David's Mumblings

401(more)ok

category: General
For the first time since I got my work 401k, the value of my account is greater than the amount of money I put in. Harrumph!

Vanguard says some pretty weird (/dumb?) stuff, though. In a newsletter they sent out:

While the U.S. stock market fell 37% last year, diversification helped many 401(k) investors cope. A balanced mix of 60% stocks and 40% bonds held up better, falling 22%.1 Diversification isn't exclusive to 401(k) investing, of course. But your plan makes it easy to hold a mix of stocks and bonds.
(The effect of ongoing contributions further softened the markets' blow. Among Vanguard plan participants who had account balances at the beginning and end of 2008, the median change in balances was –14%)


The parenthetical remark is rather odd when you get past the marketese; it's basically saying:
"You lost a lot of money, but if you kept putting money in while losing money, your balance didn’t decrease as much as if you hadn’t put in any money"
So if you put even more money into your 401k just to see even more go away, you should still be happy because you prevented your 401k balance from decreasing as rapidly, and instead made your normal bank account not increase as rapidly. :-) ^ TOP

Posted on 10/30/09 at 08:10:33 by dchaley (David Haley)
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The Perils of Cheap Wine

category: General
At the grocery store last night I wanted to pick up some cheap wine. I found a $7 bottle of "Merlot" (yeah... "cheap" in NYC is a relative term, I suppose), but when I opened later that night it I noticed its color was slightly weaker than usual. That's when I saw, in small font on the bottom of the label, the note "Wine Product - 6% alcohol". Sigh!! The ingredients were listed as red wine, water, sugar, and some other stuff. It doesn't taste terrible, but it certainly doesn't taste like red wine. Oh well. Next time I will pay more attention. :-) ^ TOP

Posted on 10/15/09 at 08:02:37 by dchaley (David Haley)
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