Not a bad problem to have
I’ve written a couple of times now how I changed jobs and rolled my 401(k) into existing IRAs. Right now the great majority of that money is sitting in a money market fund collecting 2% or whatever it is. But having it there has created, if not a true problem, an annoyance.
My rolled-over 401(k) assets are sitting around for two reasons:
- I haven’t decided what my asset allocation should be
- With all the market volatility, I haven’t pulled the trigger.
I have to sheepishly admit that the real reason is more the second than the first. See, like any reasonable person, I’d hate to invest a great deal of money (six figures, which is a great deal to me) just to watch it immediately lose 3% of its value as has been occasionally happening lately. Yep, I’m trying to time the market in a manner of speaking. I could dollar cost average, but as FMF recently wrote, that may not be the greatest move either.
So what’s the problem?
Most days, I log on to USAA and take a look at my bank accounts to make sure everything’s cool. There’s a section for my mutual funds, which consist of our emergency fund and these IRAs. Well, some of the IRAs are fully invested. So on those -3% days, I get to see my retirement assets drop thousands of dollars at a pop. That’s not a good feeling.
But it’s also a pretty good problem to have, I guess.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
March 29th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[…] that the recent volatility of the stock market and his current retirement portfolio status was not a bad problem to have. I have to agree because I have some funds in a money market which is still making money while […]