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How does your stash compare to this?
02-17-2009, 03:01 PM
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#1
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: South Texas~29N/98W Just West of Woman Hollering Creek
Posts: 6,674
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How does your stash compare to this?
I'm a bit tired of calculating how much of my retirement funds I have "lost" recently, so I have not done a comparison to these numbers. This makes a case for having a good part of your dough in bonds though.
Quote:
Retirement account losses in 2008 disproportionately affected wealthy savers. Those with more than $200,000 lost more than a quarter of their savings, on average, according to an Employee Benefit Research's Institute analysis of 22 million participants in more than 55,000 employer-sponsored 401(k) plans. Investors in the $100,000 to $200,000 range suffered as well, with an average loss of 21 percent in 2008. The typical account with $50,000 to $100,000 lost 15 percent.
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http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/...ack-Up-in-2008?
__________________
Part-Owner of Texas
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In dire need of: faster horses, younger woman, older whiskey, more money.
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02-17-2009, 03:05 PM
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#2
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Central, Ohio, USA
Posts: 2,635
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Or CD's!
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Vietnam Veteran, CW4 USA, Retired 1979
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02-17-2009, 03:40 PM
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#3
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 5,105
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mickeyd
I'm a bit tired of calculating how much of my retirement funds I have "lost" recently, so I have not done a comparison to these numbers. This makes a case for having a good part of your dough in bonds though.
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Until it doesn't.
The bonds position is was advisable if you knew what was going to happen 1+ year ago.
If we had large inflation; the numbers might have favored some other investment.
There is no one investment answer.
__________________
Sometimes death is not as tragic as not knowing how to live. This man knew how to live--and how to make others glad they were living. - Jack Benny at Nat King Cole's funeral
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02-17-2009, 03:49 PM
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#4
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 5,350
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I guess i'm worse off than most. I've lost over 35% overall. DODGX, my largest holding, has also been my worst in the last year.
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02-17-2009, 04:40 PM
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#5
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 12,880
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And people with no money at all in their savings accounts lost 0%.
__________________
Al
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02-17-2009, 04:51 PM
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#6
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: East Nowhere, 43N Latitude, NY
Posts: 9,037
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mickeyd
...This makes a case for having a good part of your dough in bonds though.
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I'm a bond girl (no, not THAT kind).
Here's a sampling of bond and balanced funds I owned with 2008 total returns (all negatives) per M*
DODIX -0.29 % - my MVP for all funds
VNYTX -3.69 %
VWAHX -10.45 %
DODBX -33.57 %
switching over to the squad with the most penalties...my MVP of the year for stock funds...no surprises here...
DODFX -46.69%
Overall portfolio loss -21.76%.
Referencing the article's parameters...2007 peak portfolio value over $250K, age 50.
So much for diversification and balanced (50/50) investing approach.
Oh well, staying the course. If snow can melt in Feb where I live, the market can recover.
__________________
"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them." - Walt Disney
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02-17-2009, 05:11 PM
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#7
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Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 12,901
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I still lost about 29% (XIRR) despite having about 35% in bonds/cash. But they are not using XIRR in the article. They seem to just compare account balances at the beginning and at the end of the year. In that case I was down only about 6%.
I am in the $200K+ / 25-34 year old category. I'm doing good based on account balances, and "bad" based on age (but only because I have much more savings than my young peers).
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02-17-2009, 05:36 PM
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#8
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gone traveling
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 3,864
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The market has rebalanced my 401K portfolio into a 201K. Down 30+%... Still contributing, though. Just hope I live long enough to enjoy the recovery
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02-17-2009, 05:47 PM
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#9
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 1,645
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The TSP sent me my annual statement and seemed to figure out my rate of return by not counting my annual contributions. Something like -37%.
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02-17-2009, 06:34 PM
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#10
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Administrator
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: N. Yorkshire
Posts: 34,126
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50% bonds, 2008 was -16.25% IRR. Sucks but could be worse.
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Retired in Jan, 2010 at 55, moved to England in May 2016
Enough private pension and SS income to cover all needs
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02-17-2009, 07:02 PM
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#11
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Recycles dryer sheets
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 312
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For me, one of the more interesting things in this article is one of the last sentences:
"... baby boomers with 20 to 29 years on the job will have to work an extra year and nine months to boost their portfolio balance to where it was a year ago."
A year and nine months to get close to the market peaks? That will do very nicely for me too, thank you, but there isn't a snowball's chance of it happening by savings from work in my case. Of course, most of these folks have modest savings, so I suppose much of this really is possible via new contributions. In a way, this is a bullish finding.
