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Between Friday and today, I've lost 5 MMNH (Medicaid Months of Nursing Home) equivalents. Brutal.

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Panic selling due to media hype, the market will recover, the economy is sound. Now some unknown professor is saying 70% of the population will get the virus...and...here is the kicker, most will just feel a little out of sorts...and now it will be added to the yearly flu shot program...which really doesn't work in the first place. Money, Money, Money!

Sit tight, this too shall pass! Since it's existence the stock market has Never Not Recovered.
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Stock market mostly not for short term, don't panic! To Dolly's point about the coronavirus... the WSJ had a thorough article all about it last week and basically the most vulnerable succumb (compromised immune systems, the very young, the very old). It's not the Black Plague. The "regular" flu still kills way more people every single year. The media is making everyone panic for no reason.
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Ever heard of Asset Allocation?

Go to www.bogleheads.org and read their Wiki for the best investment advice you'll ever get.

If you are going to invest in stock mutual funds or ETFs, set your asset allocation (your proportional mix of stock/bond/cash) so that you can sleep at night and so that you can withstand the urge to sell during times of panic.

There is some evidence that Russian bots are fueling the virus panic news; yes, it's a bad virus; no the sky is not falling.
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Lets not forget that China is a big part of the global economy and business there has slowed if not ground to a halt, that is what is causing market jitters more so than fear of COVID-19. But yeah, you haven't really lost anything unless you sell when the market is down.
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I guess the crash is unsettling me more than I realized.  I just typed a response and accidentally deleted it.

Time for a break; I have a new garden magazine in which to indulge.   Then I'll tackle worrying about the market crash.

I do agree with Barb about the Russian potential.   Putin's been meddling in our affairs for years; I just hope that we're doing the same thing with the Russians.
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I’m a nervous investor in general. My mother filled my head with horror stories about The Great Depression all my life.

But still - I invest. It just doesn’t make sense to me to let your money sit in a zero interest paying savings account nor to bury it in the backyard.

Ive worked with my investment guy to achieve a healthy mix that makes sense when one thing goes down, hopefully the other areas at least stay the same. I’m just not gonna look at today’s damage - least I give myself a stroke. My hubby predicted this a couple of days ago so I’m at least - not blindsided.

I imagine we’ll see some bounce back over the week. Now is the time when people with the really big bucks buy at a bargain. Plus - the market has just been going up and up for years now. It had to adjust itself sooner or later.

We did pull a chunk of change out back in November to buy a beach place - so I suppose that’s some consolation. Now if we can afford to keep it...? Nope - I refuse to think that way. That’s my mothers voice in my head!
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The stock market has _always_ made money over any 10 year period, including the great depression. Hang tight and things will get better.

Most businesses operating in the global economy are expecting conditions in China to impact between 2 and 4 quarters as parts and goods from China will not be available so there will be fewer iphones available and starbucks stores in China will not sale as much coffee. The service businesses may not recover as much of their revenue but the manufacturing sector often recovers in full once the manufacturing block is cleared when sales explode due to backlogged demand. Its even possible manufacturing will improve sooner as organizations move to suppliers outside of China.
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Another big down day. I stopped looking when I lost another 4 months of MMNH. I even put some money into the market yesterday hoping for a some level of retracement today.

The stock market has been flat over a 10 year period. It's happened a few times in history. Most recently in the years following 2000. The nasdaq was flat between 2000-2015. The SP500 was flat between 2000-2013. It's only in the last few years that the market took off again. For much of the last 20 years, it's been dead money.

That's also not adjusting for inflation. Between roughly 2000-2015, it would have been better to have money sitting in a savings account. During the same period, interest rates were fairly high.
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needtowashhair, yes, more losses today. I have made money over the last 10 years, I spent it too! I did buy yesterday, I am interested in dividends at this point in my life, I don't have a lot of time to worry about growth!
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I agree with Dollyme, we will recover from this. Don’t panic. I have my money in L funds. L 2020 and L2025 so that when I retire I will have 70 percent in the G fund(safe fund) and 30 percent will be in the stock market. Hang tight. We will recover from this.
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I too have money in dividend earners but often wonder why. Even with yearly 10% dividends they are swamped out by say a 70% gain in Apple last year.

Having said that, as I get older, these ups and downs stress me out much more. This last weekend, I thought about cashing everything out and living off of a safe 4% return. At 4% the money should never run out. I would have enough money to live off of fairly comfortably for the rest of my life.
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Where are you finding a safe 4%??
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Id be interested in that as well - where you can find a safe 4%?

