don't look at your 401K or your stock portfolios..

[Dancing Fire]

if you are long in the stock market,it looks very ugly in the past 10 days ...

about a month ago i told my wife to sell all of her 401K IF the Dow hits 13,000,well with our luck it topped out at about 12,830.i should have set my target at 12,500 instead..

 

[missy]

ugh, I know. I begged my dh to start getting us out of the stock market after the first recession recovery but he is (was?) convinced things will get better. My question is if it will happen within our lifetime!

 

[lyra]

We're in Canada, but we've "lost" quite a bit so far in our RSP's. My DH is currently unemployed too.

 

[missy]

We're in Canada, but we've "lost" quite a bit so far in our RSP's. My DH is currently unemployed too.

Oh, I'm so sorry lyra. I feel as we have been living constantly on the edge these days. I don't feel as if my dh or I have job security and in conjunction with everything else that is happening in the economy I feel very fragile finance wise. And unfortunately many feel the same way.

 

[yssie]

Yeah... SO glad we applied for the mortgage when we did

 

[Dancing Fire]

Yeah... SO glad we applied for the mortgage when we did

the 30 yr fixed is only 4.33% today.

 

[yssie]

Yeah... SO glad we applied for the mortgage when we did

the 30 yr fixed is only 4.33% today.

Whoa!

Ours is 4.75, from three weeks ago - good credit, parents cosigning didn't make a difference. The house is well under 2x what we make annually, decent amount down. And I thought we were about as low-risk as it gets..!

 

[centralsquare]

Ugh - it's sickening. Just pushed retirement out by a decade.

 

[Mayk]

Depressing to watch the slide down... Not feeling promising about tomorrow or the next day..and so on....

 

[lulu]

We recovered from the '08 dump very quickly. It will come back.

 

[minmin001]

already did~ but since I'm no where near retirement I hope it will come back~

 

[Dancing Fire]

Depressing to watch the slide down... Not feeling promising about tomorrow or the next day..and so on....

all the Asian markets are looking pretty ugly at this hour...

 

[centralsquare]

Depressing to watch the slide down... Not feeling promising about tomorrow or the next day..and so on....

all the Asian markets are looking pretty ugly at this hour...

Nikkei fell 4.4% already...perhaps we should brace for another sell off on wall street tomorrow...

 

[Regular Guy]

Yeah... SO glad we applied for the mortgage when we did

the 30 yr fixed is only 4.33% today.

4.25% here.

Now...having refinanced twice since moving 5 years ago...THAT's something you can control.

The stock market...not so much.

Yes, we're hurting.

And staying. Probably we're just stupid. I did tell the wife last week, before they covered the debt crisis, that maybe we should go into cash. But, I wasn't too serious, and we didn't.

Ira Z.

 

[Kaleigh]

My husband has his own firm and is very nervous. He's watching the Asian markets.. He can't sleep. I grew up with this, and know how things go.. Up and down, topsy turvey.... I am not making light of it, the dow dropped the lowest in history , or close to it??

If you have a strong feeling, then go with your gut. I wish I had done the same in 1988. I told my dad to sell. He said why all the panick. I said I am expecting, and need to get out of the market... Like now. He said don't worry all will be fine.

I lost all my money.

 

[soocool]

DH and I have stocks, mutual funds, bonds, cash, and most importantly lots of land in various states. We have been very fortunate in that some of this land (that we bought very very cheaply) is valuable for its mineral rights and has given us much financial security.

 

[iLander]

I think Standard and Poor's, the people that told everyone that all that mortgage junk was AAA/aaa, if full of [email protected]

They obviously have no clue what they're doing, and the new (3 years) CEO of the parent company (McGraw Hill) has a lot to answer for.

They should have been prosecuted or SOMETHING for lying about all those mortgage securities, but they weren't.

Now they are being irresponsible AGAIN.

We should have thrown them in jail when we had the chance.

 

[partgypsy]

Well, I'm like 25 years out from retirement, so I don't have much options. I did slightly change my allocation since 2008 that is more conservative/comfortable to me, and so I'm sticking with that.
Yes, I can stick all my money in cash, but I'm not a market timer so that approach won't help me so much when I do (eventually?) retire. I wouldn't be surprised if the kind of activity we are seeing (from 2006-2011) is going to be characteristic for the next 10-15 years, things being very choppy with real return of 5-6%. But then that's better than cash or CDs.
The thing that is scary to contemplate is the end of Rome scenario where global financial markets as we know it become unstable/crash, which is not not out of the realm of possibility, considering how connected and complex things are at this point. But if that happened I think I would have more serious things to pay attention to than my retirement balance.

We have friends who sold their house for a bunch of acres and while keeping jobs for now are going to move towards self-sufficiency. So buying a trailer and moving onto their property is an option if things get really bad

 

[rosetta]

I have no money in stocks, now am too nervous to ever get into them!

Loooking for our first home, but mortgages are hard to come by and we are borrowing 4x salary. Best rate for us about 3.99% and that is despite us having the most secure jobs in the country and salaries doubling in next 1-2 years.

Hard times indeed.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

We are too close to retirement to take too much risk, so we moved a lot of the 401k into cash and bonds after the last big drop and semi-recovery. I haven't checked it today as we still have some in mutual funds. I think I won't.

 

[Abril]

Huge run-up in the market. Today (August 9, 2011) is the most our portfolio has grown since we've kept track of daily gains/losses. Too bad yesterday's loss was bigger than today's gain.

 

[Dancing Fire]

don't look now..

 

[centralsquare]

don't look now..

I'm never retiring

 

[smitcompton]

Hi,

I guess I am an optimist. I did lose money in the market in 2008, but recovered all of it. I am now down again, but think I will recover it again. It is a shock to look at your portfolio and see loses everyday in the thousands, I only keep about 10% in stocks.
I also keep cash because you never know, We never thought what happened in 08 would happen. I sleep at night.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

We were hit really hard in 2008, so this time it doesn't quite sting as badly. Also, I feel like the U.S. market volatility is directly tied to other markets' volatility and NOT due to very poor infrastructure (banks) like it was in 2008, which makes me more optimistic. That being said, D expressed concern about a month ago and moved his long-term investments to bonds and kept his short-term investments in commodities. I only invest long term and kept mine in. He's faring better than I am.

 

[diamondringlover]

I took a big hit many years ago with stocks and money markets, so from then on out I longer have my 401K invested in stocks or money markets, its in a nice little safe account, while its not making much money it sure as heck isnt losing any money either...I am 10 years out to retirement and damn it I will retire!!!!!

 

[Abril]

Another awesome day in the market. Today was the second biggest gain for us since we started keeping track.

What a week of superlatives. Monday was the biggest loss so far. Tuesday was the biggest gain. Wednesday was our third biggest loss. Thursday was the second biggest gain (vide supra).

The pattern this week has been down, up, down, up. Do you think Friday will be down?

 

[centralsquare]

Down. I think it'll go up and down over and over again at lower magnitudes each time and then level out.

 

[Amys Bling]

Ugh...

 

[Abril]

Looks like the alternating down, up, down, up streak has been broken. Thursday and Friday were back-to-back ups in the market. Overall, I'm happy where we stand. We're poised to take advantage of any further drops. (Watch. Now that I've said that, the market is going to go up on Monday.)