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02-17-2009, 07:44 PM
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#12
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Recycles dryer sheets
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 116
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bimmerbill
The TSP sent me my annual statement and seemed to figure out my rate of return by not counting my annual contributions. Something like -37%.
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Hey, you beat me by 1%, I'm only down 36%. Now I don't feel so bad.
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02-17-2009, 08:06 PM
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#13
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Los Angeles area
Posts: 1,708
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100% individual stocks, down 19.7% in 2008.
__________________
learn, work, save, invest, fire
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02-17-2009, 09:20 PM
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#14
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Recycles dryer sheets
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 482
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TromboneAl
And people with no money at all in their savings accounts lost 0%.
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Bob Dylan said it long ago.....
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
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Retire date Jan. 10, 2018
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02-17-2009, 09:22 PM
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#15
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Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Minneapolis
Posts: 4,455
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CyclingInvestor
100% individual stocks, down 19.7% in 2008.
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That's not bad compared to the S&P500.
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May we live in peace and harmony and be free from all human sufferings.
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02-17-2009, 11:41 PM
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#16
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Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: At The Cafe
Posts: 6,873
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Seems to me that a "wealthy employee" would have more than $200,001 in a 401k or other retirement-equivalent accounts, a lot more. ??
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02-18-2009, 12:27 AM
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#17
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Recycles dryer sheets
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 321
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Quote:
Retirement account losses in 2008 disproportionately affected wealthy savers. Those with more than $200,000 lost more than a quarter of their savings, on average, according to an Employee Benefit Research's Institute analysis of 22 million participants in more than 55,000 employer-sponsored 401(k) plans. Investors in the $100,000 to $200,000 range suffered as well, with an average loss of 21 percent in 2008. The typical account with $50,000 to $100,000 lost 15 percent. <br>
http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/...ack-Up-in-2008?
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I found this article interesting and shared it with my spouse yesterday.
Yep, we're in the 'wealthy savers" category. But --- for any given age range -- I'd rather be the saver who had $200,000 and now had 'only' $150,000, than be the saver who had $50,000 and now had 'only' $42,500.
Makes me wonder if "wealthy savers" got that way because they were willing to save more or be more aggressive investers (?) Whatever the answer, I'd rather have $150,000 than have $42,500.
--Linney
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02-18-2009, 05:53 AM
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#18
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: New Orleans
Posts: 47,500
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CuppaJoe
Seems to me that a "wealthy employee" would have more than $200,001 in a 401k or other retirement-equivalent accounts, a lot more. ??
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That was my thought, too.
Besides, determining wealth based only on retirement account size seems a little ridiculous. Many middle class workers also manage to contribute the maximum to their retirement accounts, though naturally it is more of a struggle for them to do so.
If you take "Joe Wealthy" and "John Middleclass", both the same age and both of whom have contributed substantially to their 401K for the same number of years, I would expect that "Joe Wealthy" would have a much larger taxable account than "John Middleclass" although their 401Ks might not be too different in size.
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Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. - - H. Melville, 1851.
Happily retired since 2009, at age 61. Best years of my life by far!
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02-18-2009, 07:20 AM
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#19
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: North Oregon Coast
Posts: 16,483
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CuppaJoe
Seems to me that a "wealthy employee" would have more than $200,001 in a 401k or other retirement-equivalent accounts, a lot more. ??
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Depends. If someone has a rather good job with a generous pension, they may not have felt a strong need for personal retirement savings. But if a 401K is all they would have, they could be screwed. Plus, maybe wealthier people feel less "mortal" about their retirement chances so they don't pursue it as aggressively in some cases?
Heck, I'm 43 and hardly "wealthy" as the sense is typically used, but 15 months ago I had more than $500K in retirement accounts (down by nearly 1/3 today, unfortunately). Then again, this is almost all I'll have for retirement until SS (other than a very puny old pension which hardly makes a dent), so I *have* to be aggressive and contribute until it hurts if I ever hope to retire.
Still, if someone is in a high tax bracket, you'd think they want all the tax-deferral they could get. But maybe they just suffer from affluenza...
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"Hey, for every ten dollars, that's another hour that I have to be in the work place. That's an hour of my life. And my life is a very finite thing. I have only 'x' number of hours left before I'm dead. So how do I want to use these hours of my life? Do I want to use them just spending it on more crap and more stuff, or do I want to start getting a handle on it and using my life more intelligently?" -- Joe Dominguez (1938 - 1997)
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02-18-2009, 08:22 AM
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#20
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Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Central MS/Orange Beach, AL
Posts: 9,072
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CyclingInvestor
100% individual stocks, down 19.7% in 2008.
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You need to write a 'how to' book. Most people lost that much with a 'balanced' portfolio.
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Retired 3/31/2007@52
Investing style: Full time wuss.
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