Holding My Breath -- Investment Pains
I know the economy is suffering lately, and had I not been paying attention to the news I would have figured it out by looking at my bank account. My Roth IRA, which had $4000 in it, is now worth $3762, and my regular Vanguard mutual fund, which had $5100 invested in it, is now worth $4662. Ok, so I've lost about $700 thus far on my investments. Ouch.
I'll stick it out because I know investments have to be a long term sort of deal, and hopefully at some point our economy will recover and so will my piggy bank. It's just tough to watch $700 disappear so quickly, and I'm sure this isn't the end of the downturn. I'm prepared to lose all the money I invested, although it will surely SUCK to lose $9100. But if I lose all of that money, you can bet that I'm done with the stock market and mutual funds for good.
3 comments:
I completely understand! I just found out that my internship last summer (at the same company I work now) gave me about $10 in retirement savings. Around $6 was taken at the beginning of January for "Fees" and it's lost another $0.50 or so since I saw it at the beginning of the week. It's a long road, but we're young! I trust it to go up again sometime before I retire. ;-)
That's very true....in these situations, though, you have to remember that this isn't the first time the market has gone down, just the first time it's gone down carrying your money. Just remember, it's a better deal now than when the Dow index was at 14,000.
if you do bail after losing big, you lock in your loss. hold onto the investment -- esp. if you're looking long-term! -- and it'll likely go back up again/grow.
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