What do people do when a serious downturn happens 5 years or so before retirement?

[Anonymous]

What do people do when a serious downturn happens 5 years or so before retirement?

I feel like people are becoming more and more aggressive investing in equities and even when people "diversify" when closer to retirement they are still heavily invested in equities.

So say you are retiring in 5 years and you don't have the multiple millions that the standard user on this forum has, what steps do take to recover financially?

[Anonymous]

I heard there were some suicides in 2008. It can be rough for sure.

[Anonymous]

You should have been moving money out of the market as you approach retirement. People that have lots saved can stay more invested. If you have 5M and the market drops 20%,you are still fine. If you have 1m$ it is a bigger issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You should have been moving money out of the market as you approach retirement. People that have lots saved can stay more invested. If you have 5M and the market drops 20%,you are still fine. If you have 1m$ it is a bigger issue.

This. Most people (except this forum) are closer to $1m million saved. Unfortunately these people sometimes don't know when to pull out of equity and as a result they can get badly burned.

[Anonymous]

Where do people in retirement move their money?

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately the market run since COVID has given a lot of people a sense that anything below 7% is bad.

Ok reddit, on YouTube etc everyone talks about 10+% return.

Man some people will have a big wake up call.

[Anonymous]

You shouldn’t be fully in the market 5 years before retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do people do when a serious downturn happens 5 years or so before retirement?

I feel like people are becoming more and more aggressive investing in equities and even when people "diversify" when closer to retirement they are still heavily invested in equities.

So say you are retiring in 5 years and you don't have the multiple millions that the standard user on this forum has, what steps do take to recover financially?

We are in that "neighborhood". One retired and another to retire in maybe the next 4-5 years. I want a serious downturn to happen before that so our portfolio can be stress-tested, real world. I am sitting on a bunch of cash so i can load up on good stocks as well..

[Anonymous]

Five years before retirement? Ride it out. Build up some cash reserves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do people do when a serious downturn happens 5 years or so before retirement?

I feel like people are becoming more and more aggressive investing in equities and even when people "diversify" when closer to retirement they are still heavily invested in equities.

So say you are retiring in 5 years and you don't have the multiple millions that the standard user on this forum has, what steps do take to recover financially?

Roth conversions.

The multiple millions is a red herring. Whatever your number is, you were planning on spreading it over a 30yr retirement. So most of it had a long enough horizon to be in equities anyway. Probably worth having something for the first five years invested in less volatile assets, but if someone didn’t, working another year would smooth over much of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should have been moving money out of the market as you approach retirement. People that have lots saved can stay more invested. If you have 5M and the market drops 20%,you are still fine. If you have 1m$ it is a bigger issue.

This. Most people (except this forum) are closer to $1m million saved. Unfortunately these people sometimes don't know when to pull out of equity and as a result they can get badly burned.

The median net worth in the US is like $195k…and most are at that level from house equity.

Most people don’t have anything near $1MM saved.

[Anonymous]

What do you think will happen when Trump doesn't leave office?

Retirees in this country are toast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should have been moving money out of the market as you approach retirement. People that have lots saved can stay more invested. If you have 5M and the market drops 20%,you are still fine. If you have 1m$ it is a bigger issue.

This. Most people (except this forum) are closer to $1m million saved. Unfortunately these people sometimes don't know when to pull out of equity and as a result they can get badly burned.

The median net worth in the US is like $195k…and most are at that level from house equity.

Most people don’t have anything near $1MM saved.

If this true I don't even know what to say. How can people survive ?

[Anonymous]

Annually, my advisor asks us about our risk tolerance. Since we are retired, we are not willing to be very risky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you think will happen when Trump doesn't leave office?

Retirees in this country are toast.

Trump is going to leave office. Probably in a coffin but he will leave. We are obviously on track to repeat what happened in the 1920s ... Harding died (1921-1923), his VP Coolidge took over (1923-1929), then Hoover took over (1929-1933). All Republicans. All committed to the same policies and sure they were right until they drove the economy into the ground.

1. Low taxes on the wealthy
2. Anti-immigration
3. Low government spending
4. High tariffs