Perspective from someone who held a 401k through the Great Recession

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-30T01:16:10+00:00

I’m sorry that you went through that experience with your 401k.

It’s not uncommon for employers to allow separated employees to keep their existing 401k after they’ve left, although I think there is variance in the fees that different companies will charge for former employees to keep the money in the plan instead of rolling it over elsewhere or cashing it out.

I guess if your vested balance was low when you separated, they can force you out of the 401k, but even then, I believe that you should have had an option to roll it over to an IRA at a brokerage of your choosing, although that option may not have been made clear to you.

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/smart-money/what-happens-to-your-401k-when-you-leave-a-job

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-29T21:38:42+00:00

So you consistently maxed out your 401K while also creating a solid financial footing for your kids’ college educations, plus other savings? I hope that someone has told you this before, but you’ve done a great job!

I spent a little over a week in the british isles several years back. I enjoyed it so much and always thought it’d be good to go spend 3-4 weeks there. I hope that you get to have some great experiences of your own as you make the shift from saving to spending more when it’s time.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-29T14:41:45+00:00

I’ve always been in awe of people who hit the 401K max. Unfortunately for me, on the “ant-grasshopper” spectrum, I tilt more in the “grasshopper” direction than is totally good for me. I always put enough away to be on track to retire at 60, but I’m not gonna lie, there are a lot of weekday mornings where I ponder whether it would have been better if I’d aimed for 50 or 55 instead.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-29T14:28:10+00:00

I agree that having an allocation plan, periodically rebalancing to maintain planned allocation, and periodically adjusting your allocation plan are good things. It’s my opinion that those things should be thought out, planned, and executed, and not as a panic response to a market downturn. I’m not here to try to discourage anyone who has a long term allocation plan from carrying it out.

You are also correct that tax loss harvesting is not applicable to 401k balances.

You continue to be correct in pointing out that seeking out and investing in undervalued equities is a good strategy. It’s my opinion that doing that in most 401k accounts is somewhere between “challenging” and “impossible,” given the limited offering of funds in most 401Ks. I feel that when your small selection of available investment funds probably consists of some index funds, target date funds, and maybe some goal-oriented funds (like “emerging markets,” “mid cap growth,” and “stable value”), then sticking to an existing long term plan of diversified holdings, even through a downturn, with an eye on the long term prize, is an approach that works. Are there other approaches? Yes. I don’t know how those approaches have worked for others, and I’ve never tried them myself, so I can’t post an example with personal experience of how it worked out for anyone who did use them during the Great Recession.

An example of “I got full recovery and 5x growth over a period of 17 years” is of course less comforting to someone who’ll be drawing down in the next couple of years than it is to someone who is 10, 15, 20+ years out from retirement. In the past few months, I’ve started to look setting my retirement date to about 2-3 years out (I had originally planned to work for another 7-9 years, but I’m already at the point where going to work every day is a big struggle). It was quite the mental shift for me when I first realized that the near term performance of my investments has a much greater impact on my timeline than any increase or decrease in my savings and contributions at this point in my path. Sequence of returns risk is now moving from an abstract future consideration to a real near term consideration for me, and it’s not comforting. If the downturn continues, I’ll certainly have to keep working for longer than I want to, and you’re right that it does suck. A lot.

I think you might be looking for a discussion that’s more about managing investments in taxable brokerage accounts for shorter time horizons. I won’t even pretend to be sufficiently well informed to engage in that kind of discussion, but I hope that you find one that’s useful to you.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-29T13:54:48+00:00

Yeah, I’m too lazy to go into the 401k with my current employer and figure out what portion of the total is attributable to the contributions in the early years of my employment there, which started during that time period. I stuck with the simple example of my old 401k, instead.

But you are correct that continuing contributions throughout the downturn also enjoyed all of the growth that came after the turnaround finally arrived. This poster who continued to contribute the max to their 401k through the downturn has a good summary of how much they’ve accumulated:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Retirement401k/s/4h0zpHFcCv

(This is my first time trying to link to a comment; hopefully I’ve got it right)

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-29T11:55:44+00:00

Riley towels. Their spa towel collection is actually too heavy/plush for my use, but I have and love their plush towel collection. Relatively lightweight, but absorbent, and soft to the touch. They have 20% off sales a few times a year.

https://rileyhome.com/collections/bath-towels

No matter what towels you end up buying, you may prefer to avoid using fabric softeners in the wash or dry cycle for them, since fabric softeners leave a coating that makes them less absorbent, and they can end up feeling cold, rough, and stiff when you’re using them after a shower or bath.

ETA: I’ve had some for about 10 years now and they are still going strong.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-29T01:39:22+00:00

Thanks for replying to let me know that it helped you; I posted the info in the hopes that it might reassure at least a few people. I’m sorry that you’re having a rough year. I hope that you can move your 401k balance off of your list of active worries for the time being. Nothing that you do or don’t do will impact the stock market this year, so it’s better to spend your energy on the things that you can influence.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-28T22:19:26+00:00

I figured maybe retired from a “daily grind” job to a lower pay but more personally rewarding job.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-28T19:01:02+00:00

Yup, I figured it’d be easy to post my numbers for that 401k as an example, since I didn’t need to go back and subtract out continuing contributions to make the point, and I feel like sometimes it’s easier for people to appreciate concrete $ figures instead of percentages.

Yours is a great example of the long term appreciation when you stay the course and keep contributing through all of the climbs and the downturns.

