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Aggressive state of mind

January 22nd, 2009 at 10:40 pm

I'm feeling a bit unnerved. I've been reading Kiplinger's (AS & NT got me a subscription for Xmas), and Suze's book, and financial blogs, and all of them are saying not to stop investing, that in fact this is the perfect time to invest if you can afford it. And I'm thinking it's too bad I don't have any money to invest.

Then something struck me today, as I was updating our net worth: I do have my 401(k). And our new provider, Prudential, has this function where you can just plug in your risk level, your age and your retirement age, and they will pick a package that's right for you. I've always gone for moderate, so I'm pretty sure it switched over into a moderate fund. So I went into this "Goalmaker" dealie and said I was "aggressive." So it's going to pick a nice aggressive portfolio for me.

Even at a moderate level it's been posting pretty heavy losses, so it feels weird to get all aggressive. But at the same time, I feel like either things are going to go really well for the volatile stuff, or society as we know it is going to collapse and money won't be any good anyway. So I might as well go aggressive and see if I can eventually benefit from this financial nadir. Buy low, sell high! Or whatever. Smile

In other news, I read on one of the sites I follow that mortgage rates could go as low as 4.5% or even 4.3% this year, but that they will start to rise soon after. Man, I am wishing like crazy I could come up with a way to refi. Pay down as much as I can rather than saving up an EF? Reassign part of my debt to get enough equity? I don't know. I wrote to my realtor to see if she has any ideas.

OK, I've gone posting-crazy this afternoon but I think this will be my last one of the day! Smile

2 Responses to “Aggressive state of mind”

  1. baselle Says:
    1232685076

    I remembered thinking similar thoughts in 2002, 2003, so I got very aggressive with the new money I put into the 403B, starting in October. I haven't regretted it. For the value investor, the sun is shining.

  2. Broken Arrow Says:
    1232724877

    I think you're doing the right thing too, though of course, courage is also a must in trying times like this. I myself have gone really really aggressive with my 401(k) contributions, and I have no reason to believe that it won't work out in the end (got 30 years before retiring).

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