1. Come up with a plan.
2. Stick to that plan.
3. TURN OFF THE TV and DONT READ THE PAPER.

and you will be fine over the long term.
short term news just scares the hell out of you and makes you divert from your original plan.

1. Since the day we graduated we’ve seen nothing but bad news. Huge tech crash, current crash. We’re not even back to where we were almost 10 years ago.
2. We have huge student loans to pay back.
3. Finally got out of college in 2004, saved as much as possible and am currently underwater…may as well have spent that extra money.
4. There are no solid investment vehicles that are even matching inflation right now.
5. We want to start families soon and need short-term funds, not long-term retirement funds.
6. We don’t really have much trust in our country. Frankly, I don’t think the US is really #1 anymore and our economy will only decline in the long run unless we are willing to tackle education’s inadequacies, stop giving money for oil to countries that hate us, stop wasting money to blow up brown people, and truly address the issue of consumerism.

We don’t see the market as a stable investment for the near future and would rather sit on cash and then get in either in the US once we balance out or elsewhere if my dollars are still worth anything.

I’m pretty sure they’re spending it!

So it looks like they are keeping up out of recession.

I’ve got direct deposit set up for $200 per paycheck (bi-monthly) and will keep adding to that index fund till I start grad school in May. At that point I’ll be leaving my good paying job and doing research part time…I still haven’t figured out how much I’ll be able to invest on that income.

I’m hoping that the market continues to sit low so I can get more money into it before it goes back up.

My wife and I are 24 and 26 respectively and we’ve got 2 kids.

Your quote about bear markets being short-lived is backward-looking, as all such things must be. It is not at all clear that we aren’t on the brink of something like the decline in the Japanese market at the end of last century. If you had been heavily invested there, you’d be way down after a decade even.

I can understand a person who doesn’t think they could stomach that personally. And when I invest, I well know that a decade like that is what I’m risking against. If you couldn’t lose money, you wouldn’t enjoy the premium that stocks generally afford over other investments.

Personally, I think Larry Swedroe has nailed the idea of risk better than pretty much any other author I have read. I found it in Wise Investing Made Simple, but the idea is about the same in all of his books. Risk means you could lose money, maybe more money than you are really comfortable with. And it might be gone an inconvenient period of time; longer than 3.5 years.

Lots of times it doesn’t take that long. But we can’t kid ourselves. We might be digging out of this for a very long time. It is entirely possible that in 2018 we’ll be reading magazine articles about how all the rules we used to believe in were wrong. Stocks didn’t hold against inflation. They didn’t outperform every decade, etc.

If the stock market does any one thing well, it incorporates the truths that “everyone knows” and nullifies them. The fact that everyone knows that stocks are best for the long term, and that over a ten year period stocks never lose money, (add you favorite rule of thumb here), makes me particularly nervous. Houses always go up in value after all….

Even though there is a fixed account option with a 4.1% rate, and even though there is a company match, most younger people (under 30) were balking at the idea of even saving enough to get the 100% return on their money with the match. The only people taking advantage of this were the older ones who have investments already or were experienced with investing for retirement.

Sadly, if the 20-somethings use this as an excuse to put off starting their retirement savings, that generation is going to be no better off in 30+ years than the baby boomers who on average don’t have more than one year’s worth of retirement savings.

Waiting for the perfect time to start saving/investing is like waiting for the perfect time to have a baby. There will never be a perfect time, and you’ll end up waiting until it’s too late.

That is their problem. If you are too lazy to handle your own finances and pick up a few books, and are too scared to take your own money into your own hands, then that should be their problem. Don’t you think if SS was privatized then we would have many, many firms helping people invest properly? Sure we’ll have our fair share of shady firms making bad deals or running away with private SS money, but thats the free market. I, for one, know I could do a million times better with my SS money than the government. In fact, I’m not even counting on SS in my retirement projections.

I’m pretty sure they’re spending it!