Mike

But Ramit, I lost 10 dollars yesterday! Oh no, what will I do without those 10 dollars. You told me to invest so I could afford to by a home in a few years, and now I have 10 dollars less than I started with! What the hell were you thinking?!

Oh, wait for a few days, or even weeks, and the market will recover. Blah Blah compound interested blah blah millions from a few thousand invested blah blah? Oh thats right, relax and buy more stock or mutual fund? Oh okay the world didn’t end. Thank god.

JB

AAARGH! Everybody panic! It’s the attack of the giant ladyheads!

… oh… wait… That’s not what this post is about? DOH!

Jay

Tanner,

I assume this is stocks?

If somebody knew the answer to that question they’d be able to strike it rich. Unfortunately, nobody knows. And if they say they know they’re at best ignorant. At worst lying.

So the best thing to do is not keep money that needs to be immediately available in stocks.

Anonymous

I’d rather invest in a market that gained 10% per year rather than a market that gained 0% per year for the first twenty years and then gained 10% per year after.

AJ

Tanner,

The person who answered before obviously doesn’t understand what vanguard does. I’m assuming that this is a Vanguard index fund, probably an S&P. There’s no reason not to leave the money in there until you need it. The market has averaged about 6% return per year over the last 30 years, bad times and good included. This little blip will certainly not make enough of a dent to take your $10,000 down to $6,000. There’s no advantage trying to speculate on the next month’s S&P return and with inflation where it is, you will lose value having extra money held as cash. Leave it in there and cash out when you need it.

Independent George

I wonder if this is the kind of rookie mistake that peope have to make before they learn? During my first year or so of investing, I was absolutely convinced that I could time the market. So, the $3,000 I dumped into my Roth IRA appreciated about 20% in the first 3 years… instead of the 60% I would have gotten had I just held on. Worse yet, I actually lost money on the second Roth I opened just a few months later.

I’ve learned quite a bit since then. So it definitely sucks that I lost about $1,000 in the last 10 days. But I’m still slightly up on my initial investments, and don’t expect to spend it for another 30 years anyway.

It was an expensive lesson for me to learn, but now it’s one I’ll never forget.

zmann

Roth IRA’s are better than Traditional in the sense that you can keep them in for however long you want, as opposed to 59.5.

Rule of 72
Take the return on your investment and put that into 72, your answer is the amount of time it takes your money to double.
12% goes into 72 6 times… money doubles every six years APPROX.

JT

“Your Roth IRA can never go down in that time period?” -Kai

That’s not the point. He won’t need the money for 25+ years. Is there ANY historical evidence whatsoever that says that an investment WON’T grow over the course of 25+ years? Has there EVER been a 25-year period in which the value of the stock market was lower at the end than at the start?