Is it safe to check your 401K again?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just received an e-mail about making year-end changes in mine, and decided I’d take a look at the balance after keeping my eyes shut much of the past year or so.

Happy to see that my total balance is up some 24% compared to January of this year, and 7% over July 08.

I missed the boat on the initial downturn last fall, so I decided just to ride things out, not making any drastic changes over that time.

Looks like I may get to retire some day after all. Hope the rest of you have similar good news to report.

2

I was just in there. I’m above where my peak pre-crash was by 12%, but its both gains and additional contributions. I got pretty lucky in my allocations - figuring the U.S. market was going to start feeling the impact of retiring baby boomers, I was ‘over’ balanced in international and bonds.

3

I just checked mine. The answer is no.

4

Not really, when a market goes down 50%, it needs to go up 200% to get back to even.

5

I’m about back to where I was pre-crash.

Of course, that’s with over a year now of continuing contributions. Plus my company dropped the employer match last April.

The only good news is that when the company dropped the employer-match I bit the bullet and upped my contribution to 10% of my income (from 7%).

It stung a bit at first, but I’ve adjusted and plan to keep it up. I’m hearing rumors that the company match will be back next year so hopefully I can keep up the increased investing.

/really sucks that the company dropped the match precisely when it would have been a good time to get more money into the market.

6

Not sure about your math there.

If I have $100 and it goes down 50%, I now have $50. If that $50 goes up 100%, ($50 + $50) I will have $100.

I think you’re confusing 200% with “doubling”.

7

I think you may be right, see here, the math example: