My retirement fund that I just started was worth $15k in December of 2021. Then, May of 2022, our area was hit really hard. My retirement plan went down to $7k. Today, it’s worth $11k. I lost $4k on my retirement plan. It’s invested in total market funds, some tech, some big cap companies, and healthcare. But every sector has been ravaged by the stock market changes.
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What kind of fees are you paying? That chart does not reflect the market. For instance, if you had invested in a low management fee S&P 500 index find you would expect to have seen a 50% increase over the same period.
I like to go a step further and do a target-date retirement fund. I think Vanguard funds are based on index funds, but they will reduce how aggressively they invest as you approach your retirement date. And the fees are very low.
The close to retirement ones suffered that year. The 2030 target lost 25% in less than a year recently and hasn’t recovered. Ironically, the high risk ones have been less risky during COVID than the low risk ones.
Interesting. I’m targeting 2065 retirement, so I’ve got a long time. But I guess that fund could suffer from the same issue? Or maybe I should assume the same fate based on past events.
Not sure. I’m guessing interest rate stuff will mess with anything with bond holdings, so that probably had stuff to do with it. Other than that… I don’t know if I can convey a big enough shrug in text form.
If you’re really hands off these are a good choice. But if you are willing to rebalance a couple of times a year, it’s unnecessary to pay the extra fees associated with these funds.
I do like the automatic set it and forget it. Especially with scheduling transfers into investment accounts. I could probably get into rebalancing short-term, but I think long-term I would get bored and forget.
Yeah it’s not for everyone, but I just have an event on my calendar for every six months, and I just rebalance when it goes off. Only takes a short while, especially if you are using some tool that will tell you what your weights are.
Any tools you recommend? Also, how sure are you that the cost savings actually make it worth the effort? My gross expense ratio is 0.08% (I think I’m looking at the right number?)
Dude isn’t in index funds…nuff said. Mine has more than doubled since 2021
This is the actual problem with these types of retirement plans, though. People are expected to know a lot about managing the investments themselves. There’s a whole industry whose job it is to give you bad advice. The real advice is “drop it in a mix of an sp500 index fund it and bonds according to your risk level” and the rest is bullshit.
There is a large portion of the population that doesn’t know anything about how 401ks work. They are told there employer will take 3% or such out of their income and put it into a 401k account, and some part of that money will be matched by the employer (varying).
Those who don’t know the market don’t touch the money, it is invested for them. So it is very possible whoever posted this is among those people. It is not always wise on their end, but if a professional can lose money investing large amounts for companies like that, so could an inexperienced person. The annual report for 2023 for my company’s investments saw loses as well. The little money I had was elsewhere so I lucked out on that part.
Check the vanguard target retirement income fund (vtinx) and other similar funds. There was a dip in 2021 that absolutely destroyed a number of retirements, my patents included, despite being low risk options. Total bond index funds also suffered for some reason, and those are as low risk as you can get. Every other fund I have is doing great, but the ones that are supposed to be safe are not doing great.
That drop was when the Fed was raising interest rates to stall inflation. Interest rates up, bond values down. But the drop in VTINX was only 20% over all of 2022, where OP is showing 50% in maybe the first quarter.
Incidentally, the sensitivity to interest rates is why I don’t like bond funds. If you buy actual bonds, you get the face value back at maturity, where bond fund are forced to mark them all to current market prices to calculate NAV. IMO, this negates the main “safe” factor in holding bonds.
Would you give some examples of bonds that you’re talking about (rather than bond funds)? I’m thinking you mean something from Treasury Direct: Treasury bonds (T-bonds), Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and/or I bonds.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-buy-bonds
Treasuries are nice because they’re convenient and low buy-in, but their yields are crap, sometimes a little above inflation, sometimes below. TIPS are a decent way to hedge the inflation risk, but (IMO) it’s still really for people who are more worried about losing their savings than living off it. (i.e.: if you have, say, $1e8, you can live pretty comfortably off $1e6, even $1e5 in a lean year, so your rate of return doesn’t really matter)
For me, personally, the limited bond exposure I have is all corporate and mostly junk, bought through my broker in the secondary market, with maturity 10-20 years out. Until fairly recently, junk bonds were the only way to get yields above 4%, and that’s kind of my mental benchmark for gaining relative to inflation. One downside of corporate bonds is they generally have a $10k minimum.
