I keep up with most of the dumpster fire that is current US news but I’m sorta lost on this one. I contribute to my 401k every week and have a few thousand saved up, as well as stock in the company I work for. Is all of the bad news referring to the stock market crashing? Is this general across the board or more company-specific? I consider myself decently politically educated but not so much economically.
No. Unless you had a ton of money in the account and you were already very close to retirement it just wouldn’t make sense. There are a lot of penalties when you pull an account early. I made a hardship withdrawal back in 2023 to make the down payment on my first home and that made sense for me, but even that type of thing isn’t right for everyone.
Your 401k will rebound eventually, retirement investment requires you to play the long game. If things get bad enough that your 401k is wiped out entirely then it really won’t matter whether or not you pulled the money out because it would likely be worthless in that situation.
It may be wise to change your elections so that the investments are less aggressive/volatile if you have that option, but otherwise try not to think about the total dollar amount as the economy shits the bed. It’s not like a bank account where the dollars equal dollars directly, the value of the investments can change quickly.
Do what this guy said, It’s good advice.
The best time to buy is when everyone else is losing their ass. This is the best time to buy, unless it isnt and the entire market dies.
I remember 2009-2010. It was much worse than this right now. The trick is keeping your job in this market.
This 100%. The other comments addressed the “should I withdraw?” aspect of OP’s question, but this comment deals with “should I stop contributing?”. The answer to the latter is: no.
The mantra in investing has always been “buy low, sell high”. If the stock market is down, continuing your 401k contributions is doing the “buy low” part.
Appreciate it.
If I was the one doing the buying and selling, I would definitely be doing sell low buy high lol.
I was lucky and lost some minor $$ in bitcoin back in the day. Now I just put it all on automatic. Index funds with monthly/biweekly deposits are the best for me and mine.
So, from an investing standpoint, there’s really only two things that can happen. Either the market will recover, and continue steady growth, at which point you’ll definitely be mad if you pulled out completely. The alternative is the collapse of the Western hegemony, at which point you’ll have much bigger problems than your 401k account.
Kind of a similar-ish question. I recently moved my 401k from an old employer to my personal account. All my money is now sitting uninvested. As much as I’d love to hire someone to look over my accounts, I can’t really justify that at the moment. In the most basic way possible, can anyone suggest specific indexes, stocks, whatever the terminology is that I should or could invest my money into?
There should be a target date fund, do that. It automatically rebalances as you reach your target date. So if you plan to retire in 2050, pick the 2050 fund.
Omg thank you sooo much!! This is exactly the simple and straightforward investment I needed! I also found a few other funds/growth symbols that seemed easy to understand. I’d eventually like to educate myself more on this whole topic, but right now simple is all my brain can handle 🤭
Not an American, but basically decide how much risk you want to take on - then depending on that answer set aside money (0-40%) for safe investments - things like bonds (guaranteed returns) or potentially gold (lower volatility). The rest goes into a 80/20 (or 60/40, or 90/10, no one can say what’s best) split between domestic and international index funds. Things like the S&P500, Dow, and US whole market index, and then some into EU, Asia/Oceana, and emerging market index funds.
Tithe to yourself either before or after taxes, the church set 10% for a reason, that is the fluff that you can give before it starts to bother.
Always maximize your matches.
If you are in a lower tax bracket now then you would be when you retire, put it into a roth. If a high bracket today then tomorrow, put it into a traditional.
High risk when you’re younger. You can try to time market ups and downs, but unless you leg back in after you’ve pulled out, you are VERY likely to miss the upswings.
If you have enough to personally invest, either swing for the fences with 0dte or invest in products you use. You probably aren’t wrong.
And remember that that first option win is free. Post your loss porn to wsb.
Are you going to retire in the next four years? Or take all your cash out into gold, quit your job, and go into hiding for the next four years?
If neither apply to you, you can leave your money in your 401k. Selling index funds right now is ultimately up to you, but in the long term time in the market tends to beat timing the market.
What I’ve read in books is: Building up savings itself is more important than whether the returns are +10% or -10%, early in your career, since it will fluctuate but tends to average up.
And remember if your national index funds, bonds or whatever market and government backed investments lose half its value, you have bigger problems on your hand of the state of your country at that point which having cash on hand may or may not help anyway.
No. However if you’re the type of person to ask in this question, you should be invested in a target date fund. As part of the way they attempt to hedge for retirement, the include exposure to international funds and bonds.
In an ordinary recession, you should definitely keep buying because stocks are basically “on sale.”
In this recession caused by sovereign risk (i.e. the government itself fucking up), it’s possible that the market might never come back. If you believe that’s likely-- or if you just want to boycott US investment to protest against the fuckery – you should still keep contributing to your 401k, but invest it in international ex-US funds.
