How do you react when your stocks go down?

[jIM_Ohio]

100% agreed with jIM Ohio - that's my strategy too. In this case, however, my concern is unemployment and our mortgage payments so I've lowered the amount of contributions to keep more cash on hand. I have enough cash to survive for 2 years without a job but if DW loses her job too then that cuts it down to a little over 1 year worth of savings.

My overall investments declined about 50% and my reaction was a few colorful words to myself. A lot of my friends said that it happened to everyone but it doesn't ease the pain. No matter what I do I've lost 50% of my money even if I have another 30 years before I retire. My account has been reset back to 5 years ago which is discouraging. It's like a little bird trying to build a nest one straw at a time for hours and days and all of a sudden finds it's nest on the ground.

I feel for those that are closer to their retirement and lost money. Yes they should've moved from equity to bonds or other options but not many people do (or even know).

Your account value has been cut back, but undoubtedly you have more shares now than in 2003, right?

I track my shares owned as more important than my value- because when things go up I want as many shares moving up as possible.

I agree keeping cash on hand in these times looks like a safe move. My EF was depleted in middle of 2008 and we are choosing to invest now and replenish EF over a 12 month period as opposed to stop 401k and Roth now (20% of gross) to get EF back to 3 months expenses.

I am assuming both of us can maintain employment thru this. We will see.

[Russell]

Good point Jim, I didn't think about that...thanks

Yeah i dropped my 401k contribution from 13% to 6% (to get the company match). The next couple of months will be critical for my job/company and if things start to look up again I'll bump it back up. I'm also looking for another job proactively.