Quote:
Originally Posted by Over Yonder
Yea, I know you are correct. You may not remember, but me and you had a brief discussion about this over on the DC side a while back. I'm that type of guy that looks at investing like this. If I keep all my money and my employers match plus the little dab of interest/dividend it accumulates, I am satisfied. Like I said, I'm not a gambler.
And for the record, the  in my reply was to his joke, not anything else. Definitely not trying to be rude or anything. I have a very meager traditional IRA and the 401k down at work. Love reading this thread and seeing how those of you who are brave are winning the game. Sometimes I wish my brain wasn't wired the way it is, I could possibly be making coin too  |
Oh I do remember now! I do appreciate you being honest. We all have different pucker factors. I am in no way trying to change what you do.
That being said, the power of compounding interest is very real. People like to look at the highest value of their portfolio, and freak out when it loses money in a correction like this week. Truth be told, those with 25-30 year investment windows. who consistently contribute to retirement accounts, will come out vastly ahead of those who do not use such accounts, simply due to compounding interest of decades.
I have a family member who started investing into a stock market retirement account in 1978. Fast forward to 2008 when the market crashed. At that time they had contributed a total of $150k throughout those 30 years into this account. Even at the absolute bottom of the market in 2008, it was still worth $400k. Sure it was scary and worrisome to see their retirement money get cut in half! But as they told me, they were still well ahead of where they'd be if they had simply placed that money into a savings account all those years. Fast forward another 10 years to 2018, and without adding another penny to this account in those 10 years, it's now worth close to $1M.
That's the power of compounding interest at work.