Flagpole wrote:
Gravy wrote:
Before the end of the year.
Good guess. Nothing with the stock market is guaranteed though.
The Dow right now is at 24,967; down from its high of 26,952, so we have already dropped a lot lately...but there could be more to come.
So, what to do?
Well, unless you are within 5 years of retiring, nothing. If you ARE within 5 years of retiring, then you COULD decide to move stuff to more conservative vehicles (MMA, CDs, only blue chip stocks or bonds, or even cash if you are very close to retiring), stop putting money in the markets and ONLY into conservative vehicles, or do nothing. I propose doing nothing, but there are caveats to that...
If you do NOTHING (which is what I will do), then you MUST have at least one of the following in place:
1) The will to work longer than 5 more years if the market doesn't recover quickly.
2) You are within the time frame in which you had planned to take social security, and that social security will allow you to pay your bills for at least 3 years while you let the stock market recover...for example, you are 62 and you planned to take SS at age 65. So, you continue to work for 3 more years and continue to put money into your retirement accounts as always, and then you retire at 65 and take social security only to pay the bills, but you leave your stock accounts alone so they can recover without any withdrawals.
3) You have three YEARS of expenses saved up in a liquid account (this is my situation).
4) You are just so wealthy that it doesn't matter what you do.