Two Market Rallies Disappear

It's kind of crazy to think that we are now at the same point we were in 1996. How awful for people who trusted others to manage their money.

Like others, I didn't have the clairvoyance (or the opportunity) to move my retirement money to the safety of cash. Most of us don't have many options when it comes to our retirement and even if we have a little bit of market knowledge, we are still extremely limited in our choices. I had 10 funds to choose from, and was discouraged from keeping my funds in cash (it was a rigorous process to sell the funds and place them into a cash account--and I was too lazy to the paperwork).

I decided last week to cash out my accounts after seeing how decimated they were over the past year. I haven't been saving for retirement very long. I started in 2003, so I didn't have much of a nest egg built up. But what I got back (after taxes and penalties) was half of what it was a year ago. The 10 percent penalty added to my frustration. I'm paying a penalty because I'm tired of market "professionals" losing all my money!

This might be extremely irresponsible of me, but I'm not planning on keeping a retirement any more. With the insanity that has happened in the government and the markets, I don't feel that I can really trust that the market will "always go up", or that my account is safe from a desperate government that has run out of ways to raise capital.