I know I am not the only one who feels this way, but I'm petrified

[onecent]

about the stock market. My entire 30 years of savings is disappearing before my eyes...I don't know what to do....

I guess everyone else in the same boat must be feeling like me...but I don't know much about the market and how to manage or put money in different areas.
God this is a nightmare.

[raccoon]

1. Welcome to the club. nt

[Blue Meany]

8. I pulled most of my IRA savings out of stocks months ago,

except for the oil and gold I bought at the beginning of the Bush admin. But I have a college investment fund that doesn't allow me to control the investments and it's losing money fast and furiously. And I'm penalized for withdrawing it an putting it in another account. I really sucks.

[Winterblues]

28. Is the penalty greater than the loss you now are experiencing?

Sometimes it's way better to absorb a penalty than to lose "Big Time" in the markets.

[slackmaster]

33. I think anyone who cashed out of an IRA or 401k right now would suffer both the loss and the penalty

I would not advise anyone to get out now unless he or she needs cash immediately.

[RebelOne]

49. I cashed out my IRA without a penalty because I am already 69 years old. n/t

[Blue_In_AK]

65. We did, too,

and put it in money market or something. My husband's is holding steady, I've only lost about $300 (so far). Our money manager guy said that things weren't likely to get better until after the election.

[mikelgb]

2. sorry for your troubles, but at least you have a savings

i'd pull anything I could out of the market
keep what you have

[Ganja Ninja]

3. Thank God and the Democrats your Social Security isn't there to.

[wtmusic]

4. If you don't need it anytime soon don't panic.

I trust you have had conversations with an advisor about an "investment horizon".

[Nikki Stone1]

5. If you're not petrified, you're not paying attention.

You've got lots of company. :(

Shock Doctrine comes to the US.

[LeftyFingerPop]

6. I'm with you...

And I'm sorry.

It all depends on your pain tolerance. If it starts affecting your health, sell it and go into cash.

Good luck...I know how it feels.

[Kookaburra]

7. Tell me about it.

You know we have a coffee can that we use as our "vacation fund" -- you know throw in any extra change and extra $1 bills when we have them. Might be an option to use as a retirement account as well.

[HereSince1628]

9. The box-spring made by Sealy has plenty of storage room.

None of us really wanted to get old and retire anyway.

There is honor in dropping in the traces,

can you imagine the humiliation of dying while on a Carnival Cruise?

[Warpy]

10. This is when you hunker down

Some of the companies you have stock in won't make it, they'll get shaken out, but chances are very good most of your stock will be OK as long as you're diversified and/or into mutuals.

Remember, the trick is to sell high and buy low. Selling in a panic while things are dropping fast is the worst thing you can do.

It's not easy to see paper profit disappear. However, it was only on paper. You still own the stocks. You own everything you did before it started to take a dive. You just can't use it to leverage as much debt.

I fully expect the market to go down more by the time we get rid of this administration. Once enough crooks are out of office that we get some common sense regulation back into the market, things will stabilize and then begin to rise again.

This isn't a good time for the faint hearted, though. My advice is to stop looking at your portfolio for a while.

[yellowdogintexas]

12. Very Well Put. I have an old 401K that has been idle since 1997, and it tanked in 1998

over the Asian Bank Crisis (I think it was 1998)

It came back up and I expect it will again. Not as high as the peak but still higher than now. This one is a good one to use as a benchmark because it is frozen and I can't put more money in it.

Even with all the scary stuff, my original contributions as an employee are still intact as are the contributions made by my employer. So I still have about a 25% return on my money just from the vested employer contributions. It is the interest earned that is decimated. I may see a paper loss of some of the employer donations before this thing corrects and levels out, then creeps back up.

I now have two idle 401K plans so I can compare them..two different management firms too.

[Virginia Dare]

22. As long as you keep putting money in at the same rate when it's down..

theoretically you should be okay. I don't agree with the people who say pull your money out now. If you don't absolutely have to have the money for the foreseeable future, you're better off just leaving it for now. It hurts like hell to watch it tank, but that's the best option in most cases.

[yellowdogintexas]

74. I actually can't put more money in either one of these, they are from former

employers and all I can do with either of them is possible roll them into the next one I get. So they are good to watch because I know exactly what the base of my own money was because the quarterly statment breaks it down for me.

My AIG which I inherited is back up from $2.99 a share...right now... I had not planned to sell that stock until I was past 65 anyway....so I am just riding it out

[2Design]

11. check suze orman site - she is the pretty good and not making money

directly off advice to you - she makes her money from speaking and her show and books, and tapes, etc

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

20. And she has always been extremely conservative.

I read or heard her say somewhere that she had only about 7% of her net worth in the stock market. She really like municipal bonds and put the bulk there. This is from memory and my figures might be off, but I'm pretty sure the gist is true. It made quite an impression on me at the time.

