I have to remind KKKons where I work daily that they're econ ideals cause this shit...they still blame it on Clenis

[mokawanis]

10. Mine took a small hit

I've been slowly building up a good pension for 29 years and it dropped about 3% last year. Given the option of choosing low-risk or somewhat-higher-risk I always opted for the low-risk deal. Time will tell if it's going to be enough to retire when I plan to.

[Glimmer of Hope]

13. So much so I am afraid to look. I logged on to my account yesterday to change my contibutions but

I covered most of the screen so I didn't have to see my balance.

[elifino]

18. I converted mine to a fixed interest a couple of months before the fall

I also rolled over all I could under the rules to a Roth IRA in the form of a 33 month CD at a very good interest rate.

I just had a feeling that the market was not going to continue growing. I am very happy with the performance of my 401K, even though I am now 70 years old and still work part time from home, I continue to put pretax money into the fund at a level high enough to get the company match.

elifino

[Claire Beth]

19. I moved my 401K to a fixed account just before

things really went DOWN.

[elifino]

20. Good for you

What made you change yours?

elifino