The Expert Podcast

Do you have a 401k fund Are you ever wondering how you're doing Is your balance good enough? Do other people have more money than you? Are you being successful with your investments Well, here's a really good article that gives you some insight into how most people are doing with their 401ks. what has happened in the last year or two with balances. And it may point to kind of a comparison of what your success or results have been compared to others. This came out in Motley fool where it says this is the average balance last quarter. and also talks about what has happened to balances in general. The headline is many savers saw their balances drop due to market turbulence. It wasn't…because of people taking withdrawals, people aren't. Pulling money from the 401ks. you know on average, but the market has dropped on the securities that most people hold in 401ks which has made it lower. How much are we talking about? The average…401k plan balance was 103,800 So roughly about a hundred grand. Well…A year ago it was 20% higher meaning that it was probably about one 20 to one 30. So this is a big drop and the market has dropped a little bit, but this specific stocks that many people hold in 401ks have dropped even more than the market because of the psychology of 401ks What you put your money into that has been…the. The norm So there's your number a hundred, basically a hundred grand. So if your fund has. five figures in it. You're a little bit below the average if you have in the hundreds of 200,000 you have above average. A lot of it also depends on age You know people who have been putting money in for longer may have more but this is just the average of all ages. What else does it mean in terms of the losses? Well if you're seeing a lower balance according to this article, you must realize that the balance that's a single moment in time It's not what you're going to have when you retire It's not what you had a year ago. stocks go up and down and retirement is up. not a sprint So you are going to have the opportunity for it to grow but you always want to look at. What are the holdings that you keep? What are the contributions you make? if you think the market's going to go down in certain areas do you want to reallocate That's where a great. financial manager and analyst or advisor will give you good advice and you want to make your own decisions as well. And you want to consider input from a multiple sources You don't want to just take one person's opinion. You want to mix that in with your own investing goals And this is where some people. make a mistake playing it too safe. If you see volatility you might see. Shift money away from stocks and put it into something else. As an example, when the markets crashed in 2008 with the economic crisis. You know a lot of people dumped a real estate dump stocks when the two years all of the values of those things had gone up to where they were pre crash. So if you sold it at that lower level you missed out on…that upside. Right And you have to buy it back when it was higher. Now that's not a guarantee that prices will go up again. But for the most part things generally tend to increase especially when we're in an inflationary environment. When there's inflation generally all things will go up in price stocks real estate prices of things In fact, Walmart is reporting higher sales mostly because of inflation of the prices. Their sales volume is actually staying about the same. But the price. Transaction strike price is going up because of inflation. Does that mean higher profits Maybe depending upon how you run your expenses. So 401k funds are not excluded from that. Certainly inflation can trigger recessions which may affect, value of securities and and stock prices. But that you look at your long-term investment goals and what the history of economies. have shown. Happens when there are rises and fall. Events in volatility