My 401k Has Lost X% Of It's Value From The Start Of This Year...

Mine's 18%. What's your number?

I moved everything into bonds in february.....

Thee DOWs dropping faster than my desire to keep looking at their value.

The day after it dropped 770+ and then went up 500+ last week or the week before was the last time I checked it.

this sucks

Hard to watch the numbers go down, but I've got a long way to go before retirement.

I'm your zero vote

I don't like gambling, and that's what it felt like to me. My retirement plans are not based on anything in the stock market. So maybe the money doesn't grow all that fast, but it doesn't disappear, either.

:shrug:

Bush ate my IRA.

I didn't cash out, but I moved everything into the lowest risk-profile fund they have.

Unfortunately, being the last "rational" person is really shitty in this sort of situation - hahahaah!

I can't stop you though, of course.

Cash wise..I've lost about $17,000.....x(
P

In the past year. The bastards who did this to us need to be punished. Too, too many innocents get hurt. 15 year old Molly is the smartest of the bunch -- I don't know how in the world we can afford to enroll her at even cheapest state U.

I'm afraid to look again.

I just started being able to add to my 401K earlier this year after about a two year period where I couldn't....*sigh*

I am pretty young so there isn't much reason for me to worry myself with the numbers. I left everything alone and I just tell myself I'm buying low. I have plenty of time for it to recover.

The market will either recover, or if it doesn't we will have far more serious things to worry about.

...with 20 years until retirement.

i put in the minimum to get the matching funds from my employer and kissed the money good-bye a long time ago. i figure it'll just stress me further to find out how much i've lost.

I saw all this coming and took all my money out of mutual funds a year ago and put it into CDs -- spreading them around at different places. I advised my friends to do the same. They told me I was an alarmist, a chicken little, deluded, whatever.

I feel really bad for everyone who is being burned, because not everyone had the choices I did.

I also saw the real estate crash coming and three years ago sold my grossly overpriced house at the very top of the bubble. (People laughed at me then too.) My current house is no longer worth what I paid for it, but it's worth a lot more than the mortgage on it, because I "bought down" and used the proceeds from the first house.

The day I put more than $50 in gas into my Camry, I traded it in for a Honda Fit, into which I put nine gallons of gas every three weeks. (I don't drive much.)

I'm not being smug, because I know we're all going to suffer, but I feel content that I've got myself in as good a position as I can to weather the storm.

I'm currently putting 12% of my annual salary (7% from my check pretax + 5% matching from my employer) in an account that is 7 years old...technically, the total is slightly lower than it was last year, meaning I lost every penny I threw in this year and a little bit from previous years.

I've got another 15-20 years before late retirement, so I'm not terribly stressed, but still, it is scary.

I switched jobs and moved my 401K to the new company. I wasn't allowed to move it out of the simple savings account for 3 months. I was lazy and just left it there.

In july to safer investments and had lost 2.3% I considered this unacceptable since it looked like the economy was going to go down the crapper. Then when they started talking about this big bail out I moved 50% into fixed funds (it had lost 700 bucks) an left 50% in somewhat safe funds....the 50% in the fixed fund was 80% of my 403b...so I'm not that worried about the other 20%, I have 30 years until retirement. When the market finishes purging and things start moving again I'll get back in.

I have one buddy that's lost over 75k...(yeah he's rich by most standards)

Several month ago I changed my 401K to a fixed interest return and increased my contribution to 25% pretax of my salary. I also converted all that was allowed by law to a Roth IRA in the form of a CD. Even tho I am 70, I still work 30 hrs per week. I enjoy what I do and get to work from home.

elifino

but as of yesterday over 10%. I didn't have a whole lot in stocks, but I'm getting killed in the international markets.

It's less than a year old,so I guess I didn't lose much.

I don't know what percentage that is. However, at this rate I'm wondering, what's the difference if I spend it or it disappears into the ether?

I'm a conservative invertor. Supposedly almost no risk.

I technically have a pension (and a great one, too!), and the money in it is managed by people far smarter than myself. The fund has lost about 12% this year, but is up about 50% since the end of the tech bubble.

Honestly, I'm not that worried. If shit hits the fan and the economy completely implodes, I can't eat those dollars in my retirement account.

Low risk investments = smaller losses. I have always been a low risk chickenshit investor.

"Too scared to look."

I'm in my 20's, so, as suggested, I set my portfolio to "very aggressive." I can't even bring myself to look at how much I've lost. Probably 40-50%.

Even though much of it is in 'Principal Conservation' it's probably down at least 15%.

On the other hand, the kids' college funds are probably down at least 35%. Would have been better off if I'd put the money in a pickle jar for the past 3 years.

I've lost more this year than I've earned in wages. Much more.

:) / :(