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Reader participation

  • Artigo

If you are like me, over the holidays, you have more time to read blogs than usual. I've heard as much as I care to from a few folks that don't know how to argue civilly. But I thought it would be fun to do a couple readers participation posts and keep it simple. So I am going to get it started here. I'll post my responses in comments.

Since the financial downturn, have you looked at your 401(k)?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2008
    Call me a pragmatists, but I have not looked at my 401(k). I'm going to be a good girl, ride this thing out and not stress myself out needlessly.

  • Anonymous
    December 06, 2008
    I always look every month.  I also check year-to-year performance. I don't sweat it though, it's not not money I need for at leats 15 years. This year, business took a large paper loss (buying lots of equipment and software because of growth) so major deductions.  That, combined with a seriously down market means I may be rolling 401(k) into a Roth IRA and taking the tax hit in a down year.

  • Anonymous
    December 07, 2008
    I look at least once a week - it's pretty depressing, watching the value go lower and lower and lower and lower...I used to actually have a total net worth of a few bucks, but that went away pretty quickly. But since I'm still 30 years away from the minimum withdrawal date, I'm reasonably confident that the market will pick up before then.

  • Anonymous
    December 07, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2008
    I only look when I get the quarterly statement in the mail.

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2008
    Unfortunately, yes. I rolled mine into an IRA in late '06 and it's at about half its original value. =(

  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2008
    Bill Wagner - it's good that you can put it out of your mind and not obsess. Not many people could do that. Joe Enos - yeah, it's gotta pick up. Always has. goldhoarder - right now, it doesn't sound so insane ;) Kevin - I haven't gotten a quarterly statement in a while. I may leave the envelope sealed! Brian Reese - best thing I did a while back was diversify. I'm sure a bunch of people only have their 401(k) in one stock.

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2008
    Being disversified is good. My 403b, b/c I'm in a non-profit sector, only has mutual funds and a money market option. From 2006 when I started to say, June 2008, I was down substantially. Apparently, the mutual fund options I chose where not that good. Right now, I'm making the matching contribution as that's a "free" way to double the return. I'm also hoping that I can make my initial investment back, even if it takes 20 years. I have plenty of time to at least break even. Once I get some other things in life taken care of, I'm going to re-evaluate the options I have. I may decide I'm better off making the matching contribution and then going with an IRA so I have some better choices.  I prefer mutual funds over stocks, but you still have to keep it diversified to mitigate some of the risk. Ultimately, I'd like to add some real estate to the mix but, that's much further down the road.

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2008
    Sure, I check the values of my retirement accounts...and although I'm not happy about the percentage losses, I'm not fretting too much because I won't need the money for many years.  The losses are only on paper (at least I try to remind myself that.)  I'm optimistic that it will be back up by the time I need it!

  • Anonymous
    December 10, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 15, 2008
    The comment has been removed