(04-29-2022, 06:16 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(04-28-2022, 08:05 AM)mal234 Wrote: Is anyone else currently experiencing one of their retirement accounts being down.? This time of year, I work two jobs my government job and the longer-term job I held before that. The second job laid people off when Covid first began in 2020 and I went and was hired at the government job. Once things bounced back with the second job, I agreed to work with them on part time/part year basis. I usually work this job from December through April, (the busiest time of the year for it). sometimes May. This year I'm working it through May.  I have a Safe Harbor 401 K with the second job and it's currently down. I did/can choose the types of funds/investments I want to invest in. 

Today I made some adjustments to that account, by adjusting things to where I'm allocating more money into an income funds.  Prior to these adjustments I had my money from this job split almost evenly among three funds, (one for growth, income and growth and aggressive growth.) I wasn't having really anything going to one that's focused mainly on income, and I wonder how that may be impacting things. In addition to how things can be down due to inflation, etc....

I have a couple of more paychecks and a bonus check coming from second job before I'm done with it until December. Anyone have any suggestions on good funds to invest in, especially to counter with what's going on right now? I still have room to change things and get some money into accounts before my work at second job ends for this period. Though I really don't have much time to sit down and really go over all of the funds that are available right now. I'm working a lot of hours right now between the two jobs and am due into work to second job shortly.

My advice would be, set your course and don't ever change it.  Most small investors do worse than the averages because they react to things.  They buy high and sell low.  The market is unpredictable in the short term.  We don't have any idea what's going to happen in the next year or two, and by the time you make up your mind about it, the market has already moved.  If you try to predict the future, you might get lucky, but usually, the average investor buys at the wrong time and sells at the wrong time.  

My advice is, put your money in the stock market and leave it there.  Avoid mutual funds that have management fees.  Those managers are worthless, and the fees they charge hurt the performance of those funds.  Buy an index fund like SPY and forget about it.  Don't make changes.

As far as bonds being "safer" than stocks, bonds are safer in the short term, but in the long term, they are not safe at all, because of inflation and the fact that over the long term, stocks will beat bonds by a huge margin.  Businesses borrow money by issuing bonds, and if those businesses couldn't use that borrowed money to make more money than the interest they are paying on those bonds, our economy would completely collapse.  That's why stocks do better than bonds over the long haul.

Yes this is basically what I was alluding to, and I agree mostly with this sentiment.  Since MAL is focused mostly on 401k, I doubt he has the ability to buy something like SPY, he's probably limited to a bunch of mutual funds.

Either way, Marty's sentiment of short term vs. long term is correct.  There's an old saying that says "time in the market is more important than timing the market" and that's proven to be true consistently over time.  You're young, so I wouldn't worry too much about it since those funds will be in the market presumably another 30 years.

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