That is also how much I am getting on my IRA at present, 2.76%

And I thought it was a bad idea but did it anyway (locked in for 7 years @ that rate).

I've been in CDs most of the time and I'm wayyyy ahead of 2.75% as it has been in 7%,6.5%, 5.75%, 5.25% and now 2.75% CDs most of the time. Was in the stock market for awhile and I did good on it before it crashed in 2008! I was out at that time luckily and have not been inclined to return to it.

I'm ready to start drawing on it soon so I'm not bummed out at all!

The historical stock average can be as high as over 10 percent depending on how you measure it They pick 7%.

There have been a few of them since I got out of it. It was quite unpleasant. I would have lost my ass had I kept my IRA in it! I'd be seriously bummed as I can no longer work and contribute to it but, at least I still have it and yes, it is earning a couple of hundred $ a month at present.

It's also recommended that as you get older you get your money out of stocks in since you'll have little to no time to rebound from a crash.

Over 59-1/2 now and disabled. NOT a good idea at all. Nope. No way to replace any of it. I'm just glad I got out with a decent profit when I did! *whew*

Everything. Gone. Nada.

Nothing to recover with.

Relying on brokers and checks that were coming in and then ... they stopped. Broker's phone = no answer.

FUCK THEM IMO.

Glad to be away from it before it blew up.

Sounds like a shady character.

n/t

When you retire you typically wouldn't need to spend it all at once, you would spend it slowly over the next 15-20 years. That exceeds the time it would take to recover from most historical crashes so even then, the experts just say to leave it in there.

I doubt I will, but I could live longer than 20 years, who knows (I do not care to given my health)?

Another crash is right around the corner btw.

Have you noted who is the White House, lying fraud that he is paying off the Russians and everyone else that will keep their mouths shut? I have noticed. I do not like it one bit and I do not trust any of them one bit. Why would I want to have what little money I do have in there wondering if and when the next crash will happen esp. with a $20 trillion $ national debt on the books in this great country of ours?

And also, the financial impact of Hurricane Harvey & Irma ...

>>Economic Impact

Early estimates put property damage at between $30 billion and $100 billion, 0.2%-0.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). Compare that to Hurricane Sandy, which caused $70 billion of damage (0.4% of GDP at the time) and Katrina $110 billion (0.8%).

However, only some of this will be visible in the main economic indicators. There is likely to be a sharp but temporary hit to demand, showing up in weak retail sales, industrial production and jobless claims numbers. The third quarter GDP number could be 0.2-0.3 percentage points weaker than it would otherwise have been. The spike in gasoline prices also looks likely to boost consumer prices by as much as 0.3 percentage points in September.

Later, the rebuilding effort could actually be a larger but much more diffused boost to demand and therefore the level of GDP. Whether there is a lasting impact on GDP after this down-then-up pattern depends on the extent of permanent damage to infrastructure, which as things stand appears material.

Meanwhile, Harvey may have lowered the chance of a government shutdown and failure to raise the debt ceiling ([sic] they have done this temporarily for a few months into next year 2018 but after that -- ??). Congress may need to pass an appropriations bill for disaster relief funds, and also needs to re-authorize the National Flood Insurance Program by end-September. Lawmakers may tack on legislation to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling at the same time. Opposition to a combined bill could be much reduced, given the crisis in Texas.

Energy and insurance market impact

The implications of Harvey striking the heart of the U.S. energy market have been felt far and wide. Over one-third of U.S. refining capacity had been shut down. The U.S. Department of Energy released 1,000,000 barrels of crude to Phillips 66’s Lake Charles refinery to help fill the gap.

Refining capacity was reduced enough to partially close the Colonial pipeline, which delivers gasoline and other products from Houston to the Northeastern U.S. The upshot is that gasoline prices jumped 30 cents in one week. Traders have booked 20 tankers of European distillates, including gasoline for U.S. delivery to take advantage of price rises.

Attention has also focused on who gets the bill for the catastrophic damage. Typical residential home insurance covers wind and rain damage, but not floods. There are federal insurance programs that cover flood damage, but early indications are that homeowners could bear a substantial portion of the economic cost of Hurricane Harvey.

and ...

By contrast, about 80% of car owners purchase comprehensive auto insurance (there are 23 million vehicles in Texas), which does cover flood damage, and most commercial property insurance contracts cover flooding and business interruption, shifting these costs to insurers.

There will be much debate in the insurance markets as to whether this tragedy will lead to insurance rate rises. Previous large insurance events such as 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina ate into insurance companies’ capital reserves. But if the claims on the industry are lower than the value of any future rate rises, then for those who can still supply capital to it, these events can result in higher returns.

This expectation of the mix between insured and uninsured losses currently looks likely to make Harvey an “earnings event” rather than a “capital event” for the insurance industry. While in the short term this may be helpful, the outlook is therefore likely to remain for excess underwriting capacity, low investment returns and continued pressure on insurance rates (good news, of course, for the buyers of insurance).

Conclusions

The broader macro-economic (and political) implications of Hurricane Harvey may take some time to become clear. Similarly, estimates for the cost of the flooding continue to rise and it may be some time before there is clarity on the final bill - or indeed who will be the recipient of that bill.

****
This mess will have a result that will have an effect on everyone. It is called inflation. We cannot go on running such a huge national debt, disasters such as Harvey & Irma which will only continue to occur due to global warming and the huge costs involved in rebuilding over and over again. Katrina was not that long ago and here we go again only worse this time around.

I am not optimistic about the economy. That pretty much states where I am at. History provides us with no information at all regarding these new types of disasters taking place being they are much more severe and more frequent than past disasters. It is very bleak if you fail to recognize the reality of all of it combined.

Also, how CAN you recover if you lost it all and are retired? Answer: You cannot. Ask anyone this question that had their money in Lehman Bros., a company that went belly-up and no longer exists. That was what you call losing it all and the tax write-off for such a loss is a pittance at best.

I'm not familiar with historical rate of returns, but I knew it was much more than zero. I'm not shocked that it was C. I tend to avoid risk...risk aversion I believe is the term.

I got the rest of them right, even though I know very little about finance.