dear sir dave
I’m 61 and hope to retire soon, but I’m seeing my retirement savings dwindle every day. The only place I haven’t lost money is $180,000 in the bank with near zero interest. what should i do?
jessie
Dear Jessie,
Come on, hey. “Will it be completely eroded day by day?” That’s a bit dramatic. One thing to understand is that understanding it has helped me since I started working on this sort of thing 30 years ago. It means that we live in our brains a drama queen who exaggerates things. Especially when it comes down to it. for investment. So take a deep breath and stay calm. everything will be fine
Studies show that you need a $3 gain on your investment to emotionally offset a $1 loss. Our brains record the negative at a much higher rate than the positive, and it takes a lot of emotion to recover from it. Your investment may be a little less. If there’s $1 million out there, it might be worth him $900,000 by now. It could jump up to $1.1 million next year. In other words, your entire retirement savings won’t “waste.”
Have you ever heard of people losing all their fortunes on the stock market? Well, it’s mathematically impossible. Unless you put all your money into one company and that company shuts down completely and becomes worthless. Remember Enron? When most people say yes, what they really mean is that you lost a lot of money because you panicked and went into hyperdrama mode and withdrew all your money while the market was down.
Jessie, did you know that for the past 20 years the stock market has fallen every year, followed by a record rise for the next two years? I’m going to keep going!” are two best friends.
— Dave
Dave Ramsey is an eight-time national bestselling author, personal finance expert, and host of The Ramsey Show. He has appeared on Good Morning His America, CBS This Morning, Today, Fox News, CNN, Fox Business, and more. Since 1992, Dave has helped people manage their money, build wealth and improve their lives. He is also CEO of his Ramsey Solutions company.
