A Navy officer and insurance executive watched their 401(k)s and mutual funds crater in 2008, then kept contributing for four years without checking. When they finally looked in 2012, the portfolio still hadn't recovered. They realized the standard advice to keep investing the same way wasn't working.
Chapters
We both had great jobs. He was a submariner in the Navy, an officer, and I was the vice president in an insurance company. And we thought we were doing everything right. We were making great money and just enjoying life. And then in 2008, the market crashed, as we all know, and we had lost a lot of money. We had, you know, we bought into the mindset early on that We believed in the system. We believed in getting a good education, and I still do, but that we continue to put money into our 401, our IRAs, and our mutual funds, and that's how we're going to grow wealth. And we thought we were on the right path for years. Bring you back up to speed. 2008, market crashed. We were still young at the time. Our girls were still young. We, we still thought we were doing the right thing, and we both agreed that we were going to continue on that path. So we continued to work. hard for, you know, our employers and continue to put money into our 401 and IRAs. And then finally, in 2012, I had enough courage to open up our financial statements that I had been avoiding for the last 4 years. And I completely did not like what I saw. I was shocked, honestly, because we still were not where we were before the market crashed in 2008. And we were, over the last 4 years, contributing a significant amount of our income into our 401s, IRAs, and mutual funds. Still, so it made us realize that maybe we aren't on the right track.
