Yes, but when?

Those will money in 401-K’s will be poorly served if they “are retired” before their 401-K’s recover. A lot of boomers will be retiring (by their choice or their employer’s) over the next decade. If they were relying on stocks to “bounce back”, they’re sweating bullets. And the other edge of this blade is that employers are not going to be looking to hire a lot of new employees.

There’s probably a good case to be made for 401-K participants to be looking for choices like utility funds, that have respectable yields. A pity that few 401-K’s allow ETFs, and even if they do, choices like QID or SDS are unlikely to be in the mix.

How are the pre-programmed “lifetime ” funds doing in all this? One would expect those to be more in bonds for those folks approaching retirement, and would have fallen less than the all-stock or index funds that the younger people (theoretically) ought to be in.

You can take some satisfaction in doing what you were supposed to do…and besides, everyone else lost a lot of money too.

I guess those retirement plan participants whose holdings are now down >40% should just stick with the program because the same geniuses who devised the monte carlo simulation technique are now telling us that the “market always comes back”.

I had the good fortune to have little market exposure during 2008, so my retirement accounts are intact. And I sold my home (early) in 2003, so I am somewhat insulated from that situation. However, I’m shocked by the number of intelligent friends and acquaintances who have been sucker-punched by the events of the last several months. It turns out that the geniuses dispensing all of the disastrous CW “never saw the credit crisis/panic coming”. Greenspan, Reuben, The NAR, and 95% of everyone who appears on CNBC and Fox. Over the past several years, those of us who chose to rent our homes, were cautious on the stock market, and owned gold were considered to be wingnut crazies…it’s looking like the wingnuts had it right!

Those of us who were selling homes/stocks and buying gold over the past several years needed someone to take the other side of the trade. However, given the severity of the downturn, it’s hard to engage in schadenfreud since none of us is 100% safe and some of us (or people close to us) will suffer mightily.

We should now believe that “it’s too late to sell now” and that “the market always comes back”. “As long as you’re not planning to move for 7 years or longer”, you shouldn’t be bothered that your profligate neighbor is getting a bailout.

I’m tired of these discredited “experts” dispensing one-size-fits-all advice as if it is the wisdom of the ages. My personal pet peeve is my employer’s 401-k plan, which provides options ranging from vanilla to French vanilla. Perhaps, if they give me the freedoms that I have with my IRA accounts, I might do something irresponsible. Apparently, its only OK to be irresponsible if you’re doing what they tell us to do.

/Rant Off

classic bait and switch. Watch my left hand, while my right hand is in your pocket taking your money

Dennis Kneele has given out more bad information on CNBC than even Jim Cramer and has cost people alot of money. He really should shut up.

Larry, Currly, Moe, Kneele

These guys are the jesters in the court of the king. Its just that their bs has stopped being funny. The day will come when real estate is transacted in an open simple way between buyers and sellers, is already begun and is gaining momentum. Realtors will go the way of the buggy whip manufacturers except we will have less sympathy for their demise.