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?

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.

Your Roth IRA can never go down in that time period?
Plus, the main disadvantage of a Roth IRA (when compared to a traditional IRA) is that contributions are never tax-deductible.

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.

Your all obviously forgetting one thing. Long term can mean many years. The average human life span is only 70-90 yrs. You may not live long enough to see any profit, or if you do you won’t have as much time to enjoy it.

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.