Return to me all the money my retirement account has lost in the last 18 months.

[Raven]

Do that for everyone who was invested in what appeared to be stable investment funds. If the government did this and put good regulations in place, I think people would end up paying off their debts and reinvesting the money.

Any I crazy?

[Andy823]

1. Sounds good to me, but

That doesn't seem to be the way things work in D.C.! I would love to get that money back, but the only way I see that happening is if things get better, and I do think they will over time, and I wait for another 8 years of so for the market to come back up.

[Raven]

3. Why 8 years?

[shraby]

27. Many of us don't have 8 more years. At 65+

we need that retirement fund now!

[Common Sense Party]

2. How close are you to retirement?

[Journeyman]

5. A lot further away than we were 18 months ago. . .

[Raven]

8. I jus turned 63. I retired 6 years ago and went back to work last

year because I was bored. Little did I know that I'd be glad to have a job!

[Common Sense Party]

12. Yeah, not much chance of seeing that money come back any time soon.

It sounds like it's a good thing that you got bored!

[emilyg]

22. I'm 70 and will never

see the money I lost. It hurts.

[xxqqqzme]

4. I don't think so...I'd like to know the

$35,000 I lost last year is going to return one day soon.

[Skink]

6. Actively managing a 401k was good enough to avoid any losses in 08.

There might not have been any gains.
Now if employers placed restrictions on the managing of those accounts it is a different story.

[seabeyond]

7. i lost too. but i was wary enough to keep most money in cds. was husband insisting we use 401k

i personally did not see it as stable investment and i think the evidence has been there a while. i thought it would happen sooner

that being said.... i want what we lost back too.... lol.

[livetohike]

9. I hear you - we retired early, no pensions just our investments

Now we will have to go find some sort of job to cover until these investments recover. Not looking for sympathy, but we thought we were doing everything "right".

[Raven]

11. I guess that's my whole point. People like you did play by the rules

and now your money is going to bail out some people who didn't. It really isn't fair.

[Idealism]

10. Investments are not supposed to be a "sure thing."

I am sorry for your and everyone elses loss, but investments do NOT guarantee profits.

[Raven]

13. I agree with you but this is what we were encouraged to do and

many of these investments were "prudent" at the time. No one was encouraging people to keep there money in the mattress.

[Idealism]

17. Who told you they were prudent?

If you investigated beyond the fascade of corporate America, you could plainly see the cracks in their gleaming capitalist armor. Anyone who looked at the housing market in regards to the average consumer could tell you there is no way that it can sustain itself, anathema to the prudence that investment bankers were telling the world.

[Raven]

20. Everybody thought that they were prudent. I am not talking about high rollers here,

I'm talking about regular, hard working folks. Why do you demonize us or make us out to be fools? I am happy that you were so much smarter that the rest of us.

[Idealism]

26. It is a buyer-beware market place, sorry to say

Education is the key to preventing things like this from happening, and when you rely on others for your education on the matter, this is what can happen. Again, I am sorry for everyones loss (not like I didn't lose some money), but we are all at fault for this mess.

[Common Sense Party]

14. Definitely. I wouldn't put any money in stocks that I might need in the

next 10 years or so.

I am almost 100% in stocks in my 401(k), but I have 25 years until I retire. My account is down big, but I haven't "lost" anything. Those shares are still there. They're just cheaper right now, so I'm buying more.

I know it's a risk, but it's a calculated risk with which I'm comfortable.

[Raven]

16. Another good point! You have 25 years to recover and you will.

Seniors, especially those older than me, have no time. I am really afraid for the folks in their 70's and 80's who did all "the right things" and now see they retirement$ melting away. One way or another, they are going to become a burden on the government.

[Common Sense Party]

21. I know you have no time. That's the tragedy and shame of this whole

mess.

I'm a 401k consultant. I'm educating people every day about how to invest prudently and be prepared, because things don't always go up. And Murphy's Law says if anything can go wrong, it will, and usually right before you want to retire.

It aggravates me that 401k companies aren't educating people like they should, and that investors that were very close to retirement weren't cautioned against having 100% of their money in stocks.

[Idealism]

19. The bottom line is that you are comfortable

You are in a fortunate place compared to most in this country. You are quite right about the market rebounding, it will take some time but you seem to have plenty of it to spare and the patience to do so. The market in my estimates will further deteriorate, but eventually it will go back up, so there is no need to realize the losses on those assets because not only will you not share in the profits once we recover but you will also be taxed for declaring the losses.

[jmg257]

15. Man, that's A LOT of cash I would think!

[Raven]

18. Yup. :-(

[madokie]

23. not in the least are you knutts

I'd be besides myself if I had paid a lot of money into a retirement fund that went belly up because of politicians giving free rein to the wall street crooks. As it is I haven't lost much

[slackmaster]

24. There's nobody to take it back from

It's just gone.