In addition, what bank do you use that paid interest during the years you mention? My bankS stop paying even the tiny bit of interest they had been paying - after the 2008 bubble burst.
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I view falling prices in the market as a good sale! Buy low, sell high! If you bought it when the price was low, you aren't losing anything until the price is lower than what you originally paid.
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Don’t pull your money out now while it’s low! I did that when it went down in 2008 and I never recouped from my losses. I think it should balance itself out over time.
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I do have some money in mutual funds. It's been doing pretty well. Each time the market dips, I buy a bit more of the fund. I actually put in a Buy order just now. I hope I haven't missed the down swing. Right now, that's where I park my money. When I approach retirement age I will move it to safer less volatile investment options.
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I think Needtowashhair is talking about a 4% "safe withdrawal rate" often referred to by business writers and academics. If you have a properly constructed portfolio that is somewhere between 60/40 and 40/60 (stocks to bonds), you should be able to withdraw 4% per year during a 30 year retirement and die broke.

It's not a guaranteed 4% return.

As you get closer to retirement, think about pulling back on the proportion of stocks you hold to avoid volatility and "sequence of returns" risk right before it early in retirement.

As I said, www.bogleheads.org is a great place to read about this.
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Ntwh, I'm not sure why you think that the market has been flat for a 10 year period. I think you may be cherry picking data points.
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Moderator: I don't know what this has to do with aging care. Please remove this kind of post.
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As just asked by a moderator here, what does this have to do with “aging care” ?
Later, “financial planning” perhaps ? But it’s not at all specific to aging care.
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Saving for future when you get old and need care is definitely relevant. How, where, what strategy for investment, etc. are some of the things that we can discuss.

If we just stick to caregiving strictly, we can remove the jokes, what's for dinner, what's on your mind, etc. These things are an outlet to get our mind off of caregiving.

Remove them? What's left to come here for?
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BarbBrooklyn, I didn't say the market has been flat for the last 10 years. I said they have been times in the past that the market has been flat over a 10 year period. That was in response to the poster who said that "The stock market has _always_ made money over any 10 year period, including the great depression." That's not true. There have been multiple 10 year periods where the stock market has not made money or even lost money. I provided two examples of that. If you adjust for inflation it's even worse.
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Tevincolorado, no one is forcing you to be in this thread. If it's not your cup of tea then don't look.
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Other than a spike right before the 1933 crash, there's no period on any chart or in baseline data I am aware of where you cannot pick a low point year and check in 10 years and see the market has risen. If you take the average in 1932 instead of the peak, 1932-1942 shows a break even with 1942 being a war year which many viewed as an economic suppressant.

https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/historical/marketindexes.html
https://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years
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To all the self appointed forum content police:

Half the threads on AgingCare are conversational, caregivers often have limited social opportunities and these kinds of threads fill a real need in their lives. When I was new here I didn't understand that either and I actually complained to the moderators about one popular thread 🙄, they appropriately ignored me.
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As soon as the federal reserve started dump billions into the market last fall, I pulled out. The Fed has been propping this market for many months. Since then, this has been mostly the big banks playing money party with each other while the fed keeps them liquid. Look up stock market and Repro market. (The purchase of over night derivatives)

anyway, this was bound to happen. Even the Chinese are discovering that government dumping money into the markets can only go on for so long. This is a lesson Germany is currently learning too.

sadly, this will really hurt us all...inflation! Might be hyper inflation because you just cannot have the Fed putting a billion a day into the market because the banks aren’t liquid. Printing more money to paper over losses means your money is worth less.

for many months we have seen the bond market upside down. That is were all the smart money bailed out to. Now, even the banks are realizing that there isn’t anything real under those sky high stock prices. Corona virus is merely exposing the fundamental weakness in this whole scheme
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Hubby and I thought the same thing, Katiekate. So, last fall we decided to “pick some fruit” and pulled a chunk of change out of our investments.

But then the problem presented itself - now what? Buy gold bars and bury them in the yard? Which, by the way, some people actually do. My mothers best friends parents did that. Unfortunately, they left no treasure map when they died and my moms friend spent days digging holes in the yard. Even with a metal detector - she was certain she never found all of them.

Anyhoo... We decided on a beach house. Generally, land is a good investment as long as it isn’t bubble priced and also not near a toxic waste site. Plus - we have always dreamed of having a one. Fingers crossed we can sell it when the time comes.

But seriously - I’d be interested in hearing what others do with their money... is there anything that is truly “safe” and still gives a reasonable return?
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Rainmom, I bought investment property, several villas near me, affords me cash flow when the market tanks.
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Rainmon, I pulled out a large chunk out about a year ago. It sat there doing nothing for months. I was waiting for an opportunity. I got tired of waiting and put about half of it back in at the beginning of the year. Everything was roses until last Friday. Now I'm underwater on it.
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Katiekate, that's the thing. If the economy was really good, why do we still need so much stimulus? An economy that needs super low interest rates to keep going is not a good economy.

I also think they really need to redo how they calculate inflation. It doesn't reflect inflation at a everyday level. Everyday items have inflated much more than the official rate. Nutrition drinks for example. One week I went to buy a box and it was $26. The next week it was $28.

Printing money is all well and good when you are the reserve currency. Which is what the US currently is. But we can't rely on that forever. The Yuan has been steadily rising as a currency countries use for trade. China's economy isn't going to come to a halt once it catches up to ours, they will keep charging higher.
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