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Retirement Update

June 8th, 2020 at 06:46 am

I hadn't looked at retirement since February 21st. I absolutely did not want to see how bad things were when they went into free fall after the lockdowns started. But DH told me the IRA was almost completely recovered so I thought that I would take a look at it and the 401K. The 401K is doing really well, considering. Not as well as it would have without Covid-19, but still, we're ahead after our contributions and employer contributions by $763.04 of just profit. The IRA has to make up $374.02 still to meet where it was in February, but it has been making rapid gains in the last two weeks.

New amounts are:

$22,694.58 401K
+_9,647.71 IRA
----------------
$32,342.29 New Balance

Total difference is an increase of $3843.04. We are well past what my wished for milestone was in February, which was hitting $30K. The next big milestone for us will be $50K. I really hope things continue to recover as more areas move into phase 2 and 3.

Posted in Retirement | 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “Retirement Update”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    June 8th, 2020 at 02:04 pm 1591625061
    1591625061

    Amazing isn't it? Sort of doesn't seem real that it could come back that fast. I first looked on May 19, and it wasn't great at all, but not as bad as I thought. I checked Friday's total and some of our accounts are looking really good again. Strange times!

  2. LivingAlmostLarge Says:
    June 8th, 2020 at 05:02 pm 1591635777
    1591635777

    It is amazing

  3. LifeBalance Says:
    June 9th, 2020 at 01:55 am 1591667705
    1591667705

    I read an article about this that gave me an aha! moment. Because it didn't make sense that the market is doing so well when we have businesses closed and people out of work. There was mention that many of the companies represented by the S&P are those companies benefitting from the shutdown. I searched for the list and it does make sense. Pharmaceutical companies, energy companies, Amazon, etc. There were exceptions certainly, but I realized that no small businesses are represented there. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

  4. Lucky Robin Says:
    June 9th, 2020 at 03:17 am 1591672641
    1591672641

    LifeBalance--Most small businesses don't have stock or it is privately owned or employee owned stock so never comes onto the market. Employees generally have to sell back their shares when they quit. They don't tend to be something you can invest in and certainly would not be a big enough company to be in the S&P. Those are blue chip stocks and only the top performing 500 companies get into that fund.

  5. LifeBalance Says:
    June 9th, 2020 at 01:59 pm 1591711192
    1591711192

    You're right LR. I do understand that. The result of the shutdown though is that the people that benefit are those that are either part of those companies or that invest in those companies. Those that are hurt are people that work for small business and people that don't invest. I guess it just drives home the importance of investing to be diversified. It's even more important if you don't work for one of the top corporations.

    Sometimes obvious things aren't obvious to me until something makes it click! I'm glad I've introduced investing to my kids. It's even more important because of risk mitigation. I had just considered ROI before.

  6. Lucky Robin Says:
    June 9th, 2020 at 09:20 pm 1591737652
    1591737652

    LB--We diversify as much as possible within our 401K and IRA, but the only way to support small business is to really go and buy from them when they reopen and do what we can to build their sales back up. It's going to be a rough go of it for many, but I hear a lot of people talking about how they intend to boost these businesses when phase 3 hits, so I think some of them might just make it back to normal. Just not all, sadly.

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