[Raven]

25. I know. That's the flaw in my proposal. I don't want to take it from my neighbors

I want to take it back from the crooks but they spent it already or it's offshore.

[slackmaster]

32. Lost paper value of investments you and own did not end up in someone else's hands

It simply doesn't exist any more.

[Raven]

33. That is not quite true. Someone made a profit or a commission on it.

[slackmaster]

35. The people who sold at the top made a profit, but not off of you or me

We who failed to sell at the top lost paper profit. That doesn't really help the people who did sell.

People do indeed make money on commissions, but that's not a lot out of your pocket or mine.

[hfojvt]

28. Well THAT would sure be a huge boon to the wealthy

They have the largest retirement accounts. P.S. at 63, most of your retirement account should not be in places where it can lose a lot of value. Of course, I am 46 and my retirement account is 100% CDs. I have lost a fair amount of value too by the fact that the prices of milk and bread have gone waaaaay up, but I am still good on paper. I have been semi-retired for over two years now when I switched to part-time work.

[Raven]

29. I think that's a misconception. If I started saving for retirement at 20

which I did, and put $1000 away every year, I'd have a hell of a nest egg. I don't consider people who saved and were prudent to be in that hated "wealthy" category. My mother started a savings account for me when I was born and put $25 a month into it. Do the math.

[hfojvt]

30. yeah but if you started saving at age 20 and put away $3,000 a year

then you'd have a much larger nest egg. And if you put away $8,000 a year it would be much larger.

I am not hating anybody here, just saying that government programs shouldn't primarily be helping people who are better off than most other people.

Second there's losses and there are losses. If your $10,000 grew to $40,000 in the boom 1990s and then fell to $15,000 in the bust Bush years, some are crying now "my account lost 38% of its value. I lost $25,000". Apparently because they forgot the second half of "buy low, sell high". Not that I can talk, because when I sell a stock it is almost guaranteed to double in price in the next year. There's nothing that quite diminishes a $500 gain than the fact that you could have made $2,000. :banghead:

I currently have 500 shares of Freddie Mac because I trusted Chris Dodd who said the company was sound. Right now I am out $400 or so, but until I sell, I have not lost a dime. If Freddie Mac sells for $10 a share 5 years from now I will have made a very hefty gain. So why bail me out now? A market recovery will do that. A bailout would just encourage more sales.

Plus, I did the math and only came up with $5400 by the time you reached age 18.

[Raven]

31. I'm sorry, I can make no sense out of your post. :-(

[hfojvt]

40. I thought it was simple, but I do babble like a fish

Three points
1) wealthier people have bigger retirement accounts than non-wealthy people.
2) some of the losses are paper losses just like the gains were paper gains (buy 500 shares of Citi at $10 a share. If it goes to 20, you have made $5000 - on paper. Then if it goes to 9, you have lost $5500 - again, only on paper. Plus, the real loss is only $500, not $5500. That follows to point 3)
3) some of those paper losses will be recouped if the market recovers.

Take Ford for example. Suppose I had bought 500 shares of Ford back when it was at 4, because I thought it would rebound to 8 when the government bailed them out. Now it is at 1.73 and I am screwed, right? I have lost $1,135 plus commission - IF I sell today.

But why the heck would I want to sell today? (one reason might be that Ford might go broke and then I would lose another $865.) Unless I am pessimistic or really need my funds (or 43% of my original $2,000) today's price does not mean that much to me. Five years ago, Ford was selling for $15 a share. If it goes back up to $15 a share in the next five years, then I am gonna make some decent money.

[MercutioATC]

34. Almost all investment = risk.

I can feel bad for people who have lost money, but if they CHOSE higher-yield investments over safety, they made their own beds.

I gave up good returns in January 2007 because I saw something very bad coming. I could have been greedy and rolled the dice, but I opted to trade quick cash for safety.

The effect of this crash on my 401k? I'm up roughly 8% over the last 2 years.


We are responsible for our own money.

[Common Sense Party]

37. ALL investments involve risk. There is no such thing as a risk-free

investment. They key is knowing those risks ahead of time and managing them as best as one can.

[MercutioATC]

38. Well, U.S. Treasuries are pretty risk-free...

Unless you count a small net loss (to inflation) as a risk...or you believe the U.S. government is going to go belly-up.

But you're right, all investment does involve some degree of risk.

[Common Sense Party]

39. There's always a risk...or an opportunity cost.

If inflation spikes up, there can be a risk of losing purchasing power. Could you have gotten a better yield in something else?

Risk isn't always risk to principal. That was my point.

[ozu]

36. interest only exists because there is risk in the investment. n/t