401k is getting wiped out, what to do?

I think that day is coming. We just sold our house. Everyone else on the market with same type of house in our area was at $340k. We got appraised at $300k, and we priced in there. We got an offer of $295 and took it, we are making our way to closing. Inspection is today.

So the other people, in order to move their houses, have to re-think their expectations by about -15%. They are literally being a bit too greedy for the current market.

$295k is fine with me. I bought at $135k and have no mortgage. “OK Boomer”.

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Not according to any definition I found in a google search.

Just FYI… gold is is up 49% in the past year. It thrives on uncertainty. Lots of that recently. If you’d had a 10% allocation to gold, it would have contributed a 4.9% return to the other 90% of the portfolio.

I think going forward I am going to use the IAUM ETF for gold, if I buy more for whatever reason. It has a quite low expense ratio.

I find the AI-generated responses from my online queries interesting and possibly useful in providing information for further inquiry, but I don’t take them seriously and do not and have not used them in this or any other forum as my own writing.

Speaking of AI-generated responses – I asked a question to the AI assistant on my medical insurance website. It responded that my insurance situation might change and if I have any questions, just ask!! (but I had just asked…)

I think today’s situation regarding AI is similar in many ways to the early use of quantitative analysis in stock market predictions in the 1990’s.

The use of the methods and algorithms the Quants came up with proved to be wrong and that fact played a big role in what proved to be a $60 trillion-dollar mistake, and a major contributing factor behind the 2008 financial crisis.

From today’s Wall Street Journal “The S&P 500 on Friday touched its first new high since February, capping a dizzying 23% rally from the depths of April’s tariff-induced selloff.” No one knows the future up and downs of the market. Investors who sold stocks in April should assess their risk tolerance and consider having a more conservative asset allocation.

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I placed a major portion of IRA fund holdings into a Money Market fund after the stock funds had pretty much recovered from the April 3, Liberation Day. They shall remain in the money market until I see what fresh hell POTUS might unleash next week when the 90-day tariff hiatus expires. I’m pulling for TACO behavior, but recent statements make that seem less than likely.

This comment didn’t age well. Hope you did not sell. Stock market rebounded pretty well, didn’t it? Never will understand why gloom and doom arouses so much interest.

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There are some downward trends in housing:

  1. The birth rate in the US is below replacement. Stagnant or shrinking populations do not bode well for housing prices.
  2. Many of the illegal aliens are going home. Those people put an upward demand on housing.
  3. Gen Z people do not crave the McMansion style of house. Good for them.

You can avoid some of the chaos by investing in nonUS assets. International stock and bonds have done well. Look at ISHG, IGOV, VEU

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We’ll be on the market in a couple of weeks with a $400-$500K SFR house. That’s just a tad over a starter house in our market. (2150sf, 4BR, 3BA)

It’ll be an interesting ride, we haven’t sold one for 10 years.

I still cannot get my head around paying a half million for a house.

In the early sixties, I remember reading Mad Magazine. There was a cartoon with a mansion on a hill. The owner was bragging to a friend, “Yeah, that is a $50,000 house right there.” Now an unimpressive house costs 10 times that much. How currency debasement distorts values!

Neither can I, I paid $19,000 for my first house in 1966.