Don't sell the stocks in your retirement portfolio because of the drop in the market!

[disneysteve]

yeah after instantly DOUBLING my money

some 401k plans put you in a box with investment options, but mine has plenty of choices from conservative to aggressive, small and large cap, sector specific, etc.

but even the crappiest 401k plans offer a basic market index, which, invested regularly for 30 years will give a nice yield.

Exactly. A fund would have to be really awful to not be worth investing in when you are getting a 50% or 100% match. In your case, it would have to generate well less than half the return of an outside investment because there's also the tax advantage of the 401k. So if you invest $1,000, you avoid the taxes on that money, so perhaps $250 saved there, plus the company gives you another $1,000. You get $2,000 put into the fund. To do that on your own, you'd have to use after-tax money so you'd need to earn about $2,700 gross to have $2,000 of take home pay to invest to get the same result as you do in the 401k with only $1,000 of gross income. It's really a no-brainer.