Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

401(k) Loans as Recession Insurance?

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With a recession (depending on whom you ask) upon us, would it have been wise for us to have taken a loan from our 401(k)s before it started?  Bear with me here for a second.  A loan from your 401(k) is pretty simple.  You borrow the money from yourself and then repay it to the 401(k) with interest.  The interest is usually something low.  Normally, it’s a bad idea, as the market usually performs as well, if not better, than the interest on the loan.

But, if (and that’s a big if) you were able to time the market relatively well to know there was going to be a downturn, you could loan the money to yourself.  Because the money would not be in the account, it wouldn’t suffer from the loss of value in your investments.  And instead, you’d gain whatever the interest rate was that you loaned the money for.  Instead of a double digit loss, you could have a relatively decent gain.  In theory it could work.

In theory.  The catch here is that you would have to time the market correctly.  If you missed it by a day, you could cost yourself some money.  If you were totally wrong and the market rallied, you’d end up missing out on possible gains.  But, if it worked, it could work out pretty well.  In the end, the more I look at it, it’s really a form of gambling.  You’re gambling that you can time the market and save your money.

Gambling is never a safe bet when it comes to your retirement.  It’s always tempting though.  It’s important to remember that a fall like we had over the last few years almost always comes back up.  You haven’t really lost money so much as lost value.  There’s a big difference there.  And if you keep contributing, which you should, you’re buying the very same investments at a bargain price.  So, instead of trying to minimize your losses by pulling your money out, you should be increasing your investment to maximize your return when the account finally bounces back up.

Dow Drops 504 – Now What?

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The Dow dropped by nearly 504 points (503.99) yesterday.  Now what?  Don’t panic.  As the bells start ringing to open the markets again today, they will likely slip even further.  Don’t panic.  There’s a silver lining to this.

I’m an optimist.  The glass is always half-full.  The silver lining here is actually a benefit of Dollar-Cost Averaging.  If you don’t know what that is, you’ll pick up a little bit in this post, but it’s a good time to subscribe to this site as we’ll be discussing DCA a little bit further later this month.

As everyone knows, if you want to make money in the stock market, you have to buy low and sell high.  A lot of money can be made if only you can do that.  Most of us don’t have the crystal ball to do it perfectly though.  Let me help you out.  Buy now.

When you see a headline like the one above, it’s a pretty safe bet that it won’t get much lower.  And if it does?  Dollar-Cost Average to the rescue.  And in the long run, the market will come back up, and you won’t even need another dot-com bubble to make yourself a safe full of money.

So what if the Dow drops more than it has in 7 years?  Buying at a low like this can only help your Dollar-Cost Averaged prices.  And if it gets lower?  Buy more.  Pretty simple really.

The people in charge here at Beating Broke are not financial professionals.  Please don’t take our advice for gospel.  If you are going to follow the advice here, please consult a financial professional first.  And, just for the record, nothing is a sure thing in investments.  So if you lose all your money, don’t come crying to us.  And don’t sue us either.