How's y'alls 401ks doing?

[NeuroTypical]

So, the conventional wisdom on saving for retirement I was taught in the mid-'90's looked like this:

- Invest early, invest a little out of each paycheck, invest consistently.

- When you're young (under 50), invest in a mix of mutual funds.  Everyone has a recipe, with the general philosophy being mostly high growth, some bonds, some international, and a little stable stuff.

- When the stock market goes down, hooray!  Every dollar you invest while it's down will spend 2-3 decades growing! You should hope for a crash while you're in your 20's, 30's, even 40's, because the market recovers from crashes.  That's what it does.

- As you get older, you slowly move out of the high-risk/high-growth into the less risky more stable stuff.  By the time you're of retirement age, you should have just about your entire retirement funds in the safest stuff out there - T-bills, FDIC-backed ladders and CDs and stuff, maybe some gold.

So, with all that said, here's what COVID is doing to the NYSE:

 

Just wondering how many people are still a few decades away from retirement, and are smiling and grinning because of my third point.  Hopefully, nobody is near retirement age and losing their shirts because they're still heavily in the high-growth/high-risk stocks and mutual funds and stuff.   

How y'all doing long-term-wise?

 

 

 

 

 

[Just_A_Guy]

I’m still about 25-30 years from retirement (if I even live that long), and my retirement will primarily be funded by a state pension anyways.  There’ll be a small-ish 401(k), but I’m not counting on it for my bread and butter.

I feel bad for those in the private sector or who were counting on their 401(k)s in the short term.  But largely it’s not my economic ox that’s getting gored here.  If this stimulus check-thing comes to pass, our family will probably be getting upwards of $5K; and while there’s always stuff we could do with that kind of money—we don’t really need it.  I’m thinking we’ll probably donate at least a thousand of it to our ward fast offering fund—our ward is mostly private-sector computer engineers, and I suspect a lot of them are about to be unemployed.  

Edited March 28, 2020 by Just_A_Guy

[NeuroTypical]

By the way, donating to fast offerings is an EXCELLENT choice for charitable giving - no matter what the makeup of your home ward.  It's not a ward-level bucket of money, it's a churchwide bucket.

[JohnsonJones]

My retirement is...not well...at this point.   It's gone to a bad place.  I AM retirement age...so...that's how the wheel spins sometimes.

I will double down on the suggestion to donate to fast offerings.  I think the way things are going that we are into some deep financial difficulties in the US coming up.  If Trump's hopes that we all get back out by Easter, we MIGHT avoid a depression.  I think that a depression may be just around the corner though if we are not already entering into one soon.

I think there are many that are currently out of work or not working and that the next few months will see a great need for Fast Offerings to be given.  I cannot deny my own worries about income and other items (thus far, still have the same income...but I have no idea what's coming up next with all this) so hope I'm not the hypocrite on this and can offer a good sized fast offering myself to help others in the next few months.  I personally feel it will be needed or at least useful.

[mrmarket]

On 3/28/2020 at 12:54 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

I’m still about 25-30 years from retirement (if I even live that long), and my retirement will primarily be funded by a state pension anyways.  There’ll be a small-ish 401(k), but I’m not counting on it for my bread and butter.

I feel bad for those in the private sector or who were counting on their 401(k)s in the short term.  But largely it’s not my economic ox that’s getting gored here.  If this stimulus check-thing comes to pass, our family will probably be getting upwards of $5K; and while there’s always stuff we could do with that kind of money—we don’t really need it.  I’m thinking we’ll probably donate at least a thousand of it to our ward fast offering fund—our ward is mostly private-sector computer engineers, and I suspect a lot of them are about to be unemployed.  

Smallish 401K? I thought you were an attorney? State and municipal employees making half as much usually retire with  at least a QTR mil in those things. An atty should be at least triple to 4x that.

As a state employee that should actually be a 457 plan. Load it up cuz the whole market is on sale right now. Back up the truck

[Just_A_Guy]

22 minutes ago, mrmarket said:

Smallish 401K? I thought you were an attorney? State and municipal employees making half as much usually retire with  at least a QTR mil in those things. An atty should be at least triple to 4x that.

As a state employee that should actually be a 457 plan. Load it up cuz the whole market is on sale right now. Back up the truck

Long story, but basically I have a defined benefit pension plan calculated as a percentage of whatever my salary is when I retire (1.5% for every year I’ve worked with them, so if I stay 30 years my pension will be 45% of my retirement salary for as long as I or my wife live).  

The state re-calculates how much it will cost to fund the plan each year, and if the cost is an amount equal to less than 10% of my current salary, they pour the difference between 10% and the actual cost into a supplemental 401(k).  Right now that would theoretically work out to an amount equal to around 2% of my salary going into the 401(k).  I could add more to that, of course; but with six kids and student debt we aren’t exactly flush with discretionary cash at the moment.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Just_A_Guy

[Still_Small_Voice]

I invested a little over $6,500 when the markets crashed significantly.  Some of my mutual funds are still riding through the whole crash though.  I expect big gains when the market recovers from the money I threw in when the market crashed.

[mrmarket]

The past few weeks we had lots of transactions of SELLS from clients we couldn't talk into hanging on and riding it out. Now all kinds of new money is flowing in so we are doing lots of buys right now. Also the 2019 IRA contribution deadline was pushed to the right on the calendar. Lots of people maxing out their 2019 contributions to take advantage of the fire sale going on right now.

[Still_Small_Voice]

2 minutes ago, mrmarket said:

The past few weeks we had lots of transactions of SELLS from clients we couldn't talk into hanging on and riding it out. Now all kinds of new money is flowing in so we are doing lots of buys right now. Also the 2019 IRA contribution deadline was pushed to the right on the calendar. Lots of people maxing out their 2019 contributions to take advantage of the fire sale going on right now.

That is so unwise to sell in recent weeks.  If I would have sold off all my mutual funds and investments around March 23rd I would have lost big money.  I think from March 23rd to the 27th my investments recovered losses of $4,000 or more.  The time to sell was November 2019 to February 19th 2020.  It is time to buy or ride out this market crash.

[anatess2]

Swing traders are raking in for a few weeks now.  The level of volatility - up or down - has been favoring them.

[mrmarket]

1 hour ago, Still_Small_Voice said:

That is so unwise to sell in recent weeks.  If I would have sold off all my mutual funds and investments around March 23rd I would have lost big money.  I think from March 23rd to the 27th my investments recovered losses of $4,000 or more.  The time to sell was November 2019 to February 19th 2020.  It is time to buy or ride out this market crash.

Agreed but I can only talk sense into a minority of people.

[pam]

Retirement?  What is that?

[mrmarket]

1 hour ago, pam said:

Retirement?  What is that?

[Plein Air]

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Edited August 2, 2020 by Plein Air

[Traveler]

For the first time that I can think - both stocks and real estate (apartments) are doing very poorly.  Sadly I have several tenants out of work and unable to pay their rent.  I am thinking the losses in the stock market are less of a problem for humanity and that kind of thing that can recover faster when things get back on track.  I will not starve from the looses but I am thinking; if this gets to the point that I cannot meet expenses for the apartments - I am not sure what my tenants will do.

 

The Traveler