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A Painful Look At Our Retirement Accounts

October 8, 2008 By Frugal Babe

Over the last few weeks, as the stock market kept dropping, I decided I just wasn’t going to look at our retirement account values for a while. After all, we’re in our early 30s and have many years to go before we’ll be using those funds. But tonight I decided to take a peek, after reading about yet another very bad day on Wall Street. Man, I wish I hadn’t looked. At the end of August, our combined retirement accounts were worth about $42,000. Today they’re worth about $31,000. Ouch. Obviously our investments are pretty heavily tied to stocks, since we have such a long time until retirement. So for all intents and purposes the values are just on paper, since we’re not going to be pulling money out of those accounts for many years to come, and one would assume that the market will bounce back over the next 30 years. But still, ouch.

Ok, I’m going back to my ‘not looking’ strategy. Our investments are on auto-pilot, we have a diversified portfolio, we don’t have consumer debt, we’re working to pay off our mortgage as fast as we can, we live in a smaller house than we can "afford" as far as mortgage companies are concerned (and we plan to stay), and cracking into our retirement accounts is still on the distant horizon. So now I’m going to just try to not worry about the stock market, and get on with the rest of my week. And if you haven’t looked at your account balances this week, trust me – you don’t want to know.

Filed Under: investing 6 Comments

Comments

  1. Michelle says

    October 8, 2008 at 5:17 am

    Ouch is right :(

    You’re right though, now is not the time to worry.

    I don’t know much about the stock market but I’m guessing that now is the time to invest if you have extra funds!

    Reply
  2. JW says

    October 8, 2008 at 7:24 am

    Ouch is right! Funny, I just wrote on this very subject today at MSM. We are also trying to maintain a “keep our heads down” approach, but it’s tough to do.

    Reply
  3. GC says

    October 8, 2008 at 8:13 am

    I looked too
    hurt me soul
    but then I decided to be a Buffett
    and I changed my future contributions to buy more of the weak stuff
    stupid? Maybe. But I’m 29. I’ll try the mistakes now and then wise up later.

    Reply
  4. FruGal says

    October 8, 2008 at 9:50 am

    I think not looking is the best idea for the next few months. You might avoid a lot of stress and heartache, seeing as everything might be fine again this time next year.

    Reply
  5. Natural & Frugal says

    October 8, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    I have been looking at what little stocks I own everyday, and it’s driving me crazy. In my mind I know that I’m keeping those stocks for a long time, but I guess with constant bombardment about our current economic crisis, I’ve become obsessed with how my stocks are doing. I’m taking on your plan and taking a break from checking up on them!
    http://naturaltwenties.blogspot.com/

    Reply

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