[Virginia Dare]

23. She's also a big advocate of paying off mortgages when you can..

which completely goes against what the vast majority of financial investors say. She's always made quite a bit of sense to me.

[yellowdogintexas]

75. she said that tuesday night on Larry King..and advised to put money in

an FDIC protected account and have more than one in different banks if you have more than the $100K to deposit.

I have a nice nest egg in my credit union, insured.

[Breeze54]

13. Let it ride.... OR put it all in US Treasury Bonds

Stocks open higher after Wednesday's rout

http://www.forbes.com/topstories/feeds/ap/2008/09/18/ap5441786.html

By TIM PARADIS 09.18.08, 9:57 AM ET

NEW YORK -

Stocks jumped Thursday after the previous session's massive rout, but safe assets such as gold and Treasury bills still saw heavy demand as investors braced for more instability in the financial system.

Following the bailout of insurer American International Group Inc., the Federal Reserve and other major central banks around the world on Thursday joined forces to inject as much as $180 billion into global money markets in an attempt to keep the credit crisis from worsening. The Fed added another $55 billion in overnight loans Thursday.

But fears have not fully receded. Market participants are still trying to determine how to proceed in what is looking to be the most troubling period for the world's financial system in most investors' memory.

snip-->

On Wednesday, the 3-month Treasury bill - considered one of the safest short-duration assets - saw demand surge so high that its yield briefly dipped into negative territory for the first time since 1940.

In early trading Thursday, the prices for short-duration Treasurys dipped from Wednesday's levels. But the yield on the 3-month T-bill was still extremely low at 0.14 percent - up from 0.1 percent late Wednesday, but well below its yield of 1.60 percent just a week ago.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, rose to 3.43 percent in early Thursday trading from 3.42 percent late Wednesday.

More....

[RebelOne]

14. I closed out a 401K and put the money for the time being

in my savings account. Every statement I got showed that I had lost more money. After a loss of $4,000, I decided to cash it out. I know it is safer in my savings. I have an IRA that is probably worthless now. I'm going to pull that money out while there is still something left.

[B Calm]

15. I lost too much to get out now. . . I'm 58 years old, this is scary. I think

the cheap labor cons are salivating over the prospect of old, hungry, desperate, baby boomers to hire as cheap labor!

[bigtree]

17. that's their ultimate aim

to create a desperate labor force they can shortchange

[Virginia Dare]

26. Practice saying "would you like fries with that" in Mandarin..

the U.S. will become one big Disney type playland for the rich Chinese.

[greguganus]

18. I can't afford to get out either. I'll ride it out. n/t

[Speck Tater]

16. It's times like these I'm glad I'm dirt poor. No effect on me. NT

[Virginia Dare]

24. Does it effect you're employer?

it's going to effect all of us, rich poor and in between.

[Speck Tater]

40. I'm retired,

and living mostly on my own home-grown food. Almost entirely off-grid.

[Virginia Dare]

43. Then you will soon have lots of company...n/t

[anarch]

36. as a fellow poor person, I wish I could agree

but I think all this is going to have reverberations (such as, I would guess, a severe devaluation of the dollar) that are going to make life even harder than it already is for those of us who don't have much of anything. Nothing to lose, sure, but it will still hurt.

[Virginia Dare]

19. I rearranged the deck chairs on my titanic 401(k) after the post-9/11 debacle..

and subsequent recovery. I still took a hit, but not as big a one. I'm glad I woke up after that. Of course, we probably haven't seen the bottom of this yet...:scared:

[KharmaTrain]

21. We're All Sinking Together

That's no solice at the present time, but it was a necessary correction after decades of systemtic abuses. In the long run I see this depression as the debunking of the "fiscal conservative" bullshit of less regulation means "prosperity". Regulation will return and with it a focus on rebuilding the middle class that has provided the spending and investment that led to prosperity.

The short term will be rough...especially for those on retirements or fixed incomes. The stagflation going on will only get worse...the rising costs of everything teamed with a shrinking base is making the bite worse...and until "big shitpile"...the large amount of outstanding debt is finally dealt with, the bite will get deeper. Paulsen put yet another band-aid on a financial system that's gotten out of control. He's gambling it holds through November.

