My 401K & Pension Fund both ended the year with a 16% gain.
I've been retired since 2021 therefore careful not to be too aggressive with the investments.
Satisfied with the results.

Rather well, I don’t check very often.

My Roth IRA went up 120%. I put the whole thing into silver and gold funds. My more conservative IRA went up 23%.
After the metals boom cools off I will probably go back into more conservative funds.

Not a 401k, but similar (Through deferred comp). Overall I'm up, but when averaged out over 2025 it was only a .77% gain.

My Roth IRA, and rollover IRA gained 16% for the year. I have been retired for 11 1/2 years and have not contributed for that long now.

My wife retired on Dec 31. I retire on May 1. We have done very well with the 401's and brokerage accounts. We are well diversified, the accounts clocked in at about 16% for 2025. The gold and silver position went nuts, but it is only 2% of the portfolio. We can live very comfortably with our Social Security, Pension and very modest withdrawals from retirement assets (about 2.5%) I think we'll survive any downturn headwinds.

I'm 66 and tend to be very conservative with fund risk.

I'm surprised my thread is still ongoing!
My position is about identical to Scratchy. I'm 65, retired comfortably at 61.
My SS pays all my monthly bills, I just have to withdraw to pay my skyrocketing property taxes. I'm conservative as well, 16 percent.
I can't believe the value of my house, it's almost doubled in the last five or six years, but I'm not going anywhere.

My 457 ended the year +18.1. "Retirement" is 15 months away, but it is only a "paper retirement". I'll only be mid-40's and just moving on to something different after doing my 20 years here to qualify for the early retirement.

My loose idea is to use the 457 account to fund some rental property... time to really start thinking that through and looking at all my options.

I have had incredible and irregular gains since 2021. I started contributing to my work 401k when I was late 20’s but never got real serious about it until I hit 50. I started learning more about investing around 2020 and fortunately picked up good advice from people I started following online.

I have 4 different IRA accounts (I.e. 4 different companies which gives me lots of option on what I can buy) and my overall gain from October 2021 until yesterday is 203%. I had my largest yearly gain from 2021 to 2022 which was 88% in that 1 year time frame.

I am nearing retirement so I am slowing down and being conservative. I don’t ever expect to see those gains again but a couple picks during covid really did well. I’d hate to hit a market crash and have to push out retirement while I recover so I am mainly in fixed interest now.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
I am nearing retirement so I am slowing down and being conservative. I don’t ever expect to see those gains again but a couple picks during covid really did well. I’d hate to hit a market crash and have to push out retirement while I recover so I am mainly in fixed interest now.

That can be good if the market goes bad for an extended period of time, like a decade. But it is sub-optimal for normal cycles. Most bear markets only last ~3 years, and then recovery is generally fast. And there are temporary dips which recover even faster. Trying to time the market is hazardous, but letting long term investments ride through a dip is historically a winner in the long term. Which suggests that a safe conservative plan is to have about 3-5 years of spending in cash-like vehicles such as money market and short term government bonds. And then put the rest of your portfolio into well diversified longer term investments that can ride through the dips. Those long term investments should, over time, return much more than inflation.

Money market and bond interest is likely to return less than inflation. I believe in the future, the government will push for a larger gap so that they can deleverage the debt via inflation, attempting to avoid hyperinflation or outright government default. So if you can get 4% interest, inflation is likely to be twice that (even if the official inflation is lower).

Each year, rebalance those long term investments to whatever mix is your target, and sell enough to refill your money-market/bond bucket. If the market takes a bad drop, like 40%, you can skip selling for a loss and draw down the money-market/bond bucket until the market recovers.

Today with what we know, what is the best way to deploy assets in a portfolio? Man that is so tough! With the national debt and inflation concerns, a significant economic recession or depression seems likely. On the other hand, most economic indicators as well as what we see Trump doing would suggest a solid economy over the next years until something changes. I do believe, though that nearly all stocks or nearly no stocks is quite risky.

I've actually calmed down a bit after being retired 4 years. I was very risk averse at first, while my wife is a huge risk taker. We've both moved towards the middle.

quote:

Trying to time the market is hazardous, but letting long term investments ride through a dip is historically a winner in the long term. Which suggests that a safe conservative plan is to have about 3-5 years of spending in cash-like vehicles such as money market and short term government bonds. And then put the rest of your portfolio into well diversified longer term investments that can ride through the dips. Those long term investments should, over time, return much more than inflation.

Yes, this is the strategy that works.
You have short, intermediate, and long-term buckets.

I had an airline pilot buddy who just knew (correctly) that the market was going to tank and moved a huge portion of his 401k into cash. I told him my policy was I would move to cash if I had a metric that would tell me when it was time to move back into the market. Fast forward and he lost a large amount due to missing the gains when the market came back.

Don't market time. Use the bucket strategy. Invest consistently. First check of every month written to yourself as my Dad would say. Less exposure as you get older. And the primary rule is the same rule as my farmer buddy told me. "Best time to plant fruit trees?" "Last year". Start early and do it consistently.

I showed my son an IRA I started at 18 when I enlisted in the Navy. I think I did 50 bucks a month. It is amazing what the time value of money will produce.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
"Best time to plant fruit trees?" "Last year". Start early and do it consistently.

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

Yea that was probably his farm spun wisdom more correctly than I wrote. lol

My 403 (B) is doing great. I'm 67 and years ago started moving from stocks to bonds, about 60/40 now. My Edward Jones accounts and deferred comp accounts are diversified about the same. Just applied for SS, hired a financial advisor who is working with me to start doing some Roth conversions etc. Anyone who is close to retirement, please hire a FA who specializes in ways to save money on taxes.

I'm bleeding



About time to buy

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
I'm bleeding

About time to buy

It's a bad day so far. Not yet low enough for me to start buying though.

When the indexes start hitting 30% or 40% down, we'll be buying more of the etf's we're in.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
I'm bleeding

About time to buy

It's definitely a rotation out of tech.
But there are areas that aren't so over-valued.

Roll over 401k up 95.5% since 11/2022. I control all fund choices through Fidelity. YTD up 5.4%. No Money added to this fund.

Work 401k 2.5 years up 47.11% YTD is -3.27
50% Dryden S&P 500 index
50% Vanguard Inst Growth
Both with almost identical returns.

My Wife’s SEP IRA is less than year old, up 38.6%. Started it the week of Trumps Tarif crash, put in a nice chunk of money for the 2024 tax year. This is also with Fidelity and I pick the funds.

That's what I appreciate about my Grok-guided allocations with appropriate risk-rewards profiles for each time horizon bucket. On a day like today, I'm down 0.07% while Year to day is +1.74% and that's not reflecting I took money out at the beginning of both January and February.

I have time horizons for This Year, Next Year and Following Year, Years 3 - 10, and Years 11 - 20.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Rey HRH,