Well September was certainly an exciting month to be in the stock market with the overall market falling about 10% in the month of September and people getting excited about all the money they are “losing” in their retirement accounts.

As you can see below my retirement accounts dropped about 6.5% in value this month and overall I’m more excited about the stock market downturn than I am worried about it. Why am I excited? Because markets especially in the short-term are very irrational and fear takes hold when stocks start sinking and generally there are moments of overreaction that present great opportunities for those with a long term time horizon and a level head. In the very least you are a lot less likely to have to pay a hefty premium on the value of a stock. In other words despite the falling stock prices it’s probably much much safer to invest in times like this than it is when the market is chugging on up.

Now do I think the recent drops are unjustified? Certainly not, I think that much of the gains especially in the financial and real estate sectors that drove alot of the growth the last few years were based on completely faulty data (counting their eggs before they hatched) and I think things have the possibility to get much much worse, but with all things there needs to be some perspective on it. Even if we go back to the 70s or heck even the 20-30s and the great depressions things probably aren’t nearly as bad as people think they would be. I mean people survived back then and in fact many people made a lot of money during those time periods – the difference is not everyone made money.

It’s times like those that tend to weed the wheat from the chaff (man I’m using a lot of analogies) and as long as you have your personal finances and career on strong footing there probably isn’t too much to worry about. If you have a degree/training in a decent field of employment, if you are a talented worker, if you don’t have yourself weighed down with debt, if you have that emergency fund setup, and have a regular savings/investing program setup, because you spend less than you earn you are probably not going to get to end up on the street when times turn bad. Certainly things aren’t always going to be easy or rosy, but with a solid foundation like that you can probably overcome the challenges that life might throw your way.

Anyway sorry for the book of random thoughts – here is the report.

Traditional Rollover IRA – $12,058.14 (-5.68%)
My Roth IRA – $31,558.66 (-4.08%)
Wife Roth IRA – $14,433.13 (-12.70%)
Current Traditional 401k – $26,911.22 (-5.89%)

Roth/Traditional % = 54.13% (tax free)

Total Retirement Nest Egg $84,961.15 (-6.44%)