Just remember what my mother used to tell me..."when someone is losing money, someone else is making it..."...things do balance out in the long run, but it will create a lot of hardship for the next year. Hopefully you didn't have all of your savings stuck in stocks...and then with only bank and real-estate ones. Most portfolios have taken about a 15-20% hit this year...not quite a wipe-out, but the loss is being felt.

Cheers...

[slackmaster]

25. Sounds like you have bitten off more risk than you can chew at this point in your life

I'm sorry for your situation, but you should have moved to less volatile investments years ago.

FWIW I am 50 and still buying into an S&P 500 fund and a mixture of others aggressively. I'm having 18% of my pay dumped into a 401k that has some employer match. At some point the markets will bottom out, and I will have bought a lot of shares for bargain prices.

I am planning to semi-retire in about 10 years, at which point my house should be paid off. If I can stay employed.

[Virginia Dare]

27. The system has forced average Americans..

who know little or nothing about Wall Street and investing into playing the game on their turf. You may as well take your life savings and go to Vegas with it. If you know a little something about gambling, or if you have the time and the inclination to learn, you may come out okay, if not you're probably fucked. It's not surprising that people are feeling overwhelmed right now.

[slackmaster]

29. Investing and gambling are very different things

I hope you can learn the difference.

[Virginia Dare]

35. If you know nothing about it, the outcome is usually the same....n/t

[B Calm]

30. The situation was created by cheap labor employers doing away with

PENSION PLANS!

[slackmaster]

32. Defined-benefit plans were already a thing of the past when I entered the workforce in 1981

I'm 50, and have never seen nor do I have any hope of seeing the kind of job stability and long-term employee/employer relationship that my stepfather had as an engineer in the aerospace industry.

Without ever being represented by a union, he worked at modest salaries from the mid-1950s until about 1980. There were a few brief layoffs between contracts, after which he was immediately rehired. He retired with a bunch of company stock that was worth something, a fixed pension, his Navy pension (he served from before WWII to 1956), plus Social Security benefits. With the astute financial guidance my mom provided, they did quite well. Never super wealthy, but comfortable and secure.

[Name removed]

44. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slackmaster]

46. I'm investing for the long term, and don't regret not getting into less volatile investments

What you seem to not understand, sandnsea, is that risk tolerance varies from person to person and generally decreases the closer a person is to retirement. Sometimes the truth hurts.

I've lost just as much on paper as the OP has, and I'm not sweating it. I'm always expecting a bear market or recession. If I wasn't able to handle the volatility, I'd be out already.

[Virginia Dare]

50. What you don't seem to understand slackmaster..

is that the financial world is going into a period the likes of which we haven't seen in over a hundred years, if ever in our history. This isn't just a little turbulence we're talking about.

NOBODY knows what is going to happen, not even YOU. I don't think it's strange that people are feeling rather helpless and upset right now.

[slackmaster]

51. I'm sorry this thread has devolved into personal attacks

Take it easy, VD.

[Virginia Dare]

53. Then stop patronizing people and treating them like they're idiots.....

[slackmaster]

57. I have to call things as I see them

Sorry if I'm too blunt for your taste.

[Virginia Dare]

58. Well then don't get upset when you get called for being a jerk...n/t

[slackmaster]

59. Nobody has called me a jerk

sandnsea called me an asshole, but that's right in character for sandnsea.

[Virginia Dare]

60. Well maybe they're just calling them like they see them....n/t

[slackmaster]

61. People who see assholes everywhere live in a world of shit

:rofl:

[Virginia Dare]

67. That's about where we are right now as I see it....n/t

[slackmaster]

69. Things should be getting better soon

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4029067#4029811

[Virginia Dare]

70. I'll breathe easier when there's a Dem in the White House..

no doubt about that. Hopefully things don't come completely crashing down between now and then. If our currency becomes worthless, that's a problem for everybody.

[TheWatcher]

63. That's pretty much the line I've seen a lot of you take

You get confronted on your bullshit, and then slink away like cowards under the guise of "Ohhhhhh, I just can't haaaaaaaaaaaaaandle these personal attaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccks. You're Teaaaaaaring me apaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart."

I second sandnsea.

REAP.

[slackmaster]

66. What bullshit, TheWatcher?

I've made it very clear that I am walking the walk. I live by what I've written here.

I could be wrong. If I lose, that's my problem and I sure as fuck am not going to go whining about it on DU.

I second sandnsea.

Don't be surprised when you are judged by the company you keep.

