Does saving money feel like pouring water in to a bucket with holes?

[Anonymous]

Does saving money feel like pouring water in to a bucket with holes?

Increasing dollar inflation.

My emergency savings are worth less than I started with.

[haulingthescoreup]

I'm maxing out my retirement ($20,500/ year, as I'm over 50), and the balance is lower than when I started maxing last year.

All I can tell myself is that I sure have a lot of shares, if and when the markets start to recover.

[Anonymous]

I am kicking a major chunk of $ each month into savings and retirement accounts (IRA's)  - the kids UGMA's have been doing quite well even in the wild market- so they are still OK.

I have made some very wise investments and pulled back on most of the mutual funds -

Made 11K+ on my last 20K investment in 3 months-

Message Edited by Timothy on 09-13-2008 04:07 PM

[Anonymous]

HTSU- we really need to talk about your investments- I am not a securities dealer anymore- by that type of loss is unacceptable.

Maybe start playing with a few selected stocks or options.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I am kicking a major chunk of $ each month into savings and retirement accounts (IRA's) - the kids UGMA's have been doing quite well even in the wild market- so they are still OK.

I have made some very wise investments and pulled back on most of the mutual funds -

Made 11K+ on my last 20K investment in 3 months-

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I need a smiley for "weak smile."

Congrats, though. I'm reasonably sure that I would have screwed myself up pretty badly if I had gone with individual stocks.

They'll be back. It's not like I was going to retire early or anything.

[Anonymous]

Not your whole portfolio- a few thousand in a seperate invetment account and research (you seem very good at that) and buy some stock in the company. 

With option you can also Buy if you think it will go up or buy if it will go down.  

[haulingthescoreup]

You have no idea how terrifying that sounds. But I will attempt to pull myself together and get with you --thanks!

[haulingthescoreup]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:
I'm maxing out my retirement ($20,500/ year, as I'm over 50), and the balance is lower than when I started maxing last year.

All I can tell myself is that I sure have a lot of shares, if and when the markets start to recover.

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Whoa, my bad, or rather, my good. I had to go back and look again, and I had pulled up the wrong figures a while back. I'm in better shape than that, but it's not great. Net increase of around $27K, with about $32K of my contributions plus matching that have gone in so far.

So a loss, but not an outrageous loss.

I think I had fixated on that great spike we had a while back.