Friday, February 1, 2013

What to do with 401K: Savings Queen's Personal Finance Journey

January 31st, 2013 at 07:25 am

After I posted yesterday Snafu asked what I considered a "safe" investment for my 401K. About 300K of my 400K 401K (lots of Ks, huh?) is sitting in cash! I pulled everything back to cash about 4 months ago as I worried that the fiscal cliff thing would cause everything to drop. I know that was a BAD move as the stock market has done nothing but increase since then.

Now I am scared to get back in as it seems to me the stock market may be about to go down again. That is the problem. Never pull out because it's tough to know when and how to get back in.

Suzi Orman, who I watch regularly, urges risk averse people like me to go into shorter term municipal bonds. She says interest rates are about to rise so stay in short term bonds only. I know to get the growth though we really need to be partially invested in the stock market, but I only have 10 years until retirement. Also, I lost about 75% in the 90s in the high tech bubble so I am scared.

I actually got to talk with Suzi on her show about two years ago where she urged me to put everything in muni bonds due to my fear. I now wish I had done that. I only put 100K into the 5% bonds. Even with the growth of the market I would feel a lot safer with a fairly guaranteed 5%.

I have also been seeing quite a few documentaries about mutual funds that are really ponzi schemes and the fact that the Securities and Exchange Commission really doesn't do much. It is all frightening. I'm sorry, but if they want us to invest for our retirement, the government should at least have enough oversight to keep us safe from crooks!

Does anyone have any ideas on safer 401K investments? I have lots of leeway in my 401K and can invest in just about anything.

Source: http://savingsqueen.savingadvice.com/2013/01/31/what-to-do-with-401k_100720/

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