[Virginia Dare]

68. Are you channeling Phil Gramm now?....n/t

[TheWatcher]

71. Or perhaps Henry Blodget.

[TheWatcher]

72. Your Tap Dancing Needs Work.

[sandnsea]

52. You moved your money

People recommend moving money on this board all the time. Only to be met with "invest for the long term" advise. Then, when they think they've followed that advise and their long term investment tanks, they're met with shit like you gave them.

IF, and in my mind that's a truly big IF, you're truly satisfied with your investments - then you have been moving money around your entire life. You never just stuck it in one thing and left it, like the experts always advise. They want people to leave it in downturns to try to soften the blow. Meantime, the very rich have gotten their money out, and it's all the "long term investors" who keep losing their life savings. Thanks to the condescending advise from people like you.

Anybody ought to be able to sit back and just observe, and know that you have to move money around to not lose it.

[slackmaster]

56. You don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about

And you have a long history of hostile, rude outbursts on this board.

You moved your money

Other than minor portfolio rebalancing, I have not moved any money around or changed my 401k allocations in over a year.

[arcadian]

31. The truth is, you never really had your savings to begin with.

Look at this as an opportunity for a new beginning. That is if things get as bad as people are predicting they will get. They may not get that bad.

[liberalhistorian]

34. I know, and it's such a helpless feeling.

My parents are watching their hard-earned retirements erode by the day and they're really too old to start over. And why the hell should they, having worked hard for forty-plus years? What makes it even worse is that my stepdad is in a nursing home at an early age for dementia and more than half of his pension is taken from my mom every month to pay for it, courtesy of Medicaid's bullshit rules. And this is after they spent most of their assets on his care prior to his going into the nursing home. Where is THEIR bailout?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. Moved our IRAs to money markets when the handwriting on the wall became flashing neon.

Even though they were in a "low risk" balanced fund. Which has gone down 7% in the last few months.

[Virginia Dare]

38. The scary thing is money markets are looking shaky right now too..

some of the prime funds, which are never supposed to go below $1, actually went down to 80 cents in the last few days. Things are really out of control.

[sandnsea]

45. Yep. A run on a Putnam mm, they had to liquidate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3497392

[Virginia Dare]

48. I read this morning that a couple of large banks..

had to scramble to cover their money markets, which meant they had to move money from someplace else. Wow, this shit is getting deep isn't it? It's hard to know what to do at this point.

[CitizenPatriot]

39. I feel your pain

I was sick last night looking at how much money we had lost; money we saved by not going out to eat, not going to the movies, not being "consumers" and buying every gadget that became a must have...

At any rate, I've spent the last few hours on the phone with financial advisers who have nothing to gain from giving me advice. They both gave me different advice, so I'm trying to sort it out right now. The bottom line was both advised against selling now -- but that takes a solid stomach.

Good luck to you and I wish you the best.

[onecent]

41. Thank you all for your responses. I actually do feel better...Number

one - because I know I am not alone. Why that feels good has always baffled me.

Knowing that's it's on paper --(I don't need it in the near future) to my knowledge...

and I was hoping to give alot of it to my children....

I love to worry...I do it best....but I will keep reading over and over what some of you said...and hang on for the roller coaster ride.

I did go to Suze Orman site....WOW.... great site. and I feel a very knowledgeable lady.

Thanks again for responding. This is a great site to hang out in.
Go Obama!

[tpsbmam]

42. There are millions of us there with you.....

and I agree with those who said hang in there -- that's what I'm doing. I'm pretty diversified and yes, I've lost money this year.....but I made money last year and I'm still ahead. And even if I end up not ahead, I have to believe that this isn't the first time the stock market has tanked and it will go up again. I have a VERY good CFA (worth every penny and, for the job she does, comes cheap!) -- she's done very well by me and by my family. Her advice like the good advice here: just hang tough, don't sell while stocks are down and we'll pull through this. It'll take time, but we will.

Remember, terror, panic, all of that stuff doesn't solve anything -- all it does is hurt you! Not good for you physically or in any other way. Breathe!! (Hey, it's free!!) :hug:

[leftofthedial]

47. I'm sorry.

I watched mine go away (for similar and other reasons) a few years ago.

But there was no ticker on TV showing it blow by blow.

[katty]

54. your not alone

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. If you don't need the money right now

let it be... it will mostly recover...but this is a medium to long term prospect

Now my parents are in a different boat.They　ＡＲＥ　ｒｅｔｉｒｅｄ

I suggest you talk to a reputable advisor... and being scared is not only understandable but needed.

Just don't react to that.

[kineneb]

62. beans, rice, pasta, canned goods

my investments.

[fascisthunter]

64. I'm Really Sorry... hang in there

[TahitiNut]

73. CD's weren't "good" enough?

Too bad.