I guess this is probably a silly question because I suspect millions did across Canada,US and the world.Hubby and I had about $85,000 in RRSP's which is the same as your 401K's and when it tanked last November...we lost about $40,000 from the $85,000. Circumstances in the last 4 years with debt etc...forced us to cash the rest in and pay the tax hit to pay off debt...Sunday night our investment rep came in town to go over our portfolio..(What's Left of it) and hubby and I are really down..Especially him...He feels like after 30+ years of putting money away since he was 18 it's all gone..2 divorces..both of us..15 years ago...and lots of money to lawyers and ex's and we started all over again at 35 and 31...now the financial meltdown last Fall that caused the economies to dive...Hubby feels he is going to be working until he is 80 to retire...

I guess I am just looking for consolation that we aren't the only ones starting over...What are you doing to make things better?Where do you start? not to mention our rep bragged how he just sold his farmland and equipment for 5 million dollars.. I mean I want to hear that when I have just lost my life savings...

Thanks for letting me rant and pout!!


Laurel

Ugh........so sorry for you! Yeah, we lost BIG!! We had saved and invested and had more then enough to pay for our 2 kids college tuition without having to get any loans.........well when the market sank so did their college accounts. In total we lost about 2 yrs tuition from the college funds.

My DH's 401K is down $150k from where it was.......but he's in banking/investments and he's confident that we're young enough to recoup it all. You guys sound about the same age as us (late 40's), so we should all be OK if we're just patient.

It's REALLY hard to be patient and optimistic when thousands are still losing their jobs here in the US on a daily basis.

Hopefully better times ahead for us all.

Thanks Deb...Yes..I am praying we all come through it still intact,with a job and the better for it!! I know $40,000 isn't alot of money but to us it is...

I feel your pain.

I'm down about $30,00o.

Fortunatly I have another 10 years to retirement so I do think I have time to build a lot of that back up. I have a friend who just turned 65 and wanted to retire but is going to keep working another year to get the bigger ss payout.

I saw the title of this post and thought "Uh Boy Did we ever"

Yeah we lost alot. No more retirement fund...no more stocks
It really sucks cuz we were looking to retire in the next couple years. My other half has 37 years in the same company and now the retirement fund if gone.
It's sucks but what can you do? We are not alone in this crunch and I feel for the many that have it worse. At least I still have my home.

My father's investments dropped by about 75%.

Heck yeah. We are in our late mid-50's and had planned to retire at 60. Not gonna happen. At the worst point we were down to roughly about half of what our combined 401(k) accounts' values once were, but now we are back to 75% of that value. Nevertheless, those funds should have been growing to an even larger value during the catch-up period, not just catching up.

Anyone who had anything in investments lost. Some more than others. And some folks' circumstances were worsened by job losses. So far we've both been lucky to keep our good-paying jobs, and for that I am so grateful.

Well, we were kind of lucky, the first dip in the market freaked my husband out -got hit for about $20k then that he pulled it all out of the market and placed it in a steady interest bearing account. So when things went belly up we weren't hurt like alot of you were.

I still count us very lucky as we still have jobs, and we just made our last house payment.

What are we doing now is socking as much away as we can. I have one son starting college next week and i feel very fortunate that right now we are in a position to help him out. Right now we are more worried about my job then my husbands, and if mine goes belly up, well we can survive on dh's salary, we would just have to rethink some of the extras we take for granted right now.

Oh, I'm sorry. Our 401 K is in bad shape. Also, our home went way down in value and we are now upside down with our mortgage.

I was going to respond with, "You've only really LOST money if you cash in." until I saw that you had, and that you had no choice. I'm sorry that you had to do that.

Fortunately, my husband and I are very young yet, and our portfolio is small. But, I'm down about $5k in my work retirement fund (TIAA-CREF), and I think we're down at least another $5k in our IRA.

My parents are also down over $20k in my dad's 401k. He knows that as long as he doesn't cash it out, he hasn't truly lost, but it's still hard on him. He wanted to retire soon, but it doesn't look like he will be able to.

The DH lost about 1/2 of his retirement....about $35K, but he's made some back. He didn't have his porfolio tied to anything high risk but everyone just lost so much. He's had a very hard time with it, especially considering he had to take a 10% gross pay cut to keep his job on top of it. Luckily, mine isn't tied to the stock market. We figure we've lost about $40K equity in the house, the way the market has tanked. We had planned to sell and get something smaller next year, because we just have the one son left at home and don't need the 4 bedroom, 2300 sq. ft. house, but we'll just stay put now.

We are lucky though. It's not like retirement is in sight for us (at least 15 years), so there's time to recoup. We only owe $80K on the house, so we still have about $70K equity in it.

Jodie

Count us in on that, too
Our financial adviser told us "we really didn't loose that money" and I shot back "oh yea?" then why is it every time I get a statement it's substantially less than the previous month

We have so many things planned out that have fallen by the way-side. I guess I should be thankful I still have a job and can still work.

Oh yeah.....we had $155k in rsp's which went down to $111, the last statement that we received it had gone back up to $130 but in the mean time my husband has lost his job (they closed the doors to go to Atlanta....he was in warehousing..18yrs there). He has work until October 2nd. I babysit and am fortunate to be busy with that, unfortunately for hubby he only has a grade 12 education and has been extremely overpaid for the last 18yrs for what he did. We have a few options for the fall but will have to wait and see what happens. The good thing is that we have about 7yrs left on the mtg so worse case is will have to push the mtg back.

My husband was self employed so his retirement fund was the investments that we put into stocks and bonds. Yeah, we lost BIG.
Good news is, although we are close to retirement we both LOVE our jobs and do not want to retire anytime soon.
When I get the urge to have a little pity party for myself I just pick up one of the many nonfiction biographies I have. Reading about lives that have suffered truly horrendous experiences snaps my right back to the reality of what a lovely life I really have.