My retirement fund that I just started was worth $15k in December of 2021. Then, May of 2022, our area was hit really hard. My retirement plan went down to $7k. Today, it’s worth $11k. I lost $4k on my retirement plan. It’s invested in total market funds, some tech, some big cap companies, and healthcare. But every sector has been ravaged by the stock market changes.
What kind of fees are you paying? That chart does not reflect the market. For instance, if you had invested in a low management fee S&P 500 index find you would expect to have seen a 50% increase over the same period.
Dude isn’t in index funds…nuff said. Mine has more than doubled since 2021
There is a large portion of the population that doesn’t know anything about how 401ks work. They are told there employer will take 3% or such out of their income and put it into a 401k account, and some part of that money will be matched by the employer (varying).
Those who don’t know the market don’t touch the money, it is invested for them. So it is very possible whoever posted this is among those people. It is not always wise on their end, but if a professional can lose money investing large amounts for companies like that, so could an inexperienced person. The annual report for 2023 for my company’s investments saw loses as well. The little money I had was elsewhere so I lucked out on that part.
This is the actual problem with these types of retirement plans, though. People are expected to know a lot about managing the investments themselves. There’s a whole industry whose job it is to give you bad advice. The real advice is “drop it in a mix of an sp500 index fund it and bonds according to your risk level” and the rest is bullshit.
Check the vanguard target retirement income fund (vtinx) and other similar funds. There was a dip in 2021 that absolutely destroyed a number of retirements, my patents included, despite being low risk options. Total bond index funds also suffered for some reason, and those are as low risk as you can get. Every other fund I have is doing great, but the ones that are supposed to be safe are not doing great.
That drop was when the Fed was raising interest rates to stall inflation. Interest rates up, bond values down. But the drop in VTINX was only 20% over all of 2022, where OP is showing 50% in maybe the first quarter.
Incidentally, the sensitivity to interest rates is why I don’t like bond funds. If you buy actual bonds, you get the face value back at maturity, where bond fund are forced to mark them all to current market prices to calculate NAV. IMO, this negates the main “safe” factor in holding bonds.
Good point.
Would you give some examples of bonds that you’re talking about (rather than bond funds)? I’m thinking you mean something from Treasury Direct: Treasury bonds (T-bonds), Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and/or I bonds.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-buy-bonds
Treasuries are nice because they’re convenient and low buy-in, but their yields are crap, sometimes a little above inflation, sometimes below. TIPS are a decent way to hedge the inflation risk, but (IMO) it’s still really for people who are more worried about losing their savings than living off it. (i.e.: if you have, say, $1e8, you can live pretty comfortably off $1e6, even $1e5 in a lean year, so your rate of return doesn’t really matter)
For me, personally, the limited bond exposure I have is all corporate and mostly junk, bought through my broker in the secondary market, with maturity 10-20 years out. Until fairly recently, junk bonds were the only way to get yields above 4%, and that’s kind of my mental benchmark for gaining relative to inflation. One downside of corporate bonds is they generally have a $10k minimum.
I like to go a step further and do a target-date retirement fund. I think Vanguard funds are based on index funds, but they will reduce how aggressively they invest as you approach your retirement date. And the fees are very low.
If you’re really hands off these are a good choice. But if you are willing to rebalance a couple of times a year, it’s unnecessary to pay the extra fees associated with these funds.
I do like the automatic set it and forget it. Especially with scheduling transfers into investment accounts. I could probably get into rebalancing short-term, but I think long-term I would get bored and forget.
Yeah it’s not for everyone, but I just have an event on my calendar for every six months, and I just rebalance when it goes off. Only takes a short while, especially if you are using some tool that will tell you what your weights are.
Any tools you recommend? Also, how sure are you that the cost savings actually make it worth the effort? My gross expense ratio is 0.08% (I think I’m looking at the right number?)
The close to retirement ones suffered that year. The 2030 target lost 25% in less than a year recently and hasn’t recovered. Ironically, the high risk ones have been less risky during COVID than the low risk ones.
Interesting. I’m targeting 2065 retirement, so I’ve got a long time. But I guess that fund could suffer from the same issue? Or maybe I should assume the same fate based on past events.
Not sure. I’m guessing interest rate stuff will mess with anything with bond holdings, so that probably had stuff to do with it. Other than that… I don’t know if I can convey a big enough shrug in text form.