Comments on: Gulp! My Wife’s 401(k) is Down 39% Year-to-Date!

By: LiveWellSimply

LiveWellSimply — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:24:53 +0000

Wow! and I thought I was doing bad with my investments being down 30% this year. These comments make me feel like I did well, comparatively. -30% still feels like a lot, though.

By: MJ

MJ — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:24:41 +0000

My 457 gave me a return of -49%. I’m glad I found these comments, I feel a lot better that I have company. As long as we don’t sell, we’re ok.

By: Khyron

Khyron — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:49:13 +0000

Wow. Interesting experiment.

-37.4% here.

Glad I changed my contributions to 55% cash about 2 or 3 cycles ago. That was up from about 10% prior, when I was much more heavily weighted in emerging markets and international equities.

By: deshun

deshun — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:18:26 +0000

just to make all of you feel better, mine is -62.12% at merrill lynch as for last friday. hang in there.

By: Julia

Julia — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:16:46 +0000

JLP, that sounds really familiar!! Er, wait, I don’t have a wife. I am the wife.

I’m just glad I have the income to still contribute regularly, and retirement is far off. If my savings went to $0, I still wouldn’t be too bad off. Others though, aren’t so lucky.

By: Jeremy Bettis

Jeremy Bettis — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:54:17 +0000

I thought that sounded crazy, so I looked at my own ROI % YTD in quicken, and it says -31.46%

I didn’t do quite as bad as you, but that might be my 10% bonds.

By: Jaynee

Jaynee — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:03:33 +0000

My Fidelity stuff was down about 40% yesterday. Haven’t checked today. I just wish I had money that I could use to buy some stuff – but I don’t.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:54:30 +0000

I received a little bit of luck in all of this. My wife left jobs recently and I am in the process of rolling over her 401k to a vanguard account. The old 401K was sold about two weeks ago before the recent heavy downturn and is about to be placed in a Money market account at vanguard as I figure out what funds I am going to buy. I can’t wait to figure out which bargains I can find

Otherwise, I have been hit hard just like most people. I can only hope that we are close to the bottom of this and we are close to starting the long road to recovery

By: shiwala

shiwala — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:23:52 +0000

Well, now I don’t feel so bad being 42% down.

By: Curt

Curt — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:17:50 +0000

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. You could be down 50% before its over. But, don’t worry – it will come back – so they say.