My 401(K) lost 1.5% of its value in the last quarter, after gaining about 10% in the first 4 quarters I had it.

However, I'm punished at work for having an advanced degree, so I am only able to put a laughably small amount of money away each paycheck, so 1.5% (and 10%, really) don't amount to very much.

This is why I shifted my retirement funds to "Stable Value"/"Fixed Asset" allocation right after the Fed's big 75-point cut. Parking it outside of equities (stocks) should preserve capital until the collapse works itself out.

And my personal financial goal at this time is Capital Preservation, not Growth.

Usually, I let it ride. But under certain circumstances, shifting allocation seems to make sense, IMO. And with a bursting housing bubble and bunch of bad paper looking for a place to take down ... this seemed like an obvious time, to me.

With most 401k funds, you don't HAVE to have a majority (or any) of your money in equities.

There *is* an "opportunity cost" risk, but given the current economic situation ... I am willing to take that.

My pension lost nearly a whole year's worth of salary in just a few months. I started investing on my own just recently and made money. ( But of course what I put away is just a drop in the bucket compared to 20 years of pension funds.) The pension funds and investment firms are not very creative when it comes to investing. I sure hope Social security is there for me.

in real money, my pension fund has been almost halved in the last eight years. keep printing that crap.

"The stakes are just so much higher when you're that much closer to retirement."

Which is why the closer you get to retirement the less you keep in stocks and start moving to more conservative investments.

Know where your pension money is being invested!

Dead people don't need social security and, unless they have a couple of really dumb friends with an old office chair, stop collecting SS when they pass. Between exorbitant pharmaceutical costs, skyrocketing energy bills, rising food costs and substandard colas, when their nest eggs vanish the seniors are properly fucked. Sick, broke, starving and homeless, they'll perish quickly. Those who see the seniors' predicament will opt to keep working until they're dead, increasing the competition for living-wage paying jobs forcing the standard of living down.
This scheme's complexity is beyond Bush's limited capacity so it belongs to the neocons.
If the retarded codpieceboy drew up a plan to bankrupt the nation having this many moving parts, we'd all be billionaires by now.