401K Lessons (Learning it the Hard Way)

Last year was my first full year at work. I managed to max out my 401K contribution with one paycheck left to go. So for the last paycheck I set the contribution rate to 0%. This week I had to go in to reset it back to the original rate. Boy, was I in for a painfully rude shock - my 401K returns were negative. When I was younger I used to wonder why people who have money still worry about money. But in that one moment when I was staring at the numbers in red indicating negative returns on my hard earned money (that I had scrimped and scrounged to save, I must add) it was suddenly very obvious. The knot at the pit of my stomach did not feel good.

To cut a long story short, things have gone further south since then, and as of today, I am down 5% for the year. And my all-time returns have shrunk so badly that the returns on my 401K statement are beginning to resemble that of my bank statement. I have had 401K on my mind for the past few days, and here are some lessons I am learning.

Do not track the returns of the 401K on a daily basis
This is advice I need to learn to live by, since I value my sleep too much. Until this week, I hardly paid attention to how my 401K was doing, except for an occasional look out of curiosity, and I was doing fine. But now that I know it is not doing well, I have an obsessive urge to check it the first thing every morning. And with the losses going higher each day, it is turning out to be a heck of a lousy way to start the day.

Pay attention to asset allocation
When I started my contributions, since it was still very early in my career, I presumed I should be able to take a lot of risk. So I did. I put 100% in stocks - 20% large cap, 40% in mid cap and 40% in International. And now it is clear to me that this risk level is way too high for me to handle. It is very important to look realistically at what risk you can stomach, and balance it against how much returns you hope to make. So, I finally took some time out to go through all the funds, their volatility levels, their performance history, the expense ratios etc. and reallocated my future contributions. My asset allocation choices are - 50% domestic stock, 32% international stock and 18% bonds. And the funds I have selected offer performance close (though not quite there) to what my earlier allocation did but have much lower volatility. I still have a few questions about some of the funds, and have mailed the fund managers for details. Once I get the information, I hope to finalise my selection and freeze the allocation and only visit it once every 5 years or so to see if the risk tolerance is still OK.

Don't lose perspective
I have at least 30 more years to go before I can retire (assuming I do not retire early). The amount I have in my account is a small drop in the pond when compared to the final balance that my 401K account will have. The 5% loss on that small figure is but a ripple in the pond. In the long run, this experience is just a small blip that might not even register on the radar. It is important to have this long-term perspective to avoid losing sleep and to control the temptation to mess with the allocation every now and then.

Nobody else can determine what is best for you
Our company's 401K plan provides us access to some financial software and I went through it to obtain some advice on what my model allocation should be. I also had several discussions with the better half and some older colleagues. I used all this advice, but in the end, what I chose was uniquely suited for my particular situation. It is easier to let someone else handle the decisions (e.g., financial advisers, spouse, parents etc.) but to really be peaceful, it helped for me to go through the details of the funds and determine what was best for me.

In a way, I am glad that I chanced upon looking at my 401K when it was doing particularly bad. I had not paid much attention before and had randomly picked funds with seemingly good performance in an effort to maximize my returns without really paying much attention to the associated risk level. Now I have put in a lot more reading of the funds offered and have picked the ones that I believe are more suitable for me for the long run. I don't know if this is the allocation I will stick with forever, but for now at least, I feel a lot at peace with my choice.

*Image credit: Photograph by jay d [via Flickr Creative Commons]

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