Is anyone wondering about moving their IRA to Cash??

Hard to know what to do.

I lost 1/2 of my modest IRA last time the market crashed.

My guy said that because I am mutual funds, I have to wait until the end of the day.

As Buffett says: "buy when others are selling and sell when others are buying."

If you are going to panic, always do so before everyone else does.

when it's more expensive?

If you don't need it now, keep it where it is. It will come back up. In fact put more in when it so low.

anything. The interest is horrible, but I don't have enough years left to start over again.

but I'm over 59, and I needed to pull some out to pay property taxes in any event. I don't know if it depends on the fund, or not; but, if I wait till after 3 p.m. Eastern time, I would have to wait till the close of the NEXT day to see what the sale price is going to be.

I've got another 20 years before I'll start tapping mine.

Between then and now, I'll be gradually reducing my exposure to stocks.

jerking in the markets usually makes one a loser.

to dodge most of the damage in '07, then rode the market back up. I got nervous last summer expecting a double dip. I've been kicking myself for missing out on another thousand points in gains. Not kicking myself right now though.

in an interest income fund several years ago. My husband is a Ford retiree, so we kept the other 25% in Ford stock and are just sitting on it.

If anyone is that close to retirement and that concerned about principal loss, they should have gone to cash a month or two ago.

If you do so now, you're just locking in losses.

I have 20+ years to go until retirement. I stay fully invested. Things will, eventually, get much better.

much worse." :) Always got a kick out of that line.

N.B. Stocks lost 80% of their value from 1929-1935. So, while things eventually got better, it can sometimes take quite a long time.

new shares, it was still ugly, but not nearly AS ugly.

And, again, that's why I stay diversified. I don't own just large, U.S. stocks.

most IRAs is to move from stocks to money market or stable value funds. Those are not entirely devoid of risk either, although far less risky than stocks. In other words, you can't move from stocks to 'cash' in an IRA without paying early withdrawal penalties and regular income taxes on the amount withdrawn.

... the company I work for allows us to take it out once we've reached a certain threshold, and I've only been involved for about a year, and at a low % rate (cause I don't make much) so have been just short of the 'minimum necessary'. Kissing it allgoodbye, now. Sigh.

Cash is doing fine in the fire safe.

money buried in the back Yard in well hidden locations. As a little kid I thought that was really really weird years later, now I really see his logic, and they survived the Great Depression quite well, got out before the fall, saw it all coming.

Last time I readjusted, I decided to roll the dice and move a nice chunk of my 401k into gold and precious metals. That's the only thing that has saved me so far. By waiting it out and not panicking, we were able to make up more than what we lost during the last crash. Looking at my last quarterly statement, adding gold to the mix mitigated some of the other losses.

but probably won't matter as the dollar collapses...

I'm a little nervous about giving even obvious investing advice, but it's true. This is quite different from saying that stocks won't keep going down, of course--they're looking pretty saggy today. But any losses my IRA account may have suffered don't affect me until I withdraw the money and lock those losses in.

I'll still have the same number of shares when this is all over--more, because I keep buying every paycheck.

back - so "long term" is REALLY "long term"

...in the rural South,
Bubble-Proof, Low Property taxes, abundant clean water (spring), long growing season
We live there now.

Its not for everybody.
My Wife & I are healthy and strong, no dependents,
and have the skills necessary to make this fun most of the time.

when I retired. I figured my money was a lot safer in a savings account. Though it is not earning much interest, as least the balance is not going down.

I definitely wouldn't pull your money out of your IRA. If you do, you'll have to pay taxes on any pre-tax contributions and earnings and, if you are younger than 59.5, you'll have to pay a 10% penalty. If you are nervous, keep your money in the IRA but move it to someting safe like a money market fund.

As for me personally, I'm thinking about converting more money from my traditional IRA to my Roth IRA. I think my taxes will be going up, so this works from a tax standpoint. I'll also pay less in taxes if I do the exchange now while the market is relatively low.

I also tend to see these events differently. I'm a long term buyer of stocks. I'll be a seller in another decade or two. For now, when stock prices drop, I see it as Wall Street running a sale. When stock prices go up, I bitch.

so than all the investment advisors put together.

glad I did. I have a way to go before retirement, but I have left it in cash because I knew that things were going to get worse. I'm not making anything, but these days I'm just into capital preservation.

I am not too sure what I did, but I am not in stocks anymore.