Yeah my 401k basically didn’t budge for years even though I was dumping money into it.
You need to revisit your allocations
Not saying that’s not frustrating, but don’t fixate too much on the ups and downs of it if you’re not set to retire soon. What the stock market is doing now is barely going to impact the value of your retirement fund in 20, 30, etc years.
Retiring on $15k is a scary fucking thought.
$11k
Even scarier.
$7K a year ago
I thought you need $401k to retire.
Oh man I have some bad news for you…
The OP is missing something. The two specific funds of his 5 holdings that he said he bought are both up. The 3 he didn’t provide specifics are up too.
$15k should be all in Vanguard total market index. Smaller funds are riskier and could take decades to show their greater returns.
Also, if they are look at the ups and downs, hopefully they invested when it hit the dip.
If your portfolio is down that much over that period of time, you are likely not making good investment choices. S&P500 is up like 50% since 2021…
Your losses or lack of portfolio growth isn’t really something to complain about online without more info on what your asset mix is. Unless your goal was just to complain, and not get any advice from helpful anons that are having more success in investment choices.
It’s invested in total market funds, some tech, some big cap companies, and healthcare
Tech, big cap, and healthcare are already part of the total market funds, so you’re over-weighting (taking excess risk) by investing that way. Assuming you’re pretty young based on time in market, you’d be fine with just the total market fund, until you have more experience with the market or just want a set and forget, for a while.
Yea, you made a shitty bet, lost your ass, sold at the bottom, then reinvested into index funds, which has been steadily creeping up. That’s on you, bub.
How did you manage this. The market has been up every single year since you started.
Dollar cost averaging, son. Good time to buy!
You put 15k immediately in?
That sounds stressful.
If so, I feel it would be better to put 15k into your account but purchasing in 1k a month increments. It would have flattened that dip for you.
I started by putting a good amount of money in first with the goal to the the average later on.
I mean what should you do with spare 15k other then investing it somewhere.
Yes, yes you could diversify…
You should be continually contributing over time allowing you to benefit from the dips by buying low. This offsets the losses and is called dollar cost averaging,
Yep. Much like northbound travelers in the US South, when we see a low price we buy as much as our tank can carry.
I have no idea what anybody is talking about.
If you don’t know what you are doing, and still young, just set a low cost broad market index fund or ETF as the place your retirement funds go. An example would be VTSAX or VTI. Disclaimer: I am not an investment expert or advisor.
3 years is absolutely nothing in stock market terms. Check in a decade.
Also you should really just invest in a super broad index fund instead of your specific tech and healthcare and stuff.
If you had only invested in a broad stock wide index fund, your 15k would be 17k right now. A total market index fund minimises risk nicely.
What you talking about man if you just follow nasdaq it could’ve been positive
What most of the commenters are missing is that the assumption that one has to know how to gamble in order to have a retirement is a broken and stupid USA thing. Nobody should be forced to learn these things in order to not end up on the street. OP clearly has no idea what they are doing-- and so many comments point this out with varying degrees of rudeness, smugness, and shitty attitude-- but the point should be that we are feeding naive investors like these to the lions and that is morally wrong and collectively shortsighted. We all suffer as a society because people like this are being required to make investment decisions and doing that really poorly.
He didn’t have to know, and he himself knew of the alternatives for people who don’t “know how to gamble”. Nobody in any country can stop you from using your own money in an unwise manner.
Because you invested in a shit plan or simply made your investments poorly. I know plenty of people who are doing well on their retirement investment plans, and I’m doing fine too. Don’t blame America, the country, for your shitty decisions.
This is what we call Survivor Bias.
LOL. Omg I’m such a survivor. I’m only a survivor because I survived this long. I would be a completely different person if I I just survived longer than this. 😝
Retirement is a financial state. Set a goal and work until you get there. Diversify your investments and basically just ignore the market.
Unless there is a total collapse of the economy you’ll be fine and if there is a total collapse it’s unlikely you were in a position to captialize on it anyway.
