I can’t believe there are so many talking heads – notably, on CNN (Gerri Willis), but also Fox Business (Dave Ramsey), CNBC and others – still telling us to keep putting our money away in a retirement fund, because if you’re retiring in 10+ years, you want to keep averaging your investments… OK, so let me get this straight: The S&P 500 has had its worst DECADE on record, and it’s likely to keep going down or flat for the next 2-5 years, and you should keep putting money there??  When a huge portion of the index is financial companies?

This is why Jim Cramer has for a long time said to ONLY put into a 401(K) enough to get a match if you have one, otherwise  GO ELSEWHERE. I recommend a self-directed ROTH account, where you can invest in individual bond funds, stocks, commodity ETFs etc.  Whatever you think of Cramer, at least he’s telling people to be cautious and not to just keep blindly throwing money down the short-term drain.

Robert Kiyosaki also makes sense: he dislikes defined benefit plans for the precise reason that (1) people don’t know enough about investing to avoid danger (like, emailing or calling in to the cable news shows for advice about how to invest???)  and (2) you have NO CONTROL over your money and how it works for you!  If the market underperforms for 10 years, and you only have variations of the S&P 500 to invest in through your employer’s 401(K) plan, you can’t avoid a bad market.  How does that help anyone financially?

I am going to post a page with links to the people telling you to invest in the market, because in a year or two from now, I want to review their advice… so stay tuned…

Since the events of the past week or so, I’m guessing many people have stopped their retirement contributions, or at least redirected them to something other than the stock market.

But I had to laugh, when my company’s investment plan suggested that a “good” money market was one that only lost 3-5%, thereby beating the S&P for the past year.

Since when is a good investment something that simply loses less than other investments?  I am not an expert but I would bet that the 10-11% “average” stock market returns we’ve heard parrotted by all investment companies are sorely beaten up by 2008.  My crystal ball says good luck getting any kind of return at all in stocks for the next 2-3 years.  If you put 401(K) money in a fund under these conditions, I’d be intrested to hear how you think that is going to benefit you?