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avoidance...your best friend

January 29th, 2016 at 05:44 am

Okay so I've been avoiding until today looking at our retirement and investment accounts. It's not pretty.

So our cash is down $30k but that was planned expenses for the past 5 months. We moved and budgeted around $5k/month with some unexpected expenses and moving costs covered. Very planned.

What was unplanned. Tanking of the market. Our retirement savings in June 2015 hit a peak of $575k. We are currently with our contributions ending in August (we maxed out the 401k) as of today at a balance of $496k. Now in October 30th, 2015 when I checked we were down from $575k to $562k. So we had a small hit. But in 3 months we've lost about $70k in our retirement accounts and that's without me moving a penny. I left everything as is and avoided looking at it until today.

I swallowed really hard right now writing this but I am staying the course. I have a diverse asset allocation of stocks all in retirement and our taxable account right now we had it mostly in cash/cd/bonds and it's around $10k down from October. With our cash heavy position from home equity and cash for living expenses we decided to leave our retirement alone.

I'm a little sickened but I'm staying strong and I'm going to ignore it. We weather 2007-2010 and I know there were years we were losing money after contributions and company matches but by contributing and not changing our allocation (cheap low cost funds) it turned out and began to pay big dividends.

I guess the only thing left to do is avoidance. Avoid watching and worrying and realize we aren't touching this money for another 20 years. We'll survive this and start pulling in big gains soon enough. Ugh.

How are you doing?

8 Responses to “avoidance...your best friend”

  1. snafu Says:
    1454047449

    As long as you're not selling, it's just a paper exercise. What is your comparable just considering actual contribution sums? You know from experience 2008-2012 what happened to people who cashed out and how it affected those who had a decent, diversified portfolio. For those of us with new contribution space, good stocks from well managed companies are on sale.

  2. livingalmostlarge Says:
    1454048737

    Yep just our contributions and we were below contributions plus previous year for awhile. Then suddenly it all turned around and we were making massive returns. Meh it is a paper exercise but it still burns to be under $500k after that goal was hit. Hoping with DH getting a job soon we'll turn right around and max out the 401k this year and IRA and start saving again.

    My goal will be to continue on the austere budget but I doubt it'll last.

  3. ceejay74 Says:
    1454074670

    Yeah, ours are still low after a peak in July. I too swallowed hard and have begun maxing out all three of our Roths as well as bumping my 401(k) up a couple of percentage points. Doubling down in this crooked game and hoping it's the right thing to do!

  4. ThriftoRama Says:
    1454076471

    This is what markets do. Don't sell. Years ago, I shared an office with a woman who freaked out and sold stock every single time the market dropped. I'd hate to think about how much money she lost. We put the money in and we pretty much ignore it. If the market REALLY tanks, we put in more money. Yep. I was the geek who bought bank stocks in 2008, when the market bottomed. Those stocks have been my best returns!

  5. CB in the City Says:
    1454077498

    My brother is itching to sell and I keep encouraging him to hang in there. This is not the first downturn in the market and it won't be the last. It will recover.

  6. Livingalmostlarge Says:
    1454087600

    Never I won't sell a penny. I haven't in the past 20 years and I won't start now. We are sitting tight and I'm just going to avoid everything. If we were making money we'd be contributing the way we always have. Every month and ignoring everything else.

  7. Ima saver Says:
    1454095393

    I am sitting tight too!

  8. FrugalTexan75 Says:
    1454117751

    If I weren't in the mode of needing money for the wedding and house downpayment right now, I would be buying some stock (well, extra stock above what I already get every month.)

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