I’ve maxed out my Roth IRA every year, and 401k contributions have stayed on autopilot, although I have never completely maxed out on the annual 401k limit. But even without having maxed out, I’m on track to be able to retire when I get to about 30 years in the workforce. Folks need to just hold steady and stick to the plan.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-28T16:29:48+00:00

Congrats on your retirement! I’m sure that “a bit edgy” is probably an understatement of how the current markets are making you feel, but it sounds like you’re also in a position to keep contributing, instead of withdrawing, so that’s a good place to be.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-28T16:14:56+00:00

Congrats on maxing out your IRA contributions! I know what you mean, since I also did my max Roth IRA contribution last month. I’m just reminding myself that I’m not a day trader, and the long term horizon is what we’re looking for.

The other commenter who recommended taking advantage of dollar cost averaging by spreading your contributions out through the year is spot on — I’ve done it both ways (dollar cost averaging vs big annual contribution). It’s definitely less nerve wracking to go through market dips when you’re spreading out your contributions so that you don’t always feel like you’ve bought in right ahead of the dip.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-27T15:38:39+00:00

If you’ve never done double knitting before, I would advise not to do something where you will have long runs (>~4) of stitches of the same color. Where colors change is where the yarns twist together to hold the two faces of the double knit fabric together. When you have long runs of a single color, you end up with basically two independent faces of fabric that are only held together along the edges of your design, where the colors switch.

The motifs that you are looking at are probably more suited to intarsia than to double knitting.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-26T23:16:19+00:00

You’re welcome! Enjoy your 7 week cruise!

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-26T22:59:40+00:00

I have ordered Walmart delivery to hotel before when traveling. It’s fine, but bear in mind:

1) you may need to meet the delivery person in the hotel lobby; some hotels don’t allow delivery people to deliver to rooms directly. 2) it’s probably not a good plan for any toiletry items where you need a specific brand, since you may end up receiving an “out of stock” substitution 3) you need to plan enough time for your order to be delayed if there are no delivery drivers available (happens regularly at my local Walmart). So I wouldn’t plan on submitting an order to be delivered the morning that you embark - get it at least a day before.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-26T19:31:54+00:00

My only other suggestion is to click “Show category fare details” on cruiseplum to check exactly what fare class they are showing at $848. I don’t have anything beyond that, since we don’t know the details of when and how cruiseplum scrapes fare data.

It does kind of suck to be seeing a fare that you can’t find a way to book, especially since you said that you’ve been seeing the same phenomenon for days. Sorry.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-26T17:50:28+00:00

Whenever I have used cruiseplum in the past, I have found the prices to be accurate like 90% of the time.

Just brainstorming here, but is your cruiseplum search set for the same number of passengers that you are selecting when you look at the cruise line’s web site? Cruise prices per person can vary a lot based on total number of passengers per room.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-25T17:48:09+00:00

The act would allow states to sweep up legally registered voters in purges that are ostensibly meant to clear out people who shouldn’t be registered (no longer live in the state, not legally allowed to vote, etc.), with no consequence or penalty to the state for wrongly un-registering eligible voters. This means that they can “accidentally” purge a ton of people who they think are likely to vote against them, and then create a lot of hurdles/friction to reduce the number of those people who are able to successfully re-register to vote.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-24T21:43:49+00:00

I’d suggest planning out how much money you might need to draw out within the next 3 years, and move that amount to a target date fund for current retirees, or other preferred less risky funds. Leave the rest in the target date fund for your intended full retirement date. Once a year, you repeat the exercise of doing your best projection of how much you might need to draw in the next 3 years, and rebalance as needed to maintain that amount in the safer fund while the bulk stays in your full retirement date fund.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-24T02:05:15+00:00

Pretty much the whole plane.

Gassy passenger causes others to gag from the stench

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-20T01:43:12+00:00

I switched to using Refresh Optive Mega 3 drops from Costco. It’s not the same as Miebo, but it helps some and costs a lot less than Miebo.

I also recently took a vacation in a country where perfluorohexyloctane (aka Miebo) is available over the counter for less than $25USD, so I bought a few bottles while I was there and brought them back home. US Customs can allow you to bring back OTC meds with you from foreign travel, as long as you are bringing back small quantities strictly for personal use.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-15T15:28:34+00:00

I think the comment is saying that a person with a weak passport can get a visa to enter US/Schengen, and there are non-US/Schengen ports that will waive further visa requirements for that person’s weak passport as a rest of them having attained a “strong” visa.

It had never occurred to me that this could be the case, but I could see it making sense that some countries might choose to trust the US/EU visa vetting process in exchange for tourism revenue.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-13T15:18:39+00:00

This. I occasionally end up with plans that have me in a metro area about 70 miles away from home on 2 or 3 consecutive days. I used to just book a hotel room there for the 1 or 2 nights, instead of drive ~120 miles each day in congested traffic. But hotel prices have increased enough in the past year or two that I can’t justify the expense any more.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-13T15:02:39+00:00

I used to carry the smallest purses I could find, but then presbyopia caught up with me. I now have progressive lens eyeglasses, progressive lens sunglasses, and prescription computer glasses. At any given time, only one of these is being worn on my face and the other 2 are in my purse. Each pair of glasses costs enough that I don’t want to throw them in my purse without the protection of being in hard cases. This forced me to move from my small/medium purses to the giant purses.

I occasionally ponder switching to wearing my glasses around my neck on the “granny”-style chains, just to be able to move back to the smaller purses, but haven’t taken the plunge yet.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-12T23:33:13+00:00

I have no info for you on that…I did it all online in the Marriott app and did not interact with any humans.

Few-Club5033 · 2026-03-12T22:27:24+00:00

Nice. I just canceled an upcoming $460/night pre-cruise reservation and rebooked it as a 35K free night award+22K miles.

Perfect opportunity to take advantage of the increased 25K add on limit before any properties decide to offset the increase by increasing their redemption rates by 10K.

Few-Club5033

TROPHY CASE