Dawg52
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Hey, I'm definitely feeling the hurt, too! I finished college in late 2003 and have been working and investing since then. I'm not sure if I'm in the negative since I started investing, but I wouldn't be too surprised. But the way I look at it, I'm 4-5 years into my accumulation phase and I have established a fairly decent sized portfolio in spite of the downturn. In the last four to five years, I have been focusing on paying down debts (student loans, credit cards, and the mortgage). My house went up in value a decent amount. When I did my quarterly portfolio review on 9/30/2008, I was still wealthier then than I was one year earlier on 9/30/2007. After the first seven days of October, I'm not sure if I remain wealthier than I was a year ago or not though.
But you can't really focus on the day to day fluctuations in market price of your long term investments or it will drive you crazy. I know I'm investing with a multi-decade horizon, so even though the last 3 months have been ugly, it is (hopefully) not "different this time" and this will look like a blip on a ten or twenty year chart. Today I'm buying mutual funds at prices not seen since before I started really investing back in 2003-2004.
When I was young, it didn't bother me when markets went down. You should be happy to be investing at corrected rates. As a recent retiree, I'm numb. Not really pissed anymore, just numb. Hopefully one day